"A little further to the north, and just at the corner of Church Street (which was not then opened), stood what was dignified in the annual College Catalogue--(which was printed on one side of a sheet of paper, and was a novelty)--as 'the College House.' The cellar is still visible. By the students, this edifice was disrespectfully called 'Wiswal's Den,' or, for brevity, 'the Den.' I lived in it in my Freshman year. Whence the name of 'Wiswal's Den' I hardly dare say: there was something worse than 'old fogy' about it. There was a dismal tradition that, at some former period, it had been the scene of a murder. A brutal husband had dragged his wife by the hair up and down the stairs, and then killed her. On the anniversary of the murder,--and what day that was no one knew,--there were sights and sounds,--flitting garments daggled in blood, plaintive screams,--_stridor ferri tractæque catenæ_,--enough to appall the stoutest Sophomore. But for myself, I can truly say, that I got through my Freshman year without having seen the ghost of Mr. Wiswal or his lamented lady. I was not, however, sorry when the twelvemonth was up, and I was transferred to that light, airy, well-ventilated room, No. 20 Hollis; being the inner room, ground floor, north entry of that ancient and respectable edifice."--_To-Day_, Boston, Saturday, July 31, 1852, p. 66. Many years ago there emigrated to this University, from the wilds of New Hampshire, an odd genius, by the name of Jedediah Croak, who took up his abode as a student in the old _Den_.--_Harvard Register_, 1827-28, _A Legend of the Den_, pp. 82-86. DEPOSITION. During the first half of the seventeenth century, in the majority of the German universities, Catholic as well as Protestant, the matriculation of a student was preceded by a ceremony called the _deposition_. See _Howitt's Student Life in Germany_, Am. ed., pp. 119-121. DESCENDAS. Latin; literally, _you may descend_. At the University of Cambridge, Eng., when a student who has been appointed to declaim in chapel fails in eloquence, memory, or taste, his harangue is usually cut short "by a testy _descendas_."--_Grad. ad Cantab._ DETERMINING. In the University of Oxford, a Bachelor is entitled to his degree of M.A. twelve terms after the regular time for taking his first degree, having previously gone through the ceremony of _determining_, which exercise consists in reading two dissertations in Latin prose, or one in prose and a copy of Latin verses. As this takes place in Lent, it is commonly called _determining in Lent_.--_Oxf. Guide_. DETUR. Latin; literally, _let it be given_.