colleges, students who are supported on established
foundations are called _beneficiaries_. Those who receive
maintenance from the American Education Society are especially
designated in this manner.
No student who is a college _beneficiary_ shall remain such any
longer than he shall continue exemplary for sobriety, diligence,
and orderly conduct.--_Laws of Univ. at Cam., Mass._, 1848, p. 19.
BEVER. From the Italian _bevere_, to drink. An intermediate
refreshment between breakfast and dinner.--_Morison_.
At Harvard College, dinner was formerly the only meal which was
regularly taken in the hall. Instead of breakfast and supper, the
students were allowed to receive a bowl of milk or chocolate, with
a piece of bread, from the buttery hatch, at morning and evening;
this they could eat in the yard, or take to their rooms and eat
there. At the appointed hour for _bevers_, there was a general
rush for the buttery, and if the walking happened to be bad, or if
it was winter, many ludicrous accidents usually occurred. One
perhaps would slip, his bowl would fly this way and his bread
that, while he, prostrate, afforded an excellent stumbling-block
to those immediately behind him; these, falling in their turn,
spattering with the milk themselves and all near them, holding
perhaps their spoons aloft, the only thing saved from the
destruction, would, after disentangling themselves from the mass
of legs, arms, etc., return to the buttery, and order a new bowl,
to be charged with the extras at the close of the term.
Similar in thought to this account are the remarks of Professor
Sidney Willard concerning Harvard College in 1794, in his late
work, entitled, "Memories of Youth and Manhood." "The students who
boarded in commons were obliged to go to the kitchen-door with
their bowls or pitchers for their suppers, when they received
their modicum of milk or chocolate in their vessel, held in one
hand, and their piece of bread in the other, and repaired to their
rooms to take their solitary repast. There were suspicions at
times that the milk was diluted by a mixture of a very common
tasteless fluid, which led a sagacious Yankee student to put the
matter to the test by asking the simple carrier-boy why his mother
did not mix the milk with warm water instead of cold. 'She does,'
replied the honest youth. This mode of obtaining evening commons
did not prove in all cases the most economical on the part of the
fed. It sometimes hap
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