One of the last and most notable specimens of this species was Jonathan Peale Dabney, who received his A.B. in 1811. For many years, along with other members of his forlorn fraternity, he inhabited a cockloft in the old College House (now demolished), nursing the grievance that in some unspecified way the University “owed him a living.” In time the idea completely soured a disposition naturally none of the sweetest. Clad in antiquated garments, he went about with a perpetual frown. A few pamphlets he published are perfect paradigms of a cantankerous spirit. The tale is yet told how he would frequent the reading-room, arriving early enough to secure the most comfortable chair and to gather in all the morning papers, each of which (after deliberately removing his cowhide boots) he would peruse in turn, making sure of the rest by the simple process of sitting on them. When particularly hard up, he would avail himself of the graduate’s ancient privilege of attending Commons, where he employed much the same tactics. It was one of these forays that formed the basis of Oliver Wendell Holmes’s early jeu d’esprit, “The Mysterious Visitor.”
He was a dark and swarthy man
That uninvited guest;
A faded coat of bottle green
Was buttoned round his chest.
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