Three hundred years of Harvard history will be spanned when Nathan March Pusey, 28 is inaugurated this afternoon as the University's 24th President.

The rites will be simple and austere, a modern duplication of the inauguration of John Leverett in 1707. The same pattern was followed when James B. Conant 14 was installed in 1933. The reason for the austerity in Conant's inauguration was to avoid any undue expenditures in a time of rigid economy.

Pusey will be presented with the charter, seals, record books and keys of Harvard College, symbols of his office. As part of the ceremony's simple pageantry, Edward Reynolds '15, Administrative Vice President will take the role of "the College Butler" in Leverett's inauguration. Reynolds will place the keys on a table in the middle of the room.

"Library Keeper" Bears Seal

Following Reynolds will be Keyes D. Metcalf, director of Widener Library, who will bear the Charter, the Seal, and the Record Books. The "Library Keeper" performed this same function in 1707.

Leverett's inauguration was carefully described in his diary. After the library keeper and college butler had laid the symbols of office on a table in College Hall, the Governor of the colony handed them to the new president. In later years, the state governor has performed the duty, and since 1865, the President of the Board of Overseers has always given the relics to the president.

No more than 200 people will attend today's ceremony in the faculty room of University Hall. But inaugurations have not always been this simple. When Abbot Lawrence Lowell was installed in 1909, 13,000 attended the three-day festivities, which included a concert by the Boston Symphony Orchestra, a mass demonstration by the students in the Stadium, and scores of dinners, lunches, and speeches.

Students Riot

A different type of student demonstration--a riot--took place at the inauguration of Jared Sparks in 1849. When students crowding the Yard to hear Sparks' speech became unruly, police stepped in with clubs flying. According to a contemporary newspaper account:

"There appears to be a general feeling in Cambridge that gross outrage was committed on the part of the police, which the students for once entirely justified in repulsing. Even the faculty of the college, which so seldom takes sides with the students, are of the same opinion."

"As regards Mr. Abraham Edwards, marshal of Cambridge, it is said that he seized one of the students, a weakly-attenuated young man, and threw him over the fence and thereupon was handled rather roughly by some of the experts in boxing at the college. It is said that two of his eyes were blackened; hence his feeling in the matter and the issue of warrants for the arrest of the students."

The press did not like the way the actual inaugural ceremonies were handled, either:-

Singing "Excrutiating"

"The weather was exceedingly warm and the ceremonies strikingly tedious. There was much inexcusable slugglishness and delay in the movements of the officials. . . . The aisles were crowded with a heated and panting congregation.

"The singing of the undergraduates was excrutiating and should never be repeated."