Education: The Barbless Hook

For four decades, Ten Thousand Men of Harvard—or a goodly number of them—have actually sat down and read the annual appeal for contributions to the Harvard Fund. It might contain a richly allusive essay on how Thoreau would have viewed the college hierarchy, or some gentle musings on the anti-Harvard attitude of Harvard's Henry Adams, or even reflections on the upstream migration of the alewives, persistent saltwater fish that find their way to Massachusetts streams each spring. These unlikely enclosures come from a man with an unlikely blend of talents: David McCord—poet, essayist and professional fund raiser—who retires this week after...