Them As Has Gits

Of all U.S. libraries, only the Library of Congress has more books than Harvard. Almost half of Harvard's 4,702,000 are housed in the Widener Library, a massive, pillared, $2,000,000 building which squats amid more graceful red brick neighbors in the Harvard Yard. But Widener is too big, says President James Bryant Conant. What Harvard needs now, says he, is a smaller, handier library.

Last week Harvard got a letter from one of its better-heeled alumni, Morgan board chairman Thomas W. Lament, '92. "Dear Mr. Conant," it read, "I have this day delivered to your treasurer securities with a marketable value of $1,500,000 ... to enable Harvard to build the undergraduate library that you tell me [it] needs. My own gratitude to Harvard is unbounded, and the sense of exhilaration and stimulus that the college gave my undergraduate years is as vivid today as it was a half-century ago."

To grateful Harvardman Lamont, President Conant replied with "profound gratitude. . . . The Harvard Corporation will take steps immediately to raise an additional $1,500,000 [for its new library]."

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