This ended that epidemic and bolting henceforth became individual and not collective. The burning of "mechanics" was also a popular rite, which in its earlier days celebrated the completion of the course in physics under Professor Williams. This time-honored ceremony took the form of a procession of solemn officials which escorted the "corpus," borne on an elaborate bier, to a place of judgment, where it was condemned most impressively and executed with elaborate rites. The "corpus" was well guarded,--on one occasion at least by eight juniors armed with bayonets,--from the sophomores, who were infuriated by the fact that the head of the intended victim, a skull furnished from medical sources, was crowned by a mortar-board, the sophomore class insignia. A formal trial followed, presided over by a Pontifex Maximus, in which a Judex, an Advocatus Pro, and an Advocatus Con participated, with the foregone result that the culprit was sentenced to be hanged, shot, and burned; a decree carried out on a gallows and bonfire previously prepared in spite of the sophomores' best efforts. This annual fracas assumed a particularly lurid character in 1860 and the printed program was especially objectionable, a fault quite characteristic of those days. The night had been a wild one and when it became known that Dr. Tappan was to discuss the matter the next morning in Chapel, there were many misgivings. To every one's surprise, however, "there was no touch of reprimand in voice or word. In a sympathetic and familiar way, he began to talk about college songs." He told how he had once been greeted, upon opening his mail in Sweden, by a copy of the song "Where, Oh Where, is Doctor Tappan?" an evidence of student interest in his whereabouts which had cheered and inspired him mightily. Then, as merely incidental, and by way of contrast, he referred in mild tones to the obnoxious print of the night before,--"no moralizing but a salutary and effective talk, which was greeted by hearty cheers." Thus far we have been considering the student life of a University which, judged by modern standards, was small and comparatively homogeneous. The student of those days knew every one in college. The professors were able to take a personal interest in all their pupils; even the President made it a point to know every one by name. All this has been changed within the last twenty-five years. Where in 1885 the student enrolment was only about 1,300, it increased to 2,200 in 1890 and to 2,800 in 1895, and this rate of growth has continued almost unbroken up to the present time. The result is that now there are nearly 9,000 students on the Campus during the college year, and with the extraordinary increase which has followed the late war, there is every prospect of this growth continuing.