What the common schools of a century or two ago must have been is indicated by a description of the colleges which will hereafter be given in this chapter. Many of the school-masters were ignorant, and in addition were much addicted to the use of intoxicating liquors. The first of whom we have any trace was Jan Roelandsen, a New York school-master, who is on record as lying drunk for a month at a time, and being incorrigibly lazy. He was the first of many. Winthrop, in his History of New England, describes the censuring of Nathaniel Eton, a school-master, for furnishing insufficient board to his scholars, in which proceeding his wife testified that the bread and beer was always free for the boarders to go to. In 1693 a school bill for a couple of boys of the Lloyd family of Long Island contained the following items:

While the boys took the drugs the school-mistress drank the wine.

Henry Clay's education was in a district school taught in a log cabin by an intemperate Englishman, and consisted of the merest rudiments. Peter Cartwright speaks of his school teacher as a Seceder minister who would get drunk at times. Washington Irving's Ichabod Crane, and Eggleston's Hoosier School-master are at least average pictures of the country school-masters of an early day. The chorus of the school-masters seems to have been:

MacMasters describes early college life in 1784 as follows:

"The students lodged in the dormitories and ate at the commons. The food then partaken of with thankfulness would now be looked upon as prison fare. At breakfast, which was served at sunrise in summer and at day-break in winter, there was doled out to each student a small can of unsettled coffee, a size of biscuit, and a size of butter weighing generally about an ounce. Dinner was the staple meal, and at this each student was regaled with a pound of meat. Two days in the week, Monday and Thursday, the meat was boiled, and, in college language, these were known as boiling days. On the five remaining days, the meat was roasted, and to them the nickname of roasting days were fastened. With the flesh always went potatoes. When boiling days came round, pudding and cabbage, wild peas and dandelions were added. The only delicacy to which no stint was applied was the cider, a beverage then fast supplanting the small beer of the colonial days. This was brought to the mess in pewter cans which were passed from mouth to mouth, and when emptied were again replenished. For supper there was a bowl of milk and a size of bread."

The oldest college in the United States, that of William and Mary, was founded by the King and Queen of that name, who gave it twenty thousand acres of land and a penny a pound duty on tobacco exported from Virginia and Maryland. The assembly also gave it a duty on imported liquors for its support. This was in 1726, and the proceeds of the tax were to be devoted to its running expenses and the establishment of scholarships. Twenty-five years later the same benevolent body enriched the college with the proceeds of the tax on peddlers. Those who are inclined to throw stones at the source of these benefactions should remember that Harvard College has more than once profited by the gains of an authorized lottery, receiving more than eighteen thousand dollars from such a source as late as 1805.

In 1752 the rules of William and Mary College required that "spirituous liquors were to be used in that moderation which became the prudent and industrious student." From the list were excluded all liquids but beer, cider, toddy, and spirits and water. In 1798, when the Bishop of Virginia was president of the college and had apartments in the building, the English traveler Weld noticed that half a dozen or more of the students dined at his table one day when he was there. "Some were without shoes and stockings, others without coats. During the meal they constantly rose to help themselves from the sideboard."

William and Mary College, during the days of Jefferson and Monroe, was "a riot of pleasure and power, a jumble of royalist splendor and patriotic fervor, an awe of learning, and indulgence of vice." Thomas Jefferson, the most eminent graduate of the college, and its cordial friend, in advanced life remembered the "regular annual riot and battles between the students and the town boys;" and bore testimony to other greater evils. From one source and another have come down to us complaints that the college was neither a college, nor a grammar school, nor an Indian hospital; that its teachers squabbled among themselves to the detriment of their academic work; and that some of the professors sent out by the bishops of London were drunken, quarrelsome, and ignorant of the subjects they professed to teach. The president, representing the bishop, might have brought charges against the clergy for their flagrant drunkenness but he refrained, being himself a notorious drunkard. Farquier, representative of the crown, was the most finished gentleman Virginia had known, and also the most demoralizing. He introduced a passion for high play that ruined many a fine old family, encouraged hard drinking and a mania for racing, delighted in having the clergy and favored students join him in his all-night revels.

Commencement at Harvard in Old New England days was a fÊte indeed; a fÊte so important as to be attended by giant expenditures and sinful extravagance. Indeed, so early as 1722 in its history, an act was passed "that henceforth no preparation nor provision of either Plumb Cake, or Roasted, Boyled or Baked Meats or Pyes of any kind shall be made by any Commencer," and that "no such have any distilled liquors in his Chamber or any composition therewith," under penalty of twenty shillings or forfeiture of the said provisions. Five years later several acts were passed "for preventing the Excesses, Immoralities and Disorders of the Commencements," by way of enforcing the foregoing act. These, with a simplicity of conclusion which brings a smile, declare that "if any who now doe or hereafter shall stand for their degrees, presume to doe anything contrary to the said Act or goe about to evade it by Plain Cake," they shall forfeit the honors of the college.

In the latter part of the eighteenth century the Yale College butler held his buttery in the ground floor, front corner room, of South Middle College, and sold cider, metheglin, strong beer, together with loaf sugar, etc., to the students. Dr. Lyman Beecher, in his autobiography, says of old Doctor Dwight, then president of the college: "Before he came college was in a most ungodly state.... Wine and liquor were kept in many rooms, intemperance, profanity, gambling, and licentiousness were common."

John Bacon, afterwards United States Senator, and Chief Justice of New Hampshire, sailed from Boston for Princeton College September 10, 1751. In his diary he states his outfit.

In a book published in 1764 describing student life at Princeton, it is stated that "the general table drink is beer or cider."

Washington Irving, in Salmagundi, described seeing two students at the tavern at Princeton who got drunk and cursed the professors. Madison was a poler at Princeton, and although the five o'clock horn was a sovereign preventive of midnight revelry, Madison was occasionally found around the blazing logs of the Nassau Inn, when tankards of ale and puffs at the long stemmed pipes punctuated the students' songs.

James Buchanan at Dickinson was the typical bad boy. Immorality was rampant among the students, sobriety and books were ridiculed. Buchanan became a leader in debauchery, although his physique enabled him at the same time to maintain a high rank in scholarship. The faculty chose him as a scapegoat, and he was expelled.

Benny Havens, the hero of the West Point song, for many years sold liquor illicitly to the cadets. The foundation of Vassar College was the fortune acquired by Matthew Vassar as a brewer.