The tact with which he dealt with the occasional outbreaks in the college was very interesting.  If it was a case of wanton defiance of the habitual order, there was a very slight probability of its being overlooked.  A favorite prank of the stealing of the college bell was invariably punished, first by having a hand-bell rung a little earlier than regulation hours all through the sections; and, when his secret police had discovered the offenders, they were punished according to custom, never very severely, but sufficiently so to make them feel humiliated.  But the mystery of his police was never explained, and we were always at a loss to conjecture how he discovered the most elaborately concealed combinations, so that suddenly, even weeks after, when the culprits thought they had finally escaped detection, he would announce at prayers that they were to come to his study to explain.  If the outbreak, however, had been in any way justified by an arbitrary or unwise act of discipline by any of the professors, he used to ignore it altogether.

The professor of mensuration, a fussy and consequential little fellow, a volunteer on the staff, and a man of singularly slight knowledge of young men, very fond of showing his authority, especially at the public examinations at the end of the term, had incurred the wrath of the class and become the butt of all its practical jokes.  Having boasted one evening in society of the town that the students dared not rebel against him, and the boast coming to their knowledge, not a single student presented himself at the recitation next morning.  The next day he was greeted with such disorder that it was necessary to suspend the exercises, and one of the most violent demonstrators finished by throwing a huge wooden spoon at him, which, hitting him on the head, ended the row.  His public examinations were the most severe we had to go through, and often quite needlessly so, in order to impress the visitors with his own knowledge rather than with ours, and as the end of a term drew near, I think in my last junior term, a conspiracy was got up to put him hors de combat for that examination.  It was decided to take him out of his room in the section (he was section officer in my own section) and bring him into the pine woods in the rear of the college, and there, unless he solemnly promised to stay away from his class examination, to cut off his hair and tar his head first, then crop his beard, and, if he was still refractory, to strip him (it was midsummer) and tie him to a tree and leave him all night, under the conviction that he would not show himself at examination after that experience.