So wretched was its condition that in the autumn of 1777, when extraordinary efforts were in progress to quarter the “Convention Troops” of Burgoyne in Cambridge, and a serious proposal was brought forward to take one of the college halls, no mention was made of it as even a possibility, though being vacant it would naturally have been considered first of all. The only thing it was fit for was a sort of University lumber-room. The word can be taken literally, for within those formerly sacred walls the college carpenter, Abraham Hasey, is said about this date to have set up his shop.[1]
Another use of the building, perhaps as mystifying as any, is hinted at in the Faculty vote of December 3, 1779—“That Kendall be directed to see that the College Engine & Bucketts be immediately repaired, & plac’d in Holden Chapel.” The engine, sapiently procured immediately after the burning of Harvard Hall, had probably just come back from Concord, whither it had been removed during the military occupation. Samuel Kendal was only a sophomore; but with a touching faith in the undergraduates, the engine was regularly placed in their care. The results are not hard to body forth. “Exercising the engine” became a pleasant duty for the whole college; and a burlesque Engine Society arose, attended all fires in the neighbor-
- ↑ Harvard Book, i, 60; Harvard Register (1827), 284.
