sometimes for butter or cheese when I conceived there was no need of it; yet the scholars did otherways apprehend.” Poor scholars! They would “send down[1] for more meat,” but were “denied when it was in the house.” Perhaps the most telling confession of all was that they were “wanting beer betwixt brewings, a week or half a week together.” As for the accusations that “the swine and they had share and share alike,” that they received “hasty pudding with goat’s dung in it, and mackerel served with their guts in them,” these things she denied; but one must deny something. In the outcome Eaton fled—fined, deposed, and excommunicated—first to Virginia and then back to England (where after divers discreditable adventures he died in a debtor’s prison, the object of universal detestation), and Harvard College established a reputation for poor food that clung to it for more than two centuries.[2]
Matters mended somewhat after this. In the genesis of the University, the first dark chaos was followed by a dawning light, and the beginnings of order appeared like dry land above the waters. A real president was installed, the Reverend Henry Dunster, a recent graduate
- ↑ This seems to imply that the children ate in some sort of dormitory (perhaps locked in) on the second floor of Eaton’s house, since there is no probability that it had a cellar kitchen.
- ↑ For a full account of Mr. and Mrs. Eaton and their evil courses see Savage, Winthrop’s History of New England, i, *308, from which the above summary has been constructed.
