21st of June, 1798,--Class Day, as it is now called,--I
inadvertently forgot to mention, that according to custom, at that
period, [Samuel P.P.] Fay delivered a Latin Valedictory Oration in
the Chapel, in the presence of the Immediate Government, and of
the students of other classes who chose to be present. Speaking to
him on the subject some time since, he told me that he believed
[Judge Joseph] Story delivered a Poem on the same occasion....
There was no poetical performance in the celebration of the day in
the class before ours, on the same occasion; Dr. John C. Warren's
Latin oration being the only performance, and his class counting
as many reputed poets as ours did."--_Ibid._, Vol. II. p. 320.

Alterations were continually made in the observances of Class Day,
and in twenty years after the period last mentioned, its character
had in many particulars changed. Instead of the Latin, an English
oration of a somewhat sportive nature had been introduced; the
Poem was either serious or comic, at the writer's option; usually,
however, the former. After the exercises in the Chapel, the class
commonly repaired to Porter's Hall, and there partook of a dinner,
not always observing with perfect strictness the rules of
temperance either in eating or drinking. This "cenobitical
symposium" concluded, they again returned to the college yard,
where, scattered in groups under the trees, the rest of the day
was spent in singing, smoking, and drinking, or pretending to
drink, punch; for the negroes who supplied it in pails usually
contrived to take two or more glasses to every one glass that was
drank by those for whom it was provided. The dance around the
Liberty Tree,
"Each hand in comrade's hand,"
closed the regular ceremonies of the day; but generally the