It is sad news that Harvard College is to close Memorial Hall as a dining hall. Presumably the building will be converted to baser uses. It might be given over to one of the minor arts, eating not having thrived there. Or it might be utilized as a chemical laboratory or a hall of social research. In all these and in many other fields it has already attained distinction. Its venerable oil paintings, somewhat dimmed by the vapors of hot soups and coffee, its stained glass windows, more impressive, though less frequently noted, than the stained table cloths, all have served to embellish the hall and lift it from the ranks of cafeterias and side-arm banquet places.

Presumably the young men at Cambridge now will not greatly miss the hall. Few of them patronized it. It is out of date. What makes things go out of date? What was there at Memorial Hall twenty-five years ago (and more) which made it loved then and which holds it in the minds of men now grown to gray hair, which it lacks today? There are thousands, who would like to slip back the years, and go walking with the rest across the yard, and into Memorial. They would like to hear the clatter of the dishes, like to sniff the faint, elusive fragrance of cooking, like to see the dusky waiter come shuffling down the long aisle, miraculously balancing seven plates of food on his arm and only occasionally dropping one . . .

Old days never come back. But there is that in the traditions of American colleges into which such a place as Memorial dining hall fits, and will always fit. Its chance may come again at Harvard. We hope so.

The hall had its share in educating men. Many have debated just what men get from college. That they get pleasant memories everyone agrees. And if amid those memories the pictures of lecture room and class room are less distinct than memories of personalities and groups, that is human nature. Memorial Hall provided a memory. Many thousands look back to it, see its long aisle again in their mind's eye, and feel thankful for the memory.

There will be ghosts there now. They will talk of many men and many things. They will know the faces and the ways of those they knew as boys, who are now grown to great affairs. They will know the faces and the ways of some who have slipped out of sight. These ghosts will wander about the dignified old hall and wait for better times. Whiting in the Boston Herald.