A Collection of College Words and Customs Part 91

So let, &c.

"Now give, in honor of the spoon, Three cheers, long, loud, and hearty, And three for every honored June In coch-le-au-re-a-ti.[88]

Yes! let us, Juniors, shout and sing The spoon and all its glory,-- Until the welkin loudly ring And echo back the story."

_Songs of Yale_, 1853, p. 37.

WRANGLER. In the University of Cambridge, Eng., at the conclusion of the tenth term, the final examination in the Senate-House takes place. A certain number of those who pa.s.s this examination in the best manner are called _Wranglers_.

The usual number of _Wranglers_--whatever Wrangler may have meant once, it now implies a First Cla.s.s man in Mathematics--is thirty-seven or thirty-eight. Sometimes it falls to thirty-five, and occasionally rises above forty.--_Bristed's Five Years in an Eng. Univ._, Ed. 2d, p. 227.

See SENIOR WRANGLER.

WRANGLERSHIP. The office of a _Wrangler_.

He may be considered pretty safe for the highest _Wranglership_ out of Trinity.--_Bristed's Five Years in an Eng. Univ._, Ed. 2d, p. 103.

WRESTLING-MATCH. At Harvard College, it was formerly the custom, on the first Monday of the term succeeding the Commencement vacation, for the Soph.o.m.ores to challenge the Freshmen who had just entered College to a wrestling-match. A writer in the New England Magazine, 1832, in an article ent.i.tled "Harvard College Forty Years Ago," remarks as follows on this subject: "Another custom, not enjoined by the government, had been in vogue from time immemorial. That was for the Soph.o.m.ores to challenge the Freshmen to a wrestling-match. If the Soph.o.m.ores were thrown, the Juniors gave a similar challenge. If these were conquered, the Seniors entered the lists, or treated the victors to as much wine, punch, &c. as they chose to drink. In my cla.s.s, there were few who had either taste, skill, or bodily strength for this exercise, so that we were easily laid on our backs, and the Soph.o.m.ores were acknowledged our superiors, in so far as 'brute force' was concerned. Being disgusted with these customs, we held a cla.s.s-meeting, early in our first quarter, and voted unanimously that we should never send a Freshman on an errand; and, with but one dissenting voice, that we would not challenge the next cla.s.s that should enter to wrestle. When the latter vote was pa.s.sed, our moderator, pointing at the dissenting individual with the finger of scorn, declared it to be a vote, _nemine contradicente_. We commenced Soph.o.m.ores, another Freshman Cla.s.s entered, the Juniors challenged them, and were thrown. The Seniors invited them to a treat, and these barbarous customs were soon after abolished."--Vol. III. p. 239.

The Freshman Cla.s.s above referred to, as superior to the Junior, was the one which graduated in 1796, of which Mr. Thomas Mason, surnamed "the College Lion," was a member,--"said," remarks Mr.

Buckingham, "to be the greatest _wrestler_ that was ever in College. He was settled as a clergyman at Northfield, Ma.s.s., resigned his office some years after, and several times represented that town in the Legislature of Ma.s.sachusetts."

Charles Prentiss, the wit of the Cla.s.s of '95, in a will written on his departure from college life, addresses Mason as follows:--

"Item. Tom M----n, COLLEGE LION, Who'd ne'er spend cash enough to buy one, The BOANERGES of a pun, A man of science and of fun, That quite uncommon witty elf, Who darts his bolts and shoots himself, Who oft has bled beneath my jokes, I give my old _tobacco-box_."

_Buckingham's Reminiscences_, Vol. II. p. 271.

The fame which Mr. Mason had acquired while in College for bodily strength and skill in wrestling, did not desert him after he left.

While settled as a minister at Northfield, a party of young men from Vermont challenged the young men of that town to a bout at wrestling. The challenge was accepted, and on a given day the two parties a.s.sembled at Northfield. After several rounds, when it began to appear that the Vermonters were gaining the advantage, a proposal was made, by some who had heard of Mr. Mason's exploits, that he should be requested to take part in the contest. It had now grown late, and the minister, who usually retired early, had already betaken himself to bed. Being informed of the request of the wrestlers, for a long time he refused to go, alleging as reasons his ministerial capacity, the force of example, &c.

Finding these excuses of no avail, he finally arose, dressed himself, and repaired to the scene of action. Shouts greeted him on his arrival, and he found himself on the wrestling-field, as he had stood years ago at Cambridge. The champion of the Vermonters came forward, flushed with his former victories. After playing around him for some time, Mr. Mason finally threw him. Having by this time collected his ideas of the game, when another antagonist appeared, tripping up his heels with perfect ease, he suddenly twitched him off his centre and laid him on his back. Victory was declared in favor of Northfield, and the good minister was borne home in triumph.

Similar to these statements are those of Professor Sidney Willard relative to the same subject, contained in his late work ent.i.tled "Memories of Youth and Manhood." Speaking of the observances in vogue at Harvard College in the year 1794, he says:--"Next to being indoctrinated in the Customs, so called, by the Soph.o.m.ore Cla.s.s, there followed the usual annual exhibition of the athletic contest between that cla.s.s and the Freshman Cla.s.s, namely, the wrestling-match. On some day of the second week in the term, after evening prayers, the two cla.s.ses a.s.sembled on the play-ground and formed an extended circle, from which a stripling of the Soph.o.m.ore Cla.s.s advanced into the area, and, in terms justifying the vulgar use of the derivative word Soph.o.m.orical, defied his compet.i.tors, in the name of his a.s.sociates, to enter the lists. He was matched by an equal in stature, from that part of the circle formed by the new-comers. Beginning with these puny athletes, as one and another was prostrated on either side, the contest advanced through the intermediate gradations of strength and skill, with increasing excitement of the parties and spectators, until it reached its summit by the struggle of the champion or coryphaeus in reserve on each of the opposite sides. I cannot now affirm with certainty the result of the contest; whether it was a drawn battle, whether it ended with the day, or was postponed for another trial. It probably ended in the defeat of the younger party, for there were more and mightier men among their opponents. Had we been victorious, it would have behooved us, according to established precedents, to challenge the Junior Cla.s.s, which was not done.

Such a result, if it had taken place, could not fade from the memory of the victors; while failure, on the contrary, being an issue to be looked for, would soon be dismissed from the thoughts of the vanquished. Instances had occurred of the triumph of the Freshman Cla.s.s, and one of them recent, when a challenge in due form was sent to the Juniors, who, thinking the contest too doubtful, wisely resolved to let the victors rejoice in their laurels already won; and, declining to meet them in the gymnasium, invited them to a sumptuous feast instead.

"Wrestling was, at an after period, I cannot say in what year, superseded by football; a grovelling and inglorious game in comparison. Wrestling is an art; success in the exercise depends not on mere bodily strength. It had, at the time of which I have spoken, its well-known and acknowledged technical rules, and any violation of them, alleged against one who had prostrated his adversary, became a matter of inquiry. If it was found that the act was not achieved _secundum artem_, it was void, and might be followed by another trial."--Vol. I. pp. 260, 261.

Remarks on this subject are continued in another part of the work from which the above extract is made, and the story of Thomas Mason is related, with a few variations from the generally received version. "Wrestling," says Professor Willard, "was reduced to an art, which had its technical terms for the movement of the limbs, and the manner of using them adroitly, with the skill acquired by practice in applying muscular force at the right time and in the right degree. Success in the art, therefore, depended partly on skill; and a violation of the rules of the contest vitiated any apparent triumph gained by mere physical strength. There were traditionary accounts of some of our predecessors who were commemorated as among the coryphaei of wrestlers; a renown that was not then looked upon with contempt.

The art of wrestling was not then confined to the literary gymnasium. It was practised in every rustic village. There were even migrating braves and Hectors, who, in their wanderings from their places of abode to villages more or less distant, defied the chiefest of this order of gymnasts to enter the lists. In a country town of Ma.s.sachusetts remote from the capital, one of these wanderers appeared about half a century since, and issued a general challenge against the foremost wrestlers. The clergyman of the town, a son of Harvard, whose fame in this particular had travelled from the academic to the rustic green, was apprised of the challenge, and complied with the solicitation of some of his young parishioners to accept it in their behalf. His triumph over the challenger was completed without agony or delay, and having prostrated him often enough to convince him of his folly, he threw him over the stone wall, and gravely admonished him against repeating his visit, and disturbing the peace of his parish."--Vol. I. p. 315.

The peculiarities of Thomas Mason were his most noticeable characteristics. As an orator, his eloquence was of the _ore rotundo_ order; as a writer, his periods were singularly Johnsonian. He closed his ministerial labors in Northfield, February 28, 1830, on which occasion he delivered a farewell discourse, taking for his text, the words of Paul to Timothy: "The time of my departure is at hand. I have fought a good fight, I have finished my course, I have kept the faith; henceforth there is laid up for me a crown of righteousness."

As a specimen of his style of writing, the following pa.s.sages are presented, taken from this discourse:--"Time, which forms the scene of all human enterprise, solicitude, toil, and improvement, and which fixes the limitations of all human pleasures and sufferings, has at length conducted us to the termination of our long-protracted alliance. An a.s.signment of the reasons of this measure must open a field too extended and too diversified for our present survey. Nor could a development of the whole be any way interesting to us, to whom alone this address is now submitted.

Suffice it to say, that in the lively exercise of mutual and unimpaired friendship and confidence, the contracting parties, after sober, continued, and unimpa.s.sioned deliberation, have yielded to existing circ.u.mstances, as a problematical expedient of social blessing."

After commenting upon the declaration of Paul, he continued: "The Apostle proceeds, 'I have fought a good fight' Would to G.o.d I could say the same! Let me say, however, without the fear of contradiction, 'I have fought a fight!' How far it has been 'good,' I forbear to decide." His summing up was this: "You see, my hearers, all I can say, in common with the Apostle in the text, is this: 'The time of my departure is at hand,'--and, 'I have finished my course.'"

Referring then to the situation which he had occupied, he said: "The scene of our alliance and co-operation, my friends, has been one of no ordinary cast and character. The last half-century has been pregnant with novelty, project, innovation, and extreme excitement. The pillars of the social edifice have been shaken, and the whole social atmosphere has been decomposed by alchemical demagogues and revolutionary apes. The sickly atmosphere has suffused a morbid humor over the whole frame, and left the social body little more than 'the empty and b.l.o.o.d.y skin of an immolated victim.'

"We pa.s.s by the ordinary incidents of alienation, which are too numerous, and too evanescent to admit of detail. But seasons and circ.u.mstances of great alarm are not readily forgotten. We have witnessed, and we have felt, my friends, a political convulsion, which seemed the harbinger of inevitable desolation. But it has pa.s.sed by with a harmless explosion, and returning friends have paused in wonder, at a moment's suspension of friendship. Mingled with the fact.i.tious ma.s.s, there was a large spice of sincerity which sanctified the whole composition, and restored the social body to sanity, health, and increased strength and vigor.

"Thrice happy must be our reflections could we stop here, and contemplate the ascending prosperity and increasing vigor of this religious community. But the one half has not yet been told,--the beginning has hardly been begun. Could I borrow the language of the spirits of wrath,--was my pen trans.m.u.ted to a viper's tooth dipped in gore,--was my paper transformed to a vellum which no light could illume, and which only darkness could render legible, I could, and I would, record a tale of blood, of which the foulest miscreant must burn in ceaseless anguish only once to have been suspected. But I refer to imagination what description can never reach."

What the author referred to in this last paragraph no one knew, nor did he ever advance any explanation of these strange words.

Near the close of his discourse, he said: "Standing in the place of a Christian minister among you, through the whole course of my ministrations, it has been my great and leading aim ever to maintain and exhibit the character and example of a Christian man.

With clerical foppery, grimace, craft, and hypocrisy, I have had no concern. In the free partic.i.p.ation of every innocent entertainment and delight, I have pursued an open, unreserved course, equally removed from the mummery of superst.i.tion and the dissipation of infidelity. And though I have enjoyed my full share of honor from the scandal of bigotry and malice, yet I may safely congratulate myself in the reflection, that by this liberal and independent progress were men weighed in the balance of intellectual, social, and moral worth, I have yet never lost a single friend who was worth preserving."--pp. 3, 4, 5, 9, 10, 11.

_Y_.

YAGER FIGHTS. At Bowdoin College, "_Yager Fights_," says a correspondent, "are the annual conflicts which occur between the townsmen and the students. The Yagers (from the German _Jager_, a hunter, a chaser) were accustomed, when the lumbermen came down the river in the spring, to a.s.semble in force, march up to the College yard with fife and drum, get famously drubbed, and retreat in confusion to their dens. The custom has become extinct within the past four years, in consequence of the non-appearance of the Yagers."

YALENSIAN. A student at or a member of Yale College.

In making this selection, we have been governed partly by poetic merit, but more by the a.s.sociations connected with various pieces inserted, in the minds of the present generation of _Yalensians_.

--_Preface to Songs of Yale_, 1853.

The _Yalensian_ is off for Commencement.--_Yale Lit. Mag._, Vol.

XIX. p. 355.

YANKEE. According to the account of this word as given by Dr.

William Gordon, it appears to have been in use among the students of Harvard College at a very early period. A citation from his work will show this fact in its proper light.

"You may wish to know the origin of the term _Yankee_. Take the best account of it which your friend can procure. It was a cant, favorite word with Farmer Jonathan Hastings, of Cambridge, about 1713. Two aged ministers, who were at the College in that town, have told me, they remembered it to have been then in use among the students, but had no recollection of it before that period.

The inventor used it to express excellency. A _Yankee_ good horse, or _Yankee_ cider, and the like, were an excellent good horse and excellent cider. The students used to hire horses of him; their intercourse with him, and his use of the term upon all occasions, led them to adopt it, and they gave him the name of Yankee Jon. He was a worthy, honest man, but no conjurer. This could not escape the notice of the collegiates. Yankee probably became a by-word among them to express a weak, simple, awkward person; was carried from the College with them when they left it, and was in that way circulated and established through the country, (as was the case in respect to Hobson's choice, by the students at Cambridge, in Old England,) till, from its currency in New England, it was at length taken up and unjustly applied to the New-Englanders in common, as a term of reproach."--_American War_, Ed. 1789, Vol. I.

pp. 324, 325. _Thomas's Spy_, April, 1789, No. 834.

In the Ma.s.sachusetts Magazine, Vol. VII., p. 301, the editor, the Rev. Thaddeus Mason Harris, D.D., of Dorchester, referring to a letter written by the Rev. John Seccombe, and dated "Cambridge, Sept. 27, 1728," observes: "It is a most humorous narrative of the fate of a goose roasted at 'Yankee Hastings's,' and it concludes with a poem on the occasion, in the mock-heroic." The fact of the name is further substantiated in the following remarks by the Rev.

John Langdon Sibley, of Harvard College: "Jonathan Hastings, Steward of the College from 1750 to 1779,... was a son of Jonathan Hastings, a tanner, who was called 'Yankee Hastings,' and lived on the spot at the northwest corner of Holmes Place in Old Cambridge, where, not many years since, a house was built by the late William Pomeroy."--_Father Abbey's Will_, Cambridge, Ma.s.s., 1854, pp. 7, 8.

YEAR. At the English universities, the undergraduate course is three years and a third. Students of the first year are called Freshmen, and the other cla.s.ses at Cambridge are, in popular phrase, designated successively Second-year Men, Third-year Men, and Men who are just going out. The word _year_ is often used in the sense of cla.s.s.

The lecturer stands, and the lectured sit, even when construing, as the Freshmen are sometimes asked to do; the other _Years_ are only called on to listen.--_Bristed's Five Years in an Eng.

Univ._, Ed. 2d, p. 18.

Of the "_year_" that entered with me at Trinity, three men died before the time of graduating.--_Ibid._, p. 330.

YEOMAN-BEDELL. At the University of Cambridge, Eng., the _yeoman-bedell_ in processions precedes the esquire-bedells, carrying an ebony mace, tipped with silver.--_Cam. Guide_.

At the University of Oxford, the yeoman-bedels bear the silver staves in procession. The vice-chancellor never walks out without being preceded by a yeoman-bedel with his insignium of office.--_Guide to Oxford_.

See BEADLE.