Furthermore, the standards of morals and conduct among the American undergraduates are perceptibly higher than they were fifty years ago. There is a very real tendency in the line of doing away with such celebrations as have been connected with drinking and immoralities. To be sure, one will always find students who are often worse for their bacchic associations, and one must always keep in mind that the college is on earth and not in heaven; but a comparison of student customs to-day with those of fifty years ago gives cause for encouragement. Even in the early part of the nineteenth century we find conditions that did not reflect high honor upon the sobriety of students; for example, in the year 1814 we find Washington Irving and James K. Paulding depicting the usual sights about college inns in the poem entitled “The Lay of the Scottish Fiddle.” The following is an extract:
Around the table’s verge was spread
Full many a wine-bewildered head
Of student learn’d, from Nassau Hall,
Who, broken from scholastic thrall,
Had set him down to drink outright
Through all the livelong merry night,
And sing as loud as he could bawl;
Such is the custom of Nassau Hall.
No Latin now or heathen Greek