One of the most beautiful buildings in the Yard is a red brick Georgian dormitory which exhibits the simple grace of Puritan England. It is a very famous part of Harvard Great men have broken the ice in their water pails of a cold January morning in days past. Its name is the nom de plume of a contemporary writer. It has looked down upon the Yard while countless generations of Harvard men have trailed out of Sever, and it has seen many able presidents trip on the third stone step of University Hall as they mount for the day's work. For these reasons it is justly famous, but one above all others endears Holworthy Hall to the hearts of graduates. It once housed beneath its slated roof a man whose hundredth birthday is today being celebrated by the world.

Few men have held a larger audience than Horatie Alger. Little boys have sat out behind the barn blowing large clouds of cornsilk smoke heavenwards as they perused the pages of "Bound to Rise" with the condescension of a savant. Mothers have crawled beneath the had to salvage a soiled and be-thumbed "Erie, or Little by Little." Fathers have confiscated whole libraries of Algerians from erring sons and have sat up half the night before a fire set for the avowed purpose of incinerating the fame of the great author. It was a simple creed he preached, this Harvard man. Live cleanly, avoid dirt, and the pathway to monetary, armorial, and spiritual success is a broad highway with a 20 percent grade. In those days there was no Comparative Literature 11.

The Vagabond well remembers his first uplifting introduction to old Horatio. It was "Bound to Rise" and it was behind a barn near a door which was used by the farm hands when they made up the cows' beds fresh every morning. As he read the pages and heard stout Alger speak out loud and bold, the Vagabond truly felt like some watcher of the skies. Here was a man-man, did he say?-a youth of sixteen years is more like-who went to the city. On his very first day there, this boy was walking on an icy sidewalk. A dignified gentleman in front of him suddenly slipped and would have fallen had it not been for the quickness of our hero. The gentleman thanked him, and to prove there was nothing small in his nature, took our hero home and made him his secretary. He also added a codicil to his will giving his whole fortune to our hero. He was a very rich man and he had a beautiful daughter. Our hero didn't need a codicil to clinch that daughter deal. He was bound to rise.

Alger was second to none, although his supremacy was seriously questioned for a time by one Oliver Optic when he published "The Boat Club." His fame is somewhat different from the usual fame accorded great Harvard men. He was essentially a figure of the masses, a hero for the boys. It is today the opportunity of all Harvard men to give homage not only to its most widely read graduate, but to the institution which is so well equipped to render such manifold services to the world, an institution which has produced among others William Randolph Hearst, President Lowell, and Horatio Alger.