BLACK-HOOD HOUSE.  See SENATE.

BLACK RIDING.  At the College of South Carolina, it has until within a few years been customary for the students, disguised and painted black, to ride across the college-yard at midnight, on horseback, with vociferations and the sound of horns. Black riding is recognized by the laws of the College as a very high offence, punishable with expulsion.

BLEACH.  At Harvard College, he was formerly said to bleach who preferred to be spiritually rather than bodily present at morning prayers.

  ’T is sweet Commencement parts to reach,
  But, oh! ’tis doubly sweet to bleach.
    Harvardiana, Vol.  III. p. 123.

BLOOD.  A hot spark; a man of spirit; a rake.  A word long in use among collegians and by writers who described them.

With some rakes from Boston and a few College bloods, I got very drunk.—­Monthly Anthology, Boston, 1804, Vol.  I. p. 154.

  Indulgent Gods! exclaimed our bloods.
    The Crayon, Yale Coll., 1823, p. 15.

BLOOD.  At some of the Western colleges this word signifies excellent; as, a blood recitation.  A student who recites well is said to make a blood.

BLOODEE.  In the Farmer’s Weekly Museum, formerly printed at Walpole, N.H., appeared August 21, 1797, a poetic production, in which occurred these lines:—­

  Seniors about to take degrees,
  Not by their wits, but by bloodees.

In a note the word bloodee was thus described:  “A kind of cudgel worn, or rather borne, by the bloods of a certain college in New England, 2 feet 5 inches in length, and 1-7/8 inch in diameter, with a huge piece of lead at one end, emblematical of its owner.  A pretty prop for clumsy travellers on Parnassus.”

BLOODY.  Formerly a college term for daring, rowdy, impudent.

  Arriving at Lord Bibo’s study,
  They thought they’d be a little bloody;
  So, with a bold, presumptuous look,
  An honest pinch of snuff they took.
    Rebelliad, p. 44.

  They roar’d and bawl’d, and were so bloody,
  As to besiege Lord Bibo’s study.

  Ibid., p. 76.

BLOW.  A merry frolic with drinking; a spree.  A person intoxicated is said to be blown, and Mr. Halliwell, in his Dict.  Arch. and Prov.  Words, has blowboll, a drunkard.

This word was formerly used by students to designate their frolics and social gatherings; at present, it is not much heard, being supplanted by the more common words spree, tight, &c.

My fellow-students had been engaged at a blow till the stagehorn had summoned them to depart.—­Harvard Register, 1827-28, p. 172.

  No soft adagio from the muse of blows,
  E’er roused indignant from serene repose.
    Ibid., p. 233.