Give ear, ye children;[62] to my law
    Devout attention lend;
  Let the instructions[63] of my mouth
    Deep in your hearts descend.

  My tongue, by inspiration taught,
    Shall parables unfold;
  Dark oracles, but understood,
    And owned for truths of old;

  Which we from sacred registers
    Of ancient times have known,
  And our forefathers’ pious care
    To us has handed down.

  Let children learn[64] the mighty deeds
    Which God performed of old;
  Which, in our younger years we saw,
    And which our fathers told.

  Our lips shall tell them to our sons,
    And they again to theirs;
  That generations yet unborn
    May teach them to their heirs.

  Thus shall they learn in God alone
    Their hope securely stands;
  That they may ne’er forget his works,
    But practise his commands.

It has been supposed by some that the version of the Seventy-eighth Psalm by Sternhold and Hopkins, whose spiritual songs were usually printed, as appears above, “at ye end of their Bibles,” was the first which was sung at Commencement dinners; but this does not seem at all probable, since the first Commencement at Cambridge did not take place until 1642, at which time the “Bay Psalm-Book,” written by three of the most popular ministers of the day, had already been published two years.

SHADY.  Among students at the University of Cambridge, Eng., an epithet of depreciation, equivalent to MILD and SLOW.—­Bristed.

Some ... are rather shady in Greek and Latin.—­Bristed’s Five Years in an Eng.  Univ., Ed. 2d, p. 147.

My performances on the Latin verse paper were very shady.—­Ibid., p. 191.

SHARK.  In student language, an absence from a recitation, a lecture, or from prayers, prompted by recklessness rather than by necessity, is called a shark.  He who is absent under these circumstances is also known as a shark.

  The Monitors’ task is now quite done,
    They ’ve pencilled all their marks,
  “Othello’s occupation’s gone,”—­
    No more look out for sharks.
    Songs of Yale, 1853, p. 45.

SHEEPSKIN.  The parchment diploma received by students on taking their degree at college.  “In the back settlements are many clergymen who have not had the advantages of a liberal education, and who consequently have no diplomas.  Some of these look upon their more favored brethren with a little envy.  A clergyman is said to have a sheepskin, or to be a sheepskin, when educated at college.”—­Bartlett’s Dict. of Americanisms.

This apostle of ourn never rubbed his back agin a college, nor toted about no sheepskins,—­no, never!...  How you’d a perished in your sins, if the first preachers had stayed till they got sheepskins.—­Carlton’s New Purchase.