bane of a bright understanding, and brings barrenness to the brain.”[1]
Besides, they imported into the question a great moral issue. With Sir Toby Belch, they assumed that the virtuous must necessarily eschew cakes and ale. From their ethical standpoint it was perhaps inevitable that they should
Fat pig and goose itself oppose,
And blaspheme custard through the nose.
The most striking example is their famous vote of 1693 concerning “plumb cake,” which, along with “punch and flip,” the graduating class, it appears, were beginning to offer to their friends at Commencement time—the germ of the modern class-day spread. For this offence the huge fine of 20s. was to be imposed (the fine for lying was 1s. 6d.) and the cake was to be confiscated, as “dishonorable to the College, not grateful to wise men, and not used in any other Universities.” (A stranger might have supposed that the lonely little seminary in a clearing of the New England wilderness was surrounded by rival institutions as thick as the native huckleberries.) Perhaps the last official enunciation of the idea was Benjamin Peirce’s defence of Commons in 1833 as “cheap, wholesome, and philosophical.”[2]
