Word: dunster
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Dates: during 1920-1929
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...almost a block of houses. This would add something to the expense but the advantage of the project seem to outweigh any expenditure incurred by tearing down a few frame and brick structures. Furthermore, while the report stipulates the purchase of the plot bounded by the Smith Halls, Dunster, Boylston, and Mt. Auburn Streets, this acquisition is not immediately essential. It would require a greater difference than this in financial outlay between the proposition of the Student Council and any alternate proposal to justify the sacrifice of an ultimate gain to an immediate economy...
Cotton Mather, whose father was in College in Dunster's time paid a tribute in the "Magnalia" to the learning piety, and saintliness of the first President. Of his humaneness we have a few precious contemporary records. Dunster married the widow Glover, whose first husband brought over the famous printing, first in the English colonies. With the widow, Dunster acquired the press--which was operated in his house, on the site of Massachusetts Hall...
...amusing story of Dunster's presidency was handed down for two centuries among his descendants. The President was at Concord, visiting his relatives, when the word came that the College boys had, literally, raised the Devil. Prexy saddled his horse and hastened back to Cambridge to find that the report was true. The students were thoroughly frightened at something--whether a practical joke or a bit of black magic, the reader can best decide. Whatever it may have been, the President's remedy was masterly. Emptying his powder horn on the Hall floor, he solemnly exorcised the Evil...
...story of Duster's dismissal from the College has generally been related as an instance of Puritan bigotry and intolerance. Dunster, since his arrival, had been an orthodox Calvinist and member of the Cambridge Church but by careful study he reached the conclusion, some time in 1653, that the baptism of infants was unauthorized by scripture. Accordingly he refused to present for baptism his son who was horn in the fall of that year. The news that President Dunster had become a Baptist created about the same sensation in the Colony as would be aroused in the country today...
...which the "real theme is courage and devotion; courage under conditions which would seem to stifle all human effort save an avid grubbing for food and housing, devotion to the fine ideal of disciplining the human intellect and human will." One might add that the courage was largely Dunster's, and in devotion no one was his equal. Harvard College might even have followed its founder to an early death and oblivion, but for the lively faith, the serene courage, and the steadfast devotion of Henry Dunster...