Tittivillus

Dean Roscoe Pound of the Harvard Law School was one of a great army of commencement orators that went into action last week. Of all the direct hits made, none was more squarely centred than his. At the University of Indiana, he drew an analogy between the great religious foundations of the Middle Ages and the great educational foundations of today, including this feature:

"A special devil by the name of Tittivillus frequented the monasteries of the Middle Ages. It was his task to gather in a bag the dropped syllables and mumbled words and omitted words and bad grammar of the brethren, as they took part in the service, and deliver them to the father of evil. On one occasion, he told a holy abbot that he brought his master each day a thousand bags full of 'failings and of negligences and of syllables and words' that were done or undone in the abbot's order in the course of their reading and singing. Tittivillus may find ample occupation in our institutions of learning."