nd 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, perhaps most of
all, exhibited an incongruous mixture of men and things. Besi