their academic work; and that some of the professors sent out by the bishops of London were drunken, quarrelsome, and ignorant of the subjects they professed to teach.

The president, representing the bishop, might have brought charges against the clergy for their flagrant drunkenness but he refrained, being himself a notorious drunkard. Farquier, representative of the crown, was the most finished gentleman Virginia had known, and also the most demoralizing. He introduced a passion for high play that ruined many a fine old family, encouraged hard drinking and a mania for racing, delighted in having the clergy and favored students join him in his all-night revels.

Commencement at Harvard in Old New England days was a fête indeed; a fête so important as to be attended by giant expenditures and sinful extravagance. Indeed, so early as 1722 in its history, an act was passed "that henceforth no preparation nor provision of either Plumb Cake, or Roasted, Boyled or Baked Meats or Pyes of any kind shall be made by any Commencer," and that "no such have any distilled liquors in his Chamber or any composition therewith," under penalty of twenty shillings or forfeiture of the said provisions. Five years later several acts were passed "for preventing the Excesses, Immoralities and Disorders of the Commencements," by way of enforcing the foregoing act. These, with a simplicity of conclusion which brings a smile, declare that "if any who now doe or hereafter shall stand for their degrees, presume to doe anything contrary to the said Act or goe about to evade it by Plain Cake," they shall forfeit the honors of the college.

In the latter part of the eighteenth century the Yale College butler held his buttery in the ground floor, front corner room, of South Middle College, and sold cider, metheglin, strong beer, together with loaf sugar, etc., to the students. Dr. Lyman Beecher, in his autobiography, says of old Doctor Dwight, then president of the college: "Before he came college was in a most ungodly state.... Wine and liquor were kept in many rooms, intemperance, profanity, gambling, and licentiousness were common."

John Bacon, afterwards United States Senator, and Chief Justice of New Hampshire, sailed from Boston for Princeton College September 10, 1751. In his diary he states his outfit.

In a book published in 1764 describing student life at Princeton, it is stated that "the general table drink is beer or cider."

Washington Irving, in Salmagundi, described seeing two students at the tavern at Princeton who got drunk and cursed the professors. Madison was a poler at Princeton, and although the five o'clock horn was a sovereign preventive of midnight revelry, Madison was occasionally found around the blazing logs of the Nassau Inn, when tankards of ale and puffs at the long stemmed pipes punctuated the students' songs.

James Buchanan at Dickinson was the typical bad boy. Immorality was rampant among the students, sobriety and books were ridiculed. Buchanan became a leader in debauchery, although his physique enabled him at the same time to maintain a high rank in scholarship. The faculty chose him as a scapegoat, and he was expelled.

Benny Havens, the hero of the West Point song, for many years sold liquor illicitly to the cadets. The foundation of Vassar College was the fortune acquired by Matthew Vassar as a brewer.

CHAPTER IV
Bench and Bar

The field which then lay before the ablest lawyers was far less extensive and far less lucrative than at present. Thousands of cases now arise which could not then have possibly arisen. No wealthy corporations existed, expending each year in lawyers' fees enough money to have paid the taxes of the four colonies of New England. Patent law and railroad law, the business of banks and insurance companies, express companies, telegraph companies, and steamships, have given rise to legal questions of which neither Parsons, nor Tudor, nor Dexter had any conception whatever. A fee of $20,000 was unknown; a suit involving $50,000,000 was unheard of. Yet the profession was not ill-paid and offered many incentives to bright young men. The law student of that day usually began by offering his services to some lawyer of note, and if they were accepted he paid a fee of a hundred dollars, and began to read law books and copy briefs. In the course of two years he was expected to have become familiar with Coke on Littleton, with Wood's Institutes of Civil Law, with Piggot on Conveyances, with Burns's Justice of the Peace, with Hawkin's Pleas of the Crown, with Salkeld's Reports, with Lillie's Abridgements, and with some work on chancery practice and some work on what would now be called international law. This accomplished, his patron would take him into court, seat him at the lawyers' table, whisper to the gentlemen present, and with their consent would rise and ask leave of the court to present a young man for the oath of an attorney. The court would ask if the bar consented. The lawyers would then bow. The patron would vouch for the morals and learning of his young friend, and the oath would be administered by the clerk. This done, the new attorney would be introduced to the bar and carried off to the nearest tavern where health and prosperity would be drunk to him in bumpers of strong punch.

Thaddeus Stevens has left an amusing account of his brief connection, about 1820, with the Maryland bar. The examination took place in the evening before the judge and the bar committee. His honor informed Stevens that there was one indispensable requisite to the examination. "There must be two bottles of Madeira on the table and the applicant must order it in." Stevens complied with the condition, and, after the wine had been disposed of, one of the committee asked the applicant what books he had read. He replied, "Blackstone, Coke upon Littleton, a work on Pleading, and Gilbert on Evidence." He was then asked two or three questions, the last of which related to the difference between executory devises and a contingent remainder. A satisfactory answer to this question led his honor again to intervene. "Gentlemen," said the judge, "you see the young man is all right. I will give him a certificate." But before the certificate was delivered, the candidate was informed that usage required that the ceremony should terminate in the same way it had opened, and that two more bottles must be produced. Stevens very willingly complied with this requirement and was made a member of the bar.

With such a bar the courts were rude and primitive. The courts sat often times in taverns, where the tedium of business was relieved by glasses of grog, while the judge's decisions were not put on record, but were simply shouted by the crier from the inn door at the nearest market place. In North Carolina