Page:Samuel F. Batchelder - Bits of Harvard History (1924).pdf/369

 for the edification of posterity (in the words of the politicians) “something equally as good.” The age, we must remember, was one of classicism, when shop-keepers in the Square added tags of Latin to their signs, when the Janitor of the Law School could quote you Virgil by the yard, and when that monstrous hybrid, a Latin-English pun, tickled the risibilities of Cambridge circles to the bursting-point. Under the same influence, some of the brightest gems of undergraduate wit were the mock degrees conferred on all the notables of the day, from the Tsar of Russia to the sea-serpent, by the “Med. Fac.,” the society which was then the chief source of fun in the University. Our William, it appears, was also strong on the article of pickles, and hence received the following majestic testimonial: [gingerbread],

Of about the same vintage was Lewis, “a grave and amiable Ethiopian,”’ who will live in fame as an object of the youthful veneration of James Russell Lowell. Lewis sold home-brewed beer; yet he would not have incurred the frown of the strictest temperance advocate,