At the first Commencement, all the magistrates, elders, and invited guests who were present “dined,” says Winthrop in his Journal, Vol.  II. pp. 87, 88, “at the College with the scholars’ ordinary commons, which was done on purpose for the students’ encouragement, &c., and it gave good content to all.”  After dinner, a Psalm was usually sung.  In 1685, at Commencement, Sewall says:  “After dinner ye 3d part of ye 103d Ps. was sung in ye Hall.”  The seventy-eighth Psalm was the one usually sung, an account of which will be found under that title.  The Senior Class usually waited on the table on Commencement Day.  After dinner, they were allowed to take what provisions were left, and eat them at their rooms, or in the hall.  This custom was not discontinued until the year 1812.

In 1754, owing to the expensive habits worn on Commencement Day, a law was passed, ordering that on that day “every candidate for his degree appear in black, or dark blue, or gray clothes; and that no one wear any silk night-gowns; and that any candidate, who shall appear dressed contrary to such regulations, may not expect his degree.”  At present, on Commencement Day, every candidate for a first degree wears, according to the law, “a black dress and the usual black gown.”

It was formerly customary, on this day, for the students to provide entertainment in their rooms.  But great care was taken, as far as statutory enactments were concerned, that all excess should be avoided.  During the presidency of Increase Mather was developed among the students a singular phase of gastronomy, which was noticed by the Corporation in their records, under the date of June 22, 1693, in these words:  “The Corporation, having been informed that the custom taken up in the College, not used in any other Universities, for the commencers [graduating class] to have plumb-cake, is dishonorable to the College, not grateful to wise men, and chargeable to the parents of the commencers, do therefore put an end to that custom, and do hereby order that no commencer, or other scholar, shall have any such cakes in their studies or chambers; and that, if any scholar shall offend therein, the cakes shall be taken from him, and he shall moreover pay to the College twenty shillings for each such offence.”  This stringent regulation was, no doubt, all-sufficient for many years; but in the lapse of time the taste for the forbidden delicacy, which was probably concocted with a skill unknown to the moderns, was again revived, accompanied with confessions to a fondness for several kinds of expensive preparations, the recipes for which preparations, it is to be feared, are inevitably lost.  In 1722, in the latter part of President Leverett’s administration, an act was passed “for reforming the Extravagancys of Commencements,” and providing “that henceforth no preparation nor provision of either Plumb Cake, or Roasted, Boyled, or Baked Meates or Pyes of any kind shal be made by any Commencer,”