Word: bells
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Dates: during 1920-1929
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...less than eight heavy old-fashioned padlocks, four of them on one door with heavy sheet iron plates on either side formerly protected the passage up the stairs to the bell. The time-honored custom of stealing the tongue of the bell or otherwise disabling it necessitated these heavy fortifications to guard it from assault. All of these locks remain as witnesses of the old times, but they are no longer used. As Mr. Conant said: "Those days are pretty nearly faded out; there's only one door used now with a modern Yale lock...
...these incidents. That came as a result of a remark last year by President Lowell in a speech at one of the exercises of the Senior class. "He said something about the boys nowadays not having the pep they used to have because they never did anything to the bell. That night some of them smashed down the door and stole the tongue just to show him he was wrong, I suppose...
...fooled 'em! They didn't know I had a substitute tongue I rang the 7 o'clock bell with a hammer, and then put the new tongue...
...Conant's predecessor, old Jones the Bell-ringer, as he was called, who bore the brunt of the attacks in the old days. For 44 years he protected the bell and its clapper from an infinite variety of plots by undergraduates seeking a few extra hours of sleep in the morning. Mr. Conant described a few of the methods used, "Besides stealing the clapper, the boys used to tie up the bell with a rope. And in the wintertime they turned it upside down, filled it with water, and let it freeze." In order to avoid the padlocks, the usual...
Ringing the bell is an exact science. "I ring it on the hour and the minute, and as near as possible on the second," said Mr. Conant, "I've been on the job going on thirteen years, never missed a day, and never had a complaint on the bell being wrong. Two-thirds of the students and professors come to me for the right time, and most of the clocks in the square are set by the bell...