A concluding cheer. See also TIGER.
1868. The following extract from the New York Times was printed in the Standard, Nov. 18, and is to be found also in Notes and Queries, 4 S. ii. 605.
A SIGNIFICANT CHEER.—The inaugural address of Dr. M‘Cosh (late of Belfast), the new President of Princeton College, New Jersey, on the 27th ult., occupied nearly two hours in its delivery, but the interest of its subject matter, the vigour and terseness of its language, its practical common sense, the numerous happy allusions and telling hits interspersed through it, held the closest attention of the audience to the close, and hardly half a dozen left the building until it was finished. He speaks with a very strong Scotch accent, and is by no means a graceful orator, but he produced throughout a most favourable impression upon all his hearers, and especially upon the students, one of whom shouted as the speaker closed, “Long live President M‘Cosh,” and then proposed three cheers, which were given with a will, followed by the usual tiger and “rocket.” The rocket, by the way, is a thoroughly Princeton institution, and as such deserves a word of description. It is given with a f-z-z-z—boom—a—h! The first exclamation is supposed to imitate the flight of a rocket in the air; the second the explosion, and the third the admiring exclamations of the enthusiastic spectators as they witness the burst of coloured fire. It is believed this species of vocal pyrotechnics originated in the army; but wherever it came from, the effect of it, as given by a couple of hundred students who have “given their minds” to perfecting themselves in the art, is ludicrous in the extreme.
