Diary of Charles Francis Adams, volume 1
1824-04-05
Prayers, recitation, Enfield, Spanish, no afternoon exercise, pleasant day, ride to Waltham with Tudor, evening at Sheafe’s, Cards and Claret.
1824-04-06
Prayers, recitation, Enfield, Homer, Lecture, Mr. Farrar, evening quiet at home.
1824-04-07
Prayers, recitation, Enfield, Spanish, Homer, Lecture, Mr. Farrar, evening visitors, Rundlet,1 Richardson.
Edward Rundlet, of Portsmouth, N.H., a junior (
Harvard Annual Cat., 1823).
1824-04-08
Prayers, recitation, Enfield, A Forensic, Homer, evening at home, noise at Sheafe’s.
1824-04-09
Prayers, recitation, Enfield, Spanish, Declamation, Lecture, Mr. Farrar, evening, company drill,1 Lyceum Club.
Harvard’s famous Washington Corps. See entry for 17 June, and note, below.
1824-04-10
Missed Prayers and recitation, morning occupied at home, afternoon to Boston with Tudor, evening at his room.
1824-04-11
Missed Prayers, Chapel, Mr. Frothingham.1 Quiet at home, Roscoe’s life of Leo the Tenth.2 Evening at Wheatland’s.
Rev. Nathaniel Langdon Frothingham, Harvard 1811, was minister of the First Church on Chauncey Place, Boston, and an overseer of the college from 1819 to 1850. His wife was the former
JQA’s copy of William Roscoe, The Life and Pontificate of Leo the Tenth, 4 vols., Phila., 1805, is in the Stone Library.
1824-04-12
Missed Prayers, recitation, felt unwell, omitted Spanish exercise, 104Tacitus, Lecture, Mr. Farrar, evening, club meeting, Knights Square Table.1
The Society of the Knights of the Order of the Square Table was the first Northern festive club at Harvard. (For sectional rivalry within the clubs, see 13 June, below.) Its predecessor was probably the Knights of the Order of the Pudding Stick, whose history is lost to us, there being only a fragmentary record remaining in the Harvard Archives. Little is known of the Knights of the Square Table during CFA’s stay at Harvard, for its own records are missing (see entry for 22 Oct., below) and mention of the club in the faculty records appears mostly earlier or later than CFA’s time, chiefly because the faculty took cognizance of a club only when its members presented disciplinary problems. For scattered references to the Knights’ activities, see Records of the College Faculty, volumes 10–11 (1814–1840), Harvard Archives, and also some pamphlets under the club titles, housed in the Archives. Subsequently the Knights of the Square Table merged with the more famous Porcellian Club.