Ariel - December 20, 1878 description of museum visit
... I thought I'd like to go to the old chapel. We used to have real sociable times a standin round the stoves there in the winter. They was two stoves, but we always left one for the faculty, and we used to stand round the other twenty-five rows deep, the girls a-standin on the inside rows and the boys takin turns at standin on the outside. It used to be awful cold in the classrooms some times, and the professor and students used to take turns at pokin up the fire in the stoves, and the girls used to take turns at goin down stairs for shawls for the rest; and some times the stoves used to smoke most as much as some of the students do now. They don't have no stones now, but just brass sticks round the walls and they turn a little screw and let it fizz for a while and it gets real warm. Well, I was goin to the chapel. I thought I'd go up the old stiars as I was more at home there; but when I got to the topo the chapel was gone and a hall run right down through the middle of where it used to be and made two rooms. The doors was open and I went to one and looked in and there was a lot of animals behind a glass wall and some things set on little platforms in the middle, and a tall young man with whiskers sat on the edge of one of the platforms a-cleanin his finger-nail. I says to him, "This ain't the chapel." "No, it ain't," says he, "it's the Museum." "Youre a-musin then," says I. "No, I don't believe I am, very," says he. "What's this? I asked, a-tappin on one of the big things with my hands. "That's a Glipterdum, says he. "And the other big thing?" says I. "A Masterdum's skull," says he. "Its a master big skull," says I, and after I'd looked round I went to the other room. There was nothing there but a lot of rocks and gravel and stuff piled in glass boxes, and some boys and girls sittin in the windows having a good time.
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Ariel - December 20, 1878 description of a visit to the General Museum (UMN Archives)