PERUVIAN.  At the University of Vermont, a name by which the students designate a lady; e.g., “There are two hundred Peruvians at the Seminary”; or, “The Peruvians are in the observatory.”  As illustrative of the use of this word, a correspondent observes:  “If John Smith has a particular regard for any one of the Burlington ladies, and Tom Brown happens to meet the said lady in his town peregrinations, when he returns to College, if he meets John Smith, he (Tom) says to John, ’In yonder village I espied a Peruvian’; by which John understands that Tom has had the very great pleasure of meeting John’s Dulcinea.”

PETTY COMPOUNDER.  At Oxford, one who pays more than ordinary fees for his degree.

“A Petty Compounder,” says the Oxford University Calendar, “must possess ecclesiastical income of the annual value of five shillings, or property of any other description amounting in all to the sum of five pounds, per annum.”—­Ed. 1832, p. 92.

PHEEZE, or FEEZE.  At the University of Vermont, to pledge.  If a student is pledged to join any secret society, he is said to be pheezed or feezed.

PHI BETA KAPPA.  The fraternity of the [Greek:  Phi Beta Kappa] “was imported,” says Allyn in his Ritual, “into this country from France, in the year 1776; and, as it is said, by Thomas Jefferson, late President of the United States.”  It was originally chartered as a society in William and Mary College, in Virginia, and was organized at Yale College, Nov. 13th, 1780.  By virtue of a charter formally executed by the president, officers, and members of the original society, it was established soon after at Harvard College, through the influence of Mr. Elisha Parmele, a graduate of the year 1778.  The first meeting in Cambridge was held Sept. 5th, 1781.  The original Alpha of Virginia is now extinct.

“Its objects,” says Mr. Quincy, in his History of Harvard University, “were the ’promotion of literature and friendly intercourse among scholars’; and its name and motto indicate, that ’philosophy, including therein religion as well as ethics, is worthy of cultivation as the guide of life.’  This society took an early and a deep root in the University; its exercises became public, and admittance into it an object of ambition; but the ‘discrimination’ which its selection of members made among students, became an early subject of question and discontent.  In October, 1789, a committee of the Overseers, of which John Hancock was chairman, reported to that board, ’that there is an institution in the University, with the nature of which the government is not acquainted, which tends to make a discrimination among the students’; and submitted to the board ’the propriety of inquiring into its nature and designs.’  The subject occasioned considerable debate, and a petition, of the nature of a complaint against the society, by a number of the members of the Senior Class, having been presented, its consideration