a charge of six hundred tumblers, thirty coffee-pots, and I know not how many other articles of table furniture, destroyed or carried off in a single term.  Speaking of tumblers, it may be mentioned as an instance of the progress of luxury, even there, that down to about 1815 such a thing was not known, the drinking-vessels at dinner being capacious pewter mugs, each table being furnished with two.  We were at one time a good deal incommoded by the diminutive size of the milk-pitchers, which were all the while empty and gone for more.  A waiter mentioned, for our patience, that, when these were used up, a larger size would be provided.  ’O, if that’s the case, the remedy is easy.’  Accordingly the hint was passed through the room, the offending pitchers were slyly placed upon the floor, and, as we rose from the tables, were crushed under foot.  The next morning the new set appeared.  One of the classes being tired of lamb, lamb, lamb, wretchedly cooked, during the season of it, expressed their dissatisfaction by entering the hall bleating; no notice of which being taken, a day or two after they entered in advance of the Tutors, and cleared the tables of it, throwing it out of the windows, platters and all, and immediately retired.

“In truth, not much could be said in commendation of our Alma Mater’s table.  A worse diet for sedentary men than that we had during the last days of the old hall, now the laboratory, cannot be imagined.  I will not go into particulars, for I hate to talk about food.  It was absolutely destructive of health.  I know it to have ruined, permanently, the health of some, and I have not the least doubt of its having occasioned, in certain instances which I could specify, incurable debility and premature death.”—­Scenes and Characters in College, New Haven, 1847, pp. 113-117.

See INVALID’S TABLE.  SLUM.

That the commons at Dartmouth College were at times of a quality which would not be called the best, appears from the annexed paragraph, written in the year 1774.  “He [Eleazer Wheelock, President of the College] has had the mortification to lose two cows, and the rest were greatly hurt by a contagious distemper, so that they could not have a full supply of milk; and once the pickle leaked out of the beef-barrel, so that the meat was not sweet.  He had also been ill-used with respect to the purchase of some wheat, so that they had smutty bread for a while, &c.  The scholars, on the other hand, say they scarce ever have anything but pork and greens, without vinegar, and pork and potatoes; that fresh meat comes but very seldom, and that the victuals are very badly dressed.”—­Life of Jeremy Belknap, D.D., pp. 68, 69.

The above account of commons applies generally to the system as it was carried out in the other colleges in the United States.  In almost every college, commons have been abolished, and with them have departed the discords, dissatisfactions, and open revolts, of which they were so often the cause.