Page:Samuel F. Batchelder - Bits of Harvard History (1924).pdf/173

 To cap the climax, the value of the currency dropped with the sickening speed suffered in a nightmare; so that the prices of what few provisions remained in the market rose to levels positively grotesque. “Things are so extravagant,” exclaims our Sylvanus, “money is just nothing. You cannot get the meanest wine under 10s.—now you may judge. I am as frugal as possible. I borrowed shoes to walk to Boston today, have none myself.” The price of Commons was increased in 1776 to 10s. 7½d. per week. But this was merely the beginning of the inflation. In the autumn of 1780 a pound of butter in Boston cost $12, and a bushel of Indian corn $150, while the regular November dinner of the Corporation, served as cheaply as possible, stood each diner the appalling sum of $52.61. Yet so widespread was the distress that the pitiful destitution of the college table passed almost unremarked.

After the declaration of peace, the Commons, in the phraseology of Dr. Blimber, that well-remembered instructor of young gentlemen, “resumed”—but on the old unsavory basis. This was so old and so unsavory that by 1820 even the Faculty realized that unless they made some effort to keep abreast of the times their beloved system would be swamped by the rising tide of progress. They therefore engaged one Cooley as man-