It was formerly customary, on this day, for the students to provide entertainment in their rooms. But great care was taken, as far as statutory enactments were concerned, that all excess should be avoided. During the presidency of Increase Mather was developed among the students a singular phase of gastronomy, which was noticed by the Corporation in their records, under the date of June 22, 1693, in these words: "The Corporation, having been informed that the custom taken up in the College, not used in any other Universities, for the commencers [graduating class] to have plumb-cake, is dishonorable to the College, not grateful to wise men, and chargeable to the parents of the commencers, do therefore put an end to that custom, and do hereby order that no commencer, or other scholar, shall have any such cakes in their studies or chambers; and that, if any scholar shall offend therein, the cakes shall be taken from him, and he shall moreover pay to the College twenty shillings for each such offence." This stringent regulation was, no doubt, all-sufficient for many years; but in the lapse of time the taste for the forbidden delicacy, which was probably concocted with a skill unknown to the moderns, was again revived, accompanied with confessions to a fondness for several kinds of expensive preparations, the recipes for which preparations, it is to be feared, are inevitably lost. In 1722, in the latter part of President Leverett's administration, an act was passed "for reforming the Extravagancys of Commencements," and providing "that henceforth no preparation nor provision of either Plumb Cake, or Roasted, Boyled, or Baked Meates or Pyes of any kind shal be made by any Commencer," and that no "such have any distilled Lyquours in his Chamber or any composition therewith," under penalty of being "punished twenty shillings, to be paid to the use of the College," and of forfeiture of the provisions and liquors, "_to be seized by the tutors_." The President and Corporation were accustomed to visit the rooms of the Commencers, "to see if the laws prohibiting certain meats and drinks were not violated." These restrictions not being sufficient, a vote passed the Corporation in 1727, declaring, that "if any, who now doe, or hereafter shall, stand for their degrees, presume to doe any thing contrary to the act of 11th June, 1722, or _go about to evade it by plain cake_, they shall not be admitted to their degree, and if any, after they have received their degree, shall presume to make any forbidden provisions, their names shall be left or rased out of the Catalogue of the Graduates."