Page:Samuel F. Batchelder - Bits of Harvard History (1924).pdf/191

 A sort of scholastic Walpurgis Night ensued; the offenders danced around the “Rebellion Tree” amid the blazing of bonfires; for the next week or more all restraint went down the wind; college exercises (as well as many collegians) were suspended; and in a climax of resentment the entire sophomore class actually carried out the favorite threat of mutinous collegians, and left Cambridge, eighty strong. The best part of a fortnight was consumed in coaxing a score or so back again. Upon the remainder expulsions and dismissals rained so thick that the class graduated with only thirty-five members. (The Quinquennial shows that twenty-nine others were subsequently pardoned, and received their degrees from twenty to thirty years late.)

Enough, and more than enough, has been related to give an idea of the results on the discipline and reputation of the College, and on the inculcation of the good manners and urbanity that ever mark the college graduate—apart from the purely physiological effects—arising from the inconceivable tenacity (to use no harder word) with which the “immediate government” clung to the early New England tradition of feeding its students poorly and inadequately. It should be re-