ager, and evidently instructed him, in modern parlance, to “go the limit.” With all the assurance of a Barnum he advertised that he had secured “cooks superior to any in the United States,” and set forth elaborate menus, including roast goose, turtle soup, and other unheard-of dainties. A long-suffering but inextinguishably hopeful patron records the results in his diary. “Commons very bad today,” is the usual entry; “hope they will be better tomorrow.” Of the roast goose—“I suppose every goose in our room, and there were eight or ten of them, could have been bought for a dollar.” Of the turtle soup—“as I never ate any before, I do not know whether this was good, only that I could not eat any of mine.” At supper “the bread was mere dough, but will no doubt be improved.”[1] This strain of undaunted optimism may have been what Peirce meant by “philosophical” fare.
After further and equally unfortunate essays, the Faculty threw up the sponge in despair, and in 1842 turned the Commons over to an independent contractor. This worthy, having the Puritan tradition strong upon him, wrestled with the idea that the main obstacle to success lay in the excessive price, which had then reached $2.50 a week. He therefore instituted a second
- ↑ From diary kept during 1820 by G. Whitney (H. C. 1824). Quoted in Harvard Book, 1, 89. It was after a few years of Cooley that the students were allowed to choose their own boarding-places. See ante, p. 107.
