Page:Samuel F. Batchelder - Bits of Harvard History (1924).pdf/368

 convenience of the students, greatly stimulated the itinerant vending of such articles. This ambulatory trade may be said to have culminated with the “night lunch cart” which, a quarter of a century ago, used to rumble into the Square every evening to dispense “hot dogs” and similar dainties to all the nocturnal life of the College. Before that time such ambrosial delights were supplied by a succession of peddlers—elderly Ganymedes who, like the withered Hebes of the mop and pail, made up for any prosaic deficiencies by a superabundance of temperament and personality.

Dr. Charles was followed by William Emmons, whose specialty was an insidious beverage, now lost to science, denominated egg pop, whence he received his sobriquet of “Pop” Emmons. From his scholastic surroundings he seems to have absorbed the true professorial facility of orotund speech, and was ready on a moment’s notice to launch into a sonorous harangue. Some of his addresses on standard topics were so much in request that he actually had them printed and added them to his stock-in-trade.

Such unusual intellectual attainments met with equally unusual recognition. Mr. Emmons is the only representative of his calling known to have been granted a full Latin honorary degree. Not, to be sure, of the exact variety bestowed on Commencement, but