blackride

— The "blackride" was after this manner: four or five riders, half masked, with their faces blacked, and their bodies dressed in red flannel coats, with flaming torches of camphene in their hands, galloped furiously up and down the campus, waving their flambeaux; the students crowding out of their rooms, yelled at the top of their lungs, and assembled just outside the campus gateway, to give the riders concealment in the heart of the throng when they dismounted and turned the horses over to livery servants who took them back to the stables;