Those who refused to comply with these regulations were not allowed to remain in College, as appears from the following circumstance, which happened about the year 1790. A young man from the West Indies, of wealthy and highly respectable parents, entered Freshman, and soon after, being ordered by a member of one of the upper classes to go upon an errand for him, refused, at the same time saying, that if he had known it was the custom to require the lower class to wait on the other classes, he would have brought a slave with him to perform his share of these duties. In the common phrase of the day, he was _hoisted_, i.e. complained of to a tutor, and on being told that he could not remain at College if he did not comply with its regulations, he took up his connections and returned home.
With reference to some of the observances which were in vogue at Harvard College in the year 1794, the recollections of Professor Sidney Willard are these:--
"It was the practice, at the time of my entrance at College, for the Sophomore Class, by a member selected for the purpose, to communicate to the Freshmen, in the Chapel, 'the Customs,' so called; the Freshmen being required to 'keep their places in their seats, and attend with decency to the reading.' These customs had been handed down from remote times, with some modifications not essentially changing them. Not many days after our seats were assigned to us in the Chapel, we were directed to remain after evening prayers and attend to the reading of the customs; which direction was accordingly complied with, and they were read and listened to with decorum and gravity. Whether the ancient customs of outward respect, which forbade a Freshman 'to wear his hat in the College yard, unless it rains, hails, or snows, provided he be on foot, and have not both hands full,' as if the ground on which he trod and the atmosphere around him were consecrated, and the article which extends the same prohibition to all undergraduates, when any of the governors of the College are in the yard, were read, I cannot say; but I think they were not; for it would have disturbed that gravity which I am confident was preserved during the whole reading. These prescripts, after a long period of obsolescence, had become entirely obsolete.