To those who’ve parts at exhibition,
  Obtained by long, unwearied fishing,
  I say, to such unlucky wretches,
  I give, for wear, a brace of breeches.
    Will of Charles Prentiss, in Rural Repository, 1795.

  And, since his fishing on the land was vain,
  To try his luck upon the azure main.—­Class Poem, 1835.

Whenever I needed advice or assistance, I did not hesitate, through any fear of the charge of what, in the College cant, was called “fishing,” to ask it of Dr. Popkin.—­Memorial of John S. Popkin, D.D., p. ix.

At Dartmouth College, the electioneering for members of the secret societies was formerly called fishing.  At the same institution, individuals in the Senior Class were said to be fishing for appointments, if they tried to gain the good-will of the Faculty by any special means.

FIVES.  A kind of play with a ball against the side of a building, resembling tennis; so named, because three fives or fifteen are counted to the game.—­Smart.

A correspondent, writing of Centre College, Ky., says:  “Fives was a game very much in vogue, at which the President would often take a hand, and while the students would play for ice-cream or some other refreshment, he would never fail to come in for his share.”

FIZZLE.  Halliwell says:  “The half-hiss, half-sigh of an animal.”  In many colleges in the United States, this word is applied to a bad recitation, probably from the want of distinct articulation which usually attends such performances.  It is further explained in the Yale Banger, November 10, 1846:  “This figure of a wounded snake is intended to represent what in technical language is termed a fizzle.  The best judges have decided, that to get just one third of the meaning right constitutes a perfect fizzle.”

With a mind and body so nearly at rest, that naught interrupted my inmost repose save cloudy reminiscences of a morning “fizzle” and an afternoon “flunk,” my tranquillity was sufficiently enviable.—­Yale Lit.  Mag., Vol.  XV. p. 114.

  Here he could fizzles mark without a sigh,
  And see orations unregarded die.
    The Tomahawk, Nov., 1849.

  Not a wail was heard, or a “fizzle’s” mild sigh,
  As his corpse o’er the pavement we hurried.
    The Gallinipper, Dec., 1849.

At Princeton College, the word blue is used with fizzle, to render it intensive; as, he made a blue fizzle, he fizzled blue.

FIZZLE.  To fail in reciting; to recite badly.  A correspondent from Williams College says:  “Flunk is the common word when some unfortunate man makes an utter failure in recitation.  He fizzles when he stumbles through at last.”  Another from Union writes:  “If you have been lazy, you will probably fizzle.”  A writer in the Yale Literary Magazine thus humorously defines this word:  “Fizzle.  To rise with modest reluctance, to hesitate often, to decline finally; generally, to misunderstand the question.”—­Vol.  XIV. p. 144.