His ordinary working-hours are from six in the morning till six at night; but, when business presses, he rises, like the virtuous woman, while it is yet night, and brings down on his devoted head the anathemas of various students by commencing his day’s sawing under their windows at the moderately early hour of one A.M.  He is a living proof of the utter and irreclaimable falsity of the idiotic doggerel: 

  “Early to bed, and early to rise,
  Makes a man healthy, wealthy, and wise.”

Last summer, however, during the heated term, he was obliged to come down to the limit of ordinary mortals, as he feared that the influence of the sun’s rays would bring about a degeneration of the Ottah and Verdigres in the brain, and result in an explosion of the blood-veins.  By careful sanitary precautions he was enabled to avoid this fearful malady and preserve his physical well-being.

He can, and will, for the comparatively slight sum of twenty-five cents, hold his breath for five minutes.  He, himself, asserts that he can do it for seven minutes, but that the doctor advised him against doing so, as it might produce a fusion of the Ottahs.

His costume is at once serviceable and unique.  It usually consists of from two to five shirts, and three pairs of pantaloons.  He never was known to wear the same hat or pair of boots all day.  Occasionally he dons a vest, and, at rare times, a coat.  In stature he is below the medium height; nevertheless, his appearance is eminently imposing and prepossessing.  His countenance is rather oblong, and wears an expression that is a singular mixture of profound gravity and fearful earnestness.  His eyes resemble those of some species of fish, and are set under curiously wrinkled brows that nearly conceal them....  Such is Bill Pratt, honest, cheerful, and industrious, the maligner of no man.  His sturdy figure long holds a place in the memory of every student; his photograph decorates every student’s album.  Without him our college would be incomplete.  Esteemed by all for his unfailing integrity and industry, laughed at by all for his oddities, he remains ever the same.  We trust that the day is far distant when he will be among us no more, and when the college walls shall cease to echo his chaotic and ungovernable eloquence.

Quarterly, 1869.

ATTIS

ANON.

  Fair Phrygian Attis, loved of Cybele,
  Fired with the service of her awful shrine,
  Had wandered far before his restless soul
  Along the gleaming sand-line of the beach. 
  At last he came to a deep shaded nook,
  Where giant trees thick wreathed with twisting vines
  Clomb the steep hills on every side but one,
  And rimmed the sky with a green fringe of leaves.