[CHAPTER III]
Schools and Colleges
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:
| A bottle of wine for his mistress | 10 d. |
| Wormwood and rubab | 6 d. |
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:
"Let schoolmasters puzzle their brains
With grammar and nonsense and learning,
Good liquor I stoutly maintain
Gives genius a better discerning."
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."