Cambridge sketches
Estelle M. H. Merrill, Ed.

[224] the support of the clergyman. This expectation was not, however, realized and tile corporation finally voted “that the box should not be offered on the Lord's day to the scholar's gallery” but that instead the students should be taxed “in each of their quarterly bills, ninepence lawful money.” Cambridge ministers no longer reckon on these “ninepences” for their support, although they find many attentive listeners among the students, and the work of the Prospect Union and of the Social Union shows the interest of the students in the moral and educational welfare of the “Town.”

The relations of “Gown” to “Town” have not been confined to the students. The professors have been citizens of Cambridge as well as professors in the college and many of them have taken leading parts in civic affairs. The second mayor of the city was Sidney Willard, professor of “Hebrew and other Oriental Languages” in the Divinity School, and the author of a Hebrew grammar. His studious habits secured him the nickname among his students of Val from a letter of the Hebrew alphabet. Yet this quiet scholar was three times mayor of Cambridge, for two years a member of the Governor's council, and represented his city in the two branches of the legislature for seven years.

Another professor of Hebrew, John G. Palfrey, was elected a member of Congress and was postmaster of the city of Boston for six years.

Other professors who have not served the city in an official capacity have been warmly interested in the affairs of the community. It was mainly due to Professor Story that Cambridge secured the right to enclose the common, in spite of the strenuous opposition of neighboring towns claiming a prescriptive right to drive across it herds of cattle