So the boys were prepared to make a decent appearance.
He used to dress in a very peculiar fashion, wearing a queer little sack and striped trousers which made him look sometimes as if he were a salesman in a Jew clothing-store.

He had a remarkably clear and piercing black eye.

One night one of the students got into the belfry and attached a slender thread to the tongue of the bell, contrived to lock the door which led to the tower and carry off the key, then went to his room in the fourth story of Massachusetts Hall and began to toll the bell.

The students and the Faculty and proctors gathered, but nobody could explain the mysterious ringing of the bell until Peirce came upon the scene.

His sharp eye perceived the slender line and it was traced to the room where the roguish fellow who was doing the mischief thought himself secure.