The President was required to officiate at prayers, but when unable to attend, the office devolved on one of the Tutors, “they taking their turns by course weekly.”  Whenever they performed this duty “for any considerable time,” they were “suitably rewarded for their service.”  In one instance, in 1794, all the officers being absent, Mr., afterwards Prof.  McKean, then an undergraduate, performed the duties of chaplain.  In the journal above referred to, under date of Feb. 22, 1793, is this note:  “At prayers, I declaimed in Latin”; which would seem to show, that this season was sometimes made the occasion for exercises of a literary as well as religious character.

In a late work by Professor Sidney Willard, he says of his father, who was President of Harvard College:  “In the early period of his Presidency, Mr. Willard not unfrequently delivered a sermon at evening prayers on Sunday.  In the year 1794, I remember he preached once or twice on that evening, but in the next year and onward he discontinued the service.  His predecessor used to expound passages of Scripture as a part of the religious service.  These expositions are frequently spoken of in the diary of Mr. Caleb Gannett when he was a Tutor.  On Saturday evening and Sunday morning and evening, generally the College choir sang a hymn or an anthem.  When these Sunday services were observed in the Chapel, the Faculty and students worshipped on Lord’s day, at the stated hours of meeting, in the Congregational or the Episcopal Church.” —­Memories of Youth and Manhood, Vol.  I. pp. 137, 138.

At Yale College, one of the earliest laws ordains that “all undergraduates shall publicly repeat sermons in the hall in their course, and also bachelors; and be constantly examined on Sabbaths [at] evening prayer.”—­Pres.  Woolsey’s Discourse, p. 59.

Prayers at this institution were at one period regulated by the following rule.  “The President, or in his Absence, one of the Tutors in their Turn, shall constantly pray in the Chapel every Morning and Evening, and read a Chapter, or some suitable Portion of Scripture, unless a Sermon, or some Theological Discourse shall then be delivered.  And every Member of College is obliged to attend, upon the Penalty of one Penny for every Instance of Absence, without a sufficient Reason, and a half Penny for being tardy, i.e. when any one shall come in after the President, or go out before him.”—­Laws Yale Coll., 1774, p. 5.

A writer in the American Literary Magazine, in noticing some of the evils connected with the American college system, describes very truthfully, in the following question, a scene not at all novel in student life.  “But when the young man is compelled to rise at an unusually early hour to attend public prayers, under all kinds of disagreeable circumstances; when he rushes into the chapel breathless, with wet feet, half dressed, and with the prospect of a recitation immediately to succeed the devotions,—­is it not natural that he should be listless, or drowsy, or excited about his recitation, during the whole sacred exercise?”—­Vol.  IV. p. 517.