is often at the mercy of bores; he can turn away his own visitors perhaps, but not his chum's. Besides, if two or more students wish at any time to work up a subject after the coöperative fashion, as the Germans frequently do, they can accomplish the object by simply meeting at each other's rooms. But really independent, thorough research, study that is to tell in after life, can be done only in the privacy of one's own sanctum.

*

Yet, notwithstanding the advantages of the home-circle* that I was enjoying, I determined in early spring to make a change of quarters. To come to a German university and not live just as a student, seemed like visiting Rome without getting a look at the Pope. Besides, I was somewhat cramped and uncomfortable, the best rooms in the house being occupied by the older boarders. I selected, therefore, a student-room on the Wende street, the principal street of the town, and had my books and "traps" transferred. It was a pleasant abode. The main room had three windows in front, and one on the side: the sleeping room, facing on a side street, had two windows. The furniture was altogether new. For all this comfort I paid the moderate sum of five and a half louis d'or per semester, i. e., from Easter to Michaelmas, or vice versa. In university towns, this is the habitual way of renting rooms. Reckoning the louis d'or at five thalers and a half, my rental for six months was a fraction over thirty thalers, say twenty-two dollars, for more room than I needed.

Meals and fuel were of course extra. I had to make a slight outlay for table furniture, buying some knives and forks, plates, cups and saucers, napkins, and table-cloths. This was my bachelor outfit. The slight expense was more than balanced by the luxurious sense of being my own master, of being able to give a bachelor supper to my friends whenever so disposed. I continued to take my dinner with Frau H, bút breakfast and supper were in my own room. Short of being in one's own family, I doubt whether there is a more enjoyable state than that of living by one's self in hired lodgings in Germany. It is possible in New York, to say nothing of London and Paris; but in New York the expense is ruinous, and even in England and France one will miss that peculiar institution, the Dienstmädchen. The German Dienstmädchen is no more the domestique of France, or the "Bridget " of America, than Göttingen is Oxford or Harvard. She is an institution by herself, and therefore deserves especial mention. In fact, life in Germany would be scarcely what it is without her. If you wish an extra supper in the evening, you consult your Dienstmädchen; if you merely wish to send out for à glass of beer, you employ her services. She will bring home a basketful of books from the university library, make your fires, go on your thousand and one errands, and do everything for you but

* In another place the author remarks: "Whatever of conversational ability I may possess, I attribute quite as much to the children as to the parents."

blacken your boots. That is the perquisite of the Stiefelfuchs. Her capacity for work and her general cheerfulness border on the marvellous. One such servant girl will wait upon six or seven students and do the family work in addition. She brings the dinner for those who take that meal in their rooms; she makes the beds and sweeps the rooms (when they are swept); in the autumn, she is sent to the family estate outside the city walls to dig potatoes by way of variety. Yet she is able and ready to dance every Sunday night from seven o'clock to two, and go about her work on Monday morning as fresh as a June rose. Her only fault is a slight shade of impertinence; not the surly, mutinous impertinence of "Bridget," but the pert forwardness of a good-natured, spoiled child. Like all privileged servants, she thinks that she knows everything much better than her master.

Students commonly take their dinner at a hotel or restaurant, paying a fixed price per month. Some few, either on account of ill-health or because they wish to economize time, dine in their rooms. This is unquestionably a pernicious habit; no one can really enjoy the principal meal of the day in solitude. But the basket used for bringing meals into the house is so practical and so peculiar that I cannot refrain from describing it. It is round, small in diameter, and very deep; a wide slit runs down one side to the bottom. Into this basket the dishes, generally four in number, are dropped one upon the other. The bottom of the first dish fits upon and into the second, the third upon the second, and so on, after the fashion of the rings used in moulding for long vertical castings. Each of the dishes has a knob that slips down the slit and is used as a handle in pulling the dish out. When the dishes are all in place and the cover is on, the whole can be easily carried quite a distance, by means of an arched handle over the top, without spilling or cooling the

contents.

The reader may imagine me, then, as lodged in very comfortable sunshiny rooms on the principal street in town, nearly opposite the Church of St. James. This venerable edifice, the stones of which have grown gray-black with the lapse of centuries, is not beautiful; its outlines are too bald, its solitary tower too stiff and awkward. Still it is an attractive building; my chief pleasure in connection with it was to watch the going and coming and listen to the incessant cawing of the rooks that had built them nests under the eaves and in the chinks of the tower. Every fair day, about sunset, they flew around the tower again and again in a flock, evidently settling the affairs of the day and wishing each other good-night before retiring.

MATRICULATION AND LECTURES.

A German university is the one institution in the world that has for its motto: Time is NOT money. The university is a law unto

itself, each professor is a law unto himself, each student revolves on his own axis and at his own rate of speed. English and Americans have formed not a few queer notions of university life in Germany. They picture to themselves a town like Göttingen, for instance, as a place where everybody is running a break-neck race for scholarly fame, where days are months and hours days, where minutes are emphatically the gold-dust of time. The truth is, that no one hurries or gets into a feaze over anything, the University itself setting a good example. The academic year is divided into two terms, called the winter and the summer semesters. The winter semester covers nominally five months, from October 15th to March 15th. In reality, both beginning and end are whittled off, so to speak, and there is a pause of two weeks at Christmas, so that the actual working time is little over four months. From March 15th to April 15th is the spring vacation. The summer semester then runs to August 15th, but practically the work is over by the first of that month.

Supposing yourself to be a tyro in such matters, and the 15th of October to be drawing near, you are naturally impatient to be matriculated and at work. But you will discover that the older students are not yet back, and, on consulting the "Black Board," you see no announcement of lectures. There is no hurry. A day or two after the 15th, perhaps, a general announcement is affixed, to the effect that candidates for matriculation may present themselves at the Aula on such and such days of the week, at certain hours. The ceremony is a simple one. In the first place you proceed to the secretary's office and deposit there your "documents" entitling you to admission. For a German, this is a matter of some importance: he is not admitted unless he is able to produce certain papers, the principal one of which is a certificate that he has attended a gymnasium or Realschule, and has passed satisfactorily the final examination (Abiturien, tenexamen). As the University holds no entrance-examination, this is the only guarantee it can have that those seeking admission are properly qualified. But in the case of a foreigner, the utmost liberality is displayed. Ten years ago, while Göttingen was a Hanoverian university, the only document required of a foreigner was his passport. It is the same to this day in Leipsic, Heidelberg, and the South German universities. The Prussian universities are a trifle stricter; in the case of Americans, they generally expect a diploma of Bachelor of Arts or the like, but they can scarcely be said to exact it. I doubt whether any German university would refuse to admit any foreign candidate who showed by his size and bearing that he was able to look after himself, and not a mere boy.

Matriculation Fces.

The next step in matriculation is to visit the treasurer (Quaestor) and pay the matriculation fees. These vary somewhat with the

different universities, but are nowhere excessive. In Göttingen they amounted to about five dollars. In exchange for your fees you get two weighty documents, the a b c of student life: your Anmeldungsbuch, and your student card. The former varies in size and shape (in Berlin they used the Anmeldungs-bogen as distinguished from buch), but whether book or merely folded sheet, it answers the same purpose; it is to be your record of work done. Imagine to yourself a large, stout book like a copy-book; each page is for a semester, and there are eight or ten pages in all, that being the estimated maximum number of semesters that you will remain. If you study longer, you can get a fresh book. The page is ruled in vertical columns, one for the names of the courses of lectures that you hear, another for the treasurer's certificate that you have paid the lecturefees, a third and a fourth for the professor's certificates that you have attended the course, entered at the beginning and at the end of the semesters. The modus operandi is as follows. After deciding what lectures you will hear, you yourself write the official title in the left hand column. You then get the Quaestor to affix his teste in the second column. This entitles you to a seat, and if the course happens to be a popular one, attended by large numbers, the sooner you secure your seat the better. After "hearing" a week or two, you make your visit upon the professor himself, selecting some hour in the forenoon when he has no official engagement. If you wish to conform rigorously to etiquette, you must appear in grand toilet, i. e., in dress coat and kid-gloves, although the chances are ninety-` nine in a hundred that in so doing you will catch the professor himself in wrapper and slippers, unshaven and smoking a long pipe. With regard to the second certification, given at the close of the lecture course, there is no fixed rule; any time not too long before the end of the semester will do; you can even wait until the next semester or still later; in fact, you need not go in person, but can send the book around by your servant-girl or your boot-black.

Legitimation or Student-Card.

The student-card, like the Anmeldungs-buch, is a peculiarly German institution. When you are matriculated, not only is your name entered in the general university register, but you must be inscribed under some one of the four general faculties, viz.: theology, law, medicine, philosophy. You then receive a card, rot much larger than an ordinary visiting card, of stout pasteboard. On the face of the card is placed your name, Herr N. N., aus (from) such and such a place, student in such a faculty. On the reverse is printed announcement, couched in the knottiest of German sentences, that none but the accomplished scholar of both English and German : can untie, to the effect that you are always to carry this card about you on your person, and produce it whenever it may be demanded by the university or town police, under penalty of a fine of twenty: Silber Groschen (50 cents).

This simple card is your Legitimation. In a university that has a complete jurisdiction of its own, as Göttingen has, at least did have in the days of which I write, producing this card secures you against all municipal arrest. You are member of a special corporation, and as such are amenable only to the university court; neither civil nor criminal action can be brought against you in the ordinary courts, but must be laid before the university court in the first instance. If this body should find you guilty of a crime or a grave misdemeanor, it would then surrender you to the Supreme Court, Criminal Section, the German equivalent to our Circuit Court. You cannot be arrested or locked up by a town policeman; all he can do with you is to keep you for a few minutes in custody, until he can find a University Pedell (beadle) to take you in charge.

Your card in your pocket and your Anmelsdungs-buch in your hand, in company with ten or twelve other candidates, you are then ushered into the august presence of the Rector magnificus, or Chancellor of the University. You will probably find him to be a man much as other men, only looking a trifle uncomfortable in his dress coat. The rector makes a short harangue, of which, if you are in the backward condition that I was, you will probably understand one word in five, but the substance of which is that he is rejoiced to see so many promising young men aspirants to the higher culture imparted by the Georgia Augusta (the official name of the University), and that he hopes you will be good fellows and make the most of your time and opportunities. In token of which, each candidate in turn shakes hands with him. You are then ushered out, to make room for a fresh squad who have just got their books and cards.

The ceremony is over, you are a German student, or a student in Germany, at last, ready to absorb all the knowledge and Bildung that your Alma Mater deals out with lavish hand. If you happen to be of an amiable, convivial turn of mind, your spirits will be buoyant; you will consider it your privilege and duty to cele brate the occasion by "dedicating" a bowl of punch to your elder brethren and compatriots who have helped you through the ordeal by telling you where to go and what to do. You and they will then make an afternoon of it, driving out to the Gliechen or the Plesse to enjoy the scenery, and indulge in coffee in the open air, and on your return, if still unsatisfied, you can make a night of it at Fritz's or the Universitatskneipe. Should you wake up next morning with a headache, a Jammer or a Kater, you can derive consolation from two circumstances: first, that it is only what has happened to thousands before you and will happen to thousands after you; next that you have fairly and honorably initiated yourself into student-life. You know now what it is to be a student, as Victor Hugo might felicitously express it, avant d'avoir craché du latin dans la boutique d'un professeur.