BOLTER.  At Union College, one who bolts from a recitation.

2.  A correspondent from the same college says:  “If a student is unable to answer a question in the class, and declares himself unprepared, he also is a ‘bolter.’”

BONFIRE.  The making of bonfires, by students, is not an unfrequent occurrence at many of our colleges, and is usually a demonstration of dissatisfaction, or is done merely for the sake of the excitement.  It is accounted a high offence, and at Harvard College is prohibited by the following law:—­“In case of a bonfire, or unauthorized fireworks or illumination, any students crying fire, sounding an alarm, leaving their rooms, shouting or clapping from the windows, going to the fire or being seen at it, going into the college yard, or assembling on account of such bonfire, shall be deemed aiding and abetting such disorder, and punished accordingly.”—­Laws, 1848, Bonfires.

A correspondent from Bowdoin College writes:  “Bonfires occur regularly twice a year; one on the night preceding the annual State Fast, and the other is built by the Freshmen on the night following the yearly examination.  A pole some sixty or seventy feet long is raised, around which brush and tar are heaped to a great height.  The construction of the pile occupies from four to five hours.”

  Not ye, whom midnight cry ne’er urged to run
  In search of fire, when fire there had been none;
  Unless, perchance, some pump or hay-mound threw
  Its bonfire lustre o’er a jolly crew.
    Harvard Register, p. 233.

BOOK-KEEPER.  At Harvard College, students are allowed to go out of town on Saturday, after the exercises, but are required, if not at evening prayers, to enter their names before 10 P.M. with one of the officers appointed for that purpose.  Students were formerly required to report themselves before 8 P.M., in winter, and 9, in summer, and the person who registered the names was a member of the Freshman Class, and was called the book-keeper.

I strode over the bridge, with a rapidity which grew with my vexation, my distaste for wind, cold, and wet, and my anxiety to reach my goal ere the hour appointed should expire, and the book-keeper’s light should disappear from his window; “For while his light holds out to burn,
  The vilest sinner may return.”—­Collegian, p. 225.

See FRESHMAN, COLLEGE.

BOOK-WORK.  Among students at Cambridge, Eng., all mathematics that can be learned verbatim from books,—­all that are not problems.—­Bristed.

He made a good fight of it, and ... beat the Trinity man a little on the book-work.—­Bristed’s Five Years in an Eng.  Univ., Ed. 2d, p. 96.

The men are continually writing out book-work, either at home or in their tutor’s rooms.—­Ibid., p. 149.

BOOT-FOX.  This name was at a former period given, in the German universities, to a fox, or a student in his first half-year, from the fact of his being required to black the boots of his more advanced comrades.