This is Sanborn House library. It is a wonderful place, exclusively for English majors. In winter, when WCD was an undergraduate, there was a huge roaring fire in the fireplace and Oxford editions of all the major English authors and tea for faculty and students every afternoon at 4:00. WCD spent some of the happiest afternoons and evenings of his young life here, reading his way progressively through this library, from Chaucer to Samuel Johnson.
WCD
mentions this because he is hoping that eventually we may have a smaller
version of this library, with tea for faculty and students three afternoons
a week, in Murray Hall. This is going to take a great deal of planning and
some money and the cooperation both of the English department and the central
administration. But it will happen, just you wait and see. In the meantime,
if you are a Rutgers English major and would like to do your tiny bit to
help the cause, make a point, every time you see someone in the English
department administration, of asking politely "How is the project for the
English department library coming? The undergraduates think it is a wonderful
idea, simply wonderful." This applies subtle pressure which, building up
over time, makes it easier to mobilize people when the moment comes.
Many thanks to Professor Thomas Luxon of Dartmouth College for providing -- nay, taking with his own camera --the picture of Sanborn House library that appears above.