At one period in the history of Yale College, a passion for expensive dress having become manifest among the students, the Faculty endeavored to curb it by a direct appeal to the different classes. The result was the establishment of the Lycurgan Society, whose object was the encouragement of plainness in apparel. The benefits which might have resulted from this organization were contravened by the rashness of some of its members. The shape which this rashness assumed is described in a work entitled "Scenes and Characters in College," written by a Yale graduate of the class of 1821.
"Some members were seized with the notion of a distinctive dress. It was strongly objected to; but the measure was carried by a stroke of policy. The dress proposed was somewhat like that of the Quakers, but less respectable,—a rustic cousin to it, or rather a caricature; namely, a close coatee, with stand-up collar, and very short skirts,—skirtees, they might be called,—the color gray; pantaloons and vest the same;—making the wearer a monotonous gray man throughout, invisible at twilight. The proposers of this metamorphosis, to make it go, selected an individual of small and agreeable figure, and procuring a suit of fine material, and a good fit, placed him on a platform as a specimen. On him it appeared very well, as a belted blouse does on a graceful child; and all the more so, as he was a favorite with the class, and lent to it the additional effect of agreeable association. But it is bad logic to derive a general conclusion from a single fact: it did not follow that the dress would be universally becoming because it was so on him. However, majorities govern; the dress was voted. The tailors were glad to hear of it, expecting a fine run of business.
"But when a tall son of Anak appeared in the little bodice of a coat, stuck upon the hips; and still worse, when some very clumsy forms assumed the dress, and one in particular, that I remember, who was equally huge in person and coarse in manners, whose taste, or economy, or both,—the one as probably as the other,—had led him to the choice of an ugly pepper-and-salt, instead of the true Oxford mix, or whatever the standard gray was called, and whose tailor, or tailoress, probably a tailoress, had contrived to aggravate his natural disproportions by the most awkward fit imaginable,—then indeed you might have said that 'some of nature's journeymen had made men, and not made them well, they imitated humanity so abominably.' They looked like David's messengers, maltreated and sent back by Hanun.[23]
"The consequence was, the dress was unpopular; very few adopted it; and the society itself went quietly into oblivion. Nevertheless it had done some good; it had had a visible effect in checking extravagance; and had accomplished all it would have done, I imagine, had it continued longer.
"There was a time, some three or four years previous to this, when a rakish fashion began to be introduced of wearing white-topped boots. It was a mere conceit of the wearers, such a fashion not existing beyond College,—except as it appeared in here and there an antiquated gentleman, a venerable remnant of the olden time, in whom the boots were matched with buckles at the knee, and a powdered queue. A practical satire quickly put an end to it. Some humorists proposed to the waiters about College to furnish them with such boots on condition of their wearing them. The offer was accepted; a lot of them was ordered at a boot-and-shoe shop, and, all at once, sweepers, sawyers, and the rest, appeared in white-topped boots. I will not repeat the profaneness of a Southerner when he first observed a pair of them upon a tall and gawky shoe-black striding across the yard. He cursed the 'negro,' and the boots; and, pulling off his own, flung them from him. After this the servants had the fashion to themselves, and could buy the article at any discount."—pp. 127-129.
At Union College, soon after its foundation, there was enacted a law, "forbidding any student to appear at chapel without the College badge,—a piece of blue ribbon, tied in the button-hole of the coat."—Account of the First Semi-Centennial Anniversary of the Philomathean Society, Union College, 1847.
Such laws as the above have often been passed in American colleges, but have generally fallen into disuse in a very few years, owing to the predominancy of the feeling of democratic equality, the tendency of which is to narrow, in as great a degree as possible, the intervals between different ages and conditions.
See COSTUME.
DUDLEIAN LECTURE. An anniversary sermon which is preached at Harvard College before the students; supported by the yearly interest of one hundred pounds sterling, the gift of Paul Dudley, from whom the lecture derives its name. The following topics were chosen by him as subjects for this lecture. First, for "the proving, explaining, and proper use and improvement of the principles of Natural Religion." Second, "for the confirmation, illustration, and improvement of the great articles of the Christian Religion." Third, "for the detecting, convicting, and exposing the idolatry, errors, and superstitions of the Romish Church." Fourth, "for maintaining, explaining, and proving the validity of the ordination of ministers or pastors of the churches, and so their administration of the sacraments or ordinances of religion, as the same hath been practised in New England from the first beginning of it, and so continued to this day."
"The instrument proceeds to declare," says Quincy, "that he does not intend to invalidate Episcopal ordination, or that practised in Scotland, at Geneva, and among the Dissenters in England and in this country, all which 'I esteem very safe, Scriptural, and valid.' He directed these subjects to be discussed in rotation, one every year, and appointed the President of the College, the Professor of Divinity, the pastor of the First Church in Cambridge, the Senior Tutor of the College, and the pastor of the First Church in Roxbury, trustees of these lectures, which commenced in 1755, and have since been annually continued without intermission."—Quincy's Hist. Harv. Univ., Vol. II. pp. 139, 140.