Word: wadsworths
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Many of the library's oldest manuscripts date from before 1500, while others include first editions of Thomas Wolfe, Herman Melville, and Henry Wadsworth Longfellow. Houghton's theatre collection is one of its most unusual attractions--even holding the answer to "whether Macbeth should be played in quilts." A rare series of seventeenth century American almanacs, precursors to Poor Richard, are especially valuable and amusing. Among the wise saying are the following: 'All men like money; some their wives," and "He that marries for love has good nights but sorry days." The world's largest series of books and manuscripts...
...that did not amount to much until Quincy's day. Then it became an orgy, highlighted by such scenes as "the College janitor, in vain protesting, yet not without hilarious collusion on his own part, (being) borne in wavering triumph on a door." The afternoon always began in Wadsworth House over what Professor Morison cryptically calls "cake and wine...
Winter came on and Wadsworth, notwithstanding "the House was not half finished within," moved in anyway. The Overseers suggested completing it on credit, then thrusting the IOUs at the legislature. As indirection and pathos had failed before; so the fait accompli failed here, and Harvard finally had to plumb its own treasury for the eight hundred pounds due. Even then, Wadsworth House was not wholly done. 1783 saw the two wings and the ell on the north side. The brick part was built in 1810 as a separate unit and sixty years later was spun around to adjoin...
...President's House, Wadsworth was the scene of many an imposing event. General Washington, along with General Robert E. Lee's father, "Light-Horse Harry" Lee, set up his first headquarters there, and on July 3, 1775 thence rode out to the Common to take command of the Revolutionary troops. It is said that the plans to oust King George from Boston took form in the Wadsworth parlor. And it was in the same room that President Andrew Jackson received students after taking his honorary degree, greeting each and all with "'I wish you all much happiness,' 'Gentlemen, I heartily...
More and more the Harvard officialdom has taken over Wadsworth, from the Hygiene people to the Summer School. Following a complete structural renovation in 1950, it became the Alumni Center, home of the Alumni Bulletin, the Harvard Fund Council, the University Marshal, and other such activities. Though this is very appropriate for the second oldest house in the Yard, still it is not like the old days. But who knows? Dean Bundy or someone may move in and Wadsworth, like Massachusetts Hall, will begin the road back...