CHAPTER VI

COLLEGE LIFE

Holmes was not only born within the present grounds of Harvard, he grew up there, was a student of Harvard, and a loyal member of the “famous class of ’29,” a lecturer and professor at Harvard, and he became Harvard’s most famous poet and man of letters, though Harvard has had so many that were great. So the life at Harvard College was always a part of his life; and perhaps that is why he was so merry.

College students are great jokers. In the days of Holmes the students decidedly objected to going to chapel early in the morning, rising as they had to do before daylight on cold winter days. To show that they didn’t like this idea of early prayers, they would sometimes fasten firecrackers to the lids of the big Bible, so that when the president or a professor came to lead the exercises and opened the book, they would go off with a snap.

In those days, too, they had only candles, and as prayers were held before daylight the chapel candles had to be lighted. Sometimes the students would put pieces of lead where the wick ought to be, and when the candles burned down to the lead the lights went out, of course leaving the chapel in darkness. At other times the president would be startled on entering the pulpit by seeing a pig’s head standing upright and bristly on his desk.

The rooms in the college dormitories were very poorly furnished. Instead of matches they had flint and steel and a tinder-box; and in almost every room was a cannon ball, which the boys would heat red-hot and set on a metal frame of some sort to help keep the room warm. Sometimes in the middle of the night a wicked student or two would send one of these cannon balls rolling, bump, bump, bump, down the stairs, waking every one and getting the proctor out of bed. Sometimes, too, the cannon ball was hot and burned the fingers of the proctor when he tried to pick it up. Then woe to the young lad who was caught and proved to be the culprit.

In college, Holmes belonged to two or three clubs. One was the Hasty Pudding Club, which met in the rooms of the members. A worthy old lady of the village called Sister Stimson prepared the pudding in two huge pots; and the “providers” of the evening would sling these, filled with the boiling mush, on a stout pole, and, resting the ends upon their shoulders, mount gallantly to the room where the members were assembled, often in the third or fourth story. A bowl of hasty pudding was always carried to the officer in the entry, as a sort of peace offering; and when the members had eaten as much as they could, and had told all the stories they had to tell, the occupants of nearby rooms were invited to help finish up the repast.

Another club to which he belonged was called the “Med. Facs.,” and each member or officer had the title of a supposed professor in the Medical Faculty of the University. The first meeting of the year was held in an upper room, draped in black cotton and decorated with death’s-heads and cross-bones in chalk; a table, also hung in black, extended lengthwise through the room. In the center sat the mock president and about him were the “professors” and “assistant professors,” all in black. Near at hand stood two policemen, usually the two strongest men in the class, dressed in flesh-colored tights. On the stairs outside were crowds of Juniors, from which twenty or thirty were to be initiated into the society. This initiation consisted usually in answering disagreeable questions put by the “professors,” or in doing such things as standing on one’s head, crawling about the floor, singing Mother Goose melodies, or making a Latin or Greek oration.

College Commencement in those days was like a country fair. The people pitched tents on the western side of the college yard (for there were then no hotels, and boarding was expensive), and opposite them were various stands and shows, making a street which by nightfall was paved with watermelon rinds, peachstones, and various refuse, on a ground of straw,—all flavored with rum and tobacco smoke.

Holmes himself has well described this festival of the college year:

“The fair plain (the Common), not then, as now, cut up into cattle pens by the ugliest of known fences, swarmed with the joyous crowds. The ginger-beer carts rang their bells and popped their bottles, the fiddlers played Money Musk over and over and over, the sailors danced the double-shuffle, the gentlemen of the city capered in rusty jigs, the town ladies even took a part in the lusty exercise, the confectioners rattled red and white sugar plums, long sticks of candy, sugar and burnt almonds into their brass scales, the wedges of pie were driven into splitting mouths, the mountains of (clove-sprinkled) hams were cut down as Fort Hill is being sliced to-day; the hungry feeders sat still and concentrated about the boards where the grosser viands were served, while the milk flowed from cracking cocoanuts, the fragrant muskmelons were cloven into new-moon crescents, and the great watermelons showed their cool pulps sparkling and roseate as the dewy fingers of Aurora.”

And besides all this, there were the orations of the students, and the speeches of old graduates who now came back famous, and all the bustle and importance of the college men themselves, hurrying to entertain their fair lady friends, their mothers, and their fathers, who had come up to see how they behaved.