Word: oil
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Dates: during 1870-1879
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...before the Semis. This night the foolish collegians who have tarried all the autumn on field or river, till the examination, buy oil for their lamps and put on an immortal brace ere the morrow cometh...
...fortunate case, where the examinations are pleasantly sprinkled all along the dusty road, oases as it were in the dreary waste of college life. Even there, I claim, the time is not sufficiently long. To properly review the work of months within three weeks, without "exhaustive toil and midnight oil," is generally impossible. The ambitious student grinds and digs his health away, while the "bummer," secure in the thought of no recitations to-morrow, spends the days in sleep, the nights in "howls...
...corner of the world. If we could obtain a leaf from the mental note-book of each man, we might form a cosmopolitan scrap-book of experience that would be amusing, not to say instructive. O for a telescope of unlimited power, to see our friends of the midnight oil "clothed in purple and fine linen," displaying their charms of face and figure at Swampscott or Newport, looking wise if any allusion chance to be made to the creatures of the " deep blue sea" or to the idealist theory of Berkeley, showing themselves wise by saying nothing...
...remember, when we were startled by some unexpected decree which it seemed impossible for sane men to pass, - to try and remember whether the lights burned long in University on the night when that awful edict went forth, and to infer, if it appeared that the midnight oil had been consumed, that a decision had not been reached without some consideration, and that a minority had made themselves heard upon the occasion...
...this year - 1860 - the Harvards wore magenta, and I think it is probable that this name was used for the first time. It was about this date that chemistry was adding largely to the known colors by developing the beautiful shades to be extracted from coal-oil. Fanciful names were given to these shades, and two were called magenta and solferino from the victories of the French in Italy in the spring and summer of 1859. The date of the battle of Magenta will sufficiently establish the earliest use of the name, even if the shade were known before...