Page:Samuel F. Batchelder - Bits of Harvard History (1924).pdf/171

 one.” An astonishing concession was also made by the rule that “the same dish is not to be served above twice a week.”

Just as these reforms were beginning to take root, however, and an era of (comparative) gluttonous profusion seemed assured at last, the Revolutionary War broke out, and Commons promptly sank from the zenith of success to the nadir of tribulation. In times of general prosperity the bill of fare had been scanty enough; during the difficulties of this period it almost reached the vanishing-point. Tea of course was anathema, coffee and chocolate were virtually unobtainable, and even salt was so scarce that the standard Saturday dinner had to be changed to fresh fish, evidently looked upon as a last resort. Breakfast, as well as supper, was reduced to a pint of milk and one biscuit “and no more”; dinner dwindled to a “sufficient” helping of meat and a single piece of bread. These were the official allowances; in actual fact the situation was still more desperate. Graphic hints are given in the letters written to his father by Sylvanus Bourne, a sophomore, during 1777. “‘I really expect,” he says