The authorship of Father Abbey’s Will and the Letter of Courtship is ascribed to the Rev. John Seccombe, who graduated at Harvard College in the year 1728.  The former production was sent to England through the hands of Governor Belcher, and in May, 1732, appeared both in the Gentleman’s Magazine and the London Magazine.  The latter was also despatched to England, and was printed in the Gentleman’s Magazine for June, and in the London Magazine for August, 1732.  Both were republished in the Massachusetts Magazine, November, 1794.  A most entertaining account of the author of these poems, and of those to whom they relate, may be found in the “Historical and Biographical Notes” of the pamphlet to which allusion has been already made, and in the “Cambridge [Mass.] Chronicle” of April 28, 1855.

WINE.  To drink wine.

After “wining” to a certain extent, we sallied forth from his rooms.—­Alma Mater, Vol.  I. p. 14.

Hither they repair each day after dinner “to wine.”

Ibid., Vol.  I. p. 95.

After dinner I had the honor of wining with no less a personage than a fellow of the college.—­Ibid., Vol.  I. p. 114.

In wining with a fair one opposite, a luckless piece of jelly adhered to the tip of his still more luckless nose.—­The Blank Book of a Small-Colleger, New York, 1824, p. 75.

WINE PARTY.  Among students at the University of Cambridge, Eng., an entertainment after dinner, which is thus described by Bristed:  “Many assemble at wine parties to chat over a frugal dessert of oranges, biscuits, and cake, and sip a few glasses of not remarkably good wine.  These wine parties are the most common entertainments, being rather the cheapest and very much the most convenient, for the preparations required for them are so slight as not to disturb the studies of the hardest reading man, and they take place at a time when no one pretends to do any work.”—­Five Years in an Eng.  Univ., Ed. 2d, p. 21.

WIRE.  At Harvard College, a trick; an artifice; a stratagem; a dodge.

WIRY.  Trickish; artful.

WITENAGEMOTE.  Saxon, witan, to know, and gemot, a meeting, a council.

In the University of Oxford, the weekly meeting of the heads of the colleges.—­Oxford Guide.

WOODEN SPOON.  In the University of Cambridge, Eng., the scholar whose name stands last of all on the printed list of honors, at the Bachelors’ Commencement in January, is scoffingly said to gain the wooden spoon.  He is also very currently himself called the wooden spoon.

A young academic coming into the country immediately after this great competition, in which he had conspicuously distinguished himself, was asked by a plain country gentleman, “Pray, Sir, is my Jack a Wrangler?” “No, Sir.”  Now Jack had confidently pledged himself to his uncle that he would take his degree with honor.  “A Senior Optime?” “No, Sir.”  “Why, what was he then?” “Wooden Spoon!” “Best suited to his wooden head,” said the mortified inquirer.—­Forby’s Vocabulary, Vol.  II. p. 258.