town at that time. His house was a centre of hospitality. Among his welcome guests were Story the sculptor, James Russell Lowell and his wife, Longfellow, Holmes, and doubtless all the other men of letters of that half century. When the house came into possession of Miss Maria Fay, her sister, Mrs. Greenough, lived in it with her. Mrs. Greenough is remembered no less for herself than for her two daughters and their children. One of Mrs. Greenough's daughters became Mrs. Ripka, and the other was known before her marriage as Miss Lily Greenough. Her fine voice was often heard in private, but seldom in public. Miss Greenough went abroad for the purpose of cultivating her voice, and became the wife of the late Charles Moulton. She lived with her husband for a long time in Paris, and was in court circles during the palmy days of Napoleon III. She is at present Madame de Hagermann Lindencrone, and lives in Stockholm, where her husband is the Danish Minister. Her daughter Suzanne, whose name is written with a diamond point on the window panes of Fay house, is the Countess Suzanne Raben-Levetzau, and, with three charming children, lives on the Count's extensive estates at Nystel, in Denmark.

now.

a favorite

A portrait of Miss Maria Fay is preserved in the building, a present from her family. After the sale of the house, Miss Fay could not be prevailed upon to enter any room above the cellar. She had sold it to the Annex because she did not wish any other family to occupy the rooms that had for so many years been associated with her own. She would scarcely recognize the building Its attractive elliptical parlor has been changed but little. The form is the same, and all the details of the venerable ornamentation, but since the old stairway has been removed, room has been afforded for more ample doors, and they have replaced the two small ones that gave admission to the room in old times. The bedroom over the parlor, of the same elliptical form, remains essentially as it always has appeared, though the open fireplace has been closed, and the room is warmed by means of a radiator and a register.

The house has been twice enlarged, and is now threefold the size that it was formerly. At first the old ell was taken away, and an addition was made in the rear. It was in the basement of this ell that the late Professor Sophocles kept his precious hens, when they

were not in the inclosure that he made for them in the back yard. These fowls were like personal friends to the old Greek, and the impression made upon a stranger when he spoke of them was peculiar, for he had named them after members of the family, and when he predicated of one and another acts peculiar to hens, but mentioned them as the deeds of human entities, the effect was startling.

When the first addition was made, the French roof which Miss Fay had put on some fifteen years previously was taken off and a new story added. In this, by the generosity of Miss Longfellow, a beautiful room was made for the accommodation of the growing collection of books. At that time the stairs that Mr. Higginson had erected in the front entry were taken away, and a fine broad flight was made in the rear; the front door was closed, or, rather, became a window, and the main entrance was removed to the side, the south side this time. When more rooms were needed, the addition on the Mason Street side was built, with an auditorium on the first floor and lecture-rooms above. All these changes have been made in a style so nearly like that of the original house that many visitors take the new stairway for a veritable bit of old Cambridge.

Among the temporary occupants of Fay House besides Edward Everett was the late Judge Dwight Foster, of Boston, and for a more limited time the Rev. Samuel Gilman, of Charleston, S. C., brother-in-law of Judge Fay, who on the occasion of the two hundredth anniversary of Harvard College, in 1836, was the family guest. He wrote the words "Fair Harvard" for that celebration, in the room in the northwest corner of the second story. His widow, the late Caroline Howard Gilman, gave the present writer a copy of these words, with the author's photograph and autograph, and they are now preserved in the room. Colonel Higginson relates that the poem "Charles River," by Charles C. Amory, of Boston, was the first to celebrate the Fay House, and that the family living in the house when it was known as "Castle Corner " has the honor of inciting the poem.

Arthur Gilman.

A GROUP OF PRESIDENTS.1

It is a piece of great good fortune that the College Library preserves a good copy of the interesting picture in which five presidents sat at the same table. I do not know who made the arrangement, but the picture, I think, was made by my artistic friend Mr. Black. It was not a good thing for the College that its statutes should be such that five presidents could be living at the same time; but the evil which such an arrangement made is now past, and we have this very interesting picture of five remarkable men. By this I mean that the old statutes were such that no man in his senses could remain president of Harvard College for many successive years. These statutes were changed when President Eliot was elected.

It was my good fortune to know all of these gentlemen, some of them rather intimately. I was in college under Quincy, Sparks, and Felton, all of whom were in the Faculty when I was a student. At the same time James Walker was the theological member of the Corporation; in those days it was thought desirable to have one lawyer, one clergyman, and one physician on the Corporation. Indeed, at the same time Edward Everett was governor of the Commonwealth, and was therefore officially at the head of the Board of Overseers.

In those days the College was one grade higher than what we should call a good country academy, but the management of detail in its administration was not very different. Mr. Quincy was a man of great executive power. I do not know that he liked detail, but he liked to do his duty; and finding a system in which the president had a finger in almost everything he did not change that system. True, he did not often appear in a recitation room, though he did sometimes. But he did appear when committees came to examine the different classes, and you had to go to his office for a good many things where an undergraduate would now go to some Miss Harris or to the Dean. For instance, in the

1 This series of articles and portraits began in March, 1895, viz: "Thomas Hollis," by A. McF. Davis, s '54; "Savage's Washington," by Justin Winsor, '53; "Fisher Ames," by Mellen Chamberlain, l '48; "Nicholas Boylston,” by Barrett Wendell, '77; "Edward Holyoke," by C. C. Smith, h '87. — ED.