THESES-COLLECTOR.  One who collects or prepares theses.  The following extract from the laws of Harvard College will explain further what is meant by this term.  “The President, Professors, and Tutors, annually, some time in the third term, shall select from the Junior Class a number of Theses-Collectors, to prepare theses for the next year; from which selection they shall appoint so many divisions as shall be equal to the number of branches they may assign.  And each one shall, in the particular branch assigned him, collect so many theses as the government may judge expedient; and all the theses, thus collected, shall be delivered to the President, by the Saturday immediately succeeding the end of the Spring vacation in the Senior year, at furthest, from which the President, Professors, and Tutors shall select such as they shall judge proper to be published.  But if the theses delivered to the President, in any particular branch, should not afford a sufficient number suitable for publication, a further number shall be required.  The name of the student who collected any set or number of theses shall be annexed to the theses collected by him, in every publication.  Should any one neglect to collect the theses required of him, he shall be liable to lose his degree.”—­1814, p. 35.

The Theses-Collectors were formerly chosen by the class, as the following extract from a MS. Journal will show.

“March 27th, 1792.  My Class assembled in the chapel to choose theses-collectors, a valedictory orator, and poet.  Jackson was chosen to deliver the Latin oration, and Cutler to deliver the poem.  Ellis was almost unanimously chosen a collector of the grammatical theses.  Prince was chosen metaphysical theses-collector, with considerable opposition.  Lowell was chosen mathematical theses-collector, though not unanimously.  Chamberlain was chosen physical theses-collector.”

THESIS.  A position or proposition which a person advances and offers to maintain, or which is actually maintained by argument; a theme; a subject; particularly, a subject or proposition for a school or university exercise, or the exercise itself.—­Webster.

In the older American colleges, the theses held a prominent place in the exercises of Commencement.  At Harvard College the earliest theses extant bear the date of the year 1687.  They were Theses Technological, Logical, Grammatical, Rhetorical, Mathematical, and Physical.  The last theses were presented in the year 1820.  The earliest theses extant belonging to Yale College are of 1714, and the last were printed in 1797.

THIRDING.  In England, “a custom practised at the universities, where two thirds of the original price is allowed by upholsterers to the students for household goods returned them within the year.”—­Grose’s Dict.

On this subject De Quincey says:  “The Oxford rule is, that, if you take the rooms (which is at your own option), in that case you third the furniture and the embellishments; i.e. you succeed to the total cost diminished by one third.  You pay, therefore, two guineas out of each three to your immediate predecessor.”—­Life and Manners, p. 250.