Page:Samuel F. Batchelder - Bits of Harvard History (1924).pdf/197

 was finally given over, but a strange emasculated travesty, from which virtually every original and characteristic feature had been gradually stripped away. Some had proved obviously unsuitable to American conditions, but most had succumbed to the typical American passion for “scrapping” anything with the least flavor of antiquity. The more radical changes began to appear, like other social alterations, about the middle of the eighteenth century, when the English colonies showed signs of striking out for themselves and developing national peculiarities of their own. From that time forward the excisions increased in importance and frequency until the end. The fellow commoners were probably the first to go, then bevers, then breakfast in chambers, then the Steward, then the buttery, the Butler, and the old “Brown October” (commuted to the national ice-water), then a general table for all classes, then the student waiters, and last the enforced attendance.

At the same time the other and equally typical American traits of carelessness and impatience of restraint had subverted the spirit of the institution; the cheerful, decorous dining-hall of the British tradition had fallen