“The day,” wrote Willis in a freshman letter to his father, “is the greatest of the year at the South, and our Southern students seem disposed to be restless under the restriction of a lesson on playday. There were many of them drunk last evening, and still more to-day. Christmas has always been, ever since the establishment of the college, emphatically a _day of tricks_: windows broken, bell-rope cut, freshmen squirted, and every imaginable scene of dissipation acted out in full. Last night they barred the entry doors of the South College, to exclude the government, and then illuminated the building. This morning the recitation-room doors were locked and the key stolen, and we were obliged to knock down the doors to get in; and then we were not much better off, for the lamps were full of water and the wicks gone. However, we procured others, and went on with the lesson.” Wikoff tells of a fight in a college room, in which a dirk was used, between a South Carolina student named Albert Smith and another Southerner, which resulted in the expulsion of both. Smith, who stood at the head of his class, afterwards changed his name to Rhett, and became a member of his state’s legislature, but died prematurely. New Haven in 1823-27 was not the considerable manufacturing city of to-day, but a rural town with a population of about nine thousand. West of the college yard only two streets were laid out. Beyond these, along the Derby turnpike, stretched a level of sandy pastures, alive with grasshoppers, where the young orators, practicing for debates in “Linonia” or “Brothers,” or for declamations before the Professor of Rhetoric, used to go to “explode the elements.” Down by the bay, in a region now occupied by great factories, stood the old “Pavilion,” a famous seaside hotel much resorted to by Southern families. The first railroad from New Haven was laid in 1839. As yet even the Farmington Canal was only projected. Willis and the Boston contingent used to come all the way by stage-coach, passing through Framingham, Worcester, and Hartford,--in which last he had acquaintances, with whom he sometimes spent a day _en route_. Anthracite coal was not in use in New Haven before 1827. Citizens and students alike depended on wood, the latter buying theirs at the regular wood-stand near South College, and having it _cut_ in the yard behind the colleges, wood-saws not being in general vogue. The habits of the collegians, from a hygienic point of view, were usually bad. They sat up late drinking strong coffee in their rooms, rose very early perforce, prayed and recited on an empty stomach, and took little regular exercise. Dyspepsia was naturally rife.