ook regularly printed and published, a book
written by a former President of the College,--a man whom no words of
mine can affect, yet whom I cannot pass without laying at his feet my
tribute of gratitude and reverence; a man who lives to receive from his
contemporaries the honors which are generally awarded only by
posterity,--I find in this book accounts of votes passed by the
Corporation and Overseers, prohibiting Commencers from "preparing or
providing either plum-cake, or roasted, boiled, or baked meats, or pies
of any kind"; and afterwards, if anyone should do anything contrary to
this act, or "go about to evade it by plain cake, they shall not be
admitted to their degree; and also, "that commons be of better quality,
have more variety, clean table-cloths of convenient length and breadth
twice a week, and that plates be allowed." Now if the plum-cake and
pies of the "Commencers" are spread before the public, how shall one
know that the plum-cake and pies of an occasion at least equally
public, and only a month beforehand, must not be mentioned? If any
family in Beacon Street should publish its housekeeping rules and items
in this unhesitating manner, I think a very pardonable confusion of
ideas might exist as to what was legitimately public, and what must be
held private. If it be said that these items concern a period from
which the many years that have since elapsed remove the seal of
silence, I have but to turn to the Boston Daily Advertiser, a journal
whose taste and judgment are unquestionable, and find in its issue of
July 18, 1863, eight closely printed columns devoted to a minute
description of what they said, and what they did, at the College
festival arranged by the Association of the Alumni, in which
description may be read such eminently private incidents as that--by
some unfortunate mistake, which would have been a death-blow to any
Beacon Street housekeeper--there were one hundred more guests than
there were plates, and--what it might be hoped would be quite
unnecessary to state--that the unlucky De trop "bore the disappointment
with the most admirable good-breeding, AND RETIRED FROM THE HALL
WITHOUT NOISE OR DISTURBANCE." (Noble army of martyrs! Let a monument
more durable than brass rise in the hearts of their countrymen to
commemorate their heroism, and let it graven all over, in characters of
living light, with the old-time query, "Why didn't Jack eat his
supper?")

I find also in the same