He declined to give any explanation and treated the subject as one to be avoided with horror ever after.

I commend the question to the consideration of philologists.
The treatment of the students in general by the authorities and the college was stern, austere and distant.

The students had little social intercourse with the families or the professors, except such of them as had relatives in Cambridge, which allowed intercourse with the families of the professors.

The professors did nothing to encourage familiarity, or even to encourage any request for help in the difficulties of study.

Indeed a boy who did that fell into disfavor with his companions, and was called a fish.
President Eliot in some speech, I think before the graduates of the Latin School, speaking of his life as a boy, said he had a great respect for his little self.