This use of the word thirst made me drink an extra bumper of “Audit” that very day at dinner.—­Alma Mater, Vol.  I. p. 3.

After a few draughts of the Audit, the company disperse.—­Ibid. Vol.  I. p. 161.

AUTHORITY.  “This word,” says Mr. Pickering, in his Vocabulary, “is used in some of the States, in speaking collectively of the Professors, &c. of our colleges, to whom the government of these institutions is intrusted.”

Every Freshman shall be obliged to do any proper errand or message for the Authority of the College.—­Laws Middlebury Coll., 1804, p. 6.

AUTOGRAPH BOOK.  It is customary at Yale College for each member of the Senior Class, before the close of his collegiate life, to obtain, in a book prepared for that purpose, the signatures of the President, Professors, Tutors, and of all his classmates, with anything else which they may choose to insert.  Opposite the autographs of the college officers are placed engravings of them, so far as they are obtainable; and the whole, bound according to the fancy of each, forms a most valuable collection of agreeable mementos.

When news of his death reached me.  I turned to my book of classmate autographs, to see what he had written there, and to read a name unusually dear.—­Scenes and Characters in College, New Haven, 1847, p. 201.

AVERAGE BOOK.  At Harvard College, a book in which the marks received by each student, for the proper performance of his college duties, are entered; also the deductions from his rank resulting from misconduct.  These unequal data are then arranged in a mean proportion, and the result signifies the standing which the student has held for a given period.

  In vain the Prex’s grave rebuke,
  Deductions from the average book.
    MS. Poem, W.F.  Allen, 1848.

B.

B.A.  An abbreviation of Baccalaureus Artium, Bachelor of Arts.  The first degree taken by a student at a college or university.  Sometimes written A.B., which is in accordance with the proper Latin arrangement.  In American colleges this degree is conferred in course on each member of the Senior Class in good standing.  In the English universities, it is given to the candidate who has been resident at least half of each of ten terms, i.e. during a certain portion of a period extending over three and a third years, and who has passed the University examinations.

The method of conferring the degree of B.A. at Trinity College, Hartford, is peculiar.  The President takes the hands of each candidate in his own as he confers the degree.  He also passes to the candidate a book containing the College Statutes, which the candidate holds in his right hand during the performance of a part of the ceremony.

The initials of English academical titles always correspond to the English, not to the Latin of the titles, B.A., M.A., D.D., D.C.L., &c.—­Bristed’s Five Years in an Eng.  Univ., Ed. 2d, p. 13.