Probably the most cosmopolitan spot in the world today is the front parlor where President Eliot married for the second time. The old Thayer house at 5 Philips Place has become even more a meeting place of nations than the UN in recent years, as students from 58 countries gather nightly in its Colonial-style rooms to sip tea, meet new friends, and carry on bull sessions in an atmosphere many degrees more cordial than that at lake Success. Now known as the International Student Center, the pillared, yellow-clapboard house near Radcliffe yard echoed to the first of many non-New England accents in 1941 and became an unofficial consulate that has since eased many foreign students into unfamiliar American ways.

It all started in the winter of 1938 when the International Student Association organized to welcome and assist the until then unheeded foreign students studying in the vicinity. Lawrence Mead and his wife, who had spent many years in China and understood the problems of life in a new land, became directors and added the humanistic touch that now flows through all personal interrelations at the Center. In addition to aiding new arrivals by informing them on such matters as the perfect propriety of American girls who date without chaperons, the Meads also lend guidance on problems that might cause an experienced DP advisor to blanch.

With over 1,500 foreign students now in the Greater Boston area activities in the past year or two have hit some kind of zenith. Lectures last year ranged from "Zoroastrianism" to "The Ethnic Groups in Cambridge," but the programs also offered more universal appeal with dances and activities of the S-O-M-E--scouting, outing, meeting, and eating--Committee that did all those things with equal verve and success. "Open House" on Sundays attracts many American students who come to partake of both an education more liberal than the GE program and also of what the Center calls "the best Sunday night meal for forty cents in Cambridge." When the room fills with saris, turbans, and all conceivable accents from Upper Mongolian to Lower Californian, Thayer house rivals the lobby of Grand Hotel for international flavor. A hopeful not for tomorrow lies in the possibility that the good will and understanding that pervades Center gatherings today will hold over when many of the students return to lead their nations in world affairs.