Maybe Times Used to be Better

THERE'S A CERTAIN danger in looking backwards at an event, or a place. Descriptions of real problems seem to be period pieces, and in some way the past always appears a quieter and happier time.

The Cambridge of 80 or 100 years ago was a sedate and well-mannered place, if Cambridge Sketches by Cambridge Authors, published in 1896 by the Cambridge YWCA, is to be believed. This guide to the city is not a work of history, and not even well-written. It is a piece of the myth that people were somehow better off then.

An unabashed chauvinism runs through Cambridge Sketches. Its authors speak pridefully of the "the Cambridge idea," fawning on the natural features of the city. Mrs. Emma Endicott Marean writes about the discovery of the river Charles by Englishmen: "No Hudson was this beguiling stream, which promised much in its wide welcome to the eager adventurers, but soon betrayed the secret of its dependence on the ebb and flow of the tides, confessing its narrow banks and its country manners."

IF THE CHARLES was stately and historic, Harvard Square was all business. In "Six O'Clock in Harvard Square," Eleanor Parker Fiske writes: "The whistles have all blown for six O'clock, and now the city timepieces begin to strike, commencing with a deep boom and running up to a high treble till the air is filled with the clashing of iron tongues... Little groups of students coming from the side streets hasten across the yard, bound for Memorial Hall, and in spite of the general din, fragments of their gay talk come clearly to the passers-by."

In the time before in lieu of tax payments, strikes, and demonstrations, Harvard was the pride and joy of the city.

Radcliffe, then seventeen years old, merited two chapters, one written by Arthur Gilman, "Regent of the College." Even then, Martha Trimble Bennett, (probably a student) admitted, "Life at Radcliffe does not lend itself easily to description." The 'Cliffe seemed to be a dull place-- "there are no picturesque details which can be seized upon," Bennett reported. "A large number of the students live at home," so there was "none of the gay dormitory life which is so distinctive a feature at most women's colleges." An atmosphere of "thought and study invests Radcliffe," Bennett wrote, but "no girl is proud of being called a 'grind."'

EDMUND A. WHITMAN, in "Town and Gown," boasted of the good relations between the college and the town. Although the time when Commencement Day was "a holiday throughout the province when the shops of Boston were generally closed and the proprietors repaired to the Cambridge common, which was completely taken possession of by drinking stands, dancing booths, mountebank shows and gaming tables," he could still write that "in Cambridge the college has always been deferential to the town authorities."

"The Thing Most Needed in Cambridge," an essay by Mrs. Susan A. Gilman, centered on the need for "good homes for our working people-- model tenements... in our city of rapidly increasing population." Besides homes, the city cried out for the completion of the Metropolitan Park System, to provide Cambridge with "one of the most superb driveways in America, bordering the Charles, with the handsome fronts of stately residences facing the river." The common needed "a fine fountain." And even Harvard could help, with an art museum to be placed in the Yard, "along the great green terrace, between the President's house and Gore Hall," where the Pusey pit is now.