And, if no coming blow his thoughts engage,
  Lights candle and cigar.
    Ibid., p. 235.

The person who engages in a blow is also called a blow.

I could see, in the long vista of the past, the many hardened blows who had rioted here around the festive board.—­Collegian, p. 231.

BLUE.  In several American colleges, a student who is very strict in observing the laws, and conscientious in performing his duties, is styled a blue.  “Our real delvers, midnight students,” says a correspondent from Williams College, “are called blue.”

I wouldn’t carry a novel into chapel to read, not out of any respect for some people’s old-womanish twaddle about the sacredness of the place,—­but because some of the blues might see you.—­Yale Lit.  Mag., Vol.  XV. p. 81.

  Each jolly soul of them, save the blues,
  Were doffing their coats, vests, pants, and shoes.
    Yale Gallinipper, Nov. 1848.

  None ever knew a sober “blue”
    In this “blood crowd” of ours.
    Yale Tomahawk, Nov. 1849.

Lucian called him a blue, and fell back in his chair in a pouting fit.—­The Dartmouth, Vol.  IV. p. 118.

To acquire popularity,... he must lose his money at bluff and euchre without a sigh, and damn up hill and down the sober church-going man, as an out-and-out blue.—­The Parthenon, Union Coll., 1851, p. 6.

BLUE-LIGHT.  At the University of Vermont this term is used, writes a correspondent, to designate “a boy who sneaks about college, and reports to the Faculty the short-comings of his fellow-students.  A blue-light is occasionally found watching the door of a room where a party of jolly ones are roasting a turkey (which in justice belongs to the nearest farm-house), that he may go to the Faculty with the story, and tell them who the boys are.”

BLUES.  The name of a party which formerly existed at Dartmouth College.  In The Dartmouth, Vol.  IV. p. 117, 1842, is the following:—­“The students here are divided into two parties,—­the Rowes and the Blues.  The Rowes are very liberal in their notions; the Blues more strict.  The Rowes don’t pretend to say anything worse of a fellow than to call him a Blue, and vice versa”

See INDIGO and ROWES.

BLUE-SKIN.  This word was formerly in use at some American colleges, with the meaning now given to the word BLUE, q.v.

  I, with my little colleague here,
    Forth issued from my cell,
  To see if we could overhear,
    Or make some blue-skin tell.
    The Crayon, Yale Coll., 1823, p. 22.

BOARD.  The boards, or college boards, in the English universities, are long wooden tablets on which the names of the members of each college are inscribed, according to seniority, generally hung up in the buttery.—­Gradus ad Cantab.  Webster.