These are sad times. Since the turn of the century industrialization has captured the United States and turned many of the simple pleasures and traditions out to pasture. Like the spinning wheel, the pony express, and the riverboat, like the Post Road and the small country trail, many of the institutions which we associate with early America have been renovated or replaced--no longer considered adequate for the hustle and bustle of twentieth century America.

And now, after thirty-seven years of service to commuters between Boston and Cambridge, the Larz Anderson Bridge also goes its way. It hasn't been torn down of course, but it now suffers an even worse ignominity. It stands in the shadow of a new structure. The Eliot Bridge has thrust the sturdy old frame into the background; the burden has been lifted from its hunched back.

It's funny that the bridge was never really called by its right name. Larz Anderson '88 gave the bridge as a memorial to his father, Nicholas Longworth Anderson '58, but as the years passed the full epithet gave way first to "Anderson" and then to "Larz Anderson."

But there are certain things that neither time nor the Eliot Bridge will be able to change. On those brisk Saturday afternoons throughout the fall, the crowds will continue to stumble and sing their way across the old Anderson Bridge. Rowing upstream from M.I.T., the Anderson Bridge will be the last one before turning in, and it will always be the most direct route from Eliot House to the Business School.

And yet can the Anderson Bridge be expected to carry its daily load in the same honest way that it did in olden times? Can it stand firm in the knowledge that a new, younger structure is trying to take its place? How ironical its dedication now seems: "May this bridge . . . be . . . a lasting suggestion that (students) should devote their manhood, developed by study and play on the banks of this river, to the nation and its needs." Would Anderson consider the present fate of his Bridge a just reward for service "to the nation and its needs?"

The new part the Anderson Bridge must play will be a difficult one--unrewarding, steady, and dull. It is our guess, however, that the old bridge will meet its new role with calm dignity. And if perchance, the structure should someday sink into the muddy depths of the Charles, the Nicholas Longworth Anderson Bridge will still stand as a symbol a symbol of many things to many men.