"These Puritans are the ones who closed theatres in England for 18 years," says Robert S. Brustein, artistic director of the American Repertory Theatre. "And Harvard still doesn't have a drama concentration or a drama program."

Restricting merriment outside of academia did not make Johnny a dull boy. Indeed, administrators had a very optimistic outlook on academic exercises that many students now consider drudgery.

"To animate the Students in the pursuit of literary merit and fame, and to excite in their breasts a noble spirit of emulation there shall be annually a public examination, in the preference of a joint committee of the Corporation and Overseers and such other gentlemen as may be inclined to attend it," a 1790 law reads.

Although public examinations no longer grace the academic year's end, today's undergraduates spend two weeks preparing for final exams and another two weeks taking them. But if you were a Harvard freshman or a sophomore in 1767, you might have a little more trouble preparing for exams than your elder classmates.

Only juniors and seniors could borrow books from the library--no more than one every three week--and had to ask permission from the president or tutors do so.

Fortunately, the privilege of upperclassmen did not extend to freshman exploitation. "No Graduate or Undergraduate shall send a freshman on errands in studying hours, without leave from one of the tutors," according to a 1790 rule.

Epps says using freshmen as runners isn't such a bad idea. "Oh, yes, I think it would be good for upperclassmen to send to Elsie's for a late-night snack," he jests.

Fortunately today's Yardlings have their own dormitories, thus minimizing the threat of slave labor.

If you made it through your four years at Harvard, your Bachelor of Arts degree was waiting for you, as long as you met a few simple requirements. Although Harry Elkins Widener '07's ill-fated ride on the Titanic had not yet led his mother to urge the institution of the obligatory swimming test, degree candidate did have to fulfill the far simpler requirement of translating into Latin the Old and New Testaments--from their original Greek form.

Schollars also had to profess a "good Acquaintance" with the Classics mathematics, natural and moral philosophy, logic and rhetoric. Vestiges of these requirements till remain in the form of the Quantitative Reasoning test (logic), Expository. Writing (rhetoric), the language requirement (Classics, et. al.) and Freshman Week proctor meetings (moral philosophy).

Of course, Epps says, students who have forgotten to don that cloake once or twice, or have snuck into the Hong Kong on a Friday night, need not fear the Administrative Board. Votes of the Faculty during the last two centuries have added, amended and eliminated the old rules, creating today's Handbook for Student and making the puritanical rest restrictions obsolete.