in his trip to Hamilton, really have no
bearing on the situation.
There were all sorts of plausible pre-
texts in operation to bring the boys and
girls together. Lectures, receptions, and
literary exhibitions reached a total sadly
at variance with the rigid spirit of the
College catalogue. That artful tickler of
157
THE FEMALE INSTITUTIONS
man's purse-strings, the bazar, was then
a novelty; and time and again the
youngsters of Miami would ransack the
village for useless trinkets for which they
would gaily squander papa's money that
night in the castle of the maidens. The
presence of these maidens was a neces-
sity every time Miami let loose the stop-
cock of her oratory, which happened
about twice a session. Excitement didn't
begin mitil the demure line of uncon-
scious beauty came tripping in, esquired
by some local Brummel with expanded
chest. Sam. Hunt is said to have monop-
olized this performance during his entire
Oxford career. Usually these visits pro-
duced only tremor of the speaking voice
and pounding of the male heart. Once
at least they remade a program. Among
the speakers that night was Minor Milli-
kin, who was much the ladies' man, but
had unfortunately differed with Doctor
158
THE FEMALE INSTITUTIONS
Scott on some rather important particu-
lars. As the line filed in, he saw his
chance to tie the score. When his turn
came he completely ignored his an-
nounced subject and prepared address,
launching forth in a dissertation on pre-
vailing systems of "female education,"
and soundly berating the particular hob-
bies which the worthy Doctor was fond-
est of bestriding. For a full hour he
made perfectly courteous but all the
more delicious fun of college methods, un-
til girls and bovs alike were in convul-
sions and the helpless victim much in-
censed. There was some trouble for
awhile in drawing female attendance at
University functions.
One of the rare privileges for both
sexes arose from Doctor Scott's devotion
to the sciences and his consequent ad-
miration for Professor Stoddard of the
University. Every year the arrangement
159
THE FEMALE INSTITUTIONS
was renewed that an advanced class of
the girls should regularly attend the lec-
tures and experiments in little old
''Egypt," their goings-in and comings-
out being properly directed by the
Doctor himself, who sat in rapt at-
tention through the familiar demon-
strations. Needless to say, this course
was popular with the boys, and all
the pent-up mischief of the day was
likely to burst forth there. Furni-
ture would collapse in the most imac-
countable manner. Horrid mice would
appear from nowhere in particular. Once
a large sheet descended suddenly before
the class, displaying sentiments none too
complimentary to the distinguished
guest. The class of '61 was the last to
enjoy this refining privilege. When it
finally ceased, a Miami poet sang its
elegy, in tuneful verses.
160
THE FEMALE INSTITUTIONS
To the Young Ladies Who Attended the
Course in Chemistry.
"Farewell, farewell, ye lovely friends,
No more we'll meet you there;
The sunlight has departed now,
Our hearts are filled with care.
"But still on memory's page are stamped —
Forever to remain —
Those pleasant meetings, which alas!
No more we'll have again.
"May peace and joy attend your lives,
So hopefully begun;
When absent, may you ne'er forget
The Class of '61."
The real cause for the cessation of
these delightful amenities was the de-
parture of Doctor Scott, who retired in
1860 in favor of President Robert D.
Morris.
Several years before this, the Female
College had been called on to acknowl-
edge a very serious and ambitious young
rival. It was only a potential rival, so
far as University hearts were concerned,
for a fellow doesn 't conceive a very speci-
fic yearning after a girl he gets to see
161
THE FEMALE INSTITUTIONS
just once in a year, and then finds her
passing a public examination in integral
calculus. But this new female institu-
tion appealed wonderfully to thoughtful
parents who had daughters to educate
and wanted them assisted up the narrow,
thorny pathway at the least possible out-
put. Little cared they if the sweet seclu-
sion of the cloister palled sometimes upon
the fair inhabitants, and made even the
much-advised missionar}^ career seem an
attractive vista. There was satisfaction
in knowing that Miranda Jane and Eliza-
beth Ann would for a while at least be
made to learn their catechism and dust
their room and cease flirtation with those
shiftless Jones boys from across the
creek.
In the summer of 1844, Daniel Tenney
had come to Oxford as the first pastor of
the young Second Presbyterian Church,
representing the New School branch of
162
THE FEMALE INSTITUTIONS
that denomination. He was an eastern
man, and had married him an eastern
wife, an enthusiastic graduate of Miss
Mary Lyons' famous seminary, Mount
Hol^^oke. It was not long until these two
had caught the educational fever then so
prevalent in Oxford, and were all aglow
with the project of another college in the
community, this one to be built upon the
Mount Holyoke principle and fostered by
the adherents of the New School doc-
trines. Rev. Tenney put all his best
energy into the enterprise, and gave no
rest to church or individual until he had
a fine plot of land donated and sufficient
funds subscribed to assure his pet insti-
tution. So there was incorporated in
1853 the governing board of The Western
Female Seminary, virgin daughter of
Mount Holyoke, forever consecrated to
the maternal ideals and practices. Mr.
Tenney resigned his pastorate to become
163
THE FEMALE INSTITUTIONS
president of the trustees, and in Septem-
ber, 1855, the seminary opened with one
hundred and fifty pupils. The faculty
was selected by Mount Holyoke from her
own alumnae.
Oxford was fast assuming the airs of
a first-class university center, and the
Miami boj^s, at first, were wildly enthu-
siastic. Placidly relying on prospects, a
new Miami periodical, The Oxonian, next
year set aside a portion of its valauble
space for a "Ladies' Department," and
guaranteed to its readers the co-opera-
tion of the fair sex in numerous literary
offerings. With this promise came an
editorial urging that there be less separa-
tion of the local institutions anyhow.
"Because," declared the editor, "The
Miami University, The Western Female
Seminary, The Oxford Female College,
The Oxford Female Institute, The The-
ological Seminary, and the various
164
THE FEMALE INSTITUTIONS
schools that will inevitably cluster
around these, will constitute for us a true
University of Oxford." Alas, for the
buoyant hopes of sophomores! That
prophetic editor failed to consider that
the little vitals of this young and blush-
ing sister were inoculated through and
through with something called the Hol-
yoke System; and whatever else this sys-
tem might or might not be, it was uncom-
promising on one point : boys were — well,
they just simply were not. That's all.
Many people of that day, patrons as
well as citizens, were a trifle hazy as to
what Rev. Tenney and his associates
really had in mind as the Hol3^oke Sys-
tem, and many times they were called
upon to define and defend their position.
They put it, with apparent clearness,
under three heads:
1. Moral and religious culture should
be regarded as paramount to all things
else.
l65
THE FEMALE INSTITUTIONS
2. The intellectual faculties, and es-
pecially the reasoning powers, should be
most judiciously educated, but not by or-
namenting the surface with the mere
tinsel of accomplishment.
3. There should be a distinct depart-
ment for the cultivation of the physical
nature.
This last item had a corollary attached
to it, and there — on Mondays, perhaps —
came the rub. Physical exercise is good;
very excellent good. Hence, ''to secure
appropriate ph3^sical exercise, all the
members of the school will aid to some
extent in the domestic work of the family.
The i^ortion of time thus occupied will
be so small as not to retard their progress
in study, but rather facilitate it, by its in-
vigorating influence." Not unwholesome
doctrine this, especially when you read,
a few lines farther on, that, by this mini-
mizing of expenses, the entire cost of
166
THE FEMALE INSTITUTIONS
board, room, and tuition during a year
was brought as low as $60.
The whole proposition, though, was a
bit too strenuous for many well-meaning
folk. They had been taught to believe in
a serious, man-size education for their
daughters, but this was too serious. They
were glad to have religion placed first
before these girls, and even to have them
urged to consecration in the mission
fields. But when they heard of young
and unhandsome male missionaries, who
came urging the faculty to select them
helpmeets for intended careers among the
ruzz3-wuzzies, these good citizens were
not so sure. They wavered some more on
hearing of a nice list of iron-clad rules
of conduct, read each morning in chapel,
while rosy culprits, trembling in confes-
sion, were assigned to secluded sittings
on the front row. But that ''physical
exercise" scheme was the strongest test
167
THE FEMALE INSTITUTIONS
of loyalty. Those were the proud days,
you know, when mother, faintmg over
the hot cook-stove, protested she was
bringing up her girl to be a lady; and
father, clinging to the plow-handle,
prayed that his boy might not become a
man who had to work. So there was
much parley about the Seminary. It was
usurping mother's place in girl-life; it
was training up refined cooks and house-
maids; it was sapping the sweetness of
young womanhood. At this point even
the Female College put in a lady-like
word or two, not exactly complimentary
to her sister.
Right through the controversy the
Seminary kept on growing. The build-
ing was always crowded, and applications
poured in a year ahead. The great
family was ever busy, working like
beavers, worshiping like saints, playing
like the school-girls that they were. One
168
THE FEMALE INSTITUTIONS
winter midnight in 1860, the fine new
building caught fire in the attic, and
burned to the ground. Tliose brave young
girls fought the destroyer of their home,
yielding only inch by inch, and not a one
of them was harmed. A better building
rose from the ashes, and was packed with
students from the day of its dedication.
Diligent, resourceful, self-reliant, such a
student community of consecrated young
women the world has rarely seen. A
colored burglar had been terrorizing the
village, and eluding every attempt at
capture. Then he foolishly tried burglar-
izing those females at the Seminary, and
the very first night they got him. Men?
Oh, what's the use'? "Most of the so-
called men about us, young ladies," said
the principal. Miss Peabody, "are snakes;
just snakes." Perhaps the good lady was
right.
169
IN man}^ respects the decade of the 50 's
appears to have been a sort of golden
age in the student life about Miami.
Good will and harmony prevailed gen-
erally. Corridors and class-rooms were
thronged with clean-limbed, clear-com-
plexioned lads, intent on learning some-
thing, but equally intent on having a
grand good time about it. North and
south met together in the closest comrade-
ship, argued dangerous questions in the
literary halls, and glanced but rarely at
the thunder-heads of approaching storm.
Social opportunities were abundant. Any
student who desired — and many of them
did — might run the gamut any week,
171
HISTORIC PRANKS
from the moon-striu*k serenade beneath
some precious window of the Female Col-
lege to the rollicking barn-dances, with
hard cider sparkling from the tap, for
which Joe Titus rallied friend and foe
and transported them to his father's
country-place.
Living accommodations, at this time,
were pretty sorely taxed. Both dormi-
tories were crowded, as was the little old
frame cottage since destroyed. Most
popular of dining tables was that at the
Hughes house, just west of the campus,
where the finest cook on earth vied with
the most gracious hostess under heaven
to satisfy that largest of all cravings, a
school-boy 's appetite. The pies Anne Re-
gan made — those great, deep, flaky
crusts, secreting untold deliciousness and
carefully arranged in a convenient pantry
where she knew her boys could find them
in the dark — why, those same pies have
172
HISTORIC PRANKS
been the theme of orator's encomium and
poet's pen. They have brought moisture
to the lips of tortured creatures panting
on the battle field, and forced poor fam-
ished wretches in Andersonville to cry
out in agony.
A slimmer menu, but as ruddy a com-
plexion and as good a time had those
pinch-pursed fellows in the Old South-
east, who acquired skill in keeping
Bachelor's Hall. Like many a great chef
in later days, these chaps all had their
specialties. One was a shark at making
coffee; another was a regular whale at
corn dodgers. Everybody of course could
take a fling at the festive flapjack, but
Tom Allen, the genius of them all, made
perfectly scrumptious buckwheat cakes,
and in times of great prosperity set them
off with "papered eggs." He would show
you how to do the eggs, but nobody was
ever admitted to the innermost arcanum
173
HISTORIC PRANKS
of his buckwheats. That perished with
Tom on the field of Spotsylvania.
Athletic sports were crude proceed-
ings then, compared with our modern
system of elaborate training and inter-
collegiate schedules. There was no place
for mollycoddles in them either, and
science gave way to brute strength and
native agility. Impromptu wrestling
matches of a decidedly catch-as-catch-can
type were very much in vogue; and box-
ing contests, without seconds, ropes or
gloves, were no rare occurrences. A foot-
ball game, in which every fellow booted
the ball when he wasn't planting a cop-
]3ered toe in an opponent 's eye, was a fine
working-ofi^ of animal spirits. But the
test of real, genuine, blue-tempered nerve
was the old swing. It was easy enough
when you got in practice. Easy as — well,
as falling off a hickory limb in nutting
time. But it looked terrible to a new
174
HISTORIC PRANKS
Freshman. It was one good rope fastened
to an iron ring some thirty feet up in a
tree. This rope ended in a loop, dangling
a foot or so from the ground. Thirty feet
away was another tree, with a projecting
branch the proper distance up. Here the
performance began. You skinned up tree
number two, and caught the loop, which
somebody kindly threw you. In this you
inserted your foot, and began to feel
squeamish down inside. Then with your
free hand you seized the roi^e as far out
as possible, while you took a final fleeting
glimpse of your past sins. Then you
swung off, clutching at the rope with
your other hand enroute. At your age
a broken bone would knit in about six
weeks.
All the exercise and social gayety in
creation would have failed to give outlet
to the buoyant spirits of that seething
mass of young manhood. Few of them
175
HISTORIC PRANKS
were really bad. True, the editor of the
Oxonian, a college periodical at Miami in
'56, utters a sweeping criticism of all
western colleges, and is presumably
drawing upon some local conditions.
Comparing eastern colleges with western,
he says: "In the east, where endowment
and salaries are secure, discipline may be
enforced. But at almost any western in-
stitution a man may be an habitual
drunkard, may be notoriously immoral
and corrupting, may commit penitentiary
offenses against civil law and unpardon-
able ones against decency, and this be
well known by the faculty, and for all
that he may not only stay in college, but
may visit the Professor's or the Presi-
dent's daughter with impunity and pro-
priety." Surely the amateur editor was
overdoing his argument, or there is some
mistake in the traditions that have
reached us. Of course there were young
176
HISTORIC PRANKS
rascals in school then, as before and since,
some of whom had to be entirely disposed
of, while others continued to be farmed
out to nice country ministers as of old.
But generally, when the safety-valve
lifted with a wild, glad shriek of freedom,
the force behind it was the non-malicious,
gloriously creative spirit of pure mis-
chief.
Mercy me, the pranks of college days !
To hear the grizzled old grads when they
get together, you'd think that nothing
else was ever doing then. Which only
proves that people always remember the
pleasant things of life. Don't you recall
how father used to sit for hours some-
times and chuckle himself sore about the
time Jim Sharp — or was it Bill ? — painted
real stars and stripes on Prexy's old
brindle cow? And father himself had a
hand in it : he stole the paint and brushes
from a shop up town. At least he con-
177
HISTORIC PRANKS
fessed as much one night in an extra
burst of confidence, just before mother
sent you marching off to bed. So it goes,
and so it will go with all of us as we
reach our anecdotage. Don't tell us,
please, that the day is really done for the
wholesome, harmless college prank, with
the originality of genius fairly oozing out
of it. You are robbing posterity of its
sweetest reminiscences.
There is a sort of college pranks which
a good classical scholar might call ubiqui-
tous. The college that can't furnish a
replica of each and every one of them,
has no excuse to claim a history. Fancy
a girl's boarding-school where they
haven't at some time or other drawn up
the good old president in a basket, low-
ered for other and less sacred purposes,
only to let him drop or leave him hung
in midair till he was discovered. Fancy
a boy's preparatory school without a
178
HISTORIC PRANKS
stolen bell-clapper. Of sucli dear old con-
ventionalities, yellow with the dignity of
age, Miami has a rich abundance. Some
of them are drawn from their wrappings
only at commencement gatherings and
passed tenderly about from one wrinkled
hand to another, with an accompaniment
of queer little wheezy chuckles. All of
them are under some suspicion since the
story-papers have blazoned them before
the whole world and made us feel how
disgracefully common they are.
''Stacking" rooms is perhaps the most
ancient and natural pastime in this
group. Any rank amateur could pei'pe-
trate it and chortle merrily "^N^hen the
owner stood horrified before his dis-
mantled property. You'll find this men-
tioned in the earliest records of the fac-
ulty. Only there it is called "pernicious
and ungentlemanly devastation within
the college property." The appropria-
179
HISTORIC PRANKS
ting of chapel keys is another one that
came early, as we have seen. Kindly note
that the very first time this went on re-
cord the offender was a prep. It has ap-
peared only in children's sizes ever since.
For many years the old Miami chapel was
located on the first floor, — a fine and
adaptable arrangement. For look you,
there was nothing easier on a bright Sab-
bath afternoon than to drop a pitcher of
sparkling water on the gladsome raiment
of the fine young ladies trailing in below.
Unless it was, in the silence of a Saturday
night in Spring, to fill that chapel up with
fragrant new-mown hay and leave a vag-
rant village cow peacefully munching
there behind the pulpit.
There is one deep mystery about this
last type of pranks. Why is it, brother
mine, that the lazy ne'er-do-well, who in
the cheery light of day will never strike
a lick at any useful occupation, is always
180
A PITCHER OF SPARKLING WATF.R ON THE FINK YOUNG LADIKS
TRAIUNG IN BELOW."
HISTORIC PRANKS
ready to release his precious horde of
energy in these bits of midnight devil-
ment? The things that found their way
of nights into that old place of prayer
would seem marvelous to modern eyes.
Yet it is not so long since ''Bobby"
Bishop's old gray horse, tied snugly be-
hind the sacred desk in a newer upstairs
chapel, looked his disgust through enor-
mous leather sjDectacles, as the giggling
lines of youngsters straggled in. The
thing that meant real labor, though, —
real leg-weary, back-breaking toil — had
to do with a wagon and some wood. Long
years ago, a young farmer had come in
to spend the night with relatives in town,
and brought a big load of cord-wood to
dispose of in the morning. His horses
were unhitched near the college building,
and the loaded wagon left standing there.
Eestless spirits walked abroad that night,
and in the morning a perfectly dumb-
182
HISTORIC PRANKS
founded son of the soil stood gaping at
his wagon, completely put together and
loaded as before, perched peaceably on
top of the building, one hundred feet
above the ground. This has a sequel the
old fellows rarely tell. Every man- jack
of them was promptly put to work re-
storing things to terra firma, and the
stairs were full ten times as long and
tortuous as the night before.
There are a few pranks, however, to
which the little old college can read her
undivided title clear. The greatest of
these, and certainly the most epoch-
making, took place some time before the
decade of the 50 's, — in the bronze age,
perhaps. There was a spirit of mutiny
about before it happened, and the lark
itself, harmless enough in its first inten-
tion, set this ugi}^ spirit working over-
time, with what proved to be disastrous
effects. As in real tragedy, the gods
183
HISTORIC PRANKS
themselves furnished the exciting force
to temptation, old Jupiter Pluvius being
most to blame. The affair has gone into
history as the Snow Rebellion.
On the morning of the twelfth of Jan-
uary, 1848, the good people of Oxford
rubbed their sleep}^ eyes and looked out
upon a fine specimen of snow-storm, then
well under way. All nature was already
enveloped in a great white blanket, and
still the snow came down; immense bil-
lows of it that shut out the day and made
one think the very heavens had opened.
"See the old woman a-picking her
geese!" yelled one college boy to another,
as dormitory windows were flung wide
for a better look at things. Poor chaps!
Before long that same old goose was to
be cooking for them. Throughout the
whole day the snow kept tumbling on as
if the supply was inexhaustible. The old-
est inhabitants sat up and rubbed the
184
HISTORIC PRANKS
moisture from their glasses, croaking
that this was ^'cairtainly the peartest
storm they'd seed sence the year twelve."
The boys went floundering back and forth
to classes through the great white drifts,
which were as wet and soft and sticky
as any rogue of a school-boy could desire.
You know that type of snow. Remember
how it used to sparkle at you, and just
dare you to fling a nice hard ball of it at
Deacon Spriggin's new stove-pipe hat?
About ten o'clock that night some fel-
lows went downstairs, daring each other
to a flounder in the drifts. Somebody
started to roll a snowball, and to his sur-
prise soon had before him a great moun-
tain of the stuff, too much for him to
move. He yelled for help and the other
fellows came slipping and puffing to join
in the fun. All hands together they
struggled with the monster and slowly
pushed its fast-increasing bulk toward
185
HISTORIC PRANKS
the unlatched door of the main building.
Then whaf? "Let's make a giant image
of old Mac and leave it here for him to
see in the morning, ' ' somebody suggested.
"Here's one better than that," came a
mocking voice from the darkness; "let's
block up all the doors and passages in
here, and there'll have to be a holiday to-
morrow." Some people have maintained
to this day that here was no utterance of
earth, but that the accursed Fiend him-
self spake words of infernal temptation
to those attentive ears.
However that may be, there was no
parleying with conscience. A hurry call
went out in all directions, and the re-
serves came plowing through the path-
less campus with fire in their eyes. All
night long they grunted and perspired,
fairly swarming about the fine soft
masses of stickiness that were to seal for
them the passage ways to another kind
186
"OnK UV ONK THK doors AM) ( oliRI iXlUS \V1 KK < 1 OSl' I) WITH
GREAT Wlirn IIA^(•0(■KS."
HISTORIC PRANKS
of labor. This wasn't labor anyhow; it
was the greatest sport of the ages! One
b_y one the doors and corridors were
closed with great white haycocks, a few
over-particular Juniors having seen to it