“In connection with the subject of discipline,” says President Woolsey, in his Historical Discourse before the Graduates of Yale College, “we may aptly introduce that of the respect required by the officers of the College, and of the subordination which younger classes were to observe towards older.  The germ, and perhaps the details, of this system of college manners, are to be referred back to the English universities.  Thus the Oxford laws require that juniors shall show all due and befitting reverence to seniors, that is, Undergraduates to Bachelors, they to Masters, Masters to Doctors, as well in private as in public, by giving them the better place when they are together, by withdrawing out of their way when they meet, by uncovering the head at the proper distance, and by reverently saluting and addressing them.”

After citing the law of Harvard College passed in 1734, which is given above, he remarks as follows.  “Our laws of 1745 contain the same identical provisions.  These regulations were not a dead letter, nor do they seem to have been more irksome than many other college restraints.  They presupposed originally that the college rank of the individual towards whom respect is to be shown could be discovered at a distance by peculiarities of dress; the gown and the wig of the President could be seen far beyond the point where features and gait would cease to mark the person.”—­pp. 52, 53.

As an illustration of the severity with which the laws on this subject were enforced, it may not be inappropriate to insert the annexed account from the Sketches of Yale College:—­“The servile requisition of making obeisance to the officers of College within a prescribed distance was common, not only to Yale, but to all kindred institutions throughout the United States.  Some young men were found whose high spirit would not brook the degrading law imposed upon them without some opposition, which, however, was always ineffectual.  The following anecdote, related by Hon. Ezekiel Bacon, in his Recollections of Fifty Years Since, although the scene of its occurrence was in another college, yet is thought proper to be inserted here, as a fair sample of the insubordination caused in every institution by an enactment so absurd and degrading.  In order to escape from the requirements of striking his colors and doffing his chapeau when within the prescribed striking distance from the venerable President or the dignified tutors, young Ellsworth, who afterwards rose to the honorable rank of Chief Justice of the United States, and to many other elevated stations in this country, and who was then a student there, cut off entirely the brim portion of his hat, leaving of it nothing but the crown, which he wore in the form of a skull-cap on his head, putting it under his arm when he approached their reverences.  Being reproved for his perversity, and told that this was not a hat within the meaning and intent of the law, which he was required to do his obeisance with