“Much talk and nothing said.”

“The loquacious more talkative than ever, and fine Harangues preparing.”

 “Much Money sunk,
  Much Liquor drunk.”

His only note for the year 1765 was this:—­

 “Many Crapulae to Day
  Give the Head-ach to the Gay.”

Commencement Day was generally considered a holiday throughout the Province, and in the metropolis the shops were usually closed, and little or no business was done.  About ten days before this period, a body of Indians from Natick—­men, women, and pappooses—­commonly made their appearance at Cambridge, and took up their station around the Episcopal Church, in the cellar of which they were accustomed to sleep, if the weather was unpleasant.  The women sold baskets and moccasons; the boys gained money by shooting at it, while the men wandered about and spent the little that was earned by their squaws in rum and tobacco.  Then there would come along a body of itinerant negro fiddlers, whose scraping never intermitted during the time of their abode.

The Common, on Commencement week, was covered with booths, erected in lines, like streets, intended to accommodate the populace from Boston and the vicinity with the amusements of a fair.  In these were carried on all sorts of dissipation.  Here was a knot of gamblers, gathered around a wheel of fortune, or watching the whirl of the ball on a roulette-table.  Further along, the jolly hucksters displayed their tempting wares in the shape of cooling beverages and palate-tickling confections.  There was dancing on this side, auction-selling on the other; here a pantomimic show, there a blind man, led by a dog, soliciting alms; organ-grinders and hurdy-gurdy grinders, bears and monkeys, jugglers and sword-swallowers, all mingled in inextricable confusion.

In a neighboring field, a countryman had, perchance, let loose a fox, which the dogs were worrying to death, while the surrounding crowd testified their pleasure at the scene by shouts of approbation.  Nor was there any want of the spirituous; pails of punch, guarded by stout negroes, bore witness to their own subtle contents, now by the man who lay curled up under the adjoining hedge, “forgetting and forgot,” and again by the drunkard, reeling, cursing, and fighting among his comrades.

The following observations from the pen of Professor Sidney Willard, afford an accurate description of the outward manifestations of Commencement Day at Harvard College, during the latter part of the last century.  “Commencement Day at that time was a widely noted day, not only among men and women of all characters and conditions, but also among boys.  It was the great literary and mob anniversary of Massachusetts, surpassed only in its celebrities by the great civil and mob anniversary, namely, the Fourth of July, and the last Wednesday of May, Election day, so called, the anniversary of the organization of the government of the State for the civil year.  But Commencement,