Page:Samuel F. Batchelder - Bits of Harvard History (1924).pdf/346

 custom to indulge their inoffensive vagaries unchecked. So through the half-remembered twilight of Harvard’s beginnings flit shadowy hints of college characters as piquant as any of their successors.

Let us dip into the “confession” of Mrs. Eaton, the first housekeeper of the little boarding-school (for it was nothing more), in the year of grace 1639:

What ebony face with rolling white eyeballs grins sheepishly at us from this mildewed page? Who was this blackamoor who surreptitiously helped himself to