The Freshman reluctantly turned the key,
Expecting a Sophomore gang to see,
Who, with faces masked and bangers stout,
Had come resolved to smoke him out.
Yale Lit. Mag., Vol. XX. p. 75.
BARBER. In the English universities, the college barber is often employed by the students to write out or translate the impositions incurred by them. Those who by this means get rid of their impositions are said to barberize them.
So bad was the hand which poor Jenkinson wrote, that the many impositions which he incurred would have kept him hard at work all day long; so he barberized them, that is, handed them over to the college barber, who had always some poor scholars in his pay. This practice of barberizing is not uncommon among a certain class of men.—Collegian's Guide, p. 155.
BARNEY. At Harvard College, about the year 1810, this word was used to designate a bad recitation. To barney was to recite badly.
BARNWELL. At Cambridge, Eng., a place of resort for characters of bad report.
One of the most "civilized" undertook to banter me on my non-appearance in the classic regions of Barnwell.—Bristed's Five Years in an Eng. Univ., Ed. 2d, p. 31.
BARRING-OUT SPREE. At Princeton College, when the students find the North College clear of Tutors, which is about once a year, they bar up the entrance, get access to the bell, and ring it.
In the "Life of Edward Baines, late M.P. for the Borough of Leeds," is an account of a barring-out, as managed at the grammar school at Preston, England. It is related in Dickens's Household Words to this effect. "His master was pompous and ignorant, and smote his pupils liberally with cane and tongue. It is not surprising that the lads learnt as much from the spirit of their master as from his preceptions and that one of those juvenile rebellions, better known as old than at present as a 'barring-out,' was attempted. The doors of the school, the biographer narrates, were fastened with huge nails, and one of the younger lads was let out to obtain supplies of food for the garrison. The rebellion having lasted two or three days, the mayor, town-clerk, and officers were sent for to intimidate the offenders. Young Baines, on the part of the besieged, answered the magisterial summons to surrender, by declaring that they would never give in, unless assured of full pardon and a certain length of holidays. With much good sense, the mayor gave them till the evening to consider; and on his second visit the doors were found open, the garrison having fled to the woods of Penwortham. They regained their respective homes under the cover of night, and some humane interposition averted the punishment they had deserved."— Am. Ed. Vol. III. p. 415.
BATTEL. To stand indebted on the college books at Oxford for provisions and drink from the buttery.
Eat my commons with a good stomach, and battled with discretion. —Puritan, Malone's Suppl. 2, p. 543.