tuously as “forty or fifty children,”—mostly the sons of poor country ministers, accustomed to rough and scanty fare, and looking forward to no more roseate future than to become poor country ministers in their turn. Before the 1700’s were half run, though, the Steward began to complain of “the Difficulty of giving the Scholars Content.” This he was apt to attribute to “the present great Scarcity and Dearness of Provision,” due to the depreciation of the currency at that period.[1]
But the Steward could see no farther into a millstone than could the Corporation. In reality there were deeper causes also at work. The standards of living in the community outside the college halls were rising, and more and more youths were entering the University from comfortable and even wealthy homes—youths imbued moreover with their full share of the fast-increasing spirit of American independence. Among these up-to-date young gentlemen and their friends the absurdly antiquated management of Commons, their mean and monotonous meals, slovenly service, and clownish cookery, combined with the irritation of compulsory attendance (which from about 1765, as we have seen, began to be much more strictly enforced) and the constant nagging of tutors and monitors—the whole more appropriate to a gaol than to “the seat of the
- ↑ Harv. Alumni Bulletin, xxii, 302.
