RAM ON THE CLERGY.  At Middlebury College, a synonyme of the slang noun, “sell.”

RANTERS.  At Bethany College, in Virginia, there is “a band,” says a correspondent, “calling themselves ‘Ranters,’ formed for the purpose of perpetrating all kinds of rascality and mischievousness, both on their fellow-students and the neighboring people.  The band is commanded by one selected from the party, called the Grand Ranter, whose orders are to be obeyed under penalty of expulsion of the person offending.  Among the tricks commonly indulged in are those of robbing hen and turkey roosts, and feasting upon the fruits of their labor, of stealing from the neighbors their horses, to enjoy the pleasure of a midnight ride, and to facilitate their nocturnal perambulations.  If detected, and any complaint is made, or if the Faculty are informed of their movements, they seek revenge by shaving the tails and manes of the favorite horses belonging to the person informing, or by some similar trick.”

RAZOR.  A writer in the Yale Literary Magazine defines this word in the following sentence:  “Many of the members of this time-honored institution, from whom we ought to expect better things, not only do their own shaving, but actually make their own razors.  But I must explain for the benefit of the uninitiated.  A pun, in the elegant college dialect, is called a razor, while an attempt at a pun is styled a sick razor.  The sick ones are by far the most numerous; however, once in a while you meet with one in quite respectable health.”—­Vol.  XIII. p. 283.

The meeting will be opened with razors by the Society’s jester. —­Yale Tomahawk, Nov. 1849.

  Behold how Duncia leads her chosen sons,
  All armed with squibs, stale jokes, dull razors, puns.
    The Gallinipper, Dec. 1849.

READ.  To be studious; to practise much reading; e.g. at Oxford, to read for a first class; at Cambridge, to read for an honor.  In America it is common to speak of “reading law, medicine,” &c.

  We seven stayed at Christmas up to read;
  We seven took one tutor.
    Tennyson, Prologue to Princess.

In England the vacations are the very times when you read most. Bristed’s Five Years in an Eng.  Univ., Ed. 2d, p. 78.

This system takes for granted that the students have “read,” as it is termed, with a private practitioner of medicine.—­Cat.  Univ. of Virginia, 1851, p. 25.

READER.  In the University of Oxford, one who reads lectures on scientific subjects.—­Lyell.

2.  At the English universities, a hard student, nearly equivalent to READING MAN.

Most of the Cantabs are late readers, so that, supposing one of them to begin at seven, he will not leave off before half past eleven.—­Bristed’s Five Years in an Eng.  Univ., Ed. 2d, p. 21.