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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of An American at Oxford, by John Corbin
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: An American at Oxford
+
+Author: John Corbin
+
+Release Date: December 1, 2011 [EBook #38180]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK AN AMERICAN AT OXFORD ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Melissa McDaniel and the Online Distributed
+Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net (This file was
+produced from images generously made available by The
+Internet Archive)
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+Transcriber's Note:
+
+  Inconsistent hyphenation and spelling in the original document have
+  been preserved.  Obvious typographical errors have been corrected.
+
+  Italic text is denoted by _underscores_ and bold text by =equal
+  signs=.
+
+
+
+
+  [Illustration: TEA ON THE LAWN AT THE OXFORD UNION (page 63)]
+
+
+
+
+     AN AMERICAN AT
+     OXFORD
+
+     BY
+
+     JOHN CORBIN
+
+     AUTHOR OF "SCHOOLBOY LIFE IN ENGLAND"
+
+     _WITH ILLUSTRATIONS_
+
+
+     BOSTON AND NEW YORK
+     HOUGHTON, MIFFLIN AND COMPANY
+     The Riverside Press, Cambridge
+     1903
+
+
+
+
+COPYRIGHT, 1902, BY JOHN CORBIN
+
+ALL RIGHTS RESERVED
+
+_Published May, 1902_
+
+
+
+
+TO
+
+A. F. C.
+
+
+
+
+PREFACE
+
+
+By a curious coincidence, the day on which the last proof of this book
+was sent to the printer saw the publication of the will of the late
+Cecil Rhodes, providing that each of the United States is forever to
+be represented at Oxford by two carefully selected undergraduate
+students. That the plan will result in any speedy realization of the
+ideals of the great exponent of English power in the new worlds is
+perhaps not to be expected. For the future of American education, on
+the other hand, few things could be more fortunate. Native and
+independent as our national genius has always been, and seems likely
+to remain, it has always been highly assimilative. In the past, we
+have received much needed aliment from the German universities. For
+the present, the elements of which we have most need may best, as I
+think, be assimilated from England.
+
+Whether or not Americans at Oxford become imbued with Mr. Rhodes's
+conceptions as to the destiny of the English peoples, they can
+scarcely fail to observe that Oxford affords to its undergraduates a
+very sensibly ordered and invigorating life, a very sensibly ordered
+and invigorating education. This, as I have endeavored to point out in
+the following pages, our American universities do not now afford, nor
+are they likely to afford it until the social and the educational
+systems are more perfectly organized than they have ever been, or seem
+likely to be, under the dominance of German ideals. If, however, the
+new Oxford-trained Americans should ever become an important factor in
+our university life, the future is bright with hope. We have
+assimilated, or are assimilating, the best spirit of German education;
+and if we were to make a similar draft on the best educational spirit
+in England, our universities would become far superior as regards
+their organization and ideals, and probably also as regards what they
+accomplish, to any in Europe. The purpose and result of an
+introduction of English methods would of course not be to imitate
+foreign custom, but to give fuller scope to our native character, so
+that if the American educational ideals in the end approximate the
+English more closely than they do at present, such a result would be
+merely incidental to the fact that the two countries have at bottom
+much the same social character and instincts. If Mr. Rhodes's dream is
+to be realized, it will probably be in some such tardy and roundabout
+but admirably vital manner as this.
+
+At a superficial glance the testator's intention seems to have been to
+send the students to Oxford directly from American schools. Such a
+course, it seems to me, could only work harm. Even if the educational
+and residential facilities afforded at Oxford were on the whole
+superior to those of American universities, which they are not, the
+difference could not compensate the student for the loss of his
+American university course with all it means in forming lifelong
+friendships among his countrymen and in assimilating the national
+spirit. If, however, the Oxford scholarships were awarded to recent
+graduates of American universities, the greatest advantage might
+result. The student might then modify his native training so as to
+complete it and make it more effective. Now the wording of the
+testament requires only that the American scholars shall "commence
+residence as undergraduates." This they will be able to do whatever
+their previous training, and in fact this is what Americans at Oxford
+have always done in the past. The most valuable A.B. leaves the
+field of human knowledge far from exhausted; and the methods of
+instruction and of examining at Oxford are so different from anything
+we know that it has even proved worth while for the American to repeat
+at Oxford the same studies he took in America. The executors of the
+will should be most vigorously urged to select the scholars from the
+graduates of American universities.
+
+The parts of this book that treat most intimately of Oxford life were
+written while in residence in Balliol College some six years ago. Most
+of the rest was written quite recently in London. Much of the matter
+in the following pages has appeared in "Harper's Weekly," "The
+Bachelor of Arts," "The Forum," and "The Atlantic Monthly." It has all
+been carefully revised and rearranged, and much new matter added. Each
+chapter has gained, as I hope, by being brought into its natural
+relation with the other chapters; and the ideas that have informed the
+whole are for the first time adequately stated.
+
+
+
+
+CONTENTS
+
+
+     CHAP.                                                        PAGE
+
+     INTRODUCTORY                                                    1
+
+     I. THE UNIVERSITY AND THE COLLEGE
+
+     I. THE UNIVERSITY OF COLLEGES                                   7
+
+     II. THE OXFORD FRESHMAN                                        10
+
+     III. A DAY IN AN OXFORD COLLEGE                                17
+
+     IV. DINNER IN HALL                                             21
+
+     V. EVENING                                                     28
+
+     VI. THE MIND OF THE COLLEGE                                    37
+
+     VII. CLUB LIFE IN THE COLLEGE                                  52
+
+     VIII. SOCIAL LIFE IN THE UNIVERSITY                            62
+
+     IX. THE COLLEGE AND THE UNIVERSITY                             74
+
+     II. OXFORD OUT OF DOORS
+
+     I. SLACKING ON THE ISIS AND THE CHERWELL                       81
+
+     II. AS SEEN FROM AN OXFORD TUB                                 96
+
+     III. A LITTLE SCRIMMAGE WITH ENGLISH RUGBY                    116
+
+     IV. TRACK AND FIELD ATHLETICS                                 132
+
+     V. ENGLISH AND AMERICAN SPORTSMANSHIP                         145
+
+     III. THE COLLEGE AS AN EDUCATIONAL FORCE
+
+     I. THE PASSMAN                                                159
+
+     II. THE HONOR SCHOOLS                                         171
+
+     III. THE TUTOR                                                178
+
+     IV. READING FOR EXAMINATIONS                                  184
+
+     V. THE EXAMINATION                                            190
+
+     VI. OXFORD QUALITIES AND THEIR DEFECTS                        193
+
+     VII. THE UNIVERSITY AND REFORM                                200
+
+     VIII. THE UNIVERSITY AND THE PEOPLE                           206
+
+     IV. THE HISTORY OF THE UNIVERSITY AND THE
+     COLLEGE
+
+     I. THE UNIVERSITY BEFORE THE COLLEGE                          215
+
+     II. THE MEDIÆVAL HALL                                         221
+
+     III. THE COLLEGE SYSTEM                                       223
+
+     IV. THE GOLDEN AGE OF THE MEDIÆVAL HALL                       231
+
+     V. THE ORIGIN OF THE MODERN UNDERGRADUATE                     236
+
+     VI. THE INSIGNIFICANCE OF THE MODERN UNIVERSITY               239
+
+     VII. THE COLLEGE IN AMERICA                                   245
+
+     V. THE PROBLEMS OF THE AMERICAN UNIVERSITY
+
+     I. THE SOCIAL AND ATHLETIC PROBLEM                            255
+
+     II. THE ADMINISTRATIVE PROBLEM                                272
+
+     III. THE EDUCATIONAL PROBLEM                                  281
+
+     IV. THE AMERICAN HALL                                         301
+
+     APPENDIX
+
+     I. ATHLETIC TRAINING IN ENGLAND                               313
+
+     II. CLIMATE AND INTERNATIONAL ATHLETICS                       316
+
+     III. AN OXFORD FINAL HONOR SCHOOL                             319
+
+
+
+
+LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
+
+
+                                                                  PAGE
+     _Tea on the Lawn at the Oxford Union (page 63)_    _Frontispiece_
+
+     _The Hall Staircase, Christ Church_                            22
+
+     _Magdalen Tower from the Bridge_                               30
+
+     _A Racing Punt and Punter_                                     84
+
+     _Iffley Lock and Mill_                                         90
+
+     _The Full Costume of an Eightsman_                            100
+
+     _The College Barges: Tubbing in November Floods_              106
+
+     _The Last Day of the Bumping Races of the Summer
+       Eights (1895)_                                              112
+
+     _An English Rugby Line-up_                                    120
+
+     _Throwing in the Ball_                                        124
+
+     _New College Cloisters, Bell Tower, and Chapel_               224
+
+     _New College Gardens--showing the Mediæval Wall of
+       Oxford_                                                     228
+
+
+
+
+AN AMERICAN AT OXFORD
+
+
+The great German historian of the United States, H. E. Von Holst,
+declares[1] that, "in the sense attached to the word by Europeans, ...
+there is in the United States as yet not a single university;"
+institutions like Johns Hopkins and Harvard he characterizes as
+"hybrids of college and university." In his survey of European usage,
+one suspects that Professor Von Holst failed to look beyond Germany.
+The so-called universities of England, for example, are mere
+aggregations of colleges; they have not even enough of the modern
+scientific spirit to qualify as hybrids, having consciously and
+persistently refused to adopt continental standards. The higher
+institutions of America belong historically to the English type; they
+have only recently imported the scientific spirit. To the great world
+of graduates and undergraduates they are colleges, and should as far
+as possible be kept so.
+
+Yet there is reason enough for calling them hybrids. In the teaching
+bodies of all of them the German, or so-called university, spirit is
+very strong, and is slowly possessing the more advanced of our recent
+graduates and undergraduates. Let us be duly grateful. The first
+result of this spirit is an extraordinary quickening and diffusion of
+the modern ideal of scholarship, a devotion to pure science amounting
+almost to a passion. As to the second result, we may or may not have
+cause to be grateful. Our most prominent educational leaders have
+striven consciously to make over our universities on the German plan.
+We are in the midst of a struggle between old and new forces, and at
+present the alien element has apparently the upper hand. The social
+ideal, which only a few years ago was virtually the same in England
+and America, has already been powerfully modified; and the concrete
+embodiment of the new scientific spirit, the so-called elective
+system, has transformed the peculiar educational institution of our
+Anglo-Saxon people.
+
+We have gone so far forward that it is possible to gain an excellent
+perspective on what we are leaving behind. In the ensuing pages I
+propose to present as plainly as I may the English university of
+colleges. I shall not hesitate to give its social life all the
+prominence it has in fact, devoting much space even to athletic
+sports. The peculiarity of the English ideal of education is that it
+aims to develop the moral and social virtues, no less than the
+mental--to train up boys to be men among men. Only by understanding
+this is it possible to sympathize with the system of instruction, its
+peculiar excellences, and its almost incredible defects. In the end I
+hope we shall see more clearly what our colleges have inherited from
+the parent institutions, and shall be able to judge how far the system
+of collegiate education expresses the genius of English and American
+people.
+
+At the present juncture of political forces in America this
+consideration has a special importance. The success with which we
+exert our influence upon distant peoples will depend upon what manner
+of young men we train up to carry it among them. If the graduates of
+German institutions are prepared to establish their civilization in
+the imperial colonies, the fact has not yet been shown. The colleges
+of England have manned the British Empire.
+
+FOOTNOTE:
+
+[1] _Educational Review_, vol. v. p. 113.
+
+
+
+
+I
+
+THE UNIVERSITY AND THE COLLEGE
+
+
+I
+
+THE UNIVERSITY OF COLLEGES
+
+One of the familiar sights at Oxford is the American traveler who
+stops over on his way from Liverpool to London, and, wandering up
+among the walls of the twenty colleges from the Great Western Station,
+asks the first undergraduate he meets which building is the
+university. When an Oxford man is first asked this, he is pretty sure
+to answer that there isn't any university; but as the answer is taken
+as a rudeness, he soon finds it more agreeable to direct inquirers to
+one of the three or four single buildings, scattered hither and yon
+among the ubiquitous colleges, in which the few functions of the
+university are performed. A traveler from our middle West, where
+"universities" often consist of a single building, might easily set
+forth for London with the firm idea that the Ashmolean Museum or the
+Bodleian Library is Oxford University.
+
+To the undergraduate the university is an abstract institution that at
+most examines him two or three times, "ploughs" him, or graduates
+him. He becomes a member of it by being admitted into one of the
+colleges. To be sure, he matriculates also as a student of the
+university; but the ceremony is important mainly as a survival from
+the historic past, and is memorable to him perhaps because it takes
+place beneath the beautiful mediæval roof of the Divinity School;
+perhaps because he receives from the Vice-Chancellor a copy of the
+university statutes, written in mediæval Latin, which it is to be his
+chief delight to break. Except when he is in for "schools," as the
+examinations are called, the university fades beyond his horizon. If
+he says he is "reading" at Oxford, he has the city in mind. He is more
+likely to describe himself as "up at" Magdalen, Balliol, or elsewhere.
+This English idea that a university is a mere multiplication of
+colleges is so firmly fixed that the very word is defined as "a
+collection of institutions of learning at a common centre." In the
+daily life of the undergraduate, in his religious observances, and in
+regulating his studies, the college is supreme.
+
+To an American the English college is not at first sight a wholly
+pleasing object. It has walls that one would take to be insurmountable
+if they were not crowned with shards of bottles mortared into the
+coping; and it has gates that seem capable of resisting a siege until
+one notices that they are reinforced by a _cheval-de-frise_, or a row
+of bent spikes like those that keep the bears in their dens at the
+Zoo. Professor Von Holst would certainly regard it as a hybrid between
+a mediæval cloister and a nursery; and one easily imagines him
+producing no end of evidence from its history and traditions to show
+that it is so. Like so many English institutions, its outward and
+visible signs belong to the manners of forgotten ages, even while it
+is charged with a vigorous and very modern life. A closer view of it,
+I hope, will show that in spite of the barnacles of the past that
+cling to it--and in some measure, too, because of them--it is the
+expression of a very high ideal of undergraduate convenience and
+freedom.
+
+
+II
+
+THE OXFORD FRESHMAN
+
+When a freshman comes up to his college, he is received at the
+mediæval gate by a very modern porter, who lifts boxes and bags from
+the hansom in a most obliging manner, and is presently shown to his
+cloistral chambers by a friendly and urbane butler or steward. To
+accommodate the newcomers in the more populous colleges, a measure is
+resorted to so revolutionary that it shocks all American ideas of
+academic propriety. Enough seniors--fourth and third year men--are
+turned out of college to make room for the freshmen. The assumption is
+that the upper classmen have had every opportunity to profit by the
+life of the college, and are prepared to flock by themselves in the
+town. Little communities of four or five fellows who have proved
+congenial live together in "diggings"--that is, in some townsman's
+house--hard by the college gate. This arrangement makes possible
+closer and more intimate relationship among them than would otherwise
+be likely; and after three years of the very free life within those
+sharded walls, a cloistered year outside is usually more than
+advisable, in view of the final examination. It cannot be said that
+they leave college without regret; but I never heard a word of
+complaint, and it is tacitly admitted that on the whole they profit by
+the arrangement.
+
+The more substantial furnishings in the rooms are usually permanent,
+belonging to the college: each successive occupant is charged for
+interest on the investment and for depreciation by wear. Thus the
+furniture is far more comfortable than in an American college room and
+costs the occupant less. Bed and table linen, cutlery, and a few of
+the more personal furnishings the student brings himself. If one
+neglects to bring them, as I confess I did through ignorance, the
+deficiency is supplied by the scout, a dignitary in the employ of the
+college, who stands in somewhat more than the place of a servant and
+less than that of a parent to half a dozen fellows whose rooms are
+adjacent. The scout levies on the man above for sheets, on the man
+below for knives and forks, and on the man across the staircase for
+table linen. There is no call for shame on the one part or resentment
+on the other, for is not the scout the representative of the
+hospitality of the college? "When you have time, sir," he says kindly,
+"you will order your own linen and cutlery." How high a state of
+civilization is implied in this manner of receiving a freshman can be
+appreciated only by those who have arrived friendless at an American
+university.
+
+The scout is in effect a porter, "goody," and eating-club waiter
+rolled into one. He has frequently a liberal dash of the don, which he
+has acquired by extended residence at the university; for among all
+the shifting generations of undergraduates, only he and the don are
+permanent. When he reaches middle age he wears a beard if he chooses,
+and then he is usually taken for a don by the casual visitor. There is
+no harm in this; the scout plays the part _con amore_, and his long
+breeding enables him to sustain it to a marvel. Yet for the most part
+the scout belongs with the world of undergraduates. He has his social
+clubs and his musical societies; he runs, plays cricket, and rows,
+and, finally, he meets the Cambridge scout in the inter-varsity
+matches. His pay the scout receives in part from the college, but
+mostly from the students, who give him two to four pounds a term each,
+according to his deserts. All broken bread, meat, and wine are his
+perquisites, and tradition allows him to "bag" a fair amount of tea,
+coffee, and sugar. Out of all this he makes a sumptuous living. I knew
+only one exception, and that was when four out of six men on a
+certain scout's staircase happened to be vegetarians, and five
+teetotalers. The poor fellow was in extremities for meat and in
+desperation for drink. There was only one more pitiable sight in
+college, and that was the sole student on the staircase who ate meat
+and drank wine; the scout bagged food and drink from him ceaselessly.
+At the end of one term the student left a half dozen bottles of
+sherry, which he had merely tasted, in his sideboard; and when he came
+back it was gone. "Where's my sherry, Betts?" he asked. "Sherry, sir?
+you ain't got no sherry." "But I left six bottles; you had no right to
+more than the one that was broken." "Yes, sir; but when I had taken
+that, sir, the 'arf dozen was broke." According to Oxford traditions
+the student had no recourse; and be it set down to his praise, he
+never blamed the scout. He bemoaned the fate that bound them together
+in suffering, and vented his spleen on total abstinence and
+vegetarianism. It may be supposed that the scout's antiquity and
+importance makes him a bad servant; in the land of the free I fear
+that it would; but at Oxford nothing could be more unlikely. The only
+mark that distinguishes the scout from any other class of waiters is
+that his attentions to your comfort are carried off with greater ease
+and dignity. It may be true that he is president of the Oxford
+Society of College Servants--the Bones or the Hasty Pudding of the
+scouts; that he stroked the scouts' eight in the townie's bumping
+races, during the long vac, and afterward rowed against the scouts'
+eight from Cambridge; that he captained the scouts' cricket eleven;
+that in consequence he is a "double blue" and wears the Oxford
+'varsity color on his hat with no less pride than any other "blue."
+Yet he is all the more bound, out of consideration for his own
+dignity, to show you every respect and attention.
+
+After the scout, the hosts of the college are the dons. As soon as the
+freshman is settled in his rooms, or sometimes even before, his tutor
+meets him and arranges for a formal presentation to the dean and
+master. All three are apt to show their interest in a freshman by
+advising him as to trying for the athletic teams, joining the college
+clubs and societies, and in a word as to all the concerns of
+undergraduate life except his studies--these come later. If a man has
+any particular gift, athletic or otherwise, the tutor introduces him
+to the men he should know, or, when this is not feasible, gives a word
+to the upper classmen, who take the matter into their own hands. If a
+freshman has no especial gift, the tutor is quite as sure to say the
+proper word to the fellows who have most talent for drawing out
+newcomers.
+
+In the first weeks of a freshman's residence he finds sundry
+pasteboards tucked beneath his door: the upper classman's call is
+never more than the formal dropping of a card. The freshman is
+expected to return these calls at once, and is debarred by a happy
+custom from leaving his card if he does not find his man. He goes
+again and again until he does find him. By direct introduction from
+the tutor or by this formality of calling, the freshman soon meets
+half a dozen upper classmen, generally second-year men, and in due
+time he receives little notes like this:--
+
+    DEAR SMITH,--Come to my rooms if you can to breakfast with Brown
+    and me on Wednesday at 8.30.
+
+     Yours sincerely,
+     A. ROBINSON.
+
+At table the freshman finds other freshmen whose interests are
+presumably similar to his own.
+
+No one supposes for a moment that all this is done out of simple human
+kindness. The freshman breakfast is a conventional institution for
+gathering together the unlicked cubs, so that the local influences may
+take hold of them. The reputation of the college in general demands
+that it keep up a name for hospitality; and in particular the clubs
+and athletic teams find it of advantage to get the run of all
+available new material. The freshman breakfast is nothing in the world
+but a variation of the "running" that is given newcomers in those
+American colleges where fraternity life is strong, and might even be
+regarded as a more civilized form of the rushes and cane sprees and
+even hazings that used to serve with us to introduce newcomers to
+their seniors. Many second-year breakfasts are perfunctory enough; the
+host has a truly British air of saying that since for better or for
+worse he is destined to look upon your face and abide by your deeds,
+he is willing to make the best of it. If you prove a "bounder," you
+are soon enough dropped. "_I_ shall soon be a second-year man," I once
+heard a freshman remark, "and then _I_ can ask freshmen to breakfast,
+too, and cut them afterward." The point is that every fellow is thrown
+in the way of meeting the men of his year. If one is neglected in the
+end, he has no reason to feel that it is the fault of the college. As
+a result of this machinery for initiating newcomers, a man usually
+ceases to be a freshman after a single term (two months) of residence;
+and it is always assumed that he does.
+
+
+III
+
+A DAY IN AN OXFORD COLLEGE
+
+When a freshman is once established in college, his life falls into a
+pleasantly varied routine. The day is ushered in by the scout, who
+bustles into the bedroom, throws aside the curtain, pours out the
+bath, and shouts, "Half past seven, sir," in a tone that makes it
+impossible to forget that chapel--or if one chooses, roll-call--comes
+at eight. Unless one keeps his six chapels or "rollers" a week, he is
+promptly "hauled" before the dean, who perhaps "gates" him. To be
+gated is to be forbidden to pass the college gate after dark, and
+fined a shilling for each night of confinement. To an American all
+this brings recollections of the paternal roof, where tardiness at
+breakfast meant, perhaps, the loss of dessert, and bedtime an hour
+earlier. I remember once, when out of training, deliberately cutting
+chapel to see with what mien the good dean performed his nursery
+duties. His calm was unruffled, his dignity unsullied. I soon came to
+find that the rules about rising were bowed to and indeed respected
+by all concerned, even while they were broken. They are distinctly
+more lax than those the fellows have been accustomed to in the public
+schools, and they are conceded to be for the best welfare of the
+college.
+
+Breakfast comes soon after chapel, or roll-call. If a man has "kept a
+dirty roller," that is, has reported in pyjamas, ulster, and boots,
+and has turned in again, the scout puts the breakfast before the fire
+on a trestle built of shovel, poker, and tongs, where it remains
+edible until noon. If a man has a breakfast party on, the scout makes
+sure that he is stirring in season, and, hurrying through the other
+rooms on the staircase, is presently on hand for as long as he may be
+wanted. The usual Oxford breakfast is a single course, which not
+infrequently consists of some one of the excellent English pork
+products, with an egg or kidneys. There may be two courses, in which
+case the first is of the no less excellent fresh fish. There are no
+vegetables. The breakfast is ended with toast and jam or marmalade.
+When one has fellows in to breakfast,--and the Oxford custom of
+rooming alone instead of chumming makes such hospitality
+frequent,--his usual meal is increased by a course, say, of chicken.
+In any case it leads to a morning cigarette, for tobacco aids
+digestion, and helps fill the hour or so after meals which an
+Englishman gives to relaxation.
+
+At ten o'clock the breakfast may be interrupted for a moment by the
+exit of some one bent on attending a lecture, though one apologizes
+for such an act as if it were scarcely good form. An appointment with
+one's tutor is a more legitimate excuse for leaving; but even this is
+always an occasion for an apology, in behalf of the tutor of course,
+for one is certainly not himself responsible. If a quorum is left,
+they manage to sit comfortably by the fire, smoking and chatting in
+spite of lectures and tutors, until by mutual consent they scatter to
+glance at the "Times" and the "Sportsman" in the common-room, or even
+to get in a bit of reading.
+
+Luncheon often consists of bread and cheese and jam from the buttery,
+with perhaps a half pint of bitter beer; but it may, like the
+breakfast, come from the college kitchen. In any case it is very
+light, for almost immediately after it everybody scatters to field and
+track and river for the exercise that the English climate makes
+necessary and the sport that the English temperament demands.
+
+By four o'clock every one is back in college tubbed and dressed for
+tea, which a man serves himself in his rooms to as many fellows as he
+has been able to gather in on field or river. If he is eager to hear
+of the games he has not been able to witness, he goes to the junior
+common-room or to his club, where he is sure to find a dozen or so of
+kindred spirits representing every sport of importance. In this way he
+hears the minutest details of the games of the day from the players
+themselves; and before nightfall--such is the influence of tea--those
+bits of gossip which in America are known chiefly among members of a
+team have ramified the college. Thus the function of the "bleachers"
+on an American field is performed with a vengeance by the easy-chairs
+before a common-room fire; and a man had better be kicked off the team
+by an American captain than have his shortcomings served up with
+common-room tea.
+
+The two hours between tea and dinner may be, and usually are, spent in
+reading.
+
+
+IV
+
+DINNER IN HALL
+
+At seven o'clock the college bell rings, and in two minutes the
+fellows have thrown on their gowns and are seated at table, where the
+scouts are in readiness to serve them. As a rule a man may sit
+wherever he chooses; this is one of the admirable arrangements for
+breaking up such cliques as inevitably form in a college. But in point
+of fact a man usually ends by sitting in some certain quarter of the
+hall, where from day to day he finds much the same set of fellows.
+Thus all the advantages of friendly intercourse are attained without
+any real exclusiveness. This may seem a small point; but an hour a day
+becomes an item in four years, especially if it is the hour when men
+are most disposed to be companionable.
+
+The English College hall is a miniature of Memorial Hall at Harvard,
+of which it is the prototype. It has the same sombrely beautiful roof,
+the same richness of stained glass. It has also the same memorable and
+impressive canvases, though the worthies they portray are likely to be
+the princes and prelates of Holbein instead of the soldiers,
+merchants, and divines of Copley and Gilbert Stuart. The tables are of
+antique oak, with the shadow of centuries in its grain, and the
+college plate bears the names and date of the Restoration. To an
+American the mugs he drinks his beer from seem old enough, but the
+Englishman finds them aggressively new. They are not, however, without
+endearing associations, for the mugs that preceded them were last used
+to drink a health to King Charles, and were then stamped into coin to
+buy food and drink for his soldiers. The one or two colleges that, for
+Puritan principles or thrift, or both, refused to give up their old
+plate, are not overproud of showing it.
+
+Across the end of the hall is a platform for high table, at which the
+dons assemble as soon as the undergraduates are well seated. On Sunday
+night they come out in full force, and from the time the first one
+enters until the last is seated, the undergraduates rattle and bang
+the tables, until it seems as if the glass must splinter. When, as
+often happens, a distinguished graduate comes up,--the Speaker of the
+Commons to Balliol, or the Prime Minister to Christ Church,--the
+enthusiasm has usually to be stopped by a gesture from the master or
+the dean.
+
+  [Illustration: THE HALL STAIRCASE, CHRIST CHURCH]
+
+The dons at high table, like the British peers, mingle judicial with
+legislative functions. All disputes about sconces are referred to
+them, and their decrees are absolute. A sconce is a penalty for a
+breach of good manners at table, and is an institution that can be
+traced far back into the Middle Ages. The offenses that are sconcible
+may be summarized as punning, swearing, talking shop, and coming to
+hall after high table is in session. Take, for instance, the case of a
+certain oarsman who found the dinner forms rather too rigid after his
+first day on sliding seats. By way of comforting himself, he remarked
+that the Lord giveth and the Lord taketh away. Who is to decide
+whether he is guilty of profanity? The master, of course, and his
+assembled court of dons. The remark and the attendant circumstances
+are written on the back of an order-slip by the senior scholar
+present, and a scout is dispatched with it. Imagine, then, the master
+presenting this question to the dons: Is it profanity to refer by
+means of a quotation from Scripture to the cuticle one loses in a
+college boat? Suppose the dons decree that it is. The culprit has the
+alternative of paying a shilling to the college library, or ordering a
+tun of bitter beer. If he decides for beer, a second alternative
+confronts him: he may drink it down in one uninterrupted draft, or he
+may kiss the cup and send it circling the table. If he tries to floor
+the sconce and fails, he has to order more beer for the table; but if
+he succeeds, the man who sconced him has to pay the shot and order a
+second tun for the table. I never knew but one man to down a sconce.
+He did it between soup and fish, and for the rest of the evening was
+as drunk as ever was the Restoration lord who presented the silver
+tankard to the college.
+
+After hall the dons go to the senior common-room for the sweet and
+port. At Trinity they have one room for the sweet and another for
+port. The students, meanwhile, in certain of the colleges, may go for
+dessert to the college store; that is to say, to a room beneath the
+hall, where the fancy groceries of the college stock are displayed for
+sale. There are oranges from Florida and Tangiers, dainty maiden blush
+apples from New England, figs and dates from the Levant, prunes and
+prunelles from Italy, candied apricots from France, and the superb
+English hothouse grapes, more luscious than Silenus ever crushed
+against his palate. There are sweets, cigarettes, and cigars. All are
+spread upon the tables like a Venetian painting of abundance; but at
+either end of the room stand two Oxford scouts, with account-books in
+their hands. A fellow takes a Tangerine and, with a tap-room gesture,
+tilts to the scout as if to say, "Here's looking toward you,
+landlord;" or, "I drink to your bonny blue eyes." But he is not
+confronted by a publican or barmaid; only a grave underling of the
+college bursar, who silently records "Brown, orange, 2d.," and looks
+up to catch the next item. Two other fellows are flipping for cigars,
+and the second scout is gravely watching their faces to see which way
+the coin has fallen, recording the outcome without a sign. Some one
+asks, "How much are chocolate creams, Higgins?" "Three ha'pence for
+four, sir," is the answer, and the student urges three neighbors to
+share his penny'orth. The scout records, "Jones, c. c. 1½d."
+
+The minuteness of this bookkeeping is characteristic. The weekly
+battels (bills) always bear a charge of twopence for "salt, etc.;" and
+once, when I had not ordered anything during an entire day, there was
+an unspecified charge of a penny in the breakfast column. I asked the
+butler what it meant. He looked at me horrified. "Why, sir, that is to
+keep your name on the books." No penny, I suppose, ever filled an
+office of greater responsibility, and I still can shudder at so narrow
+an escape. I asked if such elaborate bookkeeping was not very
+expensive. In America, I said, we should lump the charges and devote
+the saving to hiring a better chef. He explained that it had always
+been so managed; that the chef was thought very good, sir; and that by
+itemizing charges the young gentlemen who wished were enabled to live
+more cheaply. Obviously, when it costs a penny merely to keep your
+name on the books, there is need to economize.
+
+After a quarter of an hour in the store the fellows drop off by twos
+and threes to read, or to take coffee in some one's room. With the
+coffee a glass of port is usually taken. Almost all the fellows have
+spirits and wines, which are sold by the college as freely as any
+other commodity. If a man wishes a cup served in his room, he has only
+to say so to his scout. If one waits long enough in the store, he is
+almost certain to be asked to coffee and wine. The would-be host
+circulates the room tapping the elect on the shoulder and speaking a
+quiet word, as they select Bones men at Yale. If half a dozen men are
+left in the store uninvited, one of them is apt to rise to the
+occasion and invite the lot. It scarcely matters how unpopular a
+fellow may be. The willingness to loaf is the touch of nature that
+makes all men kin.
+
+After coffee more men fall off to their books; but the faithful are
+likely to spend the evening talking or playing cards--bridge, loo,
+napp, and whist, with the German importation of skat and the American
+importation of poker. In one college I knew, there was a nomadic
+roulette wheel that wandered from room to room pursued by the shadow
+of the dean, but seldom failed of an evening to gather its flock about
+it.
+
+
+V
+
+EVENING
+
+In the evening, when the season permits, the fellows sit out of doors
+after dinner, smoking and playing bowls. There is no place in which
+the spring comes more sweetly than in an Oxford garden. The high walls
+are at once a trap for the first warm rays of the sun and a barrier
+against the winds of March. The daffodils and crocuses spring up with
+joy as the gardener bids; and the apple and cherry trees coddle
+against the warm north walls, spreading out their early buds
+gratefully to the mild English sun. For long, quiet hours after dinner
+they flaunt their beauty to the fellows smoking, and breathe their
+sweetness to the fellows playing bowls. "No man," exclaims the
+American visitor, "could live four years in these gardens of delight
+and not be made gentler and nobler!" Perhaps! though not altogether in
+the way the visitor imagines. When the flush of summer is on, the
+loiterers loll on the lawn full length; and as they watch the insects
+crawl among the grass they make bets on them, just as the gravest and
+most reverend seniors have been known to do in America.
+
+In the windows overlooking the quadrangle are boxes of brilliant
+flowers, above which the smoke of a pipe comes curling out. At Harvard
+some fellows have geraniums in their windows, but only the very rich;
+and when they began the custom an ancient graduate wrote one of those
+communications to the "Crimson," saying that if men put unmanly boxes
+of flowers in the window, how can they expect to beat Yale? Flower
+boxes, no sand. At Oxford they manage things so that anybody may have
+flower boxes; and their associations are by no means unmanly. This is
+the way they do it. In the early summer a gardener's wagon from the
+country draws up by the college gate, and the driver cries, "Flowers!
+Flowers for a pair of old bags, sir." _Bags_ is of course the fitting
+term for English trousers--which don't fit; and I should like to
+inform that ancient graduate that the window boxes of Oxford suggest
+the very badge of manhood.
+
+As long as the English twilight lingers, the men will sit and talk and
+sing to the mandolin; and I have heard of fellows sitting and talking
+all night, not turning in until the porter appeared to take their
+names at roll-call. On the eve of May day it is quite the custom to
+sit out, for at dawn one may go to see the pretty ceremony of heralding
+the May on Magdalen Tower. The Magdalen choir boys--the sweetest
+songsters in all Oxford--mount to the top of that most beautiful of
+Gothic towers, and, standing among the pinnacles,--pinnacles afire
+with the spirituality of the Middle Ages, that warms all the senses
+with purity and beauty,--those boys, I say, on that tower and among
+those pinnacles, open their mouths and sing a Latin song to greet the
+May. Meantime, the fellows who have come out to listen in the street
+below make catcalls and blow fish horns. The song above is the
+survival of a Romish, perhaps a Druidical, custom; the racket below is
+the survival of a Puritan protest. That is Oxford in symbol! Its
+dignity and mellowness are not so much a matter of flowering gardens
+and crumbling walls as of the traditions of the centuries in which the
+whole life of the place has deep sources; and the noblest of its
+institutions are fringed with survivals that run riot in the
+grotesque.
+
+  [Illustration: MAGDALEN TOWER FROM THE BRIDGE]
+
+If a man intends to spend the evening out of college, he has to make a
+dash before nine o'clock; for love or for money the porter may not let
+an inmate out after nine. One man I knew was able to escape by guile.
+He had a brother in Trinity whom he very much resembled, and
+whenever he wanted to go out, he would tilt his mortarboard forward,
+wrap his gown high about his neck, as it is usually worn of an
+evening, and bidding the porter a polite good-night, say, "Charge me
+to my brother, Hancock, if you please." The charge is the
+inconsiderable sum of one penny, and is the penalty of having a late
+guest. Having profited by my experience with the similar charge for
+keeping my name on the college books, I never asked its why and
+wherefore. Both are no doubt survivals of some mediæval custom, the
+authority of which no college employee--or don, for the matter of
+that--would question. Such matters interest the Oxford man quite as
+little as the question how he comes by a tonsil or a vermiform
+appendix. They are there, and he makes the best of them.
+
+If a fellow leaves college for an evening, it is for a foregathering
+at some other college, or to go to the theatre. As a rule he wears a
+cloth cap. A "billycock" or "bowler," as the pot hat is called, is as
+thoroughly frowned on now in English colleges as it was with us a
+dozen years ago. As for the mortarboard and gown, undergraduate
+opinion rather requires that they be left behind. This is largely, no
+doubt, because they are required by law to be worn. So far as the
+undergraduates are concerned, every operative statute of the
+university, with the exception of those relating to matriculation and
+graduation, refers to conduct in the streets after nightfall, and
+almost without exception they are honored in the breach. This is out
+of disregard for the Vice-Chancellor of the university, who is
+familiarly called the Vice, because he serves as a warning to others
+for the practice of virtue. The Vice makes his power felt in
+characteristically dark and tortuous ways. His factors are two
+proctors, college dons in daytime, but skulkers after nightfall, each
+of whom has his bulldogs, that is, scouts employed literally to spy
+upon the students. If these catch you without cap or gown, they cause
+you to be proctorized or "progged," as it is called, which involves a
+matter of five shillings or so. As a rule there is little danger of
+progging, but my first term fell in evil days. For some reason or
+other the chest of the university showed a deficit of sundry pounds,
+shillings, and pence; and as it had long ceased to need or receive
+regular bequests,--the finance of the institution being in the hands
+of the colleges,--a crisis was at hand. A more serious problem had
+doubtless never arisen since the great question was solved of keeping
+undergraduates' names on the books. The expedient of the
+Vice-Chancellor was to summon the proctors, and bid them charge their
+bulldogs to prog all freshmen caught at night without cap and gown.
+The deficit in the university chest was made up at five shillings a
+head.
+
+One of the Vice-Chancellor's rules is that no undergraduate shall
+enter an Oxford "pub." Now the only restaurant in town, Queen's, is
+run in conjunction with a pub, and was once the favorite resort of all
+who were bent on breaking the monotony of an English Sunday. The
+Vice-Chancellor resolved to destroy this den of Sabbath-breaking, and
+the undergraduates resolved no less firmly to defend their stronghold.
+The result was a hand-to-hand fight with the bulldogs, which ended so
+triumphantly for the undergraduates that a dozen or more of them were
+sent down. In the articles of the peace that followed, it was
+stipulated, I was told, that so long as the restaurant was closed
+Sunday afternoons and nights, it should never suffer from the visit of
+proctor or bulldog. As a result, Queen's is a great scene of
+undergraduate foregatherings. The dinners are good enough and
+reasonably cheap; and as most excellent champagne is to be had at
+twelve shillings the bottle, the diners are not unlikely to get back
+to college a trifle buffy, in the Oxford phrase.
+
+By an interesting survival of mediæval custom, the Vice-Chancellor
+has supreme power over the morals of the town, and any citizen who
+transgresses his laws is visited with summary punishment. For a
+tradesman or publican to assist in breaking university rules means
+outlawry and ruin, and for certain offenses a citizen may be punished
+by imprisonment. Over the Oxford theatre the Vice-Chancellor's power
+is absolute. In my time he was much more solicitous that the
+undergraduate be kept from knowledge of the omnipresent woman with a
+past than that dramatic art should flourish, and forbade the town to
+more than one excellent play of the modern school of comedy that had
+been seen and discussed in London by the younger sisters of the
+undergraduates. The woman with a present is virtually absent.
+
+Time was when no Oxford play was quite successful unless the
+undergraduates assisted at its first night, though in a way very
+different from that which the term denotes in France. The assistance
+was of the kind so generously rendered in New York and Boston on the
+evening of an athletic contest. Even to-day, just for tradition's
+sake, the undergraduates sometimes make a row. A lot of B. N. C. men,
+as the clanny sons of Brazenose College call themselves, may insist
+that an opera stop while the troupe listen to one of their own
+excellent vocal performances; and I once saw a great sprinter, not
+unknown to Yale men, rise from his seat, face the audience, and,
+pointing with his thumb over his shoulder at the soubrette, announce
+impressively, "Do you know, I rather _like_ that girl!" The show is
+usually over just before eleven, and then occurs an amusing, if
+unseemly, scramble to get back to college before the hour strikes. A
+man who stays out after ten is fined threepence; after eleven the fine
+is sixpence. When all is said, why shouldn't one sprint for
+threepence?
+
+If you stay out of college after midnight, the dean makes a star
+chamber offense of it, fines you a "quid" or two, and like as not
+sends you down. This sounds a trifle worse than it is; for if you must
+be away, your absence can usually be arranged for. If you find
+yourself in the streets after twelve, you may rap on some friend's
+bedroom window and tell him of your plight through the iron grating.
+He will then spend the first half of the night in your bed and wash
+his hands in your bowl. With such evidence as this to support him, the
+scout is not apt, if sufficiently retained, to report a suspected
+absence. I have even known fellows to make their arrangements in
+advance and spend the night in town; but the ruse has its dangers,
+and the penalty is to be sent down for good and all.
+
+It is owing to such regulations as these that life in the English
+college has the name of being cloistral. Just how cloistral it is in
+spirit no one can know who has not taken part in a rag in the quad;
+and this is impossible to an outsider, for at midnight all visitors
+are required to leave, under a heavy penalty to their host.
+
+
+VI
+
+THE MIND OF THE COLLEGE
+
+Any jubilation is a rag; but the most interesting kind, though perhaps
+the least frequent, takes the direction of what we call hazing. It is
+seldom, however, as hazing has come to be with us, a wanton outbreak.
+It is a deliberate expression of public opinion, and is carried on
+sedately by the leading men of the college. The more I saw of it, the
+more deeply I came to respect it as an institution.
+
+In its simplest if rarest form it merely consists in smashing up a
+man's room. The only affair of this kind which I saw took place in the
+owner's absence; and when I animadverted on the fact, I was assured
+that it would have turned out much worse for the man's feelings if he
+had been present. He was a strapping big Rugbeian, who had come up
+with a "reputter," or reputation, as a football player, and had
+insisted on trying first off for the 'varsity fifteen. He had promptly
+been given the hoof for being slow and lazy, and when he condescended
+to try for the college fifteen, his services were speedily dispensed
+with for the same reason. As he still carried his head high, it was
+necessary to bring his shortcomings home to him in an unmistakable
+manner. Brutal as I thought the proceeding, and shameful to grown men,
+it did him good. He became a hard-working and lowly minded athlete,
+and prospered. I am not prepared to say that the effect in this
+particular instance did not justify the means.
+
+A series of judicial raggings was much more edifying. Having pulled
+their culprit out of bed after midnight, the upper classmen set him
+upon his window-seat in pyjamas, and with great solemnity appointed a
+judge, a counsel for the prosecution, and a counsel for the defense.
+Of the charges against him only one or two struck home, and even these
+were so mingled with the nonsense of the proceedings that their sting
+was more or less blunted. The man had been given over to his books to
+the neglect of his personal appearance. It was charged that in
+pretending to know his subjunctives he was ministering to the vanity
+of the dean, who had written a Latin grammar, and that by displaying
+familiarity with Hegel he was boot-licking the master, who was a
+recently imported Scotch philosopher. Then the vital question was
+raised as to the culprit's personal habits. Heaven defend him now
+from his legal defender! It was urged that as he was a student of
+Literæ Humaniores, he might be excused from an acquaintance with the
+scientific commodity known as H2O: one might ignore anything, in
+fact, if only one were interested in Literæ Humaniores. By such means
+as this the face of the college is kept bright and shining.
+
+Here is a round robin, addressed to the best of fellows, a member of
+the 'varsity shooting team and golf team. He was a Scotchman by birth
+and by profession, and even his schoolboy days at Eton had not
+divested him of a Highland gait.
+
+"Whereas, Thomas Rankeillor, Gent, of the University of Oxford, has,
+by means of his large feet, uncouth gait, and his unwieldy brogues,
+wantonly and with malice destroyed, mutilated, and otherwise injured
+the putting greens, tees, and golf course generally, the property of
+the Oxford University Golf Club, whereof he is a member, and
+
+"Whereas, 2, The said Thomas Rankeillor, etc., has by these large
+feet, uncouth gait, and unwieldy brogues aforesaid, raised
+embankments, groins, and other bunkers, hazards, and impediments,
+formed unnecessary roads, farm roads, bridle paths, and other roads,
+on the putting greens, tees, and golf course generally, aforesaid;
+excavated sundry and diverse reservoirs, tanks, ponds, conduits,
+sewers, channels, and other runnels, needlessly irrigating the putting
+greens, tees, and golf course generally aforesaid, and
+
+"Whereas, 3, The said Thomas Rankeillor, etc., has by those large
+feet, uncouth gait, and unwieldy brogues aforesaid, caused landslips,
+thus demolishing all natural hills, bunkers, and other excrescences,
+and all artificial hillocks, mounds, hedges, and other hazards,
+
+"Hereby we, the circumsigned, do request, petition, and otherwise
+entreat the aforesaid
+
+"THOMAS RANKEILLOR, GENT, OF THE UNIVERSITY OF OXFORD, to alter,
+transform, and otherwise modify his uncouth gait, carriage, and
+general mode of progression; to buy, purchase, or otherwise acquire
+boots, shoes, and all other understandings of reasonable size, weight,
+and material; and finally that he do cease from this time forward to
+wear, use, or in any way carry the aforesaid brogues.
+
+"Given forth this the 17th day of March, 1896."
+
+At times rougher means are employed. At Brazenose there happened to be
+two men by the same name, let us say, of Gaylor, one of whom had made
+himself agreeable to the college, while the other had decidedly not.
+One midnight a party of roisterers hauled the unpopular Gaylor out of
+his study, pulled off his bags, and dragged him by the heels a lap or
+two about the quad. This form of discipline has since been practiced
+in other colleges, and is called debagging. The popular Gaylor was
+ever afterward distinguished by the name of Asher, because, according
+to the Book of Judges, Asher abode in his breaches.
+
+Not dissimilar correctives may be employed, in extreme need, against
+those mightiest in authority. A favorite device is to screw the oak of
+an objectionable don. Mr. Andrew Lang, himself formerly a don at
+Merton, reports a conversation--can it have been a personal
+experience?--between a don standing inside a newly screwed oak and his
+scout, who was tendering sympathy from the staircase. "What _am_ I to
+do?" cried the don. "Mr. Muff, sir," suggested the scout, "when 'e's
+screwed up, sir, _'e_ sends for the blacksmith." At Christ Church,
+"The House," as it is familiarly called, much more direct and personal
+methods have been employed. Not many years ago a censor (whose office
+is that of the dean at other colleges) stirred up unusual ill-will
+among his wards. They pulled him from his bed, dragged him into Tom
+Quad,--Wolsey's Quad,--and threw him bodily among the venerable carp
+of the Mercury Pond. Then they gathered about in a circle, and, when
+he raised his head above the surface, thrust him under with their
+walking-sticks. Something like forty of them were sent down for this,
+and the censor went traveling for his health.
+
+The memory of this episode was still green when the Duke of
+Marlborough gave a coming of age ball at Blenheim Palace, and invited
+over literally hundreds of his Oxford friends. In other colleges the
+undergraduates were permitted to leave Oxford for the night, but at
+the House the censor stipulated that they be within the gates, as
+usual, by midnight. This would have meant a break-neck drive of eight
+miles after about fifteen minutes at the ball, and was far more
+exasperating to the young Britons than a straightforward refusal. That
+evening the dons sported their oaks, and carefully bolted themselves
+within. The night passed in so deep a silence that, for all they knew,
+the ghost of Wolsey might have been stalking in his cherished
+quadrangle, the glory of building which the Eighth Henry so
+unfeelingly appropriated. As morning dawned, the common-room gossips
+will tell you, the dons crawled furtively out of bed, and shot their
+bolts to find whether they had need of the blacksmith. Not a screw had
+been driven. The morning showed why. On the stately walls of Tom Quad
+was painted "Damn the Dons!" and again in capital letters, "Damn the
+Dons!" and a third time, in larger capitals, "Damn the Dons!" There
+were other inscriptions, less fit to relate; and stretching along one
+whole side of the quad, in huge characters, the finely antithetical
+sentence: "God bless the Duke of Marlborough." The doors of the dean's
+residence were smeared with red paint; and against a marble statue of
+the late Dean Liddell, the Greek lexicographer, a bottle of green ink
+had been smashed. Two hundred workmen, summoned from a neighboring
+building, labored two days with rice-root brushes and fuller's earth,
+but with so little effect that certain of the stones had to be
+replaced in the walls, and endless scrubbings failed to overcome the
+affinity between the ink and the literary Liddell. The marble statue
+has been replaced by one of plaster.
+
+Compared with the usual Oxford rag, the upsetting of Professor
+Silliman's statue in the Yale campus by means of a lasso dwindles into
+insignificance, and the painting of 'varsity stockings on John
+Harvard, which so scandalized the undergraduates that they repaired
+the damage by voluntary subscriptions, might be regarded as an act of
+filial piety.
+
+The more I learned of Oxford motives, the less anxious I was to
+censure the system of ragging. In an article I wrote after only a few
+months' stay, I spoke of it as boyish and undignified; and most
+Americans, I feel sure, would likewise hold up the hand of public
+horror. Yet I cannot be wholly thankful that we are not as they. To
+the undergraduates, ragging is a survival of the excellently efficient
+system of discipline in the public schools, where the older boys have
+charge of the manners and morals of the younger; and historically,
+like public school discipline, it is an inheritance from the
+prehistoric past. In the Middle Ages it was apparently the custom to
+hold the victim's nose literally to the grindstone. In the schools, to
+be sure, the Sixth Form take their duties with great sobriety of
+conscience--which is not altogether the case in college; but the
+difference of spirit is perhaps justifiable. For a properly authorized
+committee of big schoolboys to chastise a youngster who has
+transgressed is not unnatural, and the system that provides for it has
+proved successful for five centuries; but for men to adopt the same
+attitude towards a fellow only a year or two their junior would be
+preposterous. Horseplay is a necessary part of the game. The end in
+both is the same: it is to bring each individual under the influence
+of the traditions and standards of the institution of which he has
+elected to be a part. Just as the system of breakfasting freshmen is
+by no means as altruistic as it at first appears, the practice of
+ragging is by no means as brutal. It is as if the college said: We
+have admitted you and welcomed you, opening up the way to every avenue
+of enjoyment and profit, and it is for our common good, sir, that you
+be told of your shortcomings. The most diligent and distinguished
+scholar is not unlikely to be most in need of a pointed lesson in
+personal decorum; and the man who was not Asher may be thankful all
+his life for the bad quarter of an hour that taught him the difference
+between those who do and those who do not abide in their breaches.
+
+With regard to the dons, a similar case might be made. Any one who
+assumes an authority over grown men that is so nearly absolute should
+be held to strict honesty and justice of dealing. So far as I could
+learn, the Christ Church dons who were so severely dealt with were
+both unjust and insincere, and I came to sympathize in some measure
+with the undergraduates at the House, who were half humorously
+inclined to regard the forty outcasts as martyrs.
+
+This is not to argue that all American hazing is justifiable. In many
+cases, especially of late years, it has been as silly and brutal as
+the most puritanical moralists have declared. To steal the Louisburg
+Cross from above the door of the Harvard Library was vandalism if you
+wish--it was certainly a very stupid proceeding; and to celebrate a
+really notable athletic victory by mutilating the pedestal of the
+statue of John Harvard was not only stupid, but unworthy of a true
+sportsman. How much better to make an end with painting 'varsity
+stockings on the dear old boy's bronze legs, and leave the goody to
+wash them off next day. What I wish to point out is that where there
+is vigorous public spirit, it may be more efficiently expressed by
+hazing than by a very nor'easter of Puritan morality.
+
+A tradition of the late master of Balliol, Jowett, the great humanist,
+would seem to show that he held some such opinion. It was his custom
+in his declining years to walk after breakfast in the garden quad, and
+whenever there were evidences of a rag, even to the extent of broken
+windows, he would say cheerily to his _fidus Achates_, "Ah, Hardie,
+the mind of the college is still vigorous; it has been expressing
+itself." The best possible justification of the cloistral restrictions
+of English college life is the facility with which the mind of the
+college expresses itself. It is by no means fantastic to hint that the
+decline of well-considered hazing in American colleges has come step
+by step with the breaking up of the bonds of hospitality and
+comradeship that used to make them well-organized social communities.
+
+I have not come to this philosophy without deep experience. On one
+occasion after Hall, I was flown with such insolence against college
+restrictions that the _cheval-de-frise_ above the back gate seemed an
+affront to a freeborn American. Though the porter's gate was still
+open, it was imperatively necessary to scale that roller of iron
+spikes. I was no sooner astride of it than a mob of townspeople
+gathered without, and among them a palsied beggar, who bellowed out
+that he would hextricate me for 'arf a crown, sir. I have seldom been
+in a less gratifying position; and when I had clambered back into
+college, I ruefully recalled the explanation my tutor had given me of
+the iron spikes and bottle shards,--an explanation that at the time
+had shaken my sides with laughter at British absurdity. My tutor had
+said that if the fellows were allowed to rag each other in the open
+streets and smash the townspeople's windows, the matter would be sure
+to get into the papers and set the uninitiated parent against the
+universities. In effect, the iron spikes and the stumps of bottles
+are admirable, not so much because they keep the undergraduate in, as
+because they keep the public out; and since the public includes all
+people who wish to hextricate you for 'arf a crown, sir, my mind was
+in a way to be reduced to that British state of illogic in which I
+regarded only the effect.
+
+As a last resort I carefully sounded the undergraduates as to whether
+they would find use for greater liberty. They were not only content
+with their lot, but would, I found, resent any loosening of the
+restrictions. To give them the liberty of London at night or even of
+Oxford, they argued, would tend to break up the college as a social
+organization and thus to weaken it athletically; for at Oxford they
+understand what we sometimes do not, that a successful cultivation of
+sports goes hand in hand with good comradeship and mutual loyalty.
+
+The only question remaining was of the actual moral results of the
+semi-cloistral life. Such outbreaks of public opinion as I have
+described are at the worst exceptional; they are the last resort of
+outraged patience. The affair at Christ Church is unexampled in modern
+times. Many a man of the better sort goes through his four years at
+the university without either experiencing or witnessing undergraduate
+violence. As for drinking, in spite of the fact that wine and spirits
+are sold to undergraduates by the college at any and all times and in
+any and all quantities, there seemed to be less excessive indulgence
+than, for instance, at Harvard or at Yale. And the fact that what
+there was took place for the most part within the college walls was in
+many respects most fortunate. When fellows are turned loose for their
+jubilations amid the vices of a city, as is usually the case with us,
+the consequences to their general morality are sometimes the most
+hideous. In an English college the men to whom immorality seems
+inevitable--and such are to be found in all communities--have recourse
+to London. But as their expeditions take place in daylight and cold
+blood, and are, except at great risk, cut short when the last evening
+train leaves Paddington shortly after dinner, it is not possible to
+carry them off with that dazzling air of the man of the world that in
+America lures so many silly freshmen into dissipations for which they
+have no natural inclination. This little liberty is apparently of
+great value. The cloistral vice, which seems inevitable in the English
+public schools, is robbed of any shadow of palliation. A fellow who
+continues it is thought puerile, if nothing worse. When it exists, it
+is more likely to be the result of the intimate study of the ancient
+classics, and is then even more looked down upon by the robust Briton
+as effeminate or decadent. The subject, usually difficult or
+impossible to investigate, happened to be on the surface at the time
+of my residence because of the sensational trial of an Oxford graduate
+in London. I was satisfied that the general body of undergraduates was
+quite free of contamination. On the whole, I should say that the
+restrictions of college life in England are far less dangerous than
+the absolute freedom of life in an American college. Under our system
+a few men profit greatly; they leave college experienced in the ways
+of the world and at the same time thoroughly masters of themselves.
+But it is a strong man--perhaps a blasphemous one--that would ask to
+be led into temptation. The best system of college residence, I take
+it, is that which develops thoroughly and spontaneously the normal
+social instincts, and at the same time leaves men free moral agents.
+In a rightly constituted fellow, in fact, the normal social life
+constitutes the only real freedom. Those frowning college walls,
+which we are disposed to regard as instruments of pedagogical tyranny,
+are the means of nourishing the normal social life, and are thus in
+effect the bulwarks of a freer system than is known to American
+universities.
+
+
+VII
+
+CLUB LIFE IN THE COLLEGE
+
+As a place for the general purposes of residence--eating and sleeping,
+work and play--the English college is clearly quite as well organized
+and equipped as any of the societies, clubs, or fraternities of an
+American university. And whereas these are in their very nature small
+and exclusive, the college is ample in size and is consciously and
+effectively inclusive; the very fact of living in it insures a
+well-ordered life and abundant opportunity for making friends. Yet
+within this democratic college one finds all sorts of clubs and
+societies, except those whose main purpose is residential, and these
+are obviously not necessary.
+
+By far the larger proportion of the clubs are formed to promote the
+recognized undergraduate activities. No college is without athletic
+and debating clubs, and there are musical and literary clubs almost
+everywhere. Membership in all of them is little more than a formal
+expression of the fact that a man desires to row, play cricket or
+football, to debate, read Shakespeare, or play the fiddle. Yet they
+are all conducted with a degree of social amenity that to an American
+is as surprising as it is delightful.
+
+The only distinctively social feature of the athletic clubs is the
+wine, which is given to celebrate the close of a successful season. A
+boating wine I remember was held in a severe and sombre old hall,
+built before Columbus sailed the ocean blue. It was presided over by a
+knot of the dons, ancient oarsmen, whose hearts were still in the
+sport. They sat on the dais, like the family of a baron of the Middle
+Ages, while the undergraduates sat about the tables like faithful
+retainers. All the sportsmen of the college were invited, and everybody
+made as much noise as he could, especially one of the boating men, who
+went to the piano and banged out a song of triumph he had written,
+while we all tumbled into the chorus. One of the fellows--I have
+always taken it as a compliment to my presence--improvised a cheer
+after the manner not unknown in America, which was given with much
+friendly laughter. "Quite jolly, isn't it!" he remarked, with the
+pride of authorship, "and almost as striking as your cry of 'Quack,
+quack, quack!'" He had heard the Yale men give their adaptation of the
+frog chorus at the athletic games between Oxford and Yale. About
+midnight the college butler passed a loving cup of mulled wine of a
+spicy smoothness to fill your veins with liquid joy. The recipe, I was
+told, had been handed down by the butlers of the college since the
+fourteenth century, being older than the hall in which we were
+drinking. I have no doubt it was the cordial Chaucer calls Ypocras,
+which seems to have brought joy to his warm old heart. After the
+loving cup had gone about, the fellows cleared away the tables and
+danced a stag. At this stage of the game the dons discreetly faded
+away, and the wine resolved itself into a good-natured rag in the quad
+that was ended only by daylight and the dean. I have seen many feasts
+to celebrate athletic victory and the breaking of training, but none
+as homelike and pleasant all through as the wine of an Oxford college.
+
+The debating clubs have of necessity a distinct social element, for
+where there is much talk, food and drink will always be found; and
+with the social element there is apt to be some little exclusiveness.
+In Balliol there are three debating clubs, and they are of course in
+some sense rivals. Like the fraternities in an American college, they
+look over the freshmen each year pretty closely; and the freshmen in
+turn weigh the clubs. One freshman gave his verdict as follows: "The
+fellows in A are dull, and bathe; the fellows in B are clever, and
+sometimes bathe; the fellows in C are supposed to be clever." The
+saying is not altogether a pleasant one, but will serve to indicate
+the range of selection of members. In spite of social distinctions,
+few fellows need be excluded who care to debate or are clubable in
+spirit. As a system, the clubs are inclusive rather than exclusive.
+
+Each club convenes at regular intervals, usually in the rooms of such
+members as volunteer to be hosts. The hour of meeting is directly
+after dinner, and while the men gather and settle down to the business
+of the evening, coffee, port, and tobacco are provided out of the club
+treasury. The debates are supposed to be carried on according to the
+strictest parliamentary law, and the man who transgresses is subject
+to a sharp rebuff. On one occasion, when the question of paying
+members of Parliament was up, one speaker gravely argued that the
+United States Senate was filled with politicians who were attracted by
+the salary. Though I had already spoken, I got up to protest. The
+chairman sat me down with the greatest severity--amid a broad and
+general smile. I had neglected, I suppose, the parliamentary remark
+that I arose to a point of fact. A member's redress in such instances
+is to rag the president at the time when, according to custom,
+interpellations are in order; and as a rule he avails himself of this
+opportunity without mercy. On one occasion, a fellow got up in the
+strictest parliamentary manner and asked the president--a famous shot
+on the moors--whether it was true, as reported, that on the occasion
+when he lately fell over a fence three wrens and a chipping sparrow
+fell out of his game-bag. Such ragging as the chair administers and
+receives may not aid greatly in rational debate, but it certainly has
+its value as a preparation for the shifts and formalities of
+parliamentary life. It is the first duty of a chairman, even the
+president of the Oxford Union, to meet his ragging with cheerfulness
+and a ready reply, and the first duty of all debaters is to be
+interesting as well as convincing. In American college debating there
+is little of such humor and none of such levity. The speakers are
+drafted to sustain or to oppose a position, often without much
+reference to their convictions, and are supposed to do so to the
+uttermost. The training is no doubt a good one, for life is largely
+partisan; but a man's success in the world depends almost as much on
+his tact and good sense as on his strenuosity.
+
+The Englishman's advantage in address is sometimes offset by
+deficiencies of information. In a debate on Home Rule, one argument
+ran somewhat as follows: It is asserted that the Irish are
+irresponsible and lacking in the sense of administrative justice. To
+refute this statement, I have only to point to America, to the great
+metropolis of New York. There, as is well known, politics are
+exclusively in the hands of Irish citizens, who, denied the right of
+self-government--as the American colonies were denied similar freedom,
+I need scarcely point out with what disastrous results to the
+empire--the Irish immigrants in America, I say, are evincing their
+true genius for statesmanship in their splendid organization known as
+Tammany Hall.
+
+In the better clubs, the debates are often well prepared and cogent. I
+remember with particular gratitude a discussion as to whether the
+English love of comfort was not an evidence of softening morals. The
+discussion was opened with a paper by a young Scotchman of family and
+fortune. More than any other man I met he had realized the sweetness
+and pleasantness of Oxford, and all the delights of the senses and of
+the mind that surround the fellows there; and the result of it was, as
+it has so often been with such men, a craving for the extreme opposite
+of all he had known, for moral earnestness and austerity. What right,
+he questioned, had one to buy a book which, with ever so little more
+effort, he might read in the Bodleian, while all the poor of England
+are uneducated? And was it manly or in any way proper to spend so much
+time and interest on things that are merely agreeable? The sense of
+the meeting seemed to be that comfort in daily life is an evil only
+when it becomes an end in itself, a self-indulgence; and that a
+certain amount of it is necessary to fortify one for the most
+strenuous and earnest work in the world. I think that debate made us
+realize, as we never could have realized without it, to what serious
+end England makes the ways of her young men so pleasant; yet the more
+deeply I lived into the life of the university, the more deeply I
+questioned, as the young Scotchman did, whether the line between the
+amenities and the austerities was not somewhat laxly drawn.
+
+The only purely social club, and therefore the only really exclusive
+one, is the wine club. In Balliol there is a college rule against wine
+clubs, which seems to be due partly to a feeling against social
+exclusiveness, and partly perhaps to a distrust of purely convivial
+gatherings. The purpose of a wine club was served quite as well,
+however, by an organization that was ostensibly for debating. The
+notices of meetings were usually a parody of the notices of the
+meetings of genuine debating clubs, and the chief business of the
+secretary was to concoct them in pleasing variety. For instance, it
+would be _Resolved_, that this House looks with disfavor upon the
+gradual introduction of a continental sabbath into England; or
+_Resolved_, that this House looks with marked disfavor upon the
+assumption that total abstinence is a form of intemperance. On the
+evening when the House was defending total abstinence, our host's
+furniture and tea-things suffered some damage, and as I was in
+training, I found it advisable to leave early. As I slipped out, the
+president of the club, a young nobleman, who was himself at the time
+in training for the 'varsity trial eights, called me back and said
+with marked sobriety that he had just thought of something. "You are
+in for the mile run, aren't you? And in America you have always run
+the half. Well, then, if you find the distance too long for you, just
+don't mind at all about the first part of the race, but when you get
+to the last part, run as you run a half mile. Do it in two minutes,
+and you can't help beating 'em." He bade me good-night with a grave
+and authoritative shake of the hand. If he recalled his happy thought
+next morning, he was unable to avail himself of it, for I grieve to
+say that in the 'varsity trial race, which came only a few days
+later, he missed his blue by going badly to pieces on the finish.
+
+The meeting at which this occurred was exceptional. For the most part
+the fellows were moderate enough, and at times I suspected the wine
+club of being dull. Certainly, we had no such fun as at the more
+general jubilations--a rag in the quad or a boating wine. I doubt if
+any one would have cared so very much to belong to the club if it had
+not afforded the only badge of social distinction in college, and if
+this had not happened to be an unusually pretty hatband. However
+successful a wine club may be, moreover, it is of far less consequence
+than similar clubs in America. In the first place, since there are one
+or more of them in each of the twenty colleges, the number of men who
+belong to them is far greater relatively, which of course means far
+less exclusion. In the second place, and this is more important, the
+fellows who do not belong are still able to enjoy the life which is
+common to all members of the college. In general, the social walls of
+Oxford are like the material ones. Far from being the means of undue
+exclusion and of the suppression of public feeling, they are the live
+tissues in which the vital functions of the place are performed.
+
+Until well along in the nineteenth century, this life in the college
+was about the only life; but of late years the university has begun to
+feel its unity more strongly, and in social and intellectual life, as
+in athletics, it has become for the first time since the Middle Ages
+an organic whole.
+
+
+VIII
+
+SOCIAL LIFE IN THE UNIVERSITY
+
+The first formal organization of the life of the university was, as
+its name records, the Oxford Union, an institution of peculiar
+interest to Americans because our universities, though starting from a
+point diametrically opposite, have arrived at a state of social
+disorganization no less pronounced than that which the Union was
+intended to remedy. Harvard, which has progressed farthest along the
+path of social expansion and disintegration, has already made a
+conscious effort to imitate the Union. The adamantine spirit of Yale
+is shaken by the problems of the Sophomore societies; and it will not
+be many decades before other universities will be in a similar
+predicament. It will not be amiss, therefore, to consider what the
+Oxford Union has been and is. If Americans have not clearly understood
+it even when attempting to imitate it, one should at least remember
+that it would not be easy for an Oxford man to explain it thoroughly.
+
+The Union was founded in 1823, and was primarily for debating. In
+fact, it was the only university debating society. Its members were
+carefully selected for their ability in discoursing on the questions
+of the day. In its debates Gladstone, Lord Rosebery, the Marquis of
+Salisbury, and countless other English statesmen of recent times got
+their first parliamentary training. Its present fame in England is
+largely based upon this fact; but its character has been
+metamorphosed. Early in its history it developed social features; and
+though it was still exclusive in membership, little by little men of
+all kinds were taken in. At this stage of its development, the Union
+was not unlike those vast political clubs in London in which any and
+all principles are subordinated to the kitchen and the wine cellar.
+The debates, though still of first-rate quality, became more and more
+an incident; the club was chiefly remarkable as the epitome of all the
+best elements of Oxford life. The library was filled with men reading
+or working at special hobbies; the reading and smoking rooms were
+crowded; the lawn was daily thronged with undergraduates gossiping
+over a cup of tea; the telegram board, the shrine of embryo
+politicians watching for the results from a general election, was apt
+to be profaned by sporting men scanning it for the winners of the
+Derby or the Ascot. In a word, the Union held the elect of Oxford,
+intellectual, social, and sporting. This is the Union remembered by
+the older graduates, and except for a single feature, namely, that it
+was still exclusive, this is the Union that has inspired the
+projectors of the Harvard Union.
+
+The Oxford man of the later day knows all too well that this Union is
+no more. Some years ago, responding to a democratic impulse that has
+been very strong of late at Oxford, the Union threw down all barriers;
+virtually any man nowadays may join it, and its members number well
+beyond a thousand. The result is not a social millennium. The very
+feature of inclusiveness that is to be most prominent in the Union at
+Harvard destroyed the character of the Oxford Union as a
+representative body. To the casual observer it still looks much as it
+did a dozen years ago; but its glory has departed. In any real sense
+of the word it is a Union no more. The men who used to give it
+character are to be found in smaller clubs, very much like the clubs
+of an American university.
+
+The small university debating clubs are the Russell, the Palmerston,
+the Canning, and the Chatham, each of which stands for some special
+stripe of political thought, and each of which has a special color
+which--sure sign of the pride of exclusiveness--it wears in hatbands.
+The clubs meet periodically--often weekly--in the rooms of members.
+Sometimes a paper is read which is followed by an informal discussion;
+but the usual exercise is a formal debate. Time was when the best
+debates came off at the Union, and writers of leading articles in
+London papers even now look to it as a political weather-vane. The
+debates there are still earnest and sometimes brilliant, and to have
+presided over them is a distinction of value in after life; but as far
+as I could gather, their prestige is falling before the smaller
+debating clubs. The main interest at the Union appeared to centre in
+the interpellation of the president, which is carried on much as in
+the House of Commons, though with this difference, that, following the
+immemorial custom, it is turned into ragging. When this is over, the
+major part of the audience clears out to the smoking and reading
+rooms. In the smaller clubs the exercises are not only serious,
+but--in spite of the preliminary ragging, which no function at Oxford
+may flourish without--they are taken seriously. The clubs really
+include the best forensic ability of Oxford. At the end of each year
+they give dinners, at which new and old members gather, while some
+prominent politician from Westminster holds forth on the question of
+the hour. In a word, these clubs, collectively, are what the Union
+once was--the training school of British statesmen.
+
+The university social clubs are of a newness that shocks even an
+American; but it would not be quite just to account for the fact by
+regarding them as mere offshoots, like the debating clubs, of a parent
+Union. Until the nineteenth century, there really was no university at
+Oxford, at least in modern times. The colleges were quite independent
+of one another socially and in athletics, and each of them provided
+all the necessary instruction for its members. The social clubs which
+now admit members from the university at large began life as wine
+clubs of separate colleges, and even to-day the influence of the
+parent college is apt to predominate. The noteworthy fact is that in
+proportion as the social prestige of the Union has declined, these
+college wine clubs, like the small debating clubs, have gained
+character and prestige.
+
+The oldest of these is the Bullingdon, which is not quite as old, I
+gathered, as the Institute of 1770 at Harvard, and, considered as a
+university organization, it is of course much younger. It was
+originally the Christ Church wine club, and to-day it is dominated by
+the sporting element of Christ Church, which is the most aristocratic
+of Oxford colleges. In former years, it is said, the club had kennels
+at Bullingdon, and held periodic hunts there; and it is still largely
+composed of hunting men. To-day it justifies its name mainly by having
+an annual dinner beneath the heavy rafters of a mediæval barn at
+Bullingdon. On these, as on other state occasions, the members wear a
+distinctive costume--no doubt a tradition from the time when men
+generally wore colors--which consists of a blue evening coat with
+white facings and brass buttons, a canary waistcoat, and a blue tie.
+This uniform is no doubt found in more aristocratic wardrobes than any
+other Oxford trophy. The influence of the Bullingdon is indirectly to
+discourage athletics, which it regards as unaristocratic and
+incompatible with conviviality; so that Christ Church, though the
+largest of Oxford colleges and one of the wealthiest, is of secondary
+importance in sports. For this reason the Bullingdon has suffered a
+partial eclipse, for the middle-class spirit which is invading Oxford
+has given athletic sports the precedence over hunting, while expensive
+living and mere social exclusiveness are less the vogue. By a curious
+analogy, one of the oldest and most exclusive of the clubs at Harvard
+is similarly out of sympathy with the athletic spirit.
+
+Another old and prominent college wine club that has come to elect
+members from without is the Phoenix of Brazenose, the uniform of
+which is perhaps more beautiful than the Bullingdon uniform,
+consisting of a peculiar dark wine-colored coat, brass buttons, and a
+light buff waistcoat. In general, the college wine clubs are more or
+less taking on a university character. The Annandale Club of Balliol,
+for instance, has frequent guests from outside, and often elects them
+to membership out of compliment. At the formal wines the members have
+the privilege of inviting outside guests.
+
+The most popular and representative Oxford club is Vincent's, which
+owes its prominence to the fact that it expresses the enthusiasm of
+modern Oxford for athletics. It was founded only a third of a century
+ago, but it must be remembered that inter-varsity boat races did not
+become usual until 1839, nor a fixture until 1856; that the first
+inter-varsity athletic meeting came in 1864, and the first
+inter-varsity football game as late as 1873. Vincent's was originally
+composed largely of men from University College, which was at that
+time a leader in sports; but later it elected many men from Brazenose,
+then in the ascendant. When Brazenose became more prominent in
+athletics, it gained a controlling influence in Vincent's; and when
+it declined, as it lately did, the leadership passed on. The name
+Vincent's came from a printer's shop, above which the club had its
+rooms. Any second year man is eligible; in fact, until a few years
+ago, freshmen were often taken in. The limit of members is ninety, but
+as the club is always a dozen or so short of this, no good fellow is
+excluded for lack of a place. When a man is proposed, his name is
+written in a book, in which space is left for friends in the club to
+write their names in approval. After this, elections are in the hands
+of a committee. Like all Oxford clubs, Vincent's will always, I
+suppose, lean towards men of some special college or group of
+colleges; yet it is careful to elect all clubable blues, and, in point
+of fact, is representative of the university at large, as, for
+instance, the Hasty Pudding Club at Harvard, or the senior societies
+at Yale, to which, on the whole, it most nearly corresponds.
+
+The most democratic, as well as one of the most recent of the more
+purely social clubs, is the Gridiron. It is a dining rather than a
+social club, and one may invite to his board as many guests who are
+not members as he chooses. Any good fellow is eligible, though here,
+again, a man in one of the less known colleges might fail to get in
+from lack of acquaintances on the election committee.
+
+The Union has long lost prestige before this development of small
+exclusive clubs. Politically, socially, and even in that most
+essential department, the kitchen, it holds a second place. If you ask
+men of the kind that used to give it its character why they never go
+there, they will tell you, in the most considerate phrase, how the
+pressure of other undergraduate affairs is so great that they have not
+yet found time; and this is quite true. They may add that next year
+they intend to make the time, for they believe that one should know
+all kinds of men at Oxford; and they are quite sincere. But next year
+they are more preoccupied than ever. If Oxford is united socially, it
+is not because of the Oxford Union.
+
+In addition to the clubs which are mainly social, there is the usual
+variety of special organizations. These, as a rule, are of recent
+growth. The Musical Union has frequent meetings for practice, and
+gives at least one concert a year. The Dramatic Society, the O.U.D.S.,
+as it is popularly called, will be seen to be a very portentous
+organization. In America, college men give comic operas and
+burlesques, usually writing both the book and the music themselves;
+and when they do, there is apt to be a Donnybrook Fair for vulnerable
+heads in the faculty. So well is musical nonsense adapted to the
+calibre of the undergraduate mind that college plays sometimes find
+their way to the professional stage, and to no small general favor. At
+Oxford the Vice-Chancellor, who is a law to himself and to the
+university, has decreed that there shall be no fun and nonsense. If
+the absurdities of donnishness are all too fair a mark for the
+undergraduate wit, the Vice-Chancellor has found a very serviceable
+scapegoat. He permits the undergraduates to present the plays of
+Shakespeare. Surely Shakespeare can stand the racket. The aim of the
+O.U.D.S. seems to be to get as many blues as possible into the cast
+of a Shakespearean production, with the idea, perhaps, of giving
+Oxford its full money's worth. I remember well the sensation made by
+the most famous of all university athletes,--a "quadruple blue," who
+played on four university teams, was captain of three of them, and
+held one world's record. The play was "The Merchant of Venice," and
+the athlete in question was the swarthy Prince of Morocco. Upon
+opening the golden casket his powers of elocution rose to unexpected
+heights. Fellows went again and again to hear him cry, "O hell! what
+have we here?" In one way, however, the performances of the O.U.D.S.
+are really noteworthy. Not even the crudest acting can entirely
+disguise the influences of birth and environment; and few
+Shakespearean actors have as fine a natural carriage as those
+companies of trained athletes. For the first time, perhaps, on any
+stage, the ancient Roman honor more or less appeared in Antonio, and
+there were really two gentlemen in Verona. For this reason--or, what
+is more likely, merely because the plays are given by Oxford men--the
+leading dramatic critics of London run up every year for the O.U.D.S.
+performance, and talk learnedly about it in their dignified
+periodicals. Both the musical and the dramatic societies have an
+increasing social element, and the dramatic society has a house of its
+own.
+
+Of at least one association I happened upon, I know of no American
+parallel. One Sunday afternoon, a lot of fellows who had been lunching
+each other in academic peace were routed from college by a Salvation
+Army gathering that was sending up the discordant notes of puritanical
+piety just outside the walls. In the street near by we came upon a
+quiet party of undergraduates in cap and gown. They were standing in a
+circle, at the foot of the Martyr's Memorial, and were alternately
+singing hymns and exhorting the townspeople who gathered about. Their
+faces were earnest and simple, their attitude erect. If they were
+conscious of doing an unusual thing, they did not show it. I don't
+remember that they moved any of us to repent the pleasantness of our
+ways, but I know that they filled the most careless of us with a very
+definite admiration. One of the fellows said that he thought them
+mighty plucky, and that they had the stuff at least out of which
+sportsmen are made. The phrase is peculiarly British, but in the
+undergraduate vernacular there is no higher epithet of praise. In
+America there are slumming societies and total abstinence leagues; but
+I never knew any body of men who had the courage to stand up in the
+highway and preach their gospel to passers-by.
+
+
+IX
+
+THE COLLEGE AND THE UNIVERSITY
+
+The distinctive feature of the social organization of Oxford life is
+said to be the colleges. Fifty years ago the remark held good, but
+to-day it requires an extension. The distinctive feature is the
+duality of the social organization: a man who enters fully into
+undergraduate affairs takes part both in the life of the college and
+in the life of the university. The life of the college, in so far as
+it is wholesome, is open to all newcomers; it is so organized as to
+exert powerfully upon them the force of its best influences and
+traditions, and is thus in the highest degree inclusive. The life of
+the university, in so far as it is vigorous, is in the main open only
+to those who bring to it special gifts and abilities, and is therefore
+necessarily exclusive. In college, one freely enjoys all that is
+fundamental in the life of a young man--a pleasant place to sleep in
+and to dine in, pleasant fellows with whom to work and to play. In the
+university, one finds scope for his special capacities in conviviality
+or in things of the mind. More than any other institution, the
+English university thus mirrors the conditions of social life in the
+world at large, in which one is primarily a member of his family, and
+takes part in the life of the outside community in proportion as his
+abilities lead him.
+
+The happiest thing about all this is that it affords the freest
+possible interplay of social forces. As soon as a newcomer gains
+distinction, as he does at once if he has the capacity, he is noticed
+by the leading men of the college, and is thus in a way to be taken
+into the life of the university. From the college breakfast it is only
+a step to the Gridiron, from the college eight to Vincent's, and from
+the debating society to the Chatham or the Canning. These, like all
+undergraduate clubs, are in yearly need of new members, and the older
+men in college are only too glad to urge the just claims of the
+younger for good-fellowship sake, and for the general credit of their
+institution.
+
+Even when a fellow has received all the university has to offer, he is
+still amenable to the duality of Oxford life. In American
+institutions, in proportion as a man is happily clubbed, he is by the
+very nature of the social organization withdrawn from his college
+mates; but at Oxford he still dines in Hall, holds forth at the
+college debating society, plays on the college teams, and, until his
+final year, he lives within the college walls. First, last, and always
+his general life is bound up with that of the college.
+
+The prominent men thus become a medium by which every undergraduate is
+brought in touch with the life of the university. The news of the
+athletic world is reported at Vincent's over afternoon tea; and at
+dinner time the men who have discussed it there relate it to their
+mates in the halls of a dozen colleges. A celebrated debater brings
+the news of the Union or of the smaller clubs; and whatever a man's
+affiliations in the university, he can scarcely help bringing the
+report of them back with him. In an incredibly short time all
+undergraduate news, and the judgments upon it of those best qualified
+to judge, ramify the college; and men who seldom stir beyond its walls
+are brought closely in touch with the innermost spirit of the
+university life. Here, again, those forbidding walls make possible a
+freedom of social interplay which is unknown in America. The real
+union of Oxford, social, athletic, and intellectual, is quite apart
+from the so-called Oxford Union; it results from the nice adjustment
+between the general residential life of the colleges and the
+specialized activities of the university.
+
+The immediate effect of this union is the humble one of making the
+present life of the undergraduate convenient and enjoyable; but its
+ultimate effect is a matter of no little importance. Every
+undergraduate, in proportion to his susceptibilities and capacities,
+comes under the influence of the social and intellectual traditions of
+Oxford, which are the traditions of centuries of the best English life.
+In Canada and Australia, South Africa and India, you will find the old
+Oxonian wearing the hatband, perhaps faded and weather-stained, that
+at Oxford denoted the thing he was most proud to stand for; and
+wherever you find him, you will find also the manners and standards of
+the university, which are quite as definite a part of him, though
+perhaps less conspicuous. Without a large body of men animated by such
+traditions, it is no exaggeration to say that it would not have been
+possible to build up the British empire. If the people of the United
+States are to bear creditably the responsibilities to civilization
+that have lately fallen to them, or have been assumed, there is urgent
+need for institutions that shall similarly impose upon our young men
+the best traditions and influences of American life.
+
+
+
+
+II
+
+OXFORD OUT OF DOORS
+
+
+I
+
+SLACKING ON THE ISIS AND THE CHERWELL
+
+The dual development of college and university, with all its organic
+coördinations, exists also in the sports of Oxford. The root and trunk
+of the athletic spirit lies in the colleges, though its highest
+development is found in university teams. To an American, this
+athletic life of the college will be found of especial interest, for
+it is the basis of the peculiar wholesomeness and moderation of Oxford
+sports. If the English take their pleasures sadly, as they have been
+charged with doing ever since Froissart hit upon the happy phrase,
+they are not so black a pot but that they are able to call us blacker;
+in the light of international contests, they have marveled at the
+intensity with which our sportsmen pursue the main chance. The
+difference here has a far deeper interest than the critic of boating
+or track athletics often realizes. Like the songs of a nation, its
+sports have a definite relation to its welfare: one is tempted to say,
+let me rule the games of my countrymen and who will may frame their
+laws. At least, I hope to be pardoned if I speak with some
+particularity of the out-of-door life, and neglect the lofty theme of
+inter-varsity contests for the humbler pursuits of the common or
+garden undergraduate.
+
+The origin of the boating spirit is no doubt what the Oxonian calls
+slacking, for one has to learn to paddle in a boat before he can row
+to advantage; and in point of fact the bumping races are supposed to
+have originated among parties of slackers returning at evening from up
+the river. If I were to try to define what a slacker is, I suppose you
+could answer that all Oxford men are slackers; but there are depths
+beneath depths of _far niente_. The true slacker avoids the worry and
+excitement of breakfast parties and three-day cricket matches, and
+conserves his energies by floating and smoking for hours at a time in
+his favorite craft on the Isis and the Cherwell--or "Char," as the
+university insists on calling it. He is a day-dreamer of day-dreamers;
+and despised as he is by the more strenuous Oxford men, who yet stand
+in fear of the fascination of his vices, he is as restful a figure to
+an American as a negro basking on a cotton-wharf, and as appealing as
+a beggar steeped in Italian sunlight. Merely to think of his
+uninterrupted calm and his insatiable appetite for doing nothing is a
+rest to occidental nerves; and though one may never be a roustabout
+and loaf on a cotton-wharf, one may at any time go to Oxford and play
+through a summer's day at slacking.
+
+Before you come out, you must make the acquaintance of the O.U.H.S.--that
+is, the University Humane Society. In the winter, when there is
+skating, the Humane Society man stands by the danger spot with a
+life-buoy and a rope; and in the summer, when the streams swarm with
+pleasure-craft, he wanders everywhere, pulling slackers out of the
+Isis and the Char. In view of the fact that, metaphorically speaking
+at least, you can shake hands with your neighbors across either of
+these streams, the Humane Society man is not without his humors.
+
+You may get yourself a tub or a working-boat or a wherry, a rob-roy or
+a dinghy, for every craft that floats is known on the Thames; but the
+favorite craft are the Canadian canoe and the punt. The canoe you will
+be familiar with, but your ideas of a punt are probably derived from a
+farm-built craft you have poled about American duck-marshes--which
+bears about the same relationship to this slender, half-decked cedar
+beauty that a canal-boat bears to a racing-shell.
+
+During your first perilous lessons in punting, you will probably be
+in apprehension of ducking your mentor, who is lounging among the
+cushions in the bow. But you cannot upset the punt any more than you
+can discompose the Englishman; the punt simply upsets you without
+seeming to be aware of it. And when you crawl dripping up the bank,
+consoled only by the fact that the Humane Society man was not at hand
+with his boat-hook to pull you out by the seat of the trousers, your
+mentor will gravely explain how you made your mistake. Instead of
+bracing your feet firmly on the bottom and pushing with the pole, you
+were leaning on the pole and pushing with your feet. When the pole
+stuck in the clay bottom, of course it pulled you out of the boat.
+
+Steering is a matter of long practice. When you want to throw the bow
+to the left, you have only to pry the stern over to the right as you
+are pulling the pole out of the water. To throw the bow to the right,
+ground the pole a foot or so wide of the boat, and then lean over and
+pull the boat up to it. That is not so easy, but you will learn the
+wrist motion in time. When all this comes like second nature, you will
+feel that you have become a part of the punt, or rather that the punt
+has taken life and become a part of you.
+
+  [Illustration: A RACING PUNT AND PUNTER]
+
+A particular beauty of punting is that, more than any other sport,
+it brings you into personal contact, so to speak, with the landscape.
+In a few days you will know every inch of the bottom of the Char, some
+of it perhaps by more intimate experience than you desire. Over there,
+on the outer curve of the bend, the longest pole will not touch
+bottom. Fight shy of that place. Just beyond here, in the narrows, the
+water is so shallow that you can get the whole length of your body
+into every sweep. As for the shrubbery on the bank, you will soon
+learn these hawthorns, if only to avoid barging into them. And the
+Magdalen chestnut, which spreads its shade so beautifully above the
+water just beyond, becomes quite familiar when its low-reaching
+branches have once caught the top of your pole and torn it from your
+hands.
+
+The slackers you see tied up to the bank on both sides of the Char are
+always here after luncheon. An hour later their craft will be as thick
+as money-bugs on the water, and the joys of the slackers will be at
+height. You won't, as a rule, detect happiness in their faces, but it
+is always obvious in the name of the craft. One man calls his canoe
+"Vix Satis," which is the mark the university examining board uses to
+signify that a man's examination paper is a failure. Another has
+"P.T.O." on his bows--the "Please Turn Over" which an Englishman places
+at the bottom of a card where we say "Over." Still another calls his
+canoe the "Non-conformist Conscience"--which, as you are expected to
+remark, is very easily upset. All this makes the slacker even happier
+than if he were so un-English as to smile his pleasure, for he has a
+joke ready-made on his bow, where there is no risk of any one's not
+seeing it.
+
+These pollard willows that line the bank are not expected to delight
+your eye at first sight, but as you see them day after day, they grow
+on you like the beauty of the bull-terrier pup that looks at you over
+the gunwale of the boat tied beneath them. They have been topped to
+make their roots strike deeper and wider into the soil, so that when
+the freshets come in the spring the banks will stand firm. The idea
+came some centuries ago from Holland, but has been so thoroughly
+Englished that the university, and, indeed, all England, would
+scarcely be itself without its pollard willows. And though the trees
+are not in themselves graceful, they make a large part of the beauty
+of the river scenery. The sun is never so golden as up there among
+their quivering leaves, and no shadow is so deep as that in the water
+at their feet.
+
+The bar of foam ahead of us is the overflow from the lasher--that is
+to say, from the still water above the weir. The word "lasher" is
+obsolete almost everywhere else in England, and even to the Oxford
+mind it describes the lashing overflow rather than the _lache_ or
+_slack_ water above. When we "shoot the lasher," as the phrase goes,
+you will get a hint as to why the obsolete term still clings to this
+weir. Those fellows beyond who have tied up three deep to the bank are
+waiting to see us get ducked; but it is just as easy to shoot the
+lasher as to upset in it; and with that swarm of slackers watching, it
+makes a difference which you do. We have only to get up a fair pace
+and run into it on a diagonal. The lashing torrent will catch our
+bows, but we shall be half over before it sweeps them quite around;
+and then it will catch the stern in turn, and whirl the bow back into
+the proper direction. A sudden lurching of the bow, the roaring of a
+torrent beneath, a dash of spray--and we are in still water again.
+
+In order to reach the inn at Marston by four we must pole on. If we
+were true slackers, to be sure, we should have brought a spirit lamp
+and a basket of tea, and tied up in the first convenient nook on the
+bank; but these are heights of slacking to which the novice cannot
+aspire. Just beyond here we shall have to give the Thames Conservancy
+man threepence to roll the punt around a weir. If there were ladies
+with us, we should have to let them walk a quarter of a mile on shore,
+for just above is Parson's Pleasure, the university bathing-hole; and
+these men, who would not let the Yale and the Cornell athletes appear
+in sleeveless "zephyrs," plunge into a frequented waterway without any
+zephyrs at all.
+
+Above Parson's Pleasure we emerge from Mesopotamia--as the pretty
+river bottom is called in which the Char divides into several
+channels--and come in sight of the 'varsity cricket-ground. There is a
+game on against a picked eleven from the Marylebone Club; and every
+few minutes, if we waited, we might see the statuesque figures in
+white flannel suddenly dash after a ball or trot back and forth
+between the wickets. Few slackers have had energy to get beyond this
+point; and as we pole among the meadows, the cuckoo's homely voice
+emphasizes the solitude, singing the same two notes it sang to
+Shakespeare--and to Chaucer before him, for the matter of that.
+
+At Marston, having ordered tea of the red-cheeked housewife, it is
+well to ask the innkeeper for credit. He is a Parisian, whose
+sociological principles, it is said, were the cause of his venturing
+across the Channel--in Paris, a man will even go as far as that for
+his opinions; and while his cheery English spouse, attended by troops
+of his red-cheeked boys, brings out the thin buttered bread, he will
+revile you. What business have you to ask an honest yeoman to lend you
+money? If he were to go down to Oxford and ask the first gentleman he
+met to lend him half a crown to feed his starving family, should he
+get it? Should he? And what right have you to come to his house--his
+_home_!--and demand food at his board? You are a gentleman; but what
+is a gentleman? A gentleman is the dregs of the idleness of centuries!
+Then he will declaim about his plans for the renovation of the world.
+All this time his well-fed wife has been pouring out the tea and
+slicing the Genoa cake; and now, with a smile of reassurance, she
+takes our names and college. But the innkeeper's eloquence does not
+flag, and it will not until you tell him with decision that you have
+had enough. This you are loath to do, for he has furnished you with a
+new ideal of happiness. The cotton-wharf negro sometimes wants
+leisure, the repose of the cricketer is at times rudely broken in
+upon, and even the slacker is liable to his ducking; but to stand up
+boldly against the evils of the world and to picture the new Utopia
+while your wife averts all practical consequences, this is _otium cum
+dignitate_.
+
+This journey up the Char, though all-popular with the undergraduate,
+is not the only one worth taking. We might have gone down the Isis to
+the Iffley Mill and the sleepy little Norman church near by. This
+would have taken us through the thick of the college crews training
+for the summer eights. But the rules of the river are so complicated
+that no man on earth who has not given them long hours of study can
+understand them; and if an eight ran into us, we should be fined a
+quid or two--one quid for a college eight, and two for the 'varsity.
+Below Iffley, indeed, there is as much clear punting as you could
+desire, and here you are in the full current of Thames pleasure-boats.
+The towing-path skirts the water, so that when you are tired of
+punting you can get out and tow your craft. The stretch of river here
+I hold memorable as the scene of the only bit of dalliance I ever
+witnessed in this most sentimental of environments. A young man and a
+young woman had tied the painter of their punt to the middle of a
+paddle, and shoulder by shoulder were loitering along the river-side.
+Twenty yards behind, three other men and a baffled chaperon were
+steering the punt clear of the bank, and boring one another.
+
+  [Illustration: IFFLEY LOCK AND MILL]
+
+The best trip on the Isis is into the backwaters. These are a mesh of
+tiny streams that break free from the main current above Oxford and
+lose themselves in the broad bottom-lands. The islands they form were
+chosen in the Dark Ages as the sites of religious houses; for not only
+was the land fertile, but the network of deep, if tiny, streams
+afforded defense from the heathen, while the main channel of the
+Thames afforded communication with the Christian world. The ruins of
+these, or of subsequent monasteries, remain to-day brooding over a few
+Tudor cottages and hamlets, with a mill and a bakery and an inn or two
+to sustain life in the occasional undergraduate who lazes by in his
+canoe.
+
+The most interesting of these ruins is Wytham. The phrase is exact,
+for the entire hamlet was built from a venerable religious house
+shortly after the dissolution of the monasteries. You can imagine the
+size of Wytham. If you don't watch very closely as you paddle up the
+sedgy backwater, you will miss it entirely, and that would be a pity,
+for its rude masonry, thatched roofs, and rustic garden fronts seem
+instinct with the atmosphere of Tudor England. The very tea roses,
+nodding languidly over the garden wall, smell, or seem to smell, as
+subtly sweet as if they had been pressed for ages between the leaves
+of a mediæval romance.
+
+I am not quite sure that they do, though, for these ancient hamlets
+have strange ways of pulling the wool--a true golden fleece, to be
+sure--over American eyes. Once at twilight I heard a knot of strolling
+country men and women crooning a tune which was so strangely familiar
+that I immediately set it down as a village version of one of the
+noble melodies of that golden age when English feeling found its
+natural vent in song. As it drew nearer, I suddenly recognized it. It
+was a far-away version of "Mammy's Little Alabama Coon."
+
+I have still faith, though, in a certain mediæval barmaid I chanced
+upon in the backwaters. The circumstances of our meeting were
+peculiar. As I drifted along one Sunday, perched on an after-thwart of
+the canoe, the current swept me toward a willow that leaned over the
+water, and I put up my hand to fend off. I chanced to be laughing to
+myself at the time at the thought of a fellow who, only the day before
+at the lasher, had tried to do the same thing. The lasher was forcing
+his punt against the willow on the opposite bank, whereupon, to my
+heart's delight, he lazily tried to fend it off with his arms. The
+punt refused to be fended off, and he stooped with an amusing effect
+of deliberation plump into the water. He was hauled out by the O.U.H.S.
+man hard by.
+
+I was interrupted in these pleasant reminiscences by the roaring of
+waters about my ears, mingled with a boorish guffaw from one of the
+fellows behind me.... But I started to tell about the mediæval
+barmaid. Making my way to a bakehouse up the stream, I hung my coat
+and trousers before the fire on a long baker's pole, and put my shoes
+inside the oven on a dough tray. My companion of the horse-laugh hung
+my shirt on a blossoming almond-tree, and then left for the lunch
+hamper. He had scarcely gone when I heard the rustle of skirts at the
+door. "What do you want?" I cried. "I want my dinner," was the
+friendly reply. It was the barmaid of a neighboring public house, in
+her Sunday frock.
+
+When she saw me she smiled, but maintained a dignity of port that--I
+insist upon it--was instinct with the simple and primitive modesty of
+the Middle Ages. It was the modesty of the people before whom Adam in
+the Chester mystery play was required by the stage directions to
+"stand nakyd and not be ashamyd." My barmaid advised me to take off my
+stockings and hang them up before the fire. The advice I admit came as
+a shock, but on reflection I saw that it was capital. For one happy
+moment I lived in the broad, wholesome atmosphere of the Middle Ages.
+It was like a breath from Chaucer's England.
+
+Then the baker rushed into the room, in a cutaway Sunday coat of the
+latest style. He had baked for an Oxford college so long that he had
+become infected with the squeamish leaven of the nineteenth century.
+He called the girl a huzzy, and, taking her by the shoulder, hustled
+her into the garden, and then passed her plum pudding out to her
+gingerly through a crack in the door. He covered me with apologies and
+a bath-robe; but I did not mind either, for as the barmaid ran back to
+the inn she was laughing what I still insist upon believing to have
+been the simple joyous laughter of the Middle Ages.
+
+But we must hurry to get back to college in time for dinner. And even
+at that we shall have to stop here at Magdalen bridge and give a
+street boy sixpence to take the punt the rest of the way. We land at
+the foot of the tower just as the late afternoon sun is gilding its
+exquisite pinnacles, and the chimes in its belfry are playing the
+prelude to the hour of seven. It is a melody worth all the Char and
+the Isis, with all their weirs and their willows. Other mediæval
+chimes fill you with a delicious sorrow for the past; but when they
+cease, and the great bell tolls out the hour, you think only of the
+death of time. It leaves you sadly beneath the tower, in the musty
+cellarage. But the melody that the Magdalen chimes utter is full of
+the fervid faith, the aspirations, of our fathers. It lifts you among
+the gilded pinnacles, or perhaps ever so little above them.
+
+
+II
+
+AS SEEN FROM AN OXFORD TUB
+
+To the true slacker, the college barges that line the Isis are an
+object of aversion, for into them sooner or later every fellow who
+loves the water finds his way, and then there is an end of slacking.
+Each of the barges is a grammar school of oarsmanship, where all
+available men are taught everything, from what thickness of leather to
+wear on the heels of their boating-shoes to the rhythm in rowing by
+which alone an eight can realize its full speed; and from the barges
+issues a navy of boats and boating-men more than ten times as large as
+that of an American university. When Mr. R. C. Lehmann arrived at
+Cambridge to coach the Harvard crew, he was lost in admiration of the
+Charles River and the Back Bay, and in amazement at the absence of
+boats on them. At either Yale or Harvard it would be easy to give
+space to both of the fleets that now swarm on the slender Isis and
+threadlike Cam. We have water enough--as a Congressman once remarked
+of our fighting navy--it is only the boats that are lacking. The
+lesson we have to learn of our English cousins is not so much a matter
+of reach and swing, outrigger and blades, as a generous and wholesome
+interest in boating for the sake of the boat and of the water; and it
+is less apparent in an Oxford 'varsity eight than in the humblest tub
+of the humblest college.
+
+The first suggestion that I should go out to be tubbed came from the
+gray-bearded dean of the college, who happened at the time to be
+taking me to the master for formal presentation. I told him that I had
+tried for my class crew, and that three days on the water had
+convinced the coach that I was useless. He fell a pace behind, looked
+me over, and said that I might at least try. As this was his only
+advice, I did not forget it; and when my tutor, before advising me as
+to my studies, also urged me to row, I gave the matter some serious
+thought.
+
+I found subsequently that every afternoon, between luncheon and tea,
+the college was virtually deserted for field, track, and river; and it
+dawned upon me that unless I joined the general exodus I should
+temporarily become a hermit. Still, my earlier unhappy experience in
+rowing was full in mind, and I set out for the barge humble in spirit,
+and prepared to be cursed roundly for three days, and "kicked out,"
+or, as they say in Oxford, "given the hoof," on the fourth.
+
+Few memories could be so unhappy, however, as to resist the beauty of
+the banks of the Isis. At New Haven, the first impression an oarsman
+gets is said to be an odor so unwelcome that it is not to be endeared
+even by four years of the good-fellowship and companionship of a Yale
+crew. At Harvard, the Charles--"Our Charles," as Longfellow spoke of
+it in a poem to Lowell--too often presents aspects which it would be
+sacrilege to dwell on. What the "royal-towered Thame" and "Camus,
+reverend sire," may have been in the classic days of English poetry it
+is perhaps safest not to inquire; suffice it that to-day they are--and
+especially the Thames--all that the uninitiated imagine "our Charles."
+Nowhere does the sun stream more cheerfully through the moist gray
+English clouds; nowhere is the grass more green, the ivy more
+luxuriant, and the pollard willows and slender elms and poplars more
+dense in foliage. And every building, from the thatched farm-cottage
+in Christ Church meadow to the Norman church at Iffley, is, as it
+were, more native and more a part of creation than the grass and
+trees. The English oarsman, it is true, cannot be as conscious of all
+this as an American visitor. Yet the love of outdoors, which has been
+at work for centuries in beautifying the English landscape, is not the
+least part of the British sporting instinct. Where an American might
+loiter in contemplation of these woods, fields, and streams, an
+Englishman shoots, hunts, crickets, and rows in them.
+
+When you enter the barge on the river, you feel keenly the contrast
+with the bare, chill boathouses of the American universities. On the
+centre tables are volumes of photographs of the crews and races of
+former years; the latest sporting papers are scattered on chairs and
+seats; and in one corner is a writing-table, with note-paper stamped
+"Balliol Barge, Oxford." There is a shelf or two of bound "Punches,"
+and several shelves of books--"Innocents Abroad" and "Indian Summer,"
+beside "Three Men in a Boat" and "The Dolly Dialogues." On the walls
+are strange and occult charts of the bumping races from the year
+one--which, if I remember rightly, is 1837. At the far end of the room
+is a sea-coal fire, above which shines the prow of a shell in which
+the college twice won the Ladies' Plate at Henley.
+
+The dressing-room of the barge is sacred to the members of the eight,
+who at the present season are engaged in tubbing the freshmen in the
+hope of finding a new oar or two. At the appointed hour they appear,
+in eightsman blazers if it is fair, or in sou'westers if it is
+not--sad to relate, it usually is not--and each chooses a couple of
+men and leads them out to the float. Meanwhile, with the rest of the
+candidates--freshmen, and others who in past years have failed of a
+place in the torpids--you lounge on easy-chairs and seats, reading or
+chatting, until your own turn comes to be tubbed. It is all quiet like
+a club, except that the men are in full athletic dress.
+
+  [Illustration: THE FULL COSTUME OF AN EIGHTSMAN]
+
+The athletic costume is elaborate, and has been worn for a
+generation--since top-hats and trousers were abandoned, in fact--in
+more or less its present form. It consists of a cotton zephyr, flannel
+shorts flapping about the knees, and socks, or in winter Scotch hose
+gartered above the calves. The sweater, which, in cold weather, is
+worn on the river, has a deep V neck, supplemented when the oarsman is
+not in action by a soft woolen scarf or cloud. Over all are worn a
+flannel blazer and cap embroidered with the arms of the college. This
+uniform, with trifling variations, is used in all sports on field and
+river, and it is infinitely more necessary, in undergraduate opinion,
+than the academic cap and gown which the rules of the university
+require to be worn after dark. This seemingly elaborate dress is in
+effect the most sensible in the world, and is the best expression I
+know of the cheerful and familiar way in which an Englishman goes
+about his sports. Reduced to its lowest terms, it is no more than is
+required by comfort and decency. With the addition of sweater, scarf,
+blazer, and cap, it is presentable in social conversation--indeed, in
+the streets of the city. It is in consequence of this that an
+afternoon in the barge is--except for the two tubbings on the
+river--so much like one spent in a club.
+
+In America an oarsman wears socks and trunks which are apt to be the
+briefest possible. If he wears a shirt at all, it is often a mere
+ribbon bounding the three enormous apertures through which he thrusts
+his neck and shoulders. Before going on the river he is likely to
+shiver, in spite of the collar of his sweater; and after he comes in,
+his first thought is necessarily of donning street clothes. There is,
+in consequence, practically no sociability in rowing until the crews
+are selected and sent to the training-table. A disciple of Sartor
+Resartus would be very likely to conclude that, until American rowing
+adapts itself to the English costume, it must continue to be--except
+for the fortunate few--the bare, unkindly sport it has always been.
+
+All this time I have had you seated in an armchair beside the
+sea-coal fire. Now an eightsman comes into the barge with two
+deep-breathing freshmen, and nods us to follow him to the boat the
+three have just quitted. On a chair by the door as we go out are
+several pads, consisting of a rubber cloth faced with wool. These are
+_spongeo pilenes_, or so I was told, which in English are known as
+Pontius Pilates--or Pontiuses for short. The eightsman will advise you
+to take a Pontius to protect your white flannel shorts from the water
+on the seat; for there is always a shower threatening, unless indeed
+it is raining. Every one knows, however, including the eightsman, that
+the wool is a no less important part of the Pontius than the rubber:
+it will save you many painful impressions of the dinner form in hall.
+
+We are already on the river, and pair-oars, fours, and eights are
+swarming about us. "Come forward," cries our coach, "ready--paddle!"
+and we take our place in the procession of craft that move in one
+another's wake down the narrow river. The coach talks pleasantly to us
+from time to time, and in the course of an afternoon we get a pretty
+good idea of what the English stroke consists in.
+
+The sun bursts through the pearl-gray clouds, and glows in golden
+ponds on the dense verdure of grass and trees. "Eyes in the boat,"
+shouts the stern voice of conscience; but the coach says, "See,
+fellows. Here's a 'varsity trial eight. Watch them row, and you will
+see what the stroke looks like. Those fellows in red caps belong to
+the Leander."
+
+Their backs are certainly not all flat, and to an American eye the
+crew presents a ragged appearance as a whole; but a second glance
+shows that every back swings in one piece from the hips, and that the
+apparent raggedness is due to the fact that the men on the bow side
+swing in one line, while those on the stroke side swing in another
+parallel line. They sway together with absolute rhythm and ease, and
+the boat is set on a rigidly even keel. Our coach looks them over
+critically, especially his three college-mates, one of whom at least
+he hopes will be chosen for the 'varsity eight. No doubt he aimed at a
+blue himself two years ago, when he came up; but blues are not for
+every man, even of those who row well and strongly. He watches them
+until they are indistinguishable amid the myriad craft in the
+distance. "It's jolly fine weather," he concludes pleasantly, with a
+familiar glance at the sky, which you are at liberty to follow. "Come
+forward. Ready--paddle!" We are presently in the barge again with the
+other fellows. A repetition of this experience after half an hour
+ends the day's work.
+
+When I tried for the freshman crew in America, I was put with seven
+other unfortunates into a huge clinker barge, in charge of the
+sophomore coxswain. On the first day I was told to mind the angle on
+my oar. On the second day I was told to keep my eyes in the boat, damn
+me! On the third day, the sophomore coxswain wrought himself into a
+fury, and swore at me for not keeping the proper angle. When I glanced
+out at my blade he yelled, "Damn you, eyes in the boat!" This upset me
+so that I forgot thereafter to keep a flat back at the finish of the
+stroke. When we touched the float he jumped out, looked at my back,
+brought his boot against it sharply, and told me that there was no use
+in trying to row unless I could hold a flat back and swing my body
+between my knees. That night I sat on a dictionary with my feet
+against the footboard and tried to follow these injunctions, until my
+back seemed torn into fillets, but it would not come flat. I never
+went down to the river again, and it was two years before I summoned
+courage to try another sport. The bullyragging sophomore coxswain I
+came to know very well in later years, and found him as courteous and
+good-hearted as any man. To this day, if I mention our first meeting,
+he looks shy, and says he doesn't remember it. He says that the flat
+back is a discarded fetish in Harvard boating circles, that even
+before the advent of Mr. Lehmann cursing and kicking were largely
+abandoned; and moreover (_fortissimo_) that the freshman crew he
+helped to curse and kick into shape was the only one in ten years that
+won.
+
+After a fortnight's tubbing in pair-oars, the better candidates are
+tubbed daily in fours, and the autumn races are on the horizon. At the
+end of another week the boats are finally made up, and the crews
+settle down to the task of "getting together." Each of the fours has
+at least one seasoned oarsman to steady it, and is coached from the
+coxswain's seat by a member of the college eight. Sometimes, if the
+November floods are not too high, the coach runs or bicycles along the
+towing-path, where he can see the stroke in profile. If a coach swears
+at his men, there is sure to have been provocation. His favorite
+figure of speech is sarcasm. At the end of a heart-breaking burst he
+will say, "Now, men, get ready to _row_," or, "I say, fellows, wake
+up; _can't you make a difference?_" The remark of one coach is now a
+tradition--"All but four of you men are rowing badly, and they're
+rowing damned badly!" This convention of sarcasm is by no means old.
+One of the notable personages in Eights' Week is a little man who is
+pointed out to you as the Last of the Swearing Coaches. _Tempora
+mutantur._ Perhaps my friend the ex-coxswain is in line for a similar
+distinction.
+
+When the fours are once settled in their tubs, the stroke begins to go
+much better, and the daily paddle is extended so as to be a real test
+of strength and endurance for the new men, and for the man from the
+torpid a brisk practice spin. Even at this stage very few of the new
+men are "given the hoof;" the patience of the coachers is monumental.
+
+  [Illustration: THE COLLEGE BARGES: TUBBING IN NOVEMBER FLOODS]
+
+The tubbing season is brought to an end with a race between the fours.
+Where there are half a dozen fours in training, two heats of three
+boats each are rowed the first day, and the finals between the best
+two crews on the following day. The method of conducting these races
+is characteristic of boating on the Isis and the Cam. As the river is
+too narrow to row abreast, the crews start a definite distance apart,
+and row to three flags a mile or so up the river, which are exactly as
+far apart as the boats were at starting. At each of these flags an
+eightsman is stationed. In the races I saw they flourished huge
+dueling pistols, and when the appropriate crew passed the flag, the
+appropriate man let off his pistol. The crew that is first welcomed
+with a pistol-shot wins. These races are less exciting than the
+bumping races; yet they have a picturesque quality of their own, and
+they settle the question of superiority with much less rowing. The
+members of the winning four get each a pretty enough prize to remember
+the race by, and the torpidsman at stroke holds the "Junior fours cup"
+for the year.
+
+The crowning event of the season of tubbing is a wine, to which are
+invited all boating-men in college, and the representative athletes in
+other sports. In Balliol it is called the "Morrison wine," as the
+races are called "Morrison fours," in honor of an old Balliol man, a
+'varsity oar and coach, who established the fund for the prizes. The
+most curious thing about this affair is that it is not given, as it
+would be in America, at the expense of the college, or even of the men
+who have been tubbed, but at the expense of those who are finally
+chosen to row in the races.
+
+To my untutored mind the hospitality of English boating seemed a pure
+generosity. It made me uncomfortable at first, with the sense that I
+could never repay it; but I soon got over this, and basked in it as
+in the sun. The eightsmen devote their afternoons to coaching you
+because there are seats to be filled in the torpid and in the eight;
+they speak decently because they find that in the long run decency is
+more effective; and they hold the wine because they wish to honor the
+sport in which they have chosen to stake their reputations as
+athletes. In a word, where in America we row by all that is
+self-sacrificing and loyal, in England the welfare of boating is made
+to depend upon its attractiveness as a recreation and a sport; if it
+were not enjoyable to the normal man, nothing could force fellows into
+it.
+
+The relationship of the autumn tubbing and its incidental sociability
+to the welfare of the sport in the college and in the university seems
+remote enough to the American mind, for out of the score of fellows
+who are tubbed only three or four, on an average, go farther in the
+sport. Yet it is typical of the whole; and it will help us in
+following the English boating season. Throughout the year there are
+two converging currents of activity in boating. On the one hand, the
+tubs in the autumn term develop men for the torpids, which come on
+during the winter term; and the torpids develop men for the summer
+eights. On the other hand, the 'varsity trials in the autumn term
+develop men for the 'varsity eight, which trains and races in the
+winter term; and the 'varsity oarsmen, like the men who have prospered
+in tubs and torpids, end the season in the eights of their respective
+colleges. The goal of both the novice and the veteran is thus the
+college eight.
+
+The torpid is, so to speak, the understudy to the college eight. In
+order to give full swing to the new men, no member of the eight of the
+year before is allowed to row in it; and the leading colleges man two
+torpids--sometimes even three. The training here is much more serious
+than in the tubs; wine, spirits, and tobacco are out of order. The
+races, which are conducted like the celebrated May Eights, are rowed
+in midwinter--in the second of the three Oxford terms--under leaden
+skies, and sometimes with snow piled up along the towing-path. On the
+barges, instead of the crowds of ladies, gayly dressed and bent on a
+week of social enjoyment, one finds knots of loyal partisans who are
+keen on the afternoon's sport. The towing-path, too, is not so crowded
+as in May Week; but nothing could surpass the din of pistols and
+rattles and shouting that accompanies the races. If the men in the
+torpid do not learn how to row the stroke to the finish under the
+excitement of a race, it is not for the lack of coaching and
+experience. When the torpids break training, there are many ceremonies
+to signalize the return to the flesh-pots: one hardly realizes that
+the weeks of sport and comradeship have all gone to the filling of a
+place or two in the college eight.
+
+All this time, while the tubs and torpids have been training up new
+men, the 'Varsity Boat Club, whose home is on the shore of the Isis
+opposite the row of college barges, has also, so to speak, been doing
+its tubbing. The new men for the 'varsity are chiefly those who have
+come to the front in the May Eights of the previous year--oars of two
+or three seasons' standing; though occasionally men are taken directly
+from the Eton eight, which enters yearly for the Ladies' Plate at
+Henley. The new men will number ten or a dozen; and early in the
+autumn they are taken out in tubs. They are soon joined by as many of
+last year's blues as are left in Oxford. The lot is divided into two
+eights, as evenly matched as possible, which are coached separately.
+These are called the Trial Eights, or 'Varsity Trials. To "get one's
+trials" is no mean honor. It is the _sine qua non_ of membership to
+the Leander--admittedly the foremost boating club of the world. Toward
+the end of the first term there is a race of two and a half miles
+between the two trial eights at Moulsford, where the Thames is wide
+enough to permit the two boats to race abreast. Of the men who row in
+the trials the best ten or a dozen are selected to train for the
+'varsity during the winter term.
+
+Of the training of the 'varsity eight it is not necessary to speak
+here at length. The signal fact is that the men are so well schooled
+in the stroke, and so accustomed to racing, that a season of eight
+weeks at Oxford and at Putney is enough to fit them to go over the
+four miles and a quarter between Putney and Mortlake with the best
+possible results. The race takes place in March, just after the close
+of the winter term.
+
+The series of races I have mentioned gives some idea of the scheme and
+scope of English boating, but it is by no means exhaustive. The
+strength of the boating spirit gives rise to no end of casual and
+incidental races. Chief among these are the coxswainless fours, which
+take place about the middle of the autumn term, while the trials are
+on the river. The crews are from the four or five chief boating
+colleges, and are made up largely from the men in the 'varsity trials.
+The races have no relation that I could discover to the 'varsity race;
+the only point is to find which college has the best four, and it is
+characteristic that merely for the sport of it the training of the
+'varsity trials is interrupted.
+
+After the 'varsity race the members of the crew rest during what
+remains of the Easter vacation, and then take their places in the
+boats of their respective colleges. Here they are joined by the other
+trials men, the remaining members of last year's college eight, and
+the two or three men who have come up from the torpids. Now begins the
+liveliest season in boating. Every afternoon the river is clogged with
+eights rowing to Iffley or to Sandford, and the towing-path swarms
+with enthusiasts. The course in the May bumping races is a mile and a
+quarter long--the same as the course of the torpids--and the crews
+race over it every day for a week, with the exception of an
+intervening Sunday, each going up a place or down a place in the
+procession daily according as it bumps or is bumped. These races, from
+the point of view of the expert oarsman, are far less important than
+the 'varsity race; yet socially they are far more prominent, and the
+enthusiasm they arouse among the undergraduates is incomparable. The
+vitality of Oxford is in the colleges: the university organizations
+are the flowers of a very sturdy root and branch.
+
+  [Illustration: THE LAST DAY OF THE BUMPING RACES OF THE SUMMER
+    EIGHTS (1895)]
+
+The difference between American and English boating is that we lack
+the root and branches of the college system. In a university of from
+three to four thousand men there are, in addition to the 'varsity
+crew, four class crews and perhaps a few scratch crews. In England,
+each of the score of colleges, numbering on an average something like
+one hundred and fifty men apiece, mans innumerable fours, one or more
+eight-oared torpids, and the college eight. A simple calculation will
+show that with us one man in fifty to seventy goes in for the sport,
+while in England the proportion is one man in five to seven.
+
+The difference in spirit is as great as the difference in numbers. In
+America, the sole idea in athletics, as is proclaimed again and again,
+is to beat the rival team. No concession is made to the comfort or
+wholesomeness of the sport; men are induced to train by the excellent
+if somewhat grandiose sentiment that they owe it to the university to
+make every possible sacrifice of personal pleasure. Our class crews,
+which have long ceased to represent any real class rivalry, are
+maintained mainly in the hope of producing 'varsity material. The
+result of these two systems is curiously at variance with the
+intention. At Oxford, where rowing is very pleasant indeed, and where
+for the greater part of the year the main interest centres in college
+crews, the 'varsity reaches a high degree of perfection, and the
+oarsmen, without quite being aware of the fact, represent their
+university very creditably; while at Yale, and until recently at
+Harvard, the subsidiary crews have been comparative failures in
+producing material, and the 'varsity is in consequence somewhat in the
+position of an exotic, being kept alive merely by the stimulus of
+inter-varsity rivalry.
+
+The recent improvement at Harvard is due to Mr. Rudolph C. Lehmann,
+the celebrated Cambridge and Leander oar who coached the Harvard crews
+of 1897 and 1898, in the sportsmanlike endeavor to stimulate a broader
+and more expert interest in boating. His failure to bring either of
+the crews to victory, which to so many of us signified the utter
+failure of his mission, has had more than a sufficient compensation in
+the fact that he established at Harvard something like the English
+boating system. Anything strictly similar to the torpids and eights is
+of course out of the question, because we have no social basis such as
+the colleges afford for rivalry in boating; but the lack of colleges
+has in a measure been remedied by creating a factitious rivalry
+between improvised boating clubs, and the system of torpids and
+eights has been crudely imitated in the so-called graded crews. A
+season of preliminary racing has thus been established, on the basis
+of which the candidates for the 'varsity crew are now selected, so
+that instead of the nine months of slogging in the tank and on the
+river, in which the more nervous and highly organized candidates were
+likely to succumb and the stolid men to find a place in the boat, the
+eight is made up as at Oxford of those who have shown to best
+advantage in a series of spirited races. Crude as the new Harvard
+system is as compared with the English system, it has already created
+a true boating spirit, and has trained a large body of men in the
+established stroke, placing the sport at Harvard on a sounder basis
+than at any other American university. It has thus been of infinitely
+more advantage, by the potentiality of an example, than any number of
+victories at New London. To realize the full benefit of the system of
+graded crews and preliminary races, it is only necessary to supersede
+the arbitrary and meaningless division into clubs by organizations
+after the manner of English colleges which shall represent something
+definite in the general life of the university.
+
+
+III
+
+A LITTLE SCRIMMAGE WITH ENGLISH RUGBY
+
+The relationship between the colleges and the university exists in a
+greater or less degree in all sports. There is a series of matches
+among the leading colleges in cricket, and a "cup tie" in Association
+football. These sports are almost as popular as rowing, and have many
+excellences which it would be pleasant to point out and profitable
+perhaps to emulate; but it seems best to concentrate attention on the
+sports which are best understood in America, such as Rugby football
+and athletics. The workings of the college system may be most clearly
+seen in them, and the spirit of English sportsmanship most
+sympathetically appreciated.
+
+The rivalry between the Association and the Rugby games has made
+English football players quite unexpectedly sensitive to comparisons.
+I had scarcely set foot upon a Rugby field when I was confronted with
+the inevitable question as to English Rugby and American. I replied
+that from a hasty judgment the English game seemed haphazard and
+inconsequent. "We don't kill one another, if that's what you mean by
+'inconsequent,'" my companion replied; and I soon found that a report
+that two players had been killed in the Thanksgiving Day match of the
+year before had never been contradicted in England. "That is the
+sport," my friend continued, "which Caspar Whitney says, in his
+'Sporting Pilgrimage,' has improved English Rugby off the face of the
+earth!"
+
+The many striking differences between English and American Rugby arise
+out of the features of our game known as "possession of the ball" and
+"interference." In the early days of the American game, many of the
+most sacred English traditions were unknown, and the wording of the
+English rules proved in practice so far from explicit that it was not
+possible to discover what it meant, much less to enforce the rules.
+
+One of the traditions favored a certain comparative mildness of
+demeanor. The American players, on the contrary, favored a campaign of
+personal assault for which the general rules of the English scrummage
+lent marked facilities. It soon became necessary in America to line
+the men up in loose order facing each other, and to forbid violent
+personal contact until the actual running with the ball should begin.
+This clearly made it necessary that the sides should in turn put the
+ball in play, and consequently should alternately have possession of
+it. Under this arrangement, each side is in turn organized on the
+offensive and the defensive.
+
+The upshot of this was that the forwards, who in the parent English
+game have only an incidental connection with the running of the backs,
+become a part of each successive play, opening up the way for the
+progress of the ball. According to the English code, this made our
+forwards off-side, so that the rule had to be changed to fit the new
+practice. It then appeared that if the forwards could play ahead of
+the ball, the backs could do so too; and here you have the second
+great American feature. The result of "possession" of the ball and
+"interference" is an elaborate and almost military code of tactics
+unknown in the English game.
+
+In the course of time I had unusual facilities for observing English
+Rugby. During the Morrison wine which ended the season of tubbing on
+the river, the captain of the Balliol fifteen threw his arms about me,
+and besought me to play on the team. He had not a single
+three-quarters, he said, who could get out of his own way running. I
+pleaded an attack of rheumatism and ignorance of the game. He said it
+did not matter. "And I'm half blind," I added. "So am I," he
+interrupted, "but we'll both be all right in the morning." I said I
+referred to the fact that I was very near-sighted; but he took all
+excuses as a sign of resentment because he had failed to invite me to
+breakfast in my freshman term; he appeared to think it his duty to
+breakfast all possible candidates. Such are the courtesies of an
+English captain, and such are the informalities of English training.
+
+The next morning the captain wrote me that there was a match on
+against Merton, and asked me to come out a quarter of an hour before
+the rest for a little coaching. A quarter of an hour to learn to play
+football! In spite of the captain's predictions of the night before, I
+was not so sure that he was yet "all right;" so I went out to the
+porter's lodge and scanned the bulletin board. My name stared me in
+the face. I had scarcely time to take luncheon and don a pair of
+football shorts.
+
+The practice my coach gave me consisted in running the length of the
+field three or four times, passing the ball back and forth as we went.
+His instructions with regard to the game were equally simple. To keep
+in proper position I had only to watch my Merton _vis-à-vis_ and take
+a place symmetrical with his. When the enemy heeled the ball out of
+the "scrummage" to their quarter-back, putting us for the moment on
+the defensive, I was to watch my man, and, if the ball was passed to
+him, to tackle him. If he passed it before I could tackle him I was
+still to follow him, leaving the man who took the ball to be watched
+by my neighbor, in order that I might be on hand if my man received it
+again. An American back, when his side is on the defensive, is
+expected to keep his eye on his _vis-à-vis_ while the ball is being
+snapped back; but his main duty is to follow the ball. An English back
+under similar circumstances is expected only to follow his man. If our
+side happened to heel out the ball from the scrum and one of our
+three-quarters began to run with it, we were on the offensive, and the
+other three-quarters and I were to follow at his heels, so that when
+he was about to be tackled--"collared," the English say--he could pass
+it on to us. There is, as I have said, no such thing as combined
+"interference" among the backs. A player who gets between the man with
+the ball and the enemy's goal is rankly off-side. It is not to be
+understood that the captain coached all this information into me. I
+had to buttonhole him and pump it out word by word. Coaching of any
+sort is all but unknown on English football fields. What there is
+of the game is learned at school--or in the nursery!
+
+  [Illustration: AN ENGLISH RUGBY LINE-UP To the left of the scrum,
+    two half backs and six three-quarter backs face each other in
+    pairs]
+
+When the opposing teams scattered over the field for the kick-off, I
+noticed with satisfaction that there was not a spectator on the
+grounds to embarrass me. It is so in almost all English college
+games--the fellows are more than likely to have sports of their own
+on, and anyway, what is the use in hanging round the fields where
+other fellows are having all the fun?
+
+On the kick-off, luckily, the ball did not come to my corner of the
+field, for I could scarcely have seen it, much less caught it. Our
+side returned the kick and the "scrum" formed. The nine forwards
+gathered compactly in a semi-ellipse, bent their bodies together in a
+horizontal plane, with their heads carefully tucked beneath the mass,
+and leaned against the opposing mass of forwards, who were similarly
+placed. When the two scrums were thoroughly compacted, the umpire
+tossed the ball on the ground beneath the opposing sets of legs,
+whereupon both sides began to struggle. The scrum in action looks like
+a huge tortoise with a score of legs at each end, which by some
+unaccountable freak of nature are struggling to walk in opposite
+directions. The sight is certainly awe-inspiring, and it was several
+days before I realized that it masked no abstrusely working tactics;
+there is little, if anything, in it beyond the obvious grunting and
+shoving.
+
+The backs faced each other in pairs ranged out on the side of the
+scrum that afforded the broader field for running. The legs in the
+Balliol scrum pushed harder and the bodies squirmed to more advantage,
+for our men had presently got the ball among their feet. They failed
+to hold it there, however, and it popped out into a half-back's hands.
+He passed it quickly to one of my companions at three-quarters, who
+dodged his man and ran toward the corner of the field. I followed, and
+just as the full-back collared him he passed the ball to me. Before I
+had taken three rheumatic strides I had two men hanging at my back;
+but when they brought me down, the ball was just beyond the line. The
+audience arose as one man--to wit, the referee, who had been squatting
+on the side lines--and shouted, "Played. Well played!" I had achieved
+universal fame. During the rest of the game the Balliol scrum, which
+was a very respectable affair of its kind, kept the ball to itself,
+while we backs cooled our heels.
+
+A few days later, in a game against Jesus, the scrums were more evenly
+matched, and the ball was heeled out oftener. I soon found that my
+eyes were not sharp enough to follow quick passing; and when, just
+before half-time, a punt came in my direction, I was horrified to see
+the ball multiply until it looked like a flock of balloons. As luck
+had it, I singled out the wrong balloon to catch. Jesus fell on the
+ball just as it bounced over the goal-line. In the second half the
+captain put one of the forwards in my place, and put me in the scrum.
+
+The play here was more lively, though scarcely more complex or
+difficult. Each forward stuck his head beneath the shoulders of the
+two men in front of him, grasped their waists, and then heaved, until,
+when the ball popped out of the scrum, the word came to dissolve.
+There were absolutely no regular positions; the man who was in the
+front centre of one scrummage might be in the outskirts of the next.
+On some teams, I found, by inquiry, a definite order is agreed on, but
+this is regarded as of doubtful advantage.
+
+When the umpire or a half-back tosses the ball into the scrummage,
+there are, at an ultimate analysis, four things that can happen.
+First, the two sides may struggle back and forth, carrying the ball on
+the ground at their feet; this play is called a "pack." Second, the
+stronger side may cleave the weaker, and run down the field, dribbling
+the ball yard by yard as they go, until either side picks it up for a
+run, or else drops on it and cries "down." Third, one side may be able
+to "screw the scrum," a manoeuvre which almost rises to the altitude
+of a "play." The captain shouts "Right!" or perhaps "Left!" and then
+his forwards push diagonally, instead of directly, against their
+opponents. The result is very like what we used to call a revolving
+wedge, except that, since the ball is carried on the ground, the play
+eventuates, when successful, in a scattering rush of forwards down the
+field, dribbling the ball at their feet, just as when the scrum has
+been cloven. The fourth possibility is that the side that gets the
+ball amongst its eighteen legs allows it to ooze out behind, or, if
+its backs are worthy of confidence, purposely heels it out. Thereupon
+results the play I have already described: one of the half-backs
+pounces upon it and passes it deftly to the three-quarters, who run
+with it down the field, if necessary passing it back and forth. In
+plays which involve passing or dribbling, English teams sometimes
+reach a very high degree of skill: few sights on the football field
+are more inspiring than to see a "combination" of players rush in open
+formation among their opponents, shifting the ball from one to another
+with such rapidity and accuracy as to elude all attempts to arrest
+it. As a whole, the game of the forwards is much more fun than that of
+the backs, though decidedly less attractive in the eyes of the
+spectators--a consideration of slight importance on an English field!
+
+  [Illustration: THROWING IN THE BALL]
+
+Just as I began to get warmed to my new work I smashed my nose against
+the head of a Balliol man who was dodging back into the push. The
+captain told me that I need not finish the game; but as it is against
+the English rules to substitute players and we were still far from
+sure of winning, I kept to my grunting and shoving. At the end of the
+game the captain very politely gave me the hoof. This was just what I
+expected and deserved; but I was surprised to find that the fellows
+had objected to my playing the game through with a bloody nose. They
+would have preferred not to be bled upon.
+
+This regard for pleasantness and convenience, which to an American is
+odd enough, is characteristic even of 'varsity football. The
+slenderness of the preliminary training of a 'varsity fifteen is
+incredible to any American who has not witnessed it. To sift the
+candidates there is a freshman match and a senior match, with perhaps
+one or two "squashes"--that is to say, informal games--besides. And
+even these tests are largely a matter of form. Men are selected
+chiefly on their public school reputations or in consequence of good
+work on a college fifteen. The process of developing players, so
+familiar to us, is unknown. There is no coaching of any kind, as we
+understand the word. When a man has learned the game at his public
+school or in his college, he has learned it for all time, though he
+will, of course, improve by playing for the university. The need of
+concentrated practice is greatly lessened by the fact that the soft
+English winter allows as long a season of play as is desired. The team
+plays a game or two a week against the great club teams of
+England--Blackheath, Richmond, London Scottish, Cardiff, Newport, and
+Huddersfield--with perhaps a bit of informal kicking and punting
+between times. When the weather is too bad, it lays off entirely.
+
+All this does not conduce to the strenuousness of spirit Americans
+throw into their sports. In an inter-varsity match I saw the Oxford
+team which was fifty per cent. better allow itself to be shoved all
+over the field: it kept the game a tie only by the rarest good
+fortune. It transpired later that the gayeties of Brighton, whither
+the team had gone to put the finishing touches on its training, had
+been too much for it. In an American university such laxity would be
+thought the lowest depth of unmanliness, but I could not see that any
+one at Oxford really resented it; at most it was a subject for mild
+sarcasm. You can't expect a team to be in the push everywhere!
+
+This lack of thorough preparation is even more characteristic of the
+international teams--England, Ireland, Scotland, and Wales--that
+yearly play for the championship of Great Britain. They are chosen
+from the most brilliant players in the leading clubs, and local
+jealousy makes the task of choosing most delicate. The temptation is
+to take a man or two impartially from each of the great fifteens. As
+the international teams take little or no practice as a whole, the
+tendency in the great games is to neglect the finer arts of dribbling
+and passing in combination--the arts for which each player was
+severally chosen--and revert to the primitive grunting and shoving. In
+the great games, accordingly, the team which is man for man inferior
+as regards the fine points may prevail by sheer strength, so that the
+result is liable to be most unsatisfactory. Some years ago, owing to
+local jealousy, the Welsh international had to be chosen mainly from a
+single club--with the result that it won the championship; and in 1901
+the canny Scotch team won by intentionally selecting its members, in
+spite of local jealousy, on the score of their familiarity with one
+another's play.
+
+The very rules under which the game is played are calculated to
+moderate the struggle. As a result of the rule against substituting,
+to which I have referred, any extreme of hard play in the practice
+games, such as lays off dozens of good American players yearly, is not
+likely to be encouraged. Of course good men "crock," as they call it;
+but where an injury is practically certain to disqualify a man from
+the inter-varsity match, the football limp and the football patch can
+scarcely be regarded as the final grace of athletic manhood. Willful
+brutality is all but unknown; the seriousness of being disqualified
+abets the normal English inclination to play the game like a person of
+sense and good feeling. The physical effect of the sport is to make
+men erect, lithe, and sound. And the effect on the nervous system is
+similar. The worried, drawn features of the American player on the eve
+of a great contest are unknown. An Englishman could not understand how
+it has happened that American players have been given sulphonal during
+the last nights of training. English Rugby is first of all a sport, an
+exercise that brings manly powers into play; as Hamlet would say, the
+play's the thing. It is eminently an enjoyable pastime, pleasant to
+watch, and more pleasant to take part in.
+
+That our American game is past hoping for on the score of playability
+is by no means certain. As the historical critics of literature are
+fond of saying, a period of rapid development is always marked by
+flagrant excesses, and the development of modern American football has
+been of astonishing rapidity. Quite often the game of one season has
+been radically different from the games of all preceding seasons. This
+cannot continue always, for the number of possible variations is
+obviously limited, and when the limit is reached American Rugby will
+be, like English Rugby, the same old game year in and year out.
+Everybody, from the youngest prep. to the oldest grad., will know it
+and love it.
+
+The two vital points in which our game differs from the
+English--"possession of the ball" and "interference"--are both the
+occasion of vigorous handling of one's opponents. When an American
+player is tackled, he seldom dares to pass the ball for fear of losing
+possession of it, so that our rule is to tackle low and hard, in order
+to stop the ball sharply, and if possible to jar it out of the
+runner's grasp. In England, it is still fair play to grab a man by the
+ankle. This is partly because of the softness of the moist thick
+English turf; but more largely because, as passing is the rule, the
+tackler in nine cases out of ten aims at the ball. The result is that
+a man is seldom slammed to the earth as he would be in our game. It is
+this fact that enables the English player to go bare-kneed.
+
+The danger from interference in the American game is also
+considerable. When a man is blocked off, he is liable to be thrown
+violently upon the far from tender bosom of our November mother-earth.
+Any one familiar with the practice of an American eleven will remember
+the constant cry of the coaches: "Knock your man on the ground! Put
+him out of the play!" It has been truly enough said that the American
+game has exaggerated the most dangerous features of the two English
+games--the tackling of English Rugby and the "charging" or
+body-checking of the Association game.
+
+Yet this is only a partial statement of the case. These elements of
+possession of the ball and interference have raised our game
+incalculably above the English game as a martial contest. Whereas
+English Rugby has as yet advanced very little beyond its first
+principles of grunting and shoving, the American game has always been
+supreme as a school and a test of courage; and it has always tended,
+albeit with some excesses, toward an incomparably high degree of
+skill and strategy. Since American football is still in a state of
+transition, it is only fair to judge the two games by the norm to
+which they are severally tending. The Englishman has on the whole
+subordinated the elements of skill in combination to the pleasantness
+of the sport, while the American has somewhat sacrificed the
+playability of the game to his insatiate struggle for success and his
+inexhaustible ingenuity in achieving it. More than any other sport,
+Rugby football indicates the divergent lines along which the two
+nations are developing. By preferring either game a man expresses his
+preference for one side of the Atlantic over the other.
+
+
+IV
+
+TRACK AND FIELD ATHLETICS
+
+In track and field athletics, the pleasantness and informality of
+English methods of training reach a climax. In America we place the
+welfare of our teams in the hands of a professional trainer, who,
+through his aide-de-camp, the undergraduate captain, is apt to make
+the pursuit of victory pretty much a business. Every autumn newcomers
+are publicly informed that it is their duty to the university to train
+for the freshman scratch games. At Oxford, I was surprised to find,
+there was not only no call for candidates, but no trainer to whom to
+apply for aid. The nearest approach to it was the groundsman at the
+Iffley Running Grounds, a retired professional who stoked the boilers
+for the baths, rolled the cinder-path, and occasionally acted as
+"starter." As his "professional" reputation as a trainer was not at
+stake in the fortunes of the Oxford team, his attitude was humbly
+advisory. The president of the Athletic Club never came near the
+grounds, being busy with rowing on a 'varsity trial eight, and later
+with playing Association football for the university. To one
+accustomed to train not only for the glory of his alma mater but for
+the reputation of his trainer, the situation was uninspiring.
+
+As I might have expected, the impetus to train came from the college.
+I was rescued from a fit of depression by a college-mate, a German,
+who wanted some one to train with. At school he had run three miles in
+remarkable time; but later, when an officer in the German army, his
+horse had rolled over him at the finish of a steeple-chase, and the
+accident had knocked out his heart; so he was going to try to sprint.
+I advised him against all training, and the groundsman shook his head.
+Yet he was set upon showing the Englishmen in Balliol that a German
+could be a sportsman. This was no idle talk, as I found later, when he
+fainted in the bath after a fast hundred, and failed by no one knows
+how little of coming to. We were soon joined by a third Balliol man, a
+young Greek poet, whose name is familiar to all who are abreast of the
+latest literary movement at Athens. He was taking up with athletics
+because of his interest in the revival of the ancient glories of
+Greece. When I asked him what distance suited him best--whether he was
+a sprinter or a runner--he answered with the sweet reasonableness of
+the Hellenic nature that any distance would suit him that suited me.
+A motlier trio than we, I suppose, never scratched a cinder-path. Yet
+the fellows in our college seemed almost as interested as they were
+amused; and we soon found that even so learned a place as Balliol
+would have been glad to bolster its self-esteem by furnishing its
+quota of "running blues." What was lacking in the way of stimulus from
+the university was more than made up for by the spontaneous interest
+of the fellows in college.
+
+The rudimentary form of athletics is in meetings held by the separate
+colleges. These occur throughout the athletic season, namely, the
+autumn term and the winter term; and as hard on to a score of colleges
+give them, they come off pretty often. The prizes are sums of money
+placed with the Oxford jeweler, to be spent in his shop as the winners
+see fit. In America, the four classes, which are the only sources of
+athletic life independent of the university, are so moribund socially
+that it never occurs to them to get out on the track for a day's
+sport. It is true that we sometimes hold inter-class games, but the
+management of these is in the hands of the university; they are
+inspired solely by a very conscious attempt to develop new men, and to
+furnish the old ones with practice in racing. The vitality of the
+athletic spirits in the English colleges is witnessed by the fact that
+an Oxford college frequently meets a fit rival at Cambridge in a set
+of dual games just for the fun of it.
+
+The only bond between the numerous college meetings and the university
+sports is a single event in each, called a strangers' race, which is
+open to all comers. The purpose of these races is precisely that of
+our inter-class meetings--to give all promising athletes practice in
+competition. As the two prizes in each strangers' race average five
+pounds and thirty shillings respectively, the races are pretty
+efficient. Though the "blues" sometimes compete--Cross made his record
+of 1m. 54-2/5s. for the half mile in one of them--they generally
+abandon them to the new men of promise. While the president and the
+"blues" generally are rowing and playing football, the colleges thus
+automatically develop new material for the team.
+
+The climax of the athletic meetings of the autumn term is the freshman
+sports, held on two days, with a day's interval. The friends of the
+various contestants make up a far larger audience than one finds at
+similar sports in America; and a brass band plays while the races are
+on. The whole thing is decidedly inspiring; and for the first time
+one is brought face to face with the fact that there are inter-varsity
+games in store.
+
+When the winter term opens, bleak and rainy, the strangers' races
+bring out more upper classmen. By and by the "blues" themselves appear
+in sweater, muffler, and blazer, and "paddle" about the track to
+supple their muscles and regain disused racing strides. At the end of
+a fortnight I noticed a middle-aged gentleman with whom the prominent
+athletes conferred before and after each day's work. I soon found that
+he was Mr. C. N. Jackson, a don of Hertford College, who should always
+be remembered as the first hurdler to finish in even time. It is he
+who--save the mark--takes the place of our American trainers. At one
+of our large American universities about this time, as I afterwards
+learned, a very different scene was enacting. The trainer and the
+captain called a mass-meeting and collected a band of Mott Haven
+champions of the past to exhort the University to struggle free from
+athletic disgrace. Though the inter-varsity games were nearly four
+months in the future--instead of six or seven weeks as at
+Oxford--those ancient athletes aroused such enthusiasm that 268 men
+undertook the three months of indoor training. To one used to such
+exhortations, the Oxford indifference was as chilling as the weather
+we were all training in. Mr. Jackson seemed never to notice me; and
+how could I address him when he had not even asked me to save the
+university from disgrace? I was forced to the unheroic expedient of
+presenting a card of introduction. To my surprise, I found that he had
+been carefully watching my work from day to day, but had not felt
+justified in giving advice until I asked for it.
+
+Even during the final period of training, everything happened so
+pleasantly and naturally that I had none of the nervous qualms common
+among American athletes. At first I thought I missed the early morning
+walks our teams take daily, the companionship and jollity of the
+training-table, and the sense that the team was making a common
+sacrifice for an important end. Yet here, too, the college made up in
+a large measure for what I failed to find in the university. One of
+our eightsmen was training with a scrub four that was to row a crew of
+schoolboys at Winchester; and we had a little course of training of
+our own. Every morning we walked out for our dip to Parson's Pleasure,
+and breakfasted afterward beneath an ancient ivied window in the
+common room. In the pleasantness and quiet of those sunlit mornings, I
+began to realize that our training-table mirth, which is sometimes so
+boisterous, is in part at least due to intense excitement and
+overwrought nerves. And the notion of self-sacrifice, which appeals to
+us so deeply, seemed absurd where we were all training for the
+pleasure and wholesomeness of sport, and for the sake of a ribbon of
+blue.
+
+The interest the university took in our welfare became made manifest
+when the "first strings" were sent off to Brighton for the change in
+climate which all English teams require before great games. Some of
+the rest of us, who had nowhere else to go, went with them, but most
+of the men went home to train. The second string in the three miles
+stayed up at Oxford for commemoration, and joined us after three
+consecutive nights of dancing. He said that he found he needed staying
+up work.
+
+Every morning at Brighton the president made the round of our quarter
+of the hotel shortly before eight o'clock, and spoiled our waking naps
+to rout us out for our morning's walk, which included a plunge into
+the Channel. For breakfast, as indeed for all our meals, we had
+ordinary English fare, with the difference only that it was more
+abundant.
+
+On alternate days our training consisted in cross-country walks of ten
+or a dozen miles. Our favorite paths led along the chalk cliffs, and
+commanded a lordly view of the Channel. Sometimes, for the sake of
+variety, we went by train to the Devil's Dyke and tramped back over
+the downs, now crossing golf-links and now skirting cornfields ablaze
+with poppies. All this walking filled our lungs with the Brighton air,
+and by keeping our minds off our races, prevented worry. Sprinters and
+distance men walked together, though the sprinters usually turned back
+a mile or two before the rest. The rate prescribed was three and a
+half miles an hour; but our spirits rose so high that we had trouble
+in keeping it below five.[2]
+
+The training dinners furnished the really memorable hours of the day.
+A half-pint of "Burton bitter" was a necessity, and a pint merely
+rations. If one preferred, he might drink Burgundy _ad lib._, or
+Scotch and soda. After trials there was champagne. When I told the
+fellows that in America our relaxation consists in ice-cream for
+Sunday dinner, they set me down as a humorist. After dinner, instead
+of coffee and tobacco, we used to go out to the West Pier, which was a
+miniature Coney Island, and amuse ourselves with the various
+attractions. The favorite diversion was seeing the Beautiful Living
+Lady Cremated. The attraction was the showman, who used to give an
+elaborate oration in Lancashire brogue. Every word of it was funny,
+but especially the closing sentence: "The Greeks 'ad a ancient custom
+of porun' a liebation on the cinders of the departud, which custom,
+gentlemen, we omits." We used to laugh so heartily at this that the
+showman would join in, and even the beautiful living lady would
+snicker companionably, as she crawled away beneath the stage. If the
+reader is unable to see the fun of it, there is no help for
+him--except, perhaps, an English training dinner.
+
+The rest of the evenings we used to spend in strolling about among the
+crowd, breathing the salt air, and listening to the music. We did not
+lack companionship, for the Oxford and Cambridge cricket elevens were
+at Brighton, and the entire Cambridge athletic team. Many of the
+cricketers, and not a few of the Cambridge athletes--whom the Oxford
+men called "Cantabs," and sometimes even "Tabs"--paraded the place
+puffing bulldog pipes. The outward relationship between the rival
+teams was simply that of man to man. If one knew a Cambridge man he
+joined him, and introduced the fellows he happened to be walking with.
+One day the Cambridge president talked frankly about training, urging
+us to take long walks, and inviting us to go with his men. The only
+reason we did not go was that our day for walking happened to be
+different from theirs.
+
+The days on which we did our track work we spent largely in London, at
+the Queen's Club grounds, in order to get a general sense of the track
+and of the conditions under which the sports were to take place.
+Sometimes, however, we ran at Preston Park, on the outskirts of
+Brighton.
+
+On the day of the inter-varsity meeting, our team came together as a
+whole for the first time in the dressing-rooms of the Queen's Club.
+The fellows dropped in one by one, in frock coats, top hats, and with
+a general holiday air. The Oxford broad-jumper, who was the best man
+at the event in England, had been so busy playing cricket all season,
+and smoking his pipe with the other cricketers on the pier at
+Brighton, that he had not had time even to send to Oxford for his
+jumping-shoes. In borrowing a pair he explained that unless a fellow
+undertook the fag of thorough training, he could jump better without
+any practice. Our weight-thrower, a freshman, had surprised himself
+two days previously by making better puts than either of the Cambridge
+men had ever done; but as nobody had ever thought it worth while to
+coach him, he did not know how he had done it, and was naturally
+afraid he couldn't do it again. He showed that he was a freshman by
+appearing to care whether or not he did his best; but even his
+imagination failed to grasp the fact that the team which won was to
+have the privilege of meeting Yale in America. As it turned out, if
+either of these men had taken his event, Oxford, instead of Cambridge,
+would have met Yale.
+
+As I went out to start in my race, the question of half-sleeves which
+Englishmen require in all athletic contests was settled in my mind.
+The numberless seasonable gowns in the stands and the innumerable top
+hats ranged on all sides about the course made me feel as if I were at
+a lawn party rather than at an athletic meeting. I suffered as a girl
+suffers at her first evening party, or rather as one suffers in those
+terrible dreams where one faces the problem of maintaining his dignity
+in company while clad in a smile or so. Waiving the question of
+half-sleeves, I should have consented to run in pyjamas.
+
+In the race I had an experience which raised a question or two that
+still offer food for reflection. As my best distance--a half mile--was
+not included in the inter-varsity program, I ran in the mile as second
+string. There was a strong wind and the pace was pretty hot, even for
+the best of us, namely, the Cambridge first string, who had won the
+race the year before in 4 min. 19-4/5 sec.,--the fastest mile ever run
+in university games. As the English score in athletic games, only
+first places count, and on the second of the three laps I found myself
+debating whether it is not unnecessarily strenuous to force a
+desperate finish where the only question is how far a man can keep in
+front of the tail end. Several of the fellows had already dropped out
+in the quietest and most matter of fact manner; and as we were
+finishing the lap against the wind, I became a convert to the English
+code of sportsmanship.
+
+As the bunch drew away from me and turned into the easy going of the
+sheltered stretch, I was filled with envy of them, and with
+uncontrollable disgust at myself, the like of which I had never felt
+when beaten, however badly, after making a fair struggle. And when I
+saw them finishing against the hurricane, striding as if they were
+running upstairs, I felt the heroism of a desperate finish as I had
+never done before. It did not help matters when I realized that it was
+the last race I was ever to run.
+
+At the Sports' dinner that night at the Holborn Restaurant, I pocketed
+some of my disgust. The occasion was so happy that I remember wishing
+we might have something like it after our meetings at home, for
+good-fellowship chastens the pride of winning and gives dignity to
+honest defeat. There was homage for the victors and humorous sympathy
+for the vanquished. Light blue and dark blue applauded and poked fun
+at each other impartially. Sir Richard Webster, Q. C., now Lord Chief
+Justice, himself an old blue, presided at the dinner, and explained
+how it was that the performances of his day were really not to be
+sneezed at; and the young blues, receiving their prizes, looked happy
+and said nothing. After dinner, we divided into squads and went to the
+Empire Theatre of Varieties, Cantab locking arms with Oxonian. By
+supper time, at St. James', I was almost cheerful again.
+
+Yet the disgust of having quitted that race has never left me. The
+spirit of English sportsmanship will always seem to me very gracious
+and charming. As a nation, I think we can never be too thankful for
+the lesson our kinspeople have to teach us in sportsmanly moderation
+and in chivalry toward an opponent. But every man must draw his own
+line between the amenities of life and the austerities; and I know one
+American who hopes never again to quit a contest, even a contest in
+sport, until he has had the humble satisfaction of doing his best.
+
+
+V
+
+ENGLISH AND AMERICAN SPORTSMANSHIP
+
+The prevalence of out-of-door sports in England, and the amenity of
+the English sporting spirit, may be laid, I think, primarily, to the
+influence of climate. Through the long, temperate summer, all nature
+conspires to entice a man out of doors, while in America sunstroke is
+imminent. All day long the village greens in England are thronged with
+boys playing cricket in many-colored blazers, while every stream is
+dotted with boats of all sorts and descriptions; and in the evenings,
+long after the quick American twilight has shut down on the heated
+earth, the English horizon gives light for the recreations of those
+who have labored all day. In the winter the result is the same, though
+the cause is very different. Stupefying exhalations rise from the damp
+earth, and the livelong twilight that does for day forces a man back
+for good cheer upon mere animal spirits. In the English summer no
+normal man could resist the beckoning of the fields and the river. In
+the winter it is sweat, man, or die.
+
+It is perhaps because of the incessant call to be out of doors that
+Englishmen care so little to have their houses properly tempered. At
+my first dinner with the dons of my college, the company assembled
+about a huge sea-coal fire. On a rough calculation the coal it
+consumed, if used in one of our steam-heaters, would have heated the
+entire college to incandescence. As it was, its only effect seemed to
+be to draw an icy blast across our ankles from mediæval doors and
+windows that swept the fire bodily up the chimney, and left us
+shivering. One of the dons explained that an open fire has two supreme
+advantages: it is the most cheerful thing in life, and it insures
+thorough ventilation. I agreed with him heartily, warming one ankle in
+my palms, but demurred that in an American winter heat was as
+necessary as cheerfulness and ventilation. "But if one wears thick
+woolens," he replied, "the cold and draught are quite endurable. When
+you get too cold reading, put on your great-coat." I asked him what he
+did when he went out of doors. "I take off my great-coat. It is much
+warmer there, especially if one walks briskly." Some days later, when
+I went to dine with my tutor, my hostess apologized for the chill of
+the drawing-room. "It will presently be much warmer," she added; "I
+have always noticed that when you have sat in a room awhile, it gets
+warm from the heat of your bodies." She proved to be right. But when
+we went into the dining-room, we found it like a barn. She smiled with
+repeated reassurances. Again she proved right; but we had hardly
+tempered the frost when we had to shift again to the drawing-room,
+which by this time again required, so to speak, to be acclimated.
+Meanwhile my tutor, who was of a jocular turn of mind, diverted our
+thoughts from our suffering by ragging me about American steam heat,
+and forced me, to his infinite delight, to admit that we aim to keep
+our rooms warmed to sixty-eight degrees Fahrenheit. Needless to say,
+this don was an athlete. As the winter wore away, I repeatedly saw him
+in Balliol hockey squashes, chasing the ball about with the agility of
+a terrier pup. At nightfall, no doubt, he returned to his wife and
+family prepared to heat any room in the house to the required
+temperature. Heaven forbid that I should resent the opprobrium
+Englishmen heap upon our steam heat! I merely wish to point out that
+the English have failed as signally as we, though for the opposite
+reason, in making their houses habitable in the winter, and that an
+Englishman is forced into athletics to resist the deadly stupefaction
+of a Boeotian climate, and to keep his house warm.
+
+In a sportsman it would be most ungracious to inveigh against English
+weather. The very qualities one instinctively curses make possible the
+full and varied development of outdoor games, which Americans admire
+without stint. Our football teams do day labor to get fit, and then,
+after a game or so, the sport is nipped in the bud. To teach our
+oarsmen the rudiments of the stroke we resort to months of the
+galley-slavery of tank-rowing. Our track athletes begin their season
+in the dead of winter with the dreary monotony of wooden dumb-bells
+and pulley-weights, while the baseball men are learning to slide for
+bases in the cage. In England the gymnasium is happily unknown. Winter
+and summer alike the sportsman lives beneath the skies, and the sports
+are so diverse and so widely cultivated that any man, whatever his
+mental or physical capacity, finds suitable exercise that is also
+recreation.
+
+It is because of this universality of athletic sports that English
+training is briefer and less severe. The American makes, and is forced
+to make, a long and tedious business of getting fit, whereas an
+Englishman has merely to exercise and sleep a trifle more than usual,
+and this only for a brief period. Our oarsmen work daily from January
+to July, about six months, or did so before Mr. Lehmann brought
+English ideas among us; the English 'varsity crews row together nine
+or ten weeks. Our football players slog daily for six or seven weeks;
+English teams seldom or never "practice," and play at most two matches
+a week. Our track athletes are in training at frequent intervals
+throughout the college year, and are often at the training-table six
+weeks; in England six weeks is the maximum period of training, and the
+men as a rule are given only three days a week of exercise on the
+cinder-track. To an American training is an abnormal condition; to an
+Englishman it is the consummation of the normal.
+
+The moderation of English training is powerfully abetted by a
+peculiarity of the climate. The very dullness and depression that make
+exercise imperative also make it impossible to sustain much of it. The
+clear, bright American sky--the sky that renders it difficult for us
+to take the same delight in Italy as an Englishman takes, and leads us
+to prefer Ruskin's descriptions to the reality--cheers the American
+athlete; and the crispness of the atmosphere and its extreme
+variability keeps his nerves alert. An English athlete would go
+hopelessly stale on work that would scarcely key an American up to his
+highest pitch.
+
+The effect of these differences on the temperament of the athlete is
+marked. The crispness and variety of our climate foster nervous
+vitality at the expense of physical vitality, while the equability of
+the English climate has the opposite effect. In all contests that
+require sustained effort--distance running and cross-country running,
+for example--we are in general far behind; while during the
+comparatively few years in which we have practiced athletic sports we
+have shown, on the whole, vastly superior form in all contests
+depending upon nervous energy--sprinting, hurdling, jumping, and
+weight-throwing.
+
+Because of these differences of climate and of temperament, no rigid
+comparisons can be made between English and American training; but it
+is probably true that English athletes tend to train too little. Mr.
+Horan, the president of the Cambridge team that ran against Yale at
+New Haven, said as much after a very careful study of American
+methods; but he was not convinced that our thoroughness is quite worth
+while. The law of diminishing returns, he said, applies to training as
+to other things, so that, after a certain point, very little is gained
+even for a great sacrifice of convenience and pleasantness. Our
+American athletes are twice as rigid in denying the spirit for an
+advantage, Mr. Horan admitted, of enough to win by.
+
+The remark is worth recording: it strikes the note of difference
+between English and American sportsmanship. After making all
+allowances for the conditions here and abroad that are merely
+accidental, one vital difference remains. For better or for worse, a
+sport is a sport to an Englishman, and whatever tends to make it
+anything else is not encouraged; as far as possible it is made
+pleasant, socially and physically. Contests are arranged without what
+American undergraduates call diplomacy; and they come off without
+jockeying. It is very seldom that an Englishman forgets that he is a
+man first and an athlete afterwards. Yet admirable as this quality is,
+it has its defects, at least to the transatlantic mind. Even more,
+perhaps, than others, Englishmen relish the joy of eating their hearts
+at the end of a contest, but they have no taste for the careful
+preparation that alone enables a man to fight out a finish to the best
+advantage. It is no doubt true, as the Duke of Wellington said, that
+the battle of Waterloo was won on the playing-fields of England; but
+for any inconsiderable sum I would agree to furnish a similar saying
+as to why the generals in South Africa ran into ambush after ambush.
+
+In America, sportsmanship is almost a religion. Fellows mortify the
+flesh for months and leave no means untried that may help to bring
+honor to their college; or if they don't, public opinion brings swift
+and sure retribution. It is true that this leads to excesses.
+Rivalries are so strong that undergraduates have been known to be more
+than politic in arranging matches with each other. So the graduate
+steps in to moderate the ardor of emulation, and often ends by keeping
+alive ancient animosities long after they would have been forgotten in
+the vanishing generations of undergraduates. The Harvard eleven wants
+to play the usual football game; but it is not allowed to, because a
+committee of graduates sees fit to snub Yale; the athletic team wants
+to accept a challenge from Oxford and Cambridge, but it is not allowed
+to because Pennsylvania, which is not challenged, has a better team,
+and it is the policy of the university (which has an eye to its
+graduate schools) to ingratiate sister institutions. In a word, the
+undergraduates are left to manage their studies while the faculty
+manages their pastimes.
+
+When a contest is finally on, excesses are rampant. Of occasional
+brutalities too much has perhaps been said; but more serious errors
+are unreproved. There is a tradition that it is the duty of all
+non-athletes to inspire the 'varsity teams by cheering the play from
+the side lines; and from time to time one reads leading articles in
+the college papers exhorting men to back the teams. The spectator is
+thus given an important part in every contest, and after a 'varsity
+match he is praised or blamed, together with the members of the team,
+according to his deserts. Yale may outplay Harvard, but if Harvard
+sufficiently out-cheers Yale she wins, and to the rooters belong the
+praise. In baseball games especially, a season's championship is not
+infrequently decided by the fact that the partisans of one side are
+more numerous, or for other reasons make more noise. These are serious
+excesses, and are worthy of the pen of the robustest reformer; but
+after all has been said they are incidents, and in the slow course of
+time are probably disappearing.
+
+The signal fact is that our young men do what they do with the
+diligence of enthusiasm, and with the devotion that inspires the
+highest courage. It is not unknown that, in the bitterness of failure,
+American athletes have burst into tears. When our English cousins hear
+of this they are apt to smile, and doubtless the practice is not
+altogether to be commended; but in the length and breadth of a man's
+experience there are only two or three things one would wish so
+humbly as the devotion that makes it possible. Such earnestness is the
+quintessence of Americanism, and is probably to be traced to the
+signal fact that in the struggle of life we all start with a fighting
+chance of coming out on top. Whatever the game, so long as it is
+treated as a game, nothing could be as wholesome as the spirit that
+tends to make our young men play it for all it is worth, to do
+everything that can be done to secure victory with personal honor. In
+later years, when these men stand for the honor of the larger alma
+mater, on the field of battle or in the routine of administration, it
+is not likely that they will altogether forget the virtues of their
+youth.
+
+The superiority of English sportsmanship arises, not from the spirit
+of the men, but from the breadth of the development of the sports, and
+this, climate aside, is the result of the division of the university
+into colleges. The average college of only a hundred and fifty men
+maintains two football teams--a Rugby fifteen and an Association
+eleven--an eight and two torpids, a cricket eleven, and a hockey
+eleven. Each college has also a set of athletic games yearly. If we
+add the men who play golf, lawn and court tennis, rackets and fives,
+who swim, box, wrestle, and who shoot on the ranges of the gun club,
+the total of men schooled in competition reaches eighty to one
+hundred. A simple calculation will show that when so many are
+exercising daily, few are left for spectators. Not a bench is
+prepared, nor even a plank laid on the spongy English turf, to stand
+between the hanger-on and pneumonia. A man's place is in the field of
+strife; to take part in athletic contests is almost as much a matter
+of course as to bathe. Of late years there has been a tendency in
+England to believe that the vigor of undergraduates--and of all
+Englishmen, for the matter of that--is in decadence. As regards their
+cultivation of sports at least, the reverse is true. Contests are more
+numerous now than ever, and are probably more earnestly waged. What is
+called English decadence is in reality the increasing superiority of
+England's rivals.
+
+Quite aside from the physical and moral benefit to the men engaged,
+this multiplication of contests has a striking effect in lessening the
+importance of winning or losing any particular one of them. It is more
+powerful than any other factor in keeping English sports free from the
+excesses that have so often characterized our sports. From time to
+time a voice is raised in America as of a prophet of despair demanding
+the abolition of inter-university contests. As yet the contests have
+not been abolished, and do not seem likely to be. Might it not be
+argued without impertinence that the best means of doing away with the
+excesses in question is not to have fewer contests, but more of them?
+If our universities were divided into residential units, corresponding
+roughly to the English colleges, the excesses in particular contests
+could scarcely fail to be mitigated; and what is perhaps of still
+higher importance, the great body of non-athletes would be brought
+directly under the influence of all those strong and fine traditions
+of undergraduate life which centre in the spirit of sportsmanship.
+
+    NOTE. For a discussion of the influences of climate in
+    international athletics, see Appendix II.
+
+FOOTNOTE:
+
+[2] For a note on the value of walking as a part of athletic training,
+see Appendix I.
+
+
+
+
+III
+
+THE COLLEGE AS AN EDUCATIONAL FORCE
+
+
+I
+
+THE PASSMAN
+
+In the educational life of Oxford, as in the social and athletic life,
+the distinctive feature, at least to the American mind, is the duality
+of organization in consequence of which an undergraduate is amenable
+first to his college and then to the university: the college teaches
+and the university examines. In America, so far as the undergraduate
+is concerned, the college and the university are identical: the
+instructor in each course of lectures is also the examiner. It follows
+from this that whereas in America the degree is awarded on the basis
+of many separate examinations--one in each of the sixteen or more
+"courses" which are necessary for the degree--in England it is awarded
+on the basis of a single examination. For three or four years the
+college tutor labors with his pupil, and the result of his labors is
+gauged by an examination, set and judged by the university. This
+system is characteristic of both Cambridge and Oxford, and for that
+matter, of all English education; and the details of its organization
+present many striking contrasts to American educational methods.
+
+Sir Isaac Newton's happy thought of having a big hole in his door for
+the cat and a little hole for the kitten must have first been held up
+to ridicule by an American. In England, the land of classes, it could
+hardly fail of full sympathy. In America there is but one hole of
+exit, though men differ in their proportions as they go out through
+it. In England there are passmen and classmen.
+
+To say that the passman is the kitten would not be altogether precise.
+He is rather a distinct species of undergraduate. More than that, he
+is the historic species, tracing his origin quite without break to the
+primal undergraduate of the Middle Ages. He is a tradition from the
+time when the fund of liberal knowledge was so small that the
+university undertook to serve it all up in a pint-pot to whoever might
+apply. The pint-pot still exists at Oxford; and though the increasing
+knowledge of nine centuries long ago overflowed its brim, the passman
+still holds it forth trustfully to his tutor. The tutor patiently
+mingles in it an elixir compounded of as many educational simples as
+possible, and then the passman presents it to the examiners, who smile
+and dub him Bachelor of Arts. After three years, if he is alive and
+pays the sum of twelve pounds, they dub him Master.
+
+The system for granting the pass degree is, in its broader outlines,
+the same as for all degrees. In the first examination--that for
+matriculation--it is identical for passmen and classmen. This
+examination is called "responsions," and is, like its name, of
+mediæval origin. It is the equivalent of the American entrance
+examination; but by one of the many paradoxes of Oxford life it was
+for centuries required to be taken after the pupil had been admitted
+into residence in one of the colleges. In the early Middle Ages the
+lack of preparatory schools made it necessary first to catch your
+undergraduate. It was not until the nineteenth century that a man
+could take an equivalent test before coming up, for example at a
+public school; but it is now fast becoming the rule to do so; and it
+is probable that all colleges will soon require an entrance
+examination. In this way two or three terms more of a student's
+residence are devoted to preparation for the two later and severer
+university tests.
+
+The subjects required for matriculation are easy enough, according to
+our standards. Candidates offer: (1) The whole of arithmetic, and
+either (_a_) elementary algebra as far as simple equations involving
+two unknown quantities, or (_b_) the first two books of Euclid; (2)
+Greek and Latin grammar, Latin prose composition, and prepared
+translation from one Greek and one Latin book. The passages for
+prepared translation are selected from six possible Greek authors and
+five possible Latin authors. The influence of English colonial
+expansion is evident in the fact that candidates who are not "European
+British subjects" may by special permission offer classical Sanskrit,
+Arabic, or Pali as a substitute for either Greek or Latin: the
+dark-skinned Orientals, who are so familiar a part of Oxford life, are
+not denied the right to study the classics of their native tongues.
+Thus the election of subjects is a well-recognized part of
+responsions, though the scope of the election does not extend to
+science and the modern languages.
+
+Once installed in the college and matriculated in the university, both
+passman and honor man are examined twice and twice only. The first
+public examination, more familiarly called "moderations," or "mods,"
+takes place in the middle of an undergraduate's course. Here the
+passmen have only a single subject in common with the men seeking
+honors, namely, the examination in Holy Scripture, or the Rudiments of
+Faith and Religion, more familiarly called "Divinners," which is to
+say Divinities. The subject of the examination is the gospels of St.
+Luke and St. John in the Greek text; and either the Acts of the
+Apostles or the two books of Kings in the Revised Version. As in all
+Oxford examinations, cram-books abound containing a reprint of the
+questions put in recent examinations; and, as many of these questions
+recur from year to year, the student of Holy Scripture is advised to
+master them. A cram-book which came to my notice is entitled "The
+Undergraduate's Guide to the Rudiments of Faith and Religion," and
+contains, among other items of useful information: tables of the ten
+plagues; of the halting-places during the journey in the wilderness;
+of the twelve apostles; and of the seven deacons. The book recommends
+that the kings of Judah and Israel, the journeys of St. Paul, and the
+Thirty-nine Articles shall be committed to memory. The obviously pious
+author of this guide to the rudiments of these important
+accomplishments speaks thus cheerfully in his preface: "The compiler
+feels assured that if candidates will but follow the plan he has
+suggested, no candidate of even ordinary ability need have the least
+fear of failure." According to report, it is perhaps not so easy to
+acquire the rudiments of faith and religion. In a paper set some years
+ago, as one of the examiners informed me, a new and unexpected
+question was put: "Name the prophets and discriminate between the
+major and the minor." One astute passman wrote: "Far be it from me to
+make discriminations between these wise and holy men. The kings of
+Judah and Israel are as follows." Unless a man passes the examination,
+he has to take it again, and the fee to the examiner is one guinea.
+"This time I go through," exclaimed an often ploughed passman. "I need
+these guineas for cigars." Those who are not "European British
+subjects" may substitute certain sacred works in Sanskrit, Arabic, or
+Pali; and those who object for conscientious scruples to a study of
+the Bible may substitute the Phædo of Plato; but the sagacious
+undergraduate knows that if he does this he must have no conscientious
+scruples against harder work.
+
+In America there is no such examination, so far as I know. At Harvard
+an elective course in the history and literature of the Jews is given
+by the Semitic department; and if this does not insure success in
+acquiring the rudiments of faith and religion, it was, on one occasion
+at least, the means of redoubling the attendance at chapel. Just
+before the final examination, it transpired that the professor in
+charge of the course was conducting morning service, and was giving
+five minute summaries of Jewish history. For ten days the front pews
+were crowded with waistcoats of unwonted brilliance; the so-called
+sports who had taken the course as a snap were glad to grind it up
+under the very best auspices.
+
+Let me not be misunderstood. In the long run, the English
+undergraduates no doubt add greatly to their chances of spiritual
+edification. At the very least they gain a considerable knowledge of
+one of the great monuments of the world's literature. In America the
+Bible is much less read in families than in England, so that it would
+seem much more important to prescribe a course in Biblical history and
+literature. At one time Professor Child gave a course in Spenser and
+the English Bible, and is said to have been moved at times when
+reading before his classes to a truly Elizabethan access of tears.
+Some years before the great master died, he gave up the course in
+despair at the Biblical ignorance of his pupils. The usual Harvard
+undergraduate cannot name five of the prophets, with or without
+discrimination, or be certain of five of the kings of Judah. As I
+write this, I am painfully uncertain as to whether there were as many
+as five.
+
+But to return to our muttons. The remaining subjects for pass
+moderations are: (1) Portions of three classic authors, two Greek and
+one Latin, or two Latin and one Greek. The passages of each author to
+be studied are prescribed, but the candidate may elect, with certain
+slight limitations, from eight Greek and eight Latin authors "of the
+best age." As in the case of responsions and Holy Scripture, Sanskrit,
+Arabic, or Pali may be substituted for either Greek or Latin. The
+examination covers not only grammar and literature, but any question
+arising out of the text. Besides these are required: (2) Latin prose
+composition; (3) sight translation of Greek and Latin; and (4) either
+logic or the elements of geometry and algebra.
+
+The final pass examination allows a considerable range of election.
+Three general subjects must be offered. At least one of these must be
+chosen from the following: Greek, Latin, Sanskrit, Persian, German,
+and French. If a candidate wishes, he may choose two of his three
+subjects in ancient language, literature, and history, or in modern
+language, literature, history, and economics. The remaining one or two
+subjects may be chosen from a dozen courses ranging through the
+elements of mathematics, natural science, law, and theology. This
+range of choice is very different from that in America, in that a
+student is not permitted freely to elect subjects without reference
+to one another. For the pass degree, no considerable originality or
+grasp of the subject is necessary, any more than for an
+undistinguished degree in an American college; but the body of
+necessary facts is pretty sure to be well ordered, if not digested.
+The idea of grouping electives is the fundamental difference between
+English and American education. In the case of the honor man it will
+be seen to be of chief importance.
+
+In order to take the Oxford degree, it is further necessary to be in
+residence three years, and a man may reside four years before going up
+for his final examination. The period of study--or loafing--may be
+broken in various ways; and it is characteristic that though a man may
+anticipate his time and take his last examination before the last term
+of his third year, he is required to reside at the university, studies
+or no studies, until the minimum residence is completed. Nothing could
+indicate more clearly the importance which is attached to the merely
+social side of university life.
+
+It is, in fact, as a social being that the passman usually shines. You
+may know him most often from the fact that you sight him in the High
+by a waistcoat of many colors. At night he is apt to evade the
+statutes as to academicals; but if he wears his gown, he wraps it
+about his neck as if it were a muffler, and tilts his mortar-board at
+all angles. He is the genius of the fox terrier and the bulldog pipe;
+he rides to the hounds, and is apt in evading the vice-chancellor's
+regulations as to tandems and four-in-hands. Or perhaps he sits
+comfortably in his rooms discoursing lightly of the impious
+philosophies that are the studies of the classman, and writes Horatian
+verse for the "Isis" and the "Oxford Magazine." He does anything, in
+fact, that is well-bred, amusing, and not too strenuous. Curiously
+enough, it sometimes happens that he does sufficient reading on his
+own account to give him no little real culture. Of late there has been
+a reaction in favor of the pass school as affording a far better
+general education.
+
+If the passman loiters through the three or four years, it is mainly
+the fault--or the virtue--of the public school he comes from. Of late
+the best public schools have had so strong and admirable an influence
+that boys have often been kept in them by their parents until they
+reach the age limit, generally nineteen. By this time they have
+anticipated most of the studies required for a pass degree in the
+university, and find little or nothing to do when they go up but to
+evade their tutors and to "reside." It is by this means, as the
+satirist long ago explained, that Oxford has become an institution of
+such great learning. Every freshman brings to it a little knowledge
+and no graduate takes any away.
+
+There is reason in all this. In the first place, as I have said, the
+passman is the historical undergraduate, and little short of a
+convulsion could disestablish him--that is the best of British
+reasons. Moreover, to be scrupulously just, the passman knows quite as
+much as the American student who barely takes a degree by cramming a
+few hours with a venal tutor before each of his many examinations, and
+perhaps more than the larger proportion of German students who confine
+their serious interests to the duel and the Kneipe, and never
+graduate. And then, the Oxonian argues amiably, if it were not for the
+pass schools, the majority of the passmen would not come to Oxford at
+all, and would spend their impressionable period in some place of much
+less amenity. Clearly, they learn all that is necessary for a
+gentleman to know, and are perhaps kept from a great deal that is
+dangerous to young fellows with money and leisure. It means much to
+the aristocracy and nobility of England that, whatever their ambitions
+and capacities, they are encouraged by the pursuit of a not too
+elusive A.B. to stay four years in the university. Even the
+ambitious student profits by the arrangement. Wherever his future may
+lie, in the public service, in law, medicine, or even the church, it
+is of advantage to know men of birth and position--of far greater
+advantage, from the common sensible English point of view, than to
+have been educated in an atmosphere of studious enthusiasm and exact
+scholarship.
+
+
+II
+
+THE HONOR SCHOOLS
+
+The modern extension of the world's knowledge, with the corresponding
+advance in educational requirements, which are perhaps the most signal
+results of the nineteenth century, could not fail to exert a powerful
+influence on all university teaching. In the United States, the
+monument to its influence is the elective system. In England, it is
+the honor schools. Both countries felt the inadequacy of the antique
+pint-pot of learning. The democratic New World has not dreamed of
+making a sharp distinction between the indifferent and the ambitious.
+Under the lead of the scientific spirit of the German universities, it
+has placed the noblest branches of human knowledge on a par with the
+least twig of science. With characteristic conservatism England kept
+the old pint-pot for the unscholarly, to whom its contents are still
+of value, though extending its scope to suit the changing spirit of
+the age; and for those who felt the new ambitions it made new
+pint-pots, each one of which should contain the essence gathered from
+a separate field of learning. The new pint-pots are the honor schools,
+and the children of the new ambition are the honor men.
+
+The honor schools of Oxford are eight in number. Here again the
+English conservatism is evident. The oldest of them, literæ
+humaniores, which was at first the only honor school, has for its
+subject-matter a thorough view of classical language, literature, and
+thought. It is an _édition de luxe_ of the old pass school. Because of
+the nobility of its proportions, it is familiarly called "greats," and
+it justifies its name by enrolling almost half of all Oxford
+candidates for the honor degree. An overwhelming majority of famous
+Oxford graduates have taken their degree in "greats." The other
+schools are sometimes known as the minor schools. Mathematics was
+originally a part of the school in literæ humaniores, but was soon
+made into a separate school. Since then schools have been established
+in six new subjects--natural science, jurisprudence, modern history,
+theology, Oriental studies, and English. Under our elective system, a
+student continues through his four years, choosing each year at
+random, or as the fates decree, this, that, or the other brief
+"course." Under the honor system a man decides sooner or later which
+one of the several branches he most desires, and sets out to master
+it.
+
+An Oxford man's decision may be made at the outset; but far the larger
+number of men defer the choice. They do this by reading for
+moderations, for pass moderations as well as honor mods may be
+followed by an honor school at finals. The subject-matter for honor
+mods is, roughly speaking, the same as for pass mods--the classics and
+kindred studies; but the field covered is considerably more extended,
+and to take a high class the student is required to exhibit in his
+examination papers no little grasp of the subjects as a whole, and if
+possible to develop his own individuality in the process. Having done
+with moderations, an honor man is forced to choose a final school. The
+logical sequence of honor mods is literæ humaniores; but one may
+choose instead modern history, theology, Oriental studies, or English.
+
+The men who commit themselves to a choice at the outset are those who
+go in for science or jurisprudence. These men begin by reading for a
+form of moderations known as science preliminaries or jurisprudence
+preliminaries.
+
+The exact sequence of examinations is fixed only by common sense. The
+school of history is open to those who have taken pass mods, and even
+to those who have taken the jurisprudence preliminary, though mods is
+usually preferred in order to give a man the use of the necessary
+languages. If a science man's chief work is to be in astronomy or
+physics, which require some mathematics, he may take the mathematical
+mods, and devote only the second half of his course to science.
+
+Even after a man has chosen his subject and begun to work on it with
+his tutor, there is considerable range of election. As classical mods
+are supposed to cover all the subjects essential to polite education,
+election is mainly a question as to the ancient authors read. If a man
+knows what final school he is to enter, he may choose his authors
+accordingly. Thus, a history man chooses the ancient historians; a man
+who intends to enter the school in English literature, the ancient
+poets and dramatists. In addition to such authors, all candidates for
+classical mods choose, according to their future needs, one of four
+subjects: the history of classical literature, comparative classical
+philology, classical archæology, and logic. The preliminary
+examinations in natural science and in jurisprudence are concerned
+with a general view of the field, and thus do not admit of much
+variation, whatever the branch to be pursued later; and the same is
+true of mathematical moderations. A man who chooses any one of these
+three honor schools has made the great choice of bidding good-by to
+the classics.
+
+In the final schools the range of choice is greater than at
+moderations, and is greater in some schools than in others. Literæ
+humaniores offers the least scope for election. The reason is that the
+subject-matter is a synthetic view of the classic world entire. Still,
+in so vast a field, a student perforce selects, laying emphasis on
+those aspects of the ancient world which he considers (or which he
+expects the examining board to consider) of most interest and
+importance. It has been objected even at Oxford that such a course of
+study gives a student little or no training in exact scholarship. The
+examination statutes accordingly give a choice of one among no less
+than forty special subjects, the original sources of which a man may
+thresh out anew in the hope of adding his iota to the field of
+science; and, on six months' notice, a student may, under approval,
+select a subject of his own. The unimportance of this part of the
+"greats" curriculum is evident in the fact that it is recommended, not
+required.
+
+The history school requires the student to cover the constitutional
+and political history of England entire, political science and
+economy, with economic history, constitutional law, and political and
+descriptive geography. It also requires a special subject "carefully
+studied with reference to the original authorities," and a period of
+general history. If a student does not aim at a first or second class
+at graduation, he may omit certain parts of all this. In any case, he
+has to choose from the general history of the modern world one special
+period for a more detailed examination. In the school of natural
+science, the student, after filling in the broad outlines of the
+subject for his preliminary, must choose for his final examination one
+of the following seven subjects: physics, chemistry, animal
+physiology, zoölogy, botany, geology, and astronomy. Besides the
+written examination, a "practical" examination of three hours is
+required to show the student's ability at laboratory work. These three
+honor schools are the most important, and may be regarded as
+representative. After a man has taken one honor degree, for example,
+in literæ humaniores, he may take another, for example, in modern
+history. He then becomes a double honor man, and if he has got a first
+class in both schools, he is a "double first."
+
+In America, the election of studies goes by fragmentary subjects, and
+the degree is awarded for passing some four such subjects a year, the
+whole number being as disconnected, even chaotic, as the student
+pleases or as chance decrees. In England, the degree is granted for
+final proficiency in a coherent and well-balanced course of study; but
+within this not unreasonable limit there is the utmost freedom of
+election. The student first chooses what honor school he shall pursue,
+and then chooses the general lines along which he shall pursue it.
+
+
+III
+
+THE TUTOR
+
+In preparing for his two "public examinations," the pupil is solely in
+the hands of a college tutor. Any familiar account of the Oxford don
+is apt to make him appear to the American, and especially to the
+German mind, a sufficiently humble person. His first duty is the very
+unprofessional one of making newcomers welcome. He invites his pupils
+to breakfast and to dinner, and introduces them to their fellows so
+that they shall enter easily into the life of the college; he tells
+them to go in for one or another of the various undergraduate
+activities. As a teacher, moreover, his position is strikingly similar
+to that of the venal tutors in our universities, who amiably keep lame
+ducks from halting, and temper the frost of the examination period to
+gilded grasshoppers. It is all this that makes the American scholar so
+apt to smile at the tutor, and the German, perhaps, to sniff. The
+tutor is not easily put down. If he replies with anything more than a
+British silence, it is to say that after all education cannot be
+quite dissociated from a man's life among his fellows. And then there
+is the best of all English reasons why the tutor should think well of
+his vocation: it is approved by custom and tradition. Newman, Pusey,
+Jowett, Pater, Stubbs, Lang, and many such were tutors, and they
+thought it well worth while to spend the better part of each day with
+their pupils.
+
+Homely as are the primary duties of the tutor, it is none the less
+necessary that certain information should be imparted. The shadow of
+the examiners looms across the path twice in the three or four years
+of an undergraduate's life. There is no dodging it: in order to get a
+degree, certain papers must be written and well written. Here is where
+the real dignity of the tutor resides, the attribute that
+distinguishes him from all German and American teachers. He is
+responsible to the college that his pupils shall acquit themselves
+well before the examiners,--that the reputation of the college shall
+be maintained. By the same token, the examiners are responsible to the
+university that its degrees shall be justly awarded, so that the
+course of education in England is a struggle of tutor against
+examiner. In Germany and in America, an instructor is expected to be a
+master of his subject; he may be or may not be--and usually is not--a
+teacher. In England, a tutor may be a scholar, and often is not. His
+success is measured first and foremost by the excellence of the papers
+his pupils write. Is Donkin of Balliol a good tutor? Well, rather, he
+has got more firsts than any don in Oxford; by which is meant of
+course that his pupils have got the firsts. A college is rated partly
+by its number of blues and partly by its number of firsts. For a tutor
+to lead his pupils to success is as sacred a duty as for an athletic
+undergraduate to play for the university. The leisurely, not to say
+loafing, tutor of eighteenth-century tradition has been reformed out
+of existence. If the modern tutor fails of any high attainment as a
+scholar, it is mainly because he is required to be a very lively,
+strenuous, and efficient leader of youth.
+
+The means by which the tutor conducts his charges in the narrow path
+to success in the schools are characteristic. The secret lies in
+gaining the good-will of the pupil. Thus any breakfasts, luncheons,
+and dinners that the hospitable tutor gives to his pupils while they
+are learning the ways of the place are bread cast upon the waters in a
+very literal sense. For a decent fellow to neglect the just wishes of
+a teacher to whom he is indebted is easy enough on occasions; but
+systematically to shirk a genuine debt of gratitude without losing
+caste with one's self requires supreme ingenuity. If you don't want to
+get into the clutches of your tutor, don't take the least chance of
+getting to like him. This is the soundest advice ever given by the
+wary upper classman. It has not been ordained by nature that the soul
+of the teacher is sib to the soul of the taught, but clearly, by
+exercising the humanities, the irrepressible conflict may be kept
+within bounds.
+
+Sometimes harsher measures are necessary. Then a man is sent up to the
+Head of the college, which is not at all a promotion. One fellow used
+to tell a story of how Jowett, the quondam master of Balliol,
+chastised him. When he reported, the Master was writing, and merely
+paused to say: "Sit down, Mr. Barnes, you are working with Mr. Donkin,
+are you not?" The culprit said he was, and sat down. Jowett wrote on,
+page after page, while the undergraduate fidgeted. Finally Jowett
+looked up and remarked: "Mr. Donkin says you are not. Good-morning."
+After that the undergraduate was more inclined to work with Mr.
+Donkin.
+
+For graver offenses a man is imprisoned within the paradise behind the
+college walls--"gated," the term is. One fellow I knew--a third year
+man who roomed out of college--was obliged to lodge in the rooms of
+the dean, Mr. J. L. Strachan Davidson. The two turned out excellent
+friends. No one could be altogether objectionable, the undergraduate
+explained, whose whiskey and tobacco were as good as the dean's. In
+extreme cases a man may be sent down, but if this happens, he must
+either have the most unfortunate of dispositions, or the skin of a
+rhinoceros against tact and kindness.
+
+It is by similar means that the don maintains his intellectual
+ascendency. Nothing is more foreign to Oxford than an assumption of
+pedagogic authority. Mr. Hilaire Belloc, who is now not unknown in
+London as a man of letters, used to tell of a memorable encounter with
+Jowett. Mr. Belloc was holding forth in his vein of excellent
+enthusiasm with regard to his countrymen. For a long time Jowett
+listened with courteously qualified assent, but finally said: "Mr.
+Belloc, do you know the inscription which is said to stand above the
+gate to Hell?" Mr. Belloc was ready with the familiar line from Dante.
+"No, Mr. Belloc, _Ici on parle français_." The oratory of even a
+president of the Oxford Union broke down in laughter. Under such a
+system a mutual confidence increases day by day between teacher and
+taught, which may end in a comradeship more intimate than that between
+father and son.
+
+Our universities are fast adopting the German or pseudo-German idea
+that an advanced education consists merely in mastering the subject
+one may choose to pursue. The point of departure is the "course." If
+we gain the acquaintance of Lowell or Longfellow, Agassiz, Child, or
+Norton, we have to thank our lucky stars. In England, the social
+relationship is the basis of the system of instruction.
+
+
+IV
+
+READING FOR EXAMINATIONS
+
+How easy is the course of Oxford discipline on the whole is evident in
+the regulations as to the times for taking the examinations. The
+earliest date when a man may go up for moderations is his fifth term
+after matriculation. As there are four terms a year, this earliest
+date falls at the outset of his second year. For a passman there is
+apparently no time beyond which it is forbidden to take mods, or
+finals either. An honor man may repeat his attempts at mods until
+eight terms are gone--two full and pleasant years; that is, he may
+take mods in any of three terms--almost an entire year. For finals he
+may go up as early as his eleventh term, and as late as his
+sixteenth--giving a latitude of more than a year. If he wishes to take
+a final examination in a second subject, he may do so up to his
+twentieth term. Clearly, the pupil's work is done without pressure
+other than the personal influence of the tutor. When an American
+student fails to pass his examinations on the hour, he is disclassed
+and put on probation, the penalty of which is that he cannot play on
+any of the athletic teams. On this point, at least, the Oxford system
+of discipline is not the less childish of the two.
+
+As to the nature of the work done, it is aptly expressed in the Oxford
+term, "reading." The aim is not merely to acquire facts. From week to
+week the tutor is apt to meet his pupils, and especially the less
+forward ones, in familiar conversation, often over a cup of tea and a
+cigarette. He listens to the report of what the pupil has lately been
+reading, asks questions to see how thoroughly he has comprehended it,
+and advises him as to what to read next. When there are several pupils
+present, the conference becomes general, and thus of greater advantage
+to all. In the discussions that arise, opposing views are balanced,
+phrases are struck out and fixed in mind, and the sum of the pupil's
+knowledge is given order and consistency. The best tutors consciously
+aim at such a result, for it makes all the difference between a
+brilliant and a dull examination paper, and the examiners highly value
+this difference.
+
+The staple of tutorial instruction is lectures. In the old days the
+colleges were mutually exclusive units, each doing the entire work of
+instruction for its pupils. This arrangement was obviously wasteful,
+in that it presupposed a complete and adequate teaching force in each
+of the twenty colleges. Latterly, a system of "intercollegiate
+lectures" has been devised, under which a tutor lectures only on his
+best subjects and welcomes pupils from other colleges. These
+intercollegiate tutorial lectures are quite like lecture courses at an
+American college, except that they are not used as a means of police
+regulation. Attendance is not compulsory, and there are no
+examinations. A man issues from the walls of his college for booty,
+and comes back with what he thinks he can profit by.
+
+The importance of the university examinations is thus proportionate to
+their rarity. The examiners are chosen from the best available members
+of the teaching force of the university; they are paid a very
+considerable salary, and the term of service is of considerable
+length. The preparation for the examination, at least as regards honor
+men, has a significance impossible under our system. Matters of fact
+are regarded mainly as determining whether a man shall or shall not
+get his degree; the class he receives--there are four classes--depends
+on his grasp of facts and upon the aptitude of his way of writing. No
+man can get either a first or a second class whose knowledge has not
+been assimilated into his vitals, and who has not attained in some
+considerable degree the art of expression in language.
+
+One of the incidents of reading is a set of examinations set by the
+colleges severally. They take place three times a year, at the end of
+each term, and are called collections--apparently from the fact that
+at this time certain college fees used to be collected from the
+students. The papers are set by the dons, and as is the case with all
+tutorial exercises, the results have nothing at all to do with the
+class a man receives in the public examinations--mods and finals. I
+was surprised to find that it was rather the rule to crib; and my
+inquiries disclosed a very characteristic state of affairs. One man,
+who was as honorable in all respects as most fellows, related how he
+had been caught cribbing. His tutor took the crib and examined it
+carefully. "Quite right," he said. "In fact, excellent. Don't be at
+any pains to conceal it. By the finals, of course, you will have to
+carry all these things in your head; at present, all we want to know
+is how well you can write an examination paper." The emphasis as to
+the necessity of knowing how to write was quite as genuine as the
+sarcasm. These examinations have a further interest to Americans. They
+are probably a debased survival of examinations which in centuries
+past were a police regulation to test a student's diligence, and thus
+had some such relation to a degree as our hour examinations, midyears,
+and finals. In other words, they suggest a future utility for our
+present midyears and finals, if ever a genuine honor examination is
+made requisite for an American honor degree.
+
+For the greater part of his course, an undergraduate's reading is by
+no means portentous. It was Dr. Johnson, if I am not mistaken, whose
+aim was "five good hours a day." At Oxford, this is the maximum which
+even a solid reading man requires of himself. During term time most
+men do much less, for here is another of the endlessly diverting
+Oxford paradoxes: passman and classman alike aim to do most of their
+reading in vacations. As usual, a kernel of common sense may be found.
+If the climate of England is as little favorable to a strenuous
+intellectual life as it is to strenuous athleticisms, the climate of
+Oxford is the climate of England to the _n_th power. A man's
+intellectual machinery works better at home in the country. And even
+as the necessity of relaxation is greater at Oxford, so is the chance
+of having fun and of making good friends--of growing used to the ways
+of the world of men. The months at the university are the heyday of
+life. The home friends and the home sports are the same yesterday and
+forever. The university clearly recognizes all this. It rigidly
+requires a man to reside at Oxford a certain definite time before
+graduation; but how and when he studies and is examined, it leaves to
+his own free choice. A man reads enough at Oxford to keep in the
+current of tutorial instruction, and to get on the trail of the books
+to be wrestled with in vacation.
+
+
+V
+
+THE EXAMINATION
+
+When mods and finals approach, the tune is altered. Weeks and months
+together the fellows dig and dig, morning, noon, and night. All sport
+and recreation is now regarded only as sustaining the vital forces for
+the ordeal. Sometimes, in despair at the distractions of Oxford life,
+knots of fellow sufferers form reading parties, gain permission to
+take a house together in the country, and draw up a code of terrible
+penalties against the man who suggests a turn at whist, the forbidden
+cup, or a trip to town. From the simplest tutorial cram-book to the
+profoundest available monograph, no page is left unturned. And this is
+only half. The motto of Squeers is altered. When a man knows a thing,
+he goes and writes it. Passages apt for quotation are learned by rote;
+phrases are polished until they are luminous; periods are
+premeditated; paragraphs and sections prevised. An apt epigram turns
+up in talk or in reading--the wary student jots it down, polishes it
+to a point, and keeps it in ambush to dart it at this or that
+possible question. One man I knew was electrified with Chaucer's
+description of the Sergeant of the Law,--
+
+     No wher so bisy a man as he ther nas,
+     And yet he semed bisier than he was;--
+
+and fell into despair because he could not think of any historical
+personage in his subject-matter to whom it might aptly apply. On the
+other hand, there was Alfred the Great, whose character was sure to be
+asked for. Did I know any line of Chaucer that would hit off Alfred
+the Great? So unusual to quote Chaucer.
+
+All this sort of thing has, of course, its limits. In the last days of
+preparation, the brains are few that do not reel under their weight of
+sudden knowledge; the minds are rare that are not dazzled by their own
+unaccustomed brilliance. The superlatively trained athlete knocks off
+for a day or two before an important contest--and perhaps has a dash
+at the flesh-pots by way of relaxing tension from the snapping point.
+So does the over-read examinee. He goes home to his sisters and his
+aunts, and to all the soothing wholesomeness of English country life.
+
+And then that terrible week of incessant examinations! All the facts
+and any degree of style will fail to save a man unless he has every
+resource ready at command. No athletic contest, perhaps no battle,
+could be a severer test of courage. Life does not depend upon the
+examination, but a living may. In America, degrees are more and more
+despised; but in England, it still pays to disarrange the alphabet at
+the end of one's name, or to let it be known to a prospective employer
+that one is a first-class honor man. The nature of the young
+graduate's employment and his salary too have a pretty close
+correspondence with his class at graduation. If he can add a blue to a
+first, the world is his oyster. The magnitude of the issue makes the
+examinee--or breaks him. Brilliant and laborious students too often
+come off with a bare third, and happy audacity has as often brought
+the careless a first. It may seem that the ordeal is unnecessarily
+severe; but even here the reason may be found, if it be only granted
+that the aim of a university is to turn out capable men. The honor
+examination requires some knowledge, more address, and most of all
+pluck--pluck or be plucked, as the Cambridge phrase is; and these
+things in this order are what count in the life of the British Empire.
+
+
+VI
+
+OXFORD QUALITIES AND THEIR DEFECTS
+
+Under the German-American system, the main end is scholarly training.
+Our graduates are apt to have the Socratic virtue of knowing how
+little they know--and perhaps not much besides. Even for the scholar
+this knowledge is not all. Though the English undergraduate is not
+taught to read manuscripts and decipher inscriptions--to trace out
+knowledge in its sources--the examination system gives him the breadth
+of view and mental grasp which are the only safe foundations of
+scholarship. If he contributes to science, he usually does so after he
+has left the university. The qualities which then distinguish him are
+rare among scholars--sound common sense and catholicity of judgment.
+Such qualities, for instance, enabled an Oxford classical first to
+recognize Schliemann's greatness while yet the German universities
+could only see that he was not an orthodox researcher according to
+their standards. If a man were bent on obtaining the best possible
+scholarly training, he probably could not do better than to take an
+English B. A. and then a German or an American Ph.D. As for the world
+of deeds and of men, the knowledge which is power is that which is
+combined with address and pluck; and the English system seems based on
+practical sense, in that it lays chief stress on producing this rare
+combination.
+
+To attribute to the honor schools the success with which Englishmen
+have solved the problems of civic government and colonial
+administration would be to ignore a multitude of contributory causes;
+but the honor schools are highly characteristic of the English system,
+and are responsible for no small part of its success. A striking
+illustration of this may be seen in the part which the periodical
+press plays in public affairs. In America, nothing is rarer than a
+writer who combines broad information with the power of clear and
+convincing expression. The editor of any serious American publication
+will bear me out in the observation that, notwithstanding the
+multitude of topics of the deepest and most vital interest, it is
+difficult to find any one to treat them adequately; and any reader can
+satisfy himself on this point by comparing the best of our periodicals
+with the leading English reviews. Now the writing of a review article
+requires nothing more nor less than the writing of a first-class
+examination paper, even to the element of pluck; for to marshal the
+full forces of the mind in the pressure of public life or of
+journalism requires self-command in a very high degree. The same thing
+is as obvious in the daily papers. The world is filled with English
+newspaper men who combine with reportorial training the power of
+treating a subject briefly and tellingly in its broadest relations.
+
+The public advantage of this was not long ago very aptly exemplified.
+When our late war suddenly brought us face to face with the fact that
+our national destiny had encountered the destinies of the great
+nations of the world, the most thoughtful people were those who felt
+most doubt and uncertainty; the more one considered, the less could
+one say just what he thought. At that crisis a very clear note was
+sounded. The London correspondents of our papers--Englishmen, and for
+the most part honor men--presented the issue to us from British and
+imperialistic point of view with a vigor and conviction that had
+immediate effect, as we all remember, and gave the larger part of the
+nation a new view of the crisis, and a new name for it. It was not
+until weeks later that our own most thoughtful writers as a body
+perceived the essential difference between our position and that of
+Great Britain, and we have scarcely yet discarded the word
+"imperialism." The knowledge, address, and pluck--or shall we call it
+audacity?--of the English correspondents enabled them to make a stroke
+of state policy. This is only one of many citable instances.
+
+To the robustious intelligence of the honor man, it must be admitted,
+the finer enthusiasm of scientific culture is likely to be a sealed
+book. The whole system of education is against it. Even if a student
+is possessed by the zeal for research, few tutors, in their pursuit of
+firsts, scruple to discourage it. "That is an extremely interesting
+point, but it will not count for schools." One student in a discussion
+with his tutor quoted a novel opinion of Schwegler's, and was confuted
+with the remark, "Yes, but that is the German view." It is this tutor
+who is reported to have remarked: "What I like about my subject is
+that when you know it you know it, and there's an end of it." His
+subject was that tangle of falsehood and misconception called history.
+It must, of course, be remembered in extenuation that with all his
+social and tutorial duties, the don is very hard worked. And
+considering the pressure of the necessary preparation for schools, the
+temptation to shun the byways is very great.
+
+The examining board for each school is elected by the entire faculty
+of that school from its own members; and though it is scarcely
+possible for an unscrupulous examiner to frame the questions to suit
+his own pupils, there is nothing to prevent the tutor from framing his
+pupils' knowledge to meet the presumptive demands of the examiners.
+"We shall have to pay particular attention to Scottish history, for
+Scotus is on the board, and that is his hobby." In the school of
+literæ humaniores, no one expects either pupil or tutor to go far into
+textual criticism, philology, or archæology. These branches are
+considered only as regards their results. In history, a special
+subject has to be studied with reference to its original sources, but
+its relative importance is small, and a student is discouraged from
+spending much time on it. Stubbs's "Select Charters" are the only
+original documents required, and even with regard to these all
+conclusions are cut and dried.
+
+To be sure there is a science school, but few men elect it, and it is
+in distinctly bad odor. In the slang of the university it is known as
+"stinks," and its laboratories as "stink shops." One must admit that
+its unpopularity is deserved. As it is impossible that each of the
+twenty colleges should have complete apparatus, the laboratories are
+maintained by the university, and not well maintained, for the wealth
+of Oxford is mainly in the coffers of the colleges. The whole end of
+laboratory work at Oxford is to prepare the student for a "practical
+examination" of some three hours. The Linacre professor has made many
+strenuous efforts, and has delivered much pointed criticism, but he
+has not yet been able to place the school on a modern or a rational
+basis. In his nostrils, perhaps, more than those of the university,
+the school of science is unsavory.
+
+Many subjects of the highest practical importance are entirely
+ignored. No advanced instruction is offered in modern languages and
+literatures except English, and the school in English is only six
+years old and very small. No one of the technical branches that are
+coming to be so prominent a part of American university life is as yet
+recognized.
+
+The Oxford honor first knows what he knows and sometimes he knows
+more. Few things are as distressing as the sciolism of a second-rate
+English editor of a classic. The mint sauce quite forgets that it is
+not Lamb. The English minor reviewer exhibits the pride of intellect
+in its purest form. The don perhaps intensifies these amiable foibles.
+There is an epigram current in Oxford which the summer guide will
+tell you Jowett wrote to celebrate his own attainments:--
+
+     Here I am, my name is Jowett;
+       I am the master of Balliol College.
+     All there is to know, I know it.
+       What I know not is not knowledge.
+
+This is clearly a satire written against Jowett, and it would be more
+clearly a legitimate satire if aimed at the generality of dons.
+
+
+VII
+
+THE UNIVERSITY AND REFORM
+
+This tale of Oxford shortcomings is no news to the English radical.
+The regeneration of the university has long been advocated. On the one
+hand, the reformers have tried to make it possible, as it was in the
+Middle Ages, to live and study at Oxford without being attached to any
+of the colleges; on the other, they have tried to bring into the
+educational system such modern subjects and methods of study as are
+cultivated in Germany, where the new branches have been so admirably
+grafted on the mediæval trunk. In general it must be said that Oxford
+is becoming more democratic and even more studious; but the advance
+has come in spite of the constitution of the university. All studied
+attempts at reform have proved almost ludicrously futile.
+
+In order to combat the monopoly of the colleges, and to build up a
+body of more serious students without their walls, a new order of
+"unattached" students was created. The experiment has no doubt been
+interesting, but it cannot be said that it has revived the glorious
+democracy and the intellectual enthusiasm of the mediæval university.
+Few things could be lonelier, or more profitless intellectually, than
+the lot of the unattached students. Excluded by the force of
+circumstances from the life of the colleges, they have no more real
+life of their own than the socially unaffiliated in American
+universities. They have been forced to imitate the organization of the
+colleges. They lunch and dine one another as best they can, hold
+yearly a set of athletic games, and place a boat in the college
+bumping races. They have thus come to be precisely like any of the
+colleges, except that they have none of the felicities, social or
+intellectual, that come from life within walls.
+
+From time to time the introduction of new honor schools is proposed to
+keep pace with modern learning. A long-standing agitation in favor of
+a school in modern languages was compromised by the founding of the
+school in English; but it is not yet downed, and before the century is
+over may yet rise to smite conservatism. Coupled with this there is an
+ever-increasing desire to cultivate research. As yet these agitations
+have had about as much effect as the kindred agitation that led to the
+rehabilitation of the unattached student.
+
+The Bodleian Library is a treasure chest of the rarest of old books
+and of unexplored documents; but nothing in the Bod counts for
+schools, and so the shadow of an undergraduate darkens the door only
+when he is showing off the university to his sisters--and to other
+fellows'. When I applied for permission to read, the fact that I wore
+a commoner's gown, as I was required to by statute while reading
+there, almost excluded me. If I had been after knowledge useful in the
+schools, no doubt I should have been obliged to consult a choice
+collection of well-approved books across the way in the camera of the
+Radcliffe. In America, a serious student is welcome to range in the
+stack, and to take such books as he needs to his own rooms. Some few
+researchers come to the Bodleian from the world without to spend
+halcyon days beneath the brave old timber roof of Duke Humphrey's
+Library; but any one used to the freedom of books in America would
+find very little encouragement to do so. The librarian is probably an
+eminently serviceable man according to the traditions of the Bodleian;
+but there are times when he appears to be a grudging autocrat
+intrenched behind antique rules and regulations. In the Middle Ages it
+was the custom to chain the books to the shelves, as one may still
+observe in the quaint old library of Merton College. The modern
+method at the Bodleian would seem to be a refinement on the custom.
+And what is not known about the Bodleian in the Bodleian would fill a
+library almost as large. In the picture gallery hangs a Van Dyck
+portrait of William Herbert, Earl of Pembroke, a former chancellor of
+the university, a nephew of Sir Philip Sydney, son of Mary, Countess
+of Pembroke, and the once reputed patron to whom Shakespeare addressed
+the first series of his sonnets. The librarian did not know how or
+when the portrait came into the possession of the University, or
+whether it was an original; and not being required to know by statute,
+he did not care to find out, and did not find out.
+
+The crowning absurdity of the educational system is the professors,
+and here is an Oxford paradox as yet unredeemed by a glimmering of
+reason. When I wanted assistance as to a thesis on which I was
+working, my tutor referred me to the Regius Professor of Modern
+History, who he thought would be more likely than any one else to know
+about the sources of Elizabethan literature.
+
+Few as are the professors, they are all too many for the needs of
+Oxford. They are learned and ardent scholars, many of them with a full
+measure of German training in addition to Oxford culture. But in
+proportion as they are wise and able they are lifted out of the life
+of the university. They lecture, to be sure, in the schools; and now
+and then an undergraduate evades his tutor long enough to hear them.
+Several young women may be found at their feet--students from
+Somerville and Lady Margaret. When the subject and the lecturer are
+popular, residents of the town drop in. But as regards the great mass
+of undergraduates, wisdom crieth in the streets. The professors are as
+effectually shelved as ever their learned books will be when the
+twentieth century is dust. "The university, it is true," Mr. Brodrick
+admits in his "History of Oxford," "has yet to harmonize many
+conflicting elements which mar the symmetry of its institutions."
+
+This torpor in which the university lies is no mere matter of
+accident. I quote from Mr. Gladstone's Romanes Lecture, delivered in
+1892:--
+
+    "The chief dangers before the English universities are probably
+    two: one that in [cultivating?] research, considered as apart from
+    their teaching office, they should relax and consequently dwindle
+    [as teachers?]; the other that, under pressure from without, they
+    should lean, if ever so little, to that theory of education, which
+    would have it to construct machines of so many horse power rather
+    than to form character, and to rear into true excellence the
+    marvelous creature we call man; which gloats upon success in life,
+    instead of studying to secure that the man shall ever be greater
+    than his work, and never bounded by it, but that his eye shall
+    boldly run--
+
+     Along the line of limitless desire."
+
+Few will question the necessity of rising above the sphere of mere
+science and commercialism; but many will question whether the way to
+rise is not rather by mastering the genius of the century than by
+ignoring it. It is scarcely too much to say that the greatest
+intellectual movement of the nineteenth century, though largely the
+work of English scientists, has left no mark on Oxford education. If,
+as Professor Von Holst asserts, the American universities are hybrids,
+Oxford and Cambridge cannot be called universities at all.
+
+
+VIII
+
+THE UNIVERSITY AND THE PEOPLE
+
+As a result of the narrowness of the scope of Oxford teaching, the
+university has no relation to the industrial life of the people--a
+grave shortcoming in a nation which is not unwilling to be known as a
+nation of shopkeepers. The wail of the British tradesman is not
+unfamiliar. Wares "made in Germany" undersell English wares that used
+to command the market; and being often made of a cheaper grade to suit
+the demands of purchasers, the phrase "made in Germany" is clearly
+indicative of fraudulent intention.
+
+Certain instances are exceptionally galling. Aniline dyes were first
+manufactured from the residuum of coal tar in Great Britain. But
+enterprising Germany, which has coal-fields of its own, sent
+apprentices to England who learned the manufacture, and then by means
+of the chemistry taught in the German universities, revolutionized the
+process, and discovered how to extract new colors from the coal tar,
+so that now the bulk of aniline dyes are made in Germany. Obviously,
+the German chemist is a perfidious person. The Yankee is shrewd and
+well taught in the technical professions. He makes new and quite
+unexampled tools, and machinery of all sorts. It takes the Briton some
+years to be sure that these are not iniquitous--a Yankee trick; but in
+the end he adopts them. Even then, to the Briton's surprise, the
+Yankee competes successfully. A commission (no German spy) is sent to
+America to find out why, and on its return gleefully reports that the
+Yankee works his tools at a ruinous rate, driving them so hard that in
+a decade it will be necessary to reëquip his plant entire. At the end
+of the decade, the conservative Englishman's tools are as good as if
+they had been kept in cotton batting; but by this time the Yankee has
+invented newer and more economical devices, and when he reëquips his
+plant with them he is able to undersell the English producer even more
+signally. The honest British manufacturer sells his old tools to an
+unsuspecting brother in trade and adopts the new ones. The Yankee
+machinist is obviously as perfidious as the German chemist. The upper
+middle classes in England realize that the destinies of Great Britain
+and America run together, and they are very hospitable to Americans,
+but the industrial population hate us scarcely less than they hate
+the Germans.
+
+All this is, of course, not directly chargeable to the English
+universities: but the fact remains that in Germany and in America the
+educational system is the most powerful ally of industry. Here again
+the English radical is on his guard. From time to time, in letters to
+the daily papers or political speeches before industrial audiences,
+the case is very clearly stated. In a recent epistolary agitation in
+"The Times" it was shown that whereas American and German business men
+learn foreign languages, Englishmen attempt to sell their wares by
+means of interpreters, and do not even have their pamphlets and
+prospectuses translated. Admitting the facts, one gentleman gravely
+urged that if only the English would stick out the fight, their
+language would soon be the business language of the world. If it is
+the conscious purpose of the nation to make it so, it might be of
+advantage to spell the language as it has been pronounced in the
+centuries since Chaucer; already with some such purpose the Germans
+are adopting Roman characters. But at least it will be many decades
+before English is the Volapük of business, and meantime England is
+losing ground. From the point of view of the mere outsider, it would
+seem of little moment to England what language is used, if the
+profits of the business transacted accrue to Russian, German, and
+American corporations.
+
+It has even been strongly urged that commercial and technical subjects
+be taught in the universities. Cambridge and the University of Glasgow
+have already a fund with this in view; and the new Midland University
+at Birmingham, of which Mr. Joseph Chamberlain is chancellor, is to be
+mainly devoted to commercial science and engineering. It cannot be
+foretold that the ancient universities will hold their own against the
+modern. In a speech at Birmingham (January 17, 1901), Mr. Chamberlain
+said: "Finance is the crux of the situation. Upon our finance depends
+entirely the extent to which we shall be able to develop this new
+experiment. With us, in fact, money is the root of all good. I am very
+glad to say that the promises of donations which, when I last
+addressed you, amounted to £330,000, have risen since then to an
+estimated amount of about £410,000.... Now £410,000 is a large sum. I
+heard the other day that the University of Cambridge, which has for
+some time past been appealing for further assistance, has only up to
+the present time received £60,000. I most deeply regret that their
+fund is not larger, and I regret also that ours is so small." Oxford
+has apparently not entered the new competition even in a half-hearted
+manner. For centuries it has been the resort of the nobility and
+aristocracy, the "governing classes," and though the spirit of the age
+has so far invaded it as to have been in Mr. Gladstone's eyes its
+chief danger, the university has as yet only the slenderest connection
+with the industrial life of the nation.
+
+The virtues of the Oxford educational system, like those of the social
+and athletic life, are pretty clearly traceable in the main to the
+division of the university into colleges; at least, it is hard to see
+how anything other than this could have suggested the idea of having
+one body to teach the student and another to examine him. And they
+have a strong family likeness one to another, the concrete result
+being a highly sturdy and effective character. But the educational
+system differs from the social and athletic system in that the defects
+of its qualities are the more vigorous. As far as these defects result
+from the educational system, they are chargeable not so much to the
+preponderance of the colleges as to the torpor of the university; and
+they are powerfully abetted by the Oxford tradition as to the nature
+and function of a liberal education. This has not always been the case
+at Oxford. To understand the situation more clearly, it is necessary
+to review in brief the origin and the growth of the colleges, and the
+extinction of the mediæval university. This will throw further light
+on Oxford's social history. We shall thus be better able to judge how
+and to what extent the college system offers a solution for the
+correction of our American instruction.
+
+
+
+
+IV
+
+THE HISTORY OF THE UNIVERSITY AND THE COLLEGE
+
+
+I
+
+THE UNIVERSITY BEFORE THE COLLEGE
+
+In the beginning was the university. The colleges were as unimportant
+as the university is now. If it be admitted that the university exists
+to-day, they were less important; for there were no colleges. The
+origin of the university was probably due to a migration of students
+in 1167 from the then world-famous University of Paris. The first
+definite mention of a _studium generale_ at Oxford, or assembly of
+masters of the different faculties, dates from 1185, when Giraldus
+Cambrensis, as he himself relates, read his new work, "Topographia
+Hibernia," before the citizens and scholars of the town, and
+entertained in his hostel "all the doctors of the different
+faculties."
+
+At this time, and for many centuries afterward, Oxford, like other
+mediæval universities, was a guild, and was not unlike the trade
+guilds of the time. Its object was to train and give titles to those
+who dealt in the arts and professions. The master tanner was trained
+by his guild to make leather, and he made it; the master of arts was
+trained by the university to teach, and he taught. He was required to
+rent rooms in the university schools, for a year and even two, and to
+show that he deserved his title of master by lecturing in them, and
+conducting "disputations." The masters lived directly from the
+contributions of their hearers, their means varying with the
+popularity of their lectures; and the students were mainly poor
+clerks, who sought degrees for their money value.
+
+The lectures were mere dictations from manuscript, necessitated by the
+lack of accessible texts. The students copied the lectures verbatim
+for future study. The instruction in arts covered the entire field of
+secular knowledge, the "seven arts," the trivium (grammar, rhetoric,
+and logic or dialectic), and the quadrivium (music, arithmetic,
+geometry, and astronomy). The lectures were the main and often the
+only means of imparting knowledge. The disputations were scholastic
+arguments--debates--on some set question, and were conducted by the
+masters. They were the practical application of what the student had
+learned from the lectures, and were the chief means of intellectual
+training. Besides attending lectures and disputing, the candidate for
+the degree had to pass an examination; but the great test of his
+acquirement seems to have been the skill with which he used his
+knowledge in debate. Thus the formal disputations occupied very much
+the same place as the modern written examinations, and they must have
+required very much the same rare combination of knowledge, address,
+and pluck. All learning was in a pint-pot; but it was a very
+serviceable pint-pot.
+
+The university education did not make a man above the work of the
+world: it made him an engine of so many horse power to perform it. It
+brought him benefices in that great sphere of activity, the mediæval
+Church, and important posts in that other sphere of mediæval
+statecraft, which was so often identified with the Church. If the
+clerk was above the carpenter, it was not because he came from a
+different station in life, for he often did not: it was because his
+work was more important. And he was far above the carpenter. It was a
+strenuous, glorious life, and the man of intelligence and training
+found his level, which is the highest. The kings and the nobility were
+warriors, and may have affected to despise education; but they were
+far from despising educated men. The machinery of state was organized
+and controlled by clerks from the university. If the scientific and
+mechanical professions had existed then, there is no doubt that they
+would not have been despised as to-day, but would have had full
+recognition.
+
+Socially, the university was chaos. In the absence of colleges, all
+the students lived with the townsmen in "chamberdekyns," which appear
+to be etymologically and historically the forbears of the "diggings"
+to which the fourth year man now retreats when he has been routed from
+college by incoming freshmen and by the necessity of reading for his
+final examination. But such discipline as is now exerted over
+out-of-college students was undreamed of. In his interesting and
+profoundly scholarly history of the universities of the Middle Ages,
+the Rev. Hastings Rashdall gives a vivid picture of mediæval student
+life, which was pretty much the same in all the universities of
+Europe. Boys went up to the university at as early an age as thirteen,
+and the average freshman could not have been older than fifteen; yet
+they were allowed almost absolute liberty. Drunkenness was rarely
+treated as a university offense; and for introducing suspicious women
+into his rooms, it was only on being repeatedly caught that an
+undergraduate was disciplined. At the University of Ingolstadt, a
+student who had killed another in a drunken quarrel had his scholastic
+effects and garments confiscated by the university. He may have been
+warned to be good in future, but he was not expelled. "It is
+satisfactory to add," Rashdall continues, "that at Prague, a Master of
+Arts, believed to have assisted in cutting the throat of a Friar
+Bishop, was actually expelled." The body of undergraduates was "an
+undisciplined student-horde." Hende Nicholas, in Chaucer's "Miller's
+Tale," is, it must be admitted, a lively and adventuring youth; but he
+might have been much livelier without being untrue to student life in
+chamberdekyns.
+
+The townspeople seem to have been the not unnatural fathers of the
+tradesmen and landlords of modern Oxford; and the likeness is well
+borne out in the matter of charges. But where to-day a man sometimes
+tries amiably to beat down the landlord's prices, the way of the
+Middle Ages was to beat down the landlord. As the student was in many
+cases of the same station in life as the townsman, he naturally failed
+to command the servility with which the modern undergraduate is
+regarded. Both sides used to gird on their armor, and meet in battles
+that began in bloodshed and often ended in death. Pages of Rashdall's
+history are filled with accounts of savage encounters between town and
+gown, which are of importance historically as showing the steps by
+which the university achieved the anomalous legal dominance over the
+city which it still in some measure retains. For our present purpose,
+it is enough to note that mediæval Oxford was unruly, very.
+"Fighting," says Rashdall, "was perpetually going on in the streets of
+Oxford.... There is probably not a single yard of ground in any part
+of the classic High Street that lies between St. Martin's and St.
+Mary's [almost a quarter of a mile] which has not at one time or other
+been stained with human blood. There are historic battlefields on
+which less has been spilt."
+
+As if this were not enough, there were civil feuds. In the Middle
+Ages, sectional differences were more obvious and more important than
+now; and the first subdivision of the universities, both in England
+and on the Continent, was by "nations." At Oxford there were two
+nations; and if, when the north countryman rubbed elbows with the
+south countryman, he was offended by his silken gown and soft vowels,
+he rapped him across the pate. Hence more strife and bloodshed. Amid
+all this disorder there was a full measure of mediæval want and
+misery. At best, the student of moderate means led a precarious life;
+and poor students, shivering, homeless, and starved, lived by the
+still reputable art of the beggar. Something had to be done.
+
+
+II
+
+THE MEDIÆVAL HALL
+
+The mediæval spirit of organization, which resulted in so many noble
+and deathless institutions, was not slow in exerting itself against
+the social chaos of the university. Out of chaos grew the halls, and
+out of the halls the colleges. The first permanent organizations of
+student life were small, and had their origin in the immediate wants
+of the individual. To gain the economy of coöperation and the safety
+of numbers, the students at Oxford, as at Paris and elsewhere, began
+to live in separate small colonies under one roof. These were called
+aulæ or halls. They were no less interesting in themselves than for
+the fact that they were the germ out of which the Oxford college
+system grew.
+
+At first the halls appear to have been mere chance associations. Each
+had a principal who managed its affairs; but the principal had no
+official status, and might even be an undergraduate. The halls
+correspond roughly to the fraternities of American college life. Their
+internal rule was absolutely democratic. The students lived together
+by mutual consent under laws of their own framing, and under a
+principal of their own electing. They were quite without fear or favor
+of the university. The principal's duties were to lease the hall, to
+be a sort of over-steward of it, and to lead in enforcing the
+self-imposed rules of the community. His term of office, like his
+election, depended on the good-will of his fellows; if he made himself
+disliked, they were quite at liberty to take up residence elsewhere.
+In the thirteenth century there was really no such thing as university
+discipline. The men who lived in the halls came and went as they
+pleased, and were as free as their contemporary in chamberdekyns to
+loiter, quarrel, and carouse. Chaucer's "Reeve's Tale" gives us a
+glimpse into "Soler Halle at Cantebregge," from which it would appear
+that the members were quite as loose and free as Hende Nicholas, their
+Oxford contemporary. But the liberty was an organized liberty. In
+contrast with the chaos of the life of the students in chamberdekyns,
+the early halls must have been brave places to work and to play in,
+and one might wish that a fuller record had been left of the life in
+them. It was their fate to be obscured by the greater splendor and
+permanence of the colleges to which they paved the way.
+
+
+III
+
+THE COLLEGE SYSTEM
+
+The English college, roughly speaking, is a mediæval hall supported by
+a permanent fund which the socii or fellows administer. The first fund
+for the support of scholars was bequeathed in 1243, but it can
+scarcely be regarded as marking the first college, for it provided for
+two scholars only, and these lived where they pleased. In 1249 William
+of Durham bequeathed a fund for the support of ten or more masters of
+arts. At first these also lived apart; it was only in 1280, after the
+type of the English college had been fixed, that they were formed into
+the body now known as University College. The first organized
+community at Oxford was founded by Sir John de Balliol some little
+time before 1266; but the allowances to the scholars, as was the case
+in colleges of the University of Paris, after which it was doubtless
+modeled, were not from a permanent fund, being paid annually by the
+founder. Balliol cannot therefore be regarded as the first
+characteristic English college. It was not until 1282 that Sir John's
+widow, Dervorguilla, adopted the new English idea by making the
+endowment of the "House of Balliol" permanent, and placing it under
+the management of the fellows.
+
+The real founder of the English college was Walter de Merton. In 1264
+Walter provided by endowment for the permanent maintenance of twenty
+scholars, who were to live together in a hall as a community; and in
+1274 he drew up the statutes which fix the type of the earliest
+English college. The principal of Merton was not, like the principal
+of a mediæval hall, the temporary head of a chance community, but a
+permanent head with established power; and he had to manage, not the
+periodic contributions of free associates, but a landed estate held in
+permanent trust. He was called "warden," a title which the head of
+Merton retains to this day. This idea of a body supported in a
+permanent residence by a permanent fund is perhaps of monastic origin,
+and was accompanied by certain features of brotherhood rule. The
+scholars lived a life of order and seclusion which was in striking
+contrast to the life of the students in chamberdekyns, and even of
+those in the halls. But with the monastic order they had also the
+monastic democracy, so that in one way the government of the college
+was strikingly similar to that of the halls. Vacancies in the
+community were filled by coöptation, and the warden was elected by the
+thirteen senior fellows from their own number. Though partly monastic
+in constitution, the Hall of Merton was not properly a religious body.
+The fellows took no vows, and seem rather to have been expected to
+enter lay callings. This College of Merton was the result of a gradual
+development of the hall along monastic lines--a lay brotherhood of
+students. It was destined to work a revolution in English university
+life and in English university teaching. The constitutions of
+University and Balliol were, as I have indicated, remodeled on the
+lines of Merton; and other colleges were founded as follows: Exeter,
+1314; Oriel, 1324; Queens, 1341; and Canterbury, now extinct, 1362,
+most of which were profoundly influenced by the constitution of
+Merton.
+
+  [Illustration: NEW COLLEGE CLOISTERS, BELL TOWER, AND CHAPEL]
+
+It was at first no part of the duty of the elders (socii, or, as
+Chaucer calls them, felawes) to teach the younger. The scholars of the
+college received the regular mediæval education in the university. But
+even in Merton the germ of tutorial instruction was present. Twelve
+"parvuli" who were not old enough, or sufficiently used to the Latin
+tongue, to profit by the lectures and disputations of the university,
+lived in or near the colleges and were taught by a grammar master;
+and it appears that even the older scholars might, "without blushing,"
+consult this grammar master on matters that "pertained to his
+faculty." In his relation to these older students the grammar master
+may be regarded as the precursor of the system of tutorial
+instruction.
+
+The first college to develop regular undergraduate instruction within
+its walls was "S. Marie College of Winchester in Oxford," founded in
+1379, by William of Wykeham. "S. Marie's" brought in so many
+innovations that it came to be called "New College," a title which,
+incongruously enough, it has retained for more than five hundred
+years. Wykeham's first innovation was to place the grammar master, for
+the greater good of his pupils, at the head of a "college" of seventy
+boys at Winchester, thus outlining the English system of public
+schools. New College was accordingly able to exclude all who had not
+attained the ripe age of fifteen. The effect of this innovation on the
+college was peculiar. When the boys came up from Winchester, they
+appear to have been farther advanced than most of the undergraduates
+attending lectures and disputes in the university schools; in any
+case, Wykeham arranged that the older fellows should supplement the
+university teaching by private tuition within the college. Little by
+little the New College type succeeded that of Merton. Magdalen
+College, founded in 1448, carried the tutorial system to its logical
+end by endowing lectureships in theology, metaphysics, and natural
+philosophy. The older colleges--those of the Merton type--little by
+little followed this new example, so that by the end of the Middle
+Ages it was possible for a student to receive his entire instruction
+within the walls of his college. In Wolsey's splendid foundation,
+Cardinal College (1522), now styled Christ Church, there was a still
+more ample endowment for professorships. At first the college
+instruction was regarded as supplementary to the university teaching,
+though it soon became far more important. The masters of the
+university continued to read lectures on the recognized subjects,
+living as of old on fees from those who chose to listen; but they were
+clearly unable to compete with the endowed tutors and professors of
+the colleges. By the beginning of the fifteenth century, the mediæval
+teaching master was disappearing. The only real teaching in arts--by
+all odds the most popular branch of study at Oxford--was given within
+the colleges and halls.
+
+The discipline of the earlier colleges was much severer than that of
+to-day, but the difference is one of degree rather than of kind. The
+lectures in schools began at six, instead of nine; and at any hour it
+was forbidden to leave the college except on a studious errand. When
+attending out-of-college lectures, all scholars were required to go
+and come in a body; and in one set of statutes even a chaplain was
+forbidden to leave the gates, except to go to lectures or to the
+library, without taking at least one companion, who, in the antique
+phrase of the statute, was to be a "witness of his honest
+conversation." There were only two meals a day, dinner at ten and
+supper at five. Breakfast, now the great rallying-point of Oxford
+hospitality, was the invention of a more luxurious age. Of athletics
+there was none, or next to none. The only licensed hilarities were
+certain so-called "honest jokes," with which the tutors were in at
+least one case required to regale their pupils after dinner, and a
+"potation" which was permitted after supper, perhaps as an offset to
+the "honest jokes."
+
+  [Illustration: NEW COLLEGE GARDENS Showing the mediæval wall of
+    Oxford]
+
+The severity of these regulations is mainly explainable in the fact
+that the inmates of the colleges were fed, clothed, and housed out of
+the endowment, and might thus be reasonably expected to give a good
+account of themselves. Furthermore, they were most of them mere boys.
+A statute dating as late as 1527 requires that "scholars" shall be
+at least twelve years old. At fourteen or fifteen a scholar might
+become a fellow. The average age of "determining" as bachelor of arts
+was little if at all over seventeen. At nineteen, the age at which the
+modern Oxonian comes up from the public schools, the mediæval student
+might, if he were clever, be a master of arts, lecturing and disputing
+in schools for the benefit of the bachelors and scholars of the
+university.
+
+The modern Oxonian delights to tell visiting friends that he is
+forbidden by statute to play marbles on the steps of the Bodleian, and
+to roll hoop in the High; but if a mediæval master of arts were to
+"come up" to-day, he would be amused, not that so many rules framed
+for his boyish pupils of old should be applied to grown men, but that
+the men so obviously require a check to juvenile exuberance. Yet this
+much has been gained, that the outgrown restrictions of college life
+have kept Oxford wholesomely young. The survivals of the monastic
+system meanwhile have kept it wholesomely democratic.
+
+After the colleges reached their full development, the extinction of
+the mediæval university as an institution for teaching was largely a
+matter of form. The quietus was given in 1569. The Earl of Leicester,
+then chancellor, ordered that the government should be in the hands
+of the chancellor, doctors, proctors, and the heads of the colleges
+and halls. In 1636 (the year of the founding of the first American
+college) the statutes of the university were revised and codified by
+Archbishop Laud; the sole authority was placed in the hands of an
+oligarchy composed of the leading dons of the colleges. The government
+was limited to the vice-chancellor, the proctors, and the heads of
+houses, and the vice-chancellor and the proctors were elected in
+sequence by each of the colleges from its own members. The teaching of
+the university was now legally as well as actually in the hands of the
+college tutors, and the examination was in the hands of a board chosen
+by the colleges. University lectures were still delivered in the
+schools by the regent masters, but they had ceased to play any
+important part in Oxford education.
+
+
+IV
+
+THE GOLDEN AGE OF THE MEDIÆVAL HALL
+
+Like the colleges, the halls meanwhile tended gradually towards an
+organized community life. The starting-point was a regulation that the
+principal should give the university security for the rent of the
+house. The logical result of this was that the principal became the
+representative of the university, and the hall one of its recognized
+institutions. The advantage of living in separate communities meantime
+had become so clearly evident that by the middle of the fifteenth
+century chamberdekyns were abolished. All students not living in a
+college were required to live in a hall. It was thus that the halls
+lost some of their democratic independence. At this period in their
+development they may be roughly compared to such modern American halls
+as Claverly at Harvard, where the residents govern their own affairs
+in the main, admitting newcomers only by vote, but are all alike
+subject to the authority of a resident university proctor. The analogy
+is by no means close, for the principal of the mediæval hall was not
+so much a resident policeman as the actual head of the community.
+
+As the colleges developed tutorial instruction, the halls followed
+suit; the local administrator became responsible not only for the
+social régime, but for the tuition of the undergraduates. The halls
+thus differed from the college mainly in that they had no corporate
+existence such as is necessary to an endowed institution. The mediæval
+hall was now in its golden age; it was a well-conceived instrument for
+all the purposes of residence and of education. It is especially to be
+noted that the régime of the community was still in the main
+democratic. Though the head was appointed by the university, he had to
+be accepted by vote of the undergraduates, a provision that was still
+observed, at least in one instance, until the close of the nineteenth
+century.
+
+The discipline of the halls of the fifteenth century, severe though it
+was by comparison with that of the earliest halls, was far less severe
+than the discipline in the colleges. It was quite as much as the
+university could accomplish, according to Rashdall, "to prevent
+students expelled from one hall being welcomed at another, to prevent
+the masters themselves condoning or sharing the worst excesses of
+their pupils, to compel fairly regular attendance at lectures and
+other university or college exercises, to require all students to
+return home by curfew at 8 or 9 P.M., to get the outer doors of the
+pedagogy locked till morning, and to insist on the presence of a
+regent throughout the night." When the early habits of the community
+generally are remembered, it will be evident that these regulations
+still allowed a vast deal of liberty, or rather of license. Boys of
+fifteen or sixteen living in the very centre of large and densely
+populated towns were in general perfectly free to roam about the
+streets up to the hour at which all respectable citizens were
+accustomed, if not actually compelled by town statutes, to retire to
+bed.
+
+The halls were reduced in number by the wars of the Roses and by a
+period of intellectual stagnation that followed, but they still
+numbered seventy-one, as against eighteen colleges (including those
+maintained by monasteries, which disappeared with the Reformation);
+and the number of their students is estimated at seven hundred, as
+against three hundred in the colleges. In the light of subsequent
+development it seems probable that it would have been far better for
+the university if the halls had remained the characteristic
+subdivision. Their fate was decided not by any inherent superiority
+on the part of the colleges, but by the force of corporate wealth.
+
+Even in the fifteenth century, the halls were tending to pass into the
+possession of the colleges, and later events made the tendency a fact.
+"As stars lose their light when the sun ariseth," says an ancient
+Cambridge worthy, "so all these hostels decayed by degrees when
+endowed colleges began to appear." The Reformation, and a recurrent
+pestilence, "the sweating sickness," a kind of inflammatory rheumatism
+due apparently to the unwholesome situation of the university,
+resulted in a sharp falling off in the number of students. The
+colleges lived on, however thinned their ranks, by virtue of the
+endowments; but the halls disappeared with the students who had
+frequented them. In 1526 it was recorded that sixteen had lately been
+abandoned. When the numbers of the university swelled again under
+Elizabeth, the increase found place partly in the few halls that were
+left, but mainly in the colleges. In 1602 there were only eight halls,
+and these were all mere dependencies of separate colleges. "_Singulæ
+singulis a colegiis pendent_," as a contemporary expresses it. Only
+one of these, St. Edmund Hall, now retains even a show of the old
+democratic independence, and this has lately been brought into closer
+subjection to Queen's College. Socially as well as educationally, the
+mediæval university faded before the organization and endowment of the
+colleges. The life of Oxford was concentrated in a dozen or more
+separate institutions, and so thoroughly concentrated that there was
+little association, intellectual or social, between any two of them.
+
+
+V
+
+THE ORIGIN OF THE MODERN UNDERGRADUATE
+
+If the tutors of New College were epoch-making, the amplitude and
+splendor of its social life were no less so. Its original buildings
+are in such perfect preservation that it is hard to believe that they
+are almost the oldest in Oxford, and that the New College quadrangle
+is the father of all quads. The establishment of the "head" was of
+similar dignity. The master of Balliol received forty shillings
+yearly; the warden of New College, forty pounds. In the statutes of an
+old Cambridge college we find it required that since it would be
+"indecent" for the master to go afoot, and "scandalous" to the college
+for him to "conducere hackeneye," he might be allowed one horse. The
+warden of New College had a coach and six. As century followed century
+the value of the endowments increased, and the scale of living was
+proportionately raised. The colleges in general became the home of
+comfort, and sometimes of a very positive luxury.
+
+In the colleges of the Middle Ages the students were the _socii_, and
+were maintained by the endowment. These are the dons and
+foundationers, or scholarship men, of to-day. But the comfort and
+order of the life in the colleges were very attractive, and the sons
+of the rich were early welcomed as "gentlemen commoners," precursors
+of the modern "commoners." The statutes of Magdalen make the first
+clear provision for receiving and teaching such "non-foundation"
+students. They permit the admission of twenty _filii nobilium_ as
+_commensales_, or commoners, in the vernacular. At first these were
+few and unimportant; in the centuries during which the numbers of the
+university were at an ebb, they could easily be accommodated within
+the depleted colleges. When the university increased under Elizabeth,
+the idea of living in halls in the mediæval fashion, as we have seen,
+was obsolescent, so that the result of the increase was to enlarge the
+colleges. Thus, largely as a matter of chance, the commoners of
+to-day, the characteristic and by far the larger part of the
+undergraduate body, live under a régime invented for the endowed
+scholars of the Middle Ages, and the democratic license of the
+mediæval undergraduate at large has given way to a democratic rule of
+commoners in colleges. Though the commoner is no longer called a
+gentleman commoner, he is more than likely to come from a family of
+position and means, for the comfort of life in the colleges is
+expensive. All this has transformed Oxford from a mediæval guild of
+masters and apprenticed students, a free mart of available knowledge,
+into a closely organized anteroom to social and professional life.
+
+
+VI
+
+THE INSIGNIFICANCE OF THE MODERN UNIVERSITY
+
+Though the university as a teaching body pined before the rising
+colleges, and for centuries lay in a swoon, it was not dead. It was
+kept alive by certain endowments for lecturers. But so thoroughly did
+the college tutors supply all undergraduate needs that, unless walls
+indeed have ears, the lectures were never heard. The professors
+gradually abandoned the university schools and gave the unattended
+lectures in their own houses. Such lectures were known as "study
+lectures." Even these gave way to silence. An odd situation was caused
+by the fact that there were also salaries paid to university proctors,
+a part of whose duty it was to see that the professorial lectures were
+properly given. When a proctor appeared, the learned professor would
+snatch up his manuscript and read until his auditor got tired and
+left. This was one case in which a thief was not the person to catch a
+thief; such energy on the part of the proctor was unusual, and was
+regarded as in extremely bad form. The abuse proceeded so far that in
+some cases, when hearers appeared at the appointed hour, the
+professors refused point blank to read their lectures. The climax of
+the farce was that at graduation students were fined for having cut
+these lectures that had never been given. When Samuel Johnson was
+fined for neglecting a college lecture to go "sliding on Christ Church
+Meadow," he exclaimed, "Sir, you have fined me twopence for missing a
+lecture that was not worth a penny!" His untimely departure from
+Oxford has lamentably left us to conjecture what he would have said
+upon paying the university fines at graduation for cutting lectures
+that had never been given.
+
+Even the university examinations became farcical. Under the Laudian
+statutes the very examiners became corrupt. Instead of a feast of
+reason and a flow of soul, the wary student provided his examiner with
+good meat and wine; and the two, with what company they bade in, got
+gloriously drunk together. B. A. meant Bacchanal of Arts. Even when
+the forms of examination were held to, the farce was only less
+obvious. A writer in _Terræ Filius_, March 24, 1721, tells us that the
+examination consisted in "a formal repetition of a set of syllogisms
+upon some ridiculous question in logick, which the candidates get by
+rote, or perhaps read out of their caps, which lie before them." These
+commodious sets of syllogisms were called strings, and descended from
+undergraduate to undergraduate in a regular succession like themes and
+mechanical drawings in an American club or fraternity. "I have in my
+custody a book of strings upon most or all of the questions discussed
+in a certain college noted for its ratiocinative faculty; on the first
+leaf of which are these words: _Ex dono Richardi P----e primæ classi
+benefactoris munificentissimi_." Lord Eldon took his degree at
+University College by an examination that consisted of two questions:
+"What is the meaning of Golgotha?" and "Who founded University
+College?" It was, no doubt, the bearers of degrees thus achieved who
+owned those marvelous libraries of the eighteenth century, which
+consisted of pasteboard boxes exquisitely backed in tooled calf, and
+labeled with the names of the standard Greek and Latin classics.
+
+The decline of the university teaching and examination did not result
+in a corresponding rise in the colleges. Each of the dozen and more
+institutions was supposed, as I have said, to keep a separate faculty
+in arts, and often in law and theology as well. If there had been any
+incentive to ambition, the colleges might have vied with one another
+in their impossible task, or at least have gone far enough to bring
+about a reform. But they were rich and did not care. The wealth of
+collegiate endowments, that had begun by ruining the university, ended
+by ruining the colleges. There were still earnest teachers and
+students at Oxford, but they were not the rule. The chief energies of
+the tutors were spent in increasing their salaries by a careful
+management of the estates, and in evading their pupils. In "the
+splendid foppery of a well-turned period" Gibbon thus pictures the
+dons of Magdalen in 1752: "Their deep and dull potations excused the
+brisk intemperance of youth." Only one result was possible. In 1821 T.
+J. Hogg, Shelley's college-mate at University College, referred to
+Oxford as a seat of learning. "Why do you call it so?" Shelley cried
+indignantly. "Because," Hogg replied, "it is a place in which learning
+sits very comfortably, well thrown back as in an easy chair, and
+sleeps so soundly that neither you nor I nor anybody else can wake
+her." Permanent endowments had transferred the seat of learning from a
+nobly indigent university to the colleges, and the deep and dull
+potations of endowed tutors had put it asleep on the common-room
+chairs.
+
+The nineteenth century did not altogether arouse it. "The studies of
+the university," according to the testimony of the Oxford Commission
+of 1850, "were first raised from their abject state by a statute
+passed in 1800." Heretofore all students had pursued the same studies,
+and there was no distinction to be gained at graduation except the
+mere fact of becoming a Bachelor of Arts. The statute of 1800 provided
+that such students as chose might distinguish themselves from the rest
+by taking honors; and for both passman and honor man it provided a
+dignified and quite undebauchable university examining board. At first
+the subjects studied were, roughly speaking, the same for passman and
+honor man; the difference was made by raising the standard of the
+honor examination. The examination followed the mediæval custom in
+being mainly oral; and though it soon came to be written, it still
+preserves the tradition of the mediæval disputation by including a
+_viva voce_ which is open to the attendance of the public. Throughout
+the nineteenth century the development consisted mainly in adding a
+few minor schools.
+
+The good and bad features of the English college system as a whole
+should not be hard to distinguish. In all social aspects the colleges
+are as nearly perfect as human institutions are capable of becoming,
+and they are the foundation of an unequaled athletic life.
+Educationally, their qualities are mixed. For the purpose of common or
+garden English gentlemen, nothing could be better than a happy
+combination of tutorial instruction and university examining. For the
+purposes of scholarly instruction in general, and of instruction in
+the modern sciences and mechanic arts in particular, few things could
+be worse than the system as at present construed.
+
+To exult over the superiority of American institutions in so many of
+the things that make up a modern university would not be a very
+profitable proceeding. Let us neglect the imperfections of Oxford. It
+is of much greater profit to consider the extraordinary social
+advantages that arise from the division of the university into
+colleges, and the educational advantages of the honor schools. These
+are points with regard to which we are as poor as Oxford is poor in
+the scope of university instruction.
+
+The point will perhaps be clearer for a brief review of the manner in
+which our college system grew out of the English. The development is
+the reverse of what we have just been considering. In England, the
+colleges overshadowed the university and sapped its life. With us, the
+university has overshadowed the college and is bidding fair to
+annihilate it.
+
+
+VII
+
+THE COLLEGE IN AMERICA
+
+In 1636 the Commonwealth of Massachusetts passed an act to establish a
+"schoole or colledge," and set apart a tract of land in "New Towne" as
+its seat, which they called Cambridge. Our Puritan forefathers had
+carried from the English university the conviction that "sound
+learning" is the "root of true religion," and were resolved, in their
+own vigorous phrase, that it should not be "buried in the graves of
+the fathers." In 1638 a master of arts of Emmanuel College, Cambridge,
+John Harvard, bequeathed to the new institution his library and half
+his fortune, some £780. A timber building was erected and a
+corporation formed which bore the donor's name. From the regulations
+in force in 1655 it is evident that in its manner of life, its laws of
+government, the studies taught, and the manner of granting the degree,
+Harvard College was a close counterpart of the English college of the
+early seventeenth century, its very phraseology including such terms
+as "disputing," "proceeding," "determining." It was the first
+institution of higher education in British America. Until the founding
+of the first state university, the University of Virginia, in 1819,
+the constitution afforded the principal model for subsequent
+foundations, and to-day colleges of the Harvard type are perhaps the
+strongest factor in American education. Harvard thus transplanted to
+American soil the full measure of the traditions of the Middle Ages,
+many of which exist in a modified form to-day.
+
+In "Harvard College by an Oxonian" Dr. George Birkbeck Hill suggests
+that John Harvard expected others to found similar institutions which
+collectively were to reproduce the University of Cambridge in New
+England. The supposition is by no means impossible, and the manuscript
+records in the Harvard Library would perhaps reward research. But
+whatever the intention, it is abundantly clear that in the full
+English sense of the word no second college was established at
+Cambridge. The first constitution was in all essentials the same as
+that of to-day. Hutchinson's "History of Massachusetts" records
+(1676): "There are but four fellowships, the two seniors have each
+30_l._ per ann. and the two juniors 15_l._, but no diet is allowed:
+There are tutors to all such as are admitted students.... The
+government of these colledges is in the governor and magistrates of
+Massachusetts and the president of the colledge, together with the
+teaching elders of the six adjacent towns." The fellows are the
+forbears of the modern corporation, the tutors of the faculty; and
+though the institution has been separated from the state, the
+"teaching elders" are the earliest overseers. Furthermore, the
+endowment of Harvard has remained undivided; and generations elapsed
+before the present very un-English division was made by which the
+teaching force is separated into independent faculties for arts and
+the various professions. From the first the "college" was a
+"university" in that it granted degrees; and less than twenty years
+after its founding the two terms are used as synonymous; an appendix
+to what is called the charter of Harvard "College" calls the
+institution a "University." This confusion of terms still persists,
+and is found at most other American institutions, the constitutions of
+which were largely modeled after that of Harvard. For generations the
+endowments and the teaching force of the American college and
+university were identical. Thus as regards its constitution the
+typical American university is a single English college writ large.
+
+Almost from the outset, however, there were, in one sense of the word,
+several colleges. In "An Inventory of the whole Estate of Harvd
+Colledge taken by the President & Fellows as they find the same to be
+Decemb. 10, 1654," the first two items are as follows:--
+
+"Imprs. The building called the old colledge, conteyning a Hall,
+Kitchen, Buttery, Cellar, Turrett & 5 Studeys & therin 7 chambers for
+students in them. A Pantry & small corne Chamber. A library & Books
+therin, vallued at 400lb.
+
+"It. Another house called Goffes colledge, & was purchased of Edw:
+Goffe. conteyning five chambers. 18 studyes. a kitchen cellar & 3
+garretts."[3]
+
+It is to be noted that "Old Colledge," which was Harvard's building,
+had a kitchen, buttery, and cellar, a pantry and a small corn chamber,
+and was thus primitively modeled after an English hall or college.
+Presumably the inmates, like their cousins across the water, dined in
+the hall. As for "Goffe's colledge," granting that the punctuation of
+the inventory is intentional, it had a kitchen cellar, which would
+seem to imply a kitchen; and it is not impossible that there should be
+a comma after "kitchen." No hall is mentioned, and it is hardly likely
+that there could have been so imposing a room in what was built for a
+private house; but it would have been possible and natural to serve
+meals in the largest of the five "chambers." A third building
+Hutchinson's history describes as "a small brick building called the
+Indian Colledge, where some few Indians did study, but now it is a
+printing house," the first printing house in British America. The two
+earliest buildings at Harvard would thus be the abodes of separate
+communities, and though I can find no intimation as to the Indian
+College, it can scarcely be doubted that since it was established for
+the separate use of the redskins, it contained a separate
+living-plant. A later record shows that there was a separate kitchen
+in the first Stoughton Hall.
+
+These early "colledges" at Harvard are more properly termed halls, and
+such as survived are now so called. They had probably little in common
+with the democratic English halls of the Middle Ages. Both at Oxford
+and at Cambridge the halls of the seventeenth century were, as I have
+said, mere pendants of the colleges; they must have had a separate
+character as a social community and a certain independence; but if
+they had separate endowments, they did not manage them, and each of
+them depended for its instruction mainly on the college to which it
+was affiliated. The printed records of the early American halls are
+too meagre to warrant definite conclusions; but they seem to show that
+the halls were conceived in the spirit of the English hall of the
+seventeenth century, in that they provided for separate social and
+residential communities without separate endowment or teaching force.
+If the increase of students at Harvard had been rapid, it is not
+unlikely that many new halls would have been established, each the
+home of a complete community; but for half a century the number
+fluctuated between fifteen and thirty. If we take the English estimate
+of two hundred and fifty as the largest feasible size for a single
+community, the limit was not reached until as late as 1840. By 1676
+the timber "colledge" built at the charge of Mr. Harvard, which bore
+his name, had been superseded by the first Harvard Hall, which
+Hutchinson describes as "a fair pile of brick building covered with
+tiles by reason of the late Indian warre not yet finished.... It
+contains twenty chambers for students, two in a chamber, a large hall
+which serves for a chapel; over that a convenient library." In these
+ample accommodations it was found that the student body could be most
+conveniently and cheaply fed as a single community. Thus, like the
+idea of a group of colleges with separate finances and teaching
+bodies, the idea of separate residential halls must have passed away
+with the generation of divines educated in England. The American
+college and the American university remained identical, not only
+educationally and in their finances, but as a social organization.
+This fact has caused a curious reversion in America toward the
+mediæval type of university, both socially and educationally.
+
+As the university has expanded, it has declined socially: to-day the
+residential life is only a degree better than that in the ancient
+chamberdekyns. Educationally, the reversion has been fortunate: the
+university is alive to the needs of the life about it. If it here
+resembles the modern German universities, this is largely due to the
+fact that both have more faithfully preserved the system and the
+spirit of the Middle Ages: the resemblance is quite as much a matter
+of native growth in America as of foreign imitation. In England, the
+mediæval idea of a multiplicity of residential bodies has survived,
+and the educational idea of the mediæval university has perished. In
+Germany, the educational idea has survived, and the old community life
+has perished. In America, the two ideas have survived by virtue of
+their identity. But for the same reason both are in a rudimentary and
+very imperfect state of development.
+
+FOOTNOTE:
+
+[3] William G. Brown in _The Nation_, vol. 61, No. 1585, p. 346.
+
+
+
+
+V
+
+THE PROBLEMS OF THE AMERICAN UNIVERSITY
+
+
+I
+
+THE SOCIAL AND ATHLETIC PROBLEM
+
+The imperfection of the modern American university in its social
+organization has been stated with the utmost clearness and authority,
+at least as regards Harvard. The "Harvard Graduates' Magazine" for
+September, 1894, published posthumously an article by Frank Bolles,
+late secretary of the college, entitled "The Administrative Problem."
+"In the present state of affairs," says Mr. Bolles, "student social
+life is stunted and distorted.... There is something very ugly in the
+possibility of a young man's coming to Cambridge, and while here
+sleeping and studying alone in a cheerless lodging, eating alone in a
+dismal restaurant, feeling himself unknown, and so alone in his
+lectures, his chapel, and his recreations, and not even having the
+privilege of seeing his administrative officers, who know most of his
+record, without having to explain to them at each visit who he is and
+what he is, before they can be made to remember that he is a living,
+hoping, or despairing part of Harvard College."
+
+Some of these men who fail to find a place in the social community
+meet their isolation grimly and are embittered against life. Others,
+after a few months or a year of lonesomeness and neglect, give up
+their university career broken-hearted, and by so doing perhaps take
+the first step in a life of failures. One man of whom I happened to
+know confided to his daily themes a depth of misery of which it can
+only be hoped that it was hysterical. At night when he heard a step on
+his staircase he prayed that it might be some one coming to see him.
+The tide of undergraduate life and of joy in living flowed all about
+him and left him thirsting. If a man finds sweetness in the uses of
+such adversity, it can only be by virtue of the firmest and calmest of
+tempers. Sometimes fellows starve physically without a friend with
+whom to share their hardship, living perhaps on bread, milk, and
+oatmeal, which they cook over the study lamp. Occasionally one hears
+disquieting rumors that such short rations have resulted in disease
+and even death before the authorities were aware. If this be so, the
+hardships of life in the earliest mediæval university, though far
+enough removed from us to be picturesque, could hardly have been more
+real.
+
+The sickness of the body politic has been portrayed with artistic
+sympathy and veracity by Mr. C. M. Flandrau, in his "Harvard
+Episodes," the wittiest and most searching of studies of undergraduate
+life. It is no doubt for this reason that the book is both read and
+resented by the healthy and unthinking college man.
+
+To dwell on such individual instances would be unpleasant. The point
+of importance is to show how the social chaos affects the health of
+the community as a whole. As it happens, we have a barometer. For
+better or for worse, the moving passion of the undergraduate body,
+aside from studies, is athletic success. If athletics prosper, it is
+because the life of the college finds an easy and natural expression;
+if athletics languish, there is pretty sure to be some check on
+wholesome functioning.
+
+The causes of Harvard's abundant failures and the remedies have been a
+fertile theme of discussion. One cause is obvious. The rivals with
+distressing frequency have produced better teams. Every one knows that
+what Cambridge chooses to call Yale luck is nine parts Yale pluck; and
+the quality is well developed at Princeton, Pennsylvania, and
+elsewhere. But why is it developed at these places more than at
+Harvard? The explanations are legion. The first cry was bad coaching.
+This was repeated until the fault was corrected, at least in part,
+and until every one was wholly tired of hearing the explanation. Then
+came the cry of bad physical training. This in turn was repeated until
+it brought partial remedy and total weariness of the agitation. By and
+by, all other complaints having been worn threadbare, Harvard's defeat
+was attributed to the fog on Soldier's Field. It is not unlikely that
+the fog will be dissipated and the athletes duly benefited. Yet it is
+far from certain that this will make the athletic body sound.
+
+The fault lies deeper than Yale pluck--or even the fog on Soldier's
+Field. It is to be found in the conditions, social, administrative,
+and even educational, which are at the basis of the life of the
+university. If these conditions were peculiar to Harvard, it would
+decidedly not be worth while to discuss them publicly. But they are
+inherent in the type of university of which Harvard is the earliest
+and most developed example, and are destined to crop out in every
+American institution of learning in proportion as it grows, as Harvard
+has grown, from the English college of a few decades ago into the
+Teutonized university of the present and of the future. In considering
+the causes, it is necessary to speak concretely of our one eminent
+example; but the main fact brought out will be applicable in greater
+or less degree to the present or future of any American college.
+
+The sources of Harvard's weakness are mainly social. When the college
+was small, it had its share of victory; but almost from the year when
+it began to outgrow its rivals, its prowess declined. Forty years ago,
+and even less, the undergraduate constitution of American institutions
+was, roughly speaking, that of the colleges of Oxford and Cambridge: a
+freshman was measurably sure of falling into easy relationship with
+the fellows of his class and of other classes, and thus of finding his
+level or his pinnacle in athletic teams and in clubs. Considered as a
+machine for developing good fellows and good sportsmen, it was well
+adjusted and well oiled; it worked. But it was not capable of
+expansion. Two or three hundred fellows can live and even dine
+together with comfort and an increase of mutual understanding; they
+soon become an organized community. When a thousand or two live as a
+single community and dine at one board (let us call it dining), the
+social bond relaxes. Next door neighbors are unknown to one another,
+having no common ground of meeting, and even the college commons fail
+to bring them together. The relaxing influence of the hour spent at
+table and in the subsequent conversation, during which social
+intercourse should most freely flourish, is quite lost. The
+undergraduate body is a mob, or at best an aggregation of shifting
+cliques. If men live in crowds or in cliques, their life is that of
+crowds or of cliques, and is unprofitable both to themselves and to
+the community that should prosper by their loyal activity.
+
+It is true that there are societies and clubs, but these also to a
+certain degree have been swamped in the rising tide of undergraduates.
+With freshman classes as large as those of to-day, the old social
+machinery becomes incapable of sifting the clubable from the less
+clubable, those who deserve recognition in the body of undergraduates
+from those who do not. The evil is increased by the fact that as a
+rule in America the social life is organized early in the
+undergraduate course, so that the men who fail of election in the
+first year or two have failed for good. There are, to be sure, cases
+in which men who have later developed signal merit have been taken
+into the all-important societies and clubs of the upper classmen, and
+sometimes these societies make a special and most creditable effort
+thus to remedy the failures of the system; but the men who are thus
+elected are an exception, and an exception of the kind that proves
+the rule. Unless a man has been prominent in one of the large
+preparatory schools, or becomes prominent in athletics in the first
+year or so, there is only one way to make sure of meeting such fellows
+as he wishes to know, and that is both to choose friends and to avoid
+them with an eye to social chances, a method which is scarcely to be
+commended. As the incoming classes grow larger, there is an
+increasingly large proportion of undergraduates who fail to qualify in
+the first year or two in any of these ways. Throughout their course
+they neither receive benefit from the general life of the university
+nor contribute to it. They are often of loyal and disinterested
+character, and they not infrequently develop into men of exceptional
+ability in all of the paths of undergraduate life; not a few of them
+have been 'varsity captains. But instead of exerting the influence on
+the welfare of the university which such men might and should exert,
+they find it impossible to get into the main currents, and revolve
+impotently on the outside, each in the particular eddy where fate has
+thrust him.
+
+At Harvard, where the evil has long been recognized, a remedy has been
+sought in increasing the membership of the great sophomore and senior
+societies, the Institute of 1770 and the Hasty Pudding Club. The
+result has been the reverse of what was intended. The larger the club
+the less compact its life and its influence,--what a few men have
+gained the club has lost. The tendency toward disintegration is
+confirmed by a peculiarity of the organization of the societies. The
+first half of the members of the Institute form a separate club, the
+D. K. E., or Dickey. From this the second half are excluded, becoming
+a sort of social fringe; they often form a part of the mob that dines
+at Memorial or of the cliques that dine in boarding-houses, and are
+only a shade less excluded than the rest from the centres of the
+college life. If this inner club, the Dickey, were the instrument of a
+united and efficient public spirit, the case would not be so bad, but
+its members in turn are split into a number of small clubs; as a
+social organization the Dickey is mainly a name. If now these small
+clubs took a strong part in the general life of the college, the case
+would still not be so bad; but each spends its main strength in
+struggling with the others to secure as many members as possible from
+the first ten of the Dickey. They are scarcely to be regarded as
+engines of public spirit.
+
+The same is true of the great senior society, the Hasty Pudding. Its
+most prominent members belong to the few small clubs of upper
+classmen; the rest are as much a social fringe as the later tens of
+the Institute. And the senior clubs, like the clubs of the under
+classmen, are more interested in their private politics than in the
+policy of the college as a whole. At Yale the senior societies still
+exert a strong and generally wholesome influence, but at Harvard they
+have long ceased to do so, if they ever did. In proportion as a man is
+successful in the social world the system lifts him out of the body of
+undergraduate life. The reward of athletic distinction or of
+good-fellowship is a sort of pool pocket, upon getting into which a
+man is definitely out of the game. The leaders in the college life,
+social and athletic, are chosen on the superficial tests of the
+freshman year, and are not truly representative; and the organization
+of which they become a part is calculated only to suppress general and
+efficient public spirit. The outer layers are dead wood and the
+kernels sterile. This is at least one reason why Harvard does not
+oftener win.
+
+In all this there is no place for a philosophy of despair. The spirit
+of the undergraduate, clubbed and unclubbed, is normal and sound. The
+efforts which the clubs themselves make from time to time to become
+representative are admirably public spirited; and there is no less
+desire on the part of the outsiders to live for the best interests of
+the college. On the day of an athletic contest the university is
+behind the team, heart and lungs; and when defeat comes it is felt
+alike by all conditions of men. From time to time ancient athletes
+journey to Cambridge to exhort the undergraduate body to pull
+together; and it is a poor orator indeed who cannot set in motion
+strong currents of enthusiasm. Half an hour of earnest talk on the
+strenuous life from Theodore Roosevelt has often been known to raise a
+passion of aspiration that has positively lasted for weeks. But the
+social system cannot be galvanized into life and functioning. The
+undergraduates aspire and strive, but every effort is throttled by a
+Little Old Man of the Sea. When all is said and done, the mob and the
+cliques remain mob and cliques; with discord within and exclusive
+without, there is small hope of organized efficiency.
+
+At Yale the oligarchic spirit of the senior societies is compact and
+operative where that of the Harvard clubs is not; but Yale also is
+being swamped. The vast and increasing mob of the unaffiliated has
+several times within the last decade shown a shocking disrespect for
+the sacred authority of the captains; and the non-representative
+character of the sophomore societies, from which the senior societies
+are recruited, has been a public scandal. One result of this disorder
+is that the ancient athletic prestige is slipping away, or is so far
+in abeyance that it is again a question whether Harvard or Yale
+has--shall we say the worse team? The case of the older universities
+is typical. Other institutions are expanding as fast or faster, and it
+is only a question of time when the increase of numbers will swamp the
+social system.
+
+That there is something rotten in the state of Denmark has of late
+been officially recognized, at least at Harvard. In order to create a
+general social and athletic life in the community a Union has been
+established, modeled on the Oxford Union. It would be pleasant to
+picture the College House of the future shaking hands with Claverly,
+the Phi Beta Kappa linking elbows with the Porcellian, and the fellows
+who now, in spite of a desire to be sociable, have lived through four
+years of solitary confinement each in his petty circle, enjoying the
+bosom friendship of all the men they may desire to know. It would be
+pleasant but perhaps not altogether warrantable, when one considers
+the essential nature of the Union.
+
+The Oxford Union of celebrity, as has been pointed out in an earlier
+chapter, is a thing of the past. It was an exclusive institution, in
+which no attempt was made to foster universal brotherhood. When it was
+thrown open to the entire undergraduate world, it lost caste and
+authority. The elect flocked by themselves each in his own exclusive
+club. If the Harvard Union had been modeled on the old exclusive
+Oxford Union, it might perhaps have been equally efficient in bringing
+together a broadly representative body of men. But it was modeled on
+the modern democratic Union. Here is a plain case: When the Oxford
+Union ceased to be exclusive, its best elements flocked by themselves,
+and the result is a growth of small exclusive clubs. At Harvard the
+exclusive clubs and societies are both ancient and honorable, and,
+moreover, very comfortable, and it hardly seems likely that their
+members will rout themselves out of their cosy corners to join the
+merry rout at the Harvard Union.
+
+This is not to cast a gloomy eye upon the new university club; it is
+rather by way of emphasizing the importance of the work it has to do,
+and will succeed in doing. Hitherto the lounging grounds of the
+unaffiliated (alas! that in such an alma mater so many are forever
+unaffiliated!) have been public billiard-rooms and tobacco shops. For
+the solace of a midnight supper one had to go to the locally familiar
+straw-hatted genius of the sandwich, and for the luxury of a late
+breakfast to John of the Holly Tree. And John the Orange Man! Great
+worthies these, ancient and most honorable. But even in the
+enchantment of retrospect they somehow or other explain why so many
+fellows choose to live, for the most part, in small cliques in one
+another's rooms and cultivate the deadly chafing-dish. For the
+unaffiliated--by far the larger part of each class--the new club-house
+will be a Godsend. It is much more fun to cut a nine-o'clock lecture
+if you are sure of a comfortable chair at breakfast and a real napkin;
+and even in the brutal gladness of youth, it is pleasant at a midnight
+supper to be seated. And then, after that athletic dinner at Memorial,
+a place to loaf quietly over a pipe with whatever congenial spirit one
+finds, and listen to the clicking of billiard-balls! It is also
+proposed that the 'varsity athletes have their training tables at the
+new Union, so that any fellow may come to know them clothed and in
+their right minds. I fancy that the new club will leave those old
+worthies a trifle lonesome, and will banish the chafing-dish forever.
+
+The spirit of an old graduate somehow takes kindly to the idea of a
+place like that. How the spirit of Bishop Brooks, for instance, would
+enjoy slipping in of an evening for the cigar they have denied him in
+the house erected in his memory! And for the graduate in the flesh the
+club-house will be no less welcome, especially if he is unlucky enough
+not to have a club of his own to go back to. To love one's alma mater
+it is, of course, not necessary to have a club; but it somehow
+interferes with the sentiment of a home-coming to be obliged to go
+back to Boston by trolley for luncheon and dinner, and to eat it among
+aliens. In the new Union it will even be possible to put up for the
+night. A long step has been made in advance of the old unhappy order.
+Yet the new Union leaves the vital evil in the community life as far
+as ever from solution.
+
+What the authorities have failed to do consciously may, according to
+present indications, be accomplished, in some manner at least, by an
+unconscious growth. When Memorial became inadequate to the mere demand
+for seating-room, new dining-halls were established. In the future it
+is possible that these new halls may be kept within the line where
+community life becomes impossible and mob life begins. If they could
+be, the problem would be at least one step nearer solution. But to
+gain the highest effect of community organization, it is necessary
+that the men who dine in the same hall shall live near one another.
+Under the present system this rarely happens, and when it does, it
+does not even follow that they know one another by sight. Until the
+halls represent some real division in undergraduate life--separate and
+organized communities--they must remain the resort of a student mob.
+
+Fortunately, another movement is discernible in the direction of
+separate residential organization. Already certain of the dormitories
+in American universities are governed democratically by the inmates:
+no student is admitted except by order of a committee of the members.
+The fraternity houses so widely diffused in America offer a still
+better example, almost a counterpart, of the halls of the golden age
+of the mediæval university. Any considerable development of hall or
+fraternity life in the great universities would result in a dual
+organization of the kind that has proved of such advantage in England,
+so that a man would have his residence in a small democratic
+community, and satisfy his more special interests in the exclusive
+clubs of the university. In such an arrangement the hall would profit
+by the clubman as the clubman would gain influence through the hall.
+All undergraduates would thus be united in the general university
+life in a way which is now undreamed of, and which is unlikely, as I
+think, even in the new Harvard Union.
+
+The tendency toward division in the dining-halls and the dormitories
+is evident also in athletics; but here it is very far from
+unconscious. The division by classes long ago ceased to be an adequate
+means of developing material for the 'varsity teams, and when the
+English rowing coach, Mr. R. C. Lehmann, was in charge of the Harvard
+oarsmen, he outlined a plan for developing separate crews not unlike
+the college crews of England. This system has since been effected with
+excellent results. Separate boating clubs have been established, each
+of which has races among its own crews and races with the crews of its
+rivals. Only one thing has prevented the complete success of the
+system. The division into clubs is factitious, representing no real
+rivalry such as exists among English colleges. To supply this rivalry,
+it is only necessary that each boat club shall represent a hall. The
+same division would of course be equally of benefit in all branches of
+sport. The various teams within the university would then represent a
+real social rivalry, such as has long ceased to exist. This could
+scarcely fail to produce the effect that has been so remarkable at
+the English universities. As in England, a multiplication of contests
+would on the one hand develop far better university material, and on
+the other hand it would lessen rather than exaggerate the excessive
+importance of intercollegiate contests.
+
+
+II
+
+THE ADMINISTRATIVE PROBLEM
+
+The administrative evil of the American university, as typified in
+Harvard, Mr. Bolles described even more vividly than the social evil.
+The bare fact of the problem he stated as follows: "In 1840 the
+college contained 250 students; in 1850, 300; in 1860, 450; in 1870,
+600; in 1880, 800; in 1890, 1300; in 1894, 1600." He then pointed out
+that the only means the authorities have found for meeting this
+increasing demand on the administrative office is, not to divide the
+students into separate small bodies each under a single administrator,
+but to divide the duties of administration among several officers.
+Thus each of the added officers is required to perform his duty toward
+the entire student body. It is apparently assumed that he can
+discharge one duty toward two or three thousand students as
+intelligently as in former years he could discharge two or three
+duties toward two or three hundred. By this arrangement the most
+valuable factor in administration is eliminated--personal knowledge
+and personal contact between the administrator and his charges. It is
+said that the members of the administrative board of the
+college--professors whose time is of extreme value to the university
+and to the world, and who receive no pay as administrators--sit three
+hours a night three nights in the week deciding the cases that come
+before them, not from personal knowledge of the undergraduates
+concerned, but from oral and documentary reports. "It is only by a
+fiction that the Recorder [or the Dean, or the member of the
+administrative board] can be assumed to have any personal knowledge of
+even a half of the men whose absences he counts, whose petitions he
+acts upon, and against whose delinquencies he remonstrates; yet the
+fiction is maintained while its absurdity keeps on growing.... If the
+rate of growth and our present administrative system are maintained,
+the Dean and Recorder of Harvard College will [in 1950] be personally
+caring for 6500 individuals, with all of whom they will be presumed to
+have an intelligent acquaintance."
+
+Mr. Bolles lived through the period in which a brilliant band of
+German-trained American professors, having made over our educational
+system as far as possible on German lines, were endeavoring to
+substitute German discipline, or lack of it, for the traditional
+system of collegiate residence which aims to make the college a
+well-regulated social community. At one time these reformers rejoiced
+in the fact that Harvard students attended the ice carnival at
+Montreal or basked in the Bermudan sun while the faculty had no means
+of knowing where they were and no responsibility for the success of
+their college work. The Overseers, however, were not in sympathy with
+the Teutonized faculty, and soon put an end to this; but the reformers
+were, and perhaps still are, only waiting the opportunity to establish
+again the Teutonic license. "It is sometimes said," Mr. Bolles
+continues, "that Harvard may eventually free itself from all its
+remaining parental responsibility and leave students' habits, health,
+and morals to their individual care, confining itself to teaching,
+research, and the granting of degrees. Before it can do this, it must
+be freed from dormitories. As long as fifteen hundred of its students
+live in monastic quarters provided or approved by the university, so
+long must the university be held responsible by the city, by parents,
+and by society at large, for the sanitary and moral condition of such
+quarters. The dormitory system implies and necessitates oversight of
+health and morals. The trouble to-day is that the administrative
+machinery in use is not capable of doing all that is and ought to be
+expected of it.... If it be determined openly that the health and
+morals of Harvard undergraduates are not to occupy the attention of
+the Dean and Board of the college, then the present system may be
+perpetuated, but if this determination is not reached, then either the
+system must be changed or the present attempt to accomplish the
+impossible will go on until something snaps."
+
+Since Mr. Bolles's day there has been much earnest effort to solve the
+administrative problem; but the difficulties have increased rather
+than diminished. The duties of the Dean are still much the same as
+when the freshman class numbered one hundred instead of five. Only the
+Dean has been improved. He is at least five times as human and five
+times as earnest as any other Dean; but the freshman class keeps on
+growing, and when he has satisfied his very exacting conscience and
+retires (or, not having satisfied his conscience, perishes), no man
+knows where his better is to be found. Of the Secretary and the
+Recorder and his assistants Mr. Bolles has spoken. A Regent has among
+other duties a general charge of the rooms the fellows live in, and
+usually makes each room and its occupant a yearly visit--which the
+occupant, in the perversity of undergraduate nature, regards as a
+visitation. Then there is the physician. So large a proportion of the
+undergraduates were found to be isolated and unhappy in their
+circumstances, and remote from the knowledge of the authorities, that
+it became necessary to appoint some one to whom they might appeal in
+need. Thus the details as to each undergraduate's residence are in the
+hands of seven different officials, each of whom, in order to attain
+the best results, requires a personal acquaintance with the thousands
+of undergraduates. Furthermore the entire body of undergraduates
+changes every four years. If every administrator had the commodity of
+lives commonly attributed to the cat, the duties of their offices
+would still be infinitely beyond them.
+
+Mr. Bolles suggested a solution of the administrative problem: "If the
+college is too large for its dean and administrative board to manage
+in the way most certain to benefit its students, it should be divided,
+using as a divisor the number ... which experts may agree in thinking
+is the number of young men whom one dean and board should be expected
+to know and govern effectively."
+
+When Mr. Bolles wrote, one class of administrative officer and one
+only was limited in his duties to a single small community: in each
+building in which students lived, a proctor resided who was supposed
+to see that the Regent's orders were enforced. Since then another
+step has been taken in the same direction; a board of advisers has
+been established, each member of which is supposed to have a helpful
+care of twenty-five freshmen. These two officials, it will be seen,
+divide the administrative duties of an English tutor. That they
+represent a step toward Mr. Bolles's solution of the administrative
+difficulty has probably never occurred to the authorities; and as yet
+it must be admitted the step is mainly theoretical. The position of
+both, as I know from sad personal experience, is such that their
+duties, like those of all other administrators, resolve into a mere
+matter of police regulation. The men are apt to resist all friendly
+advances. In the end, a proctor's activities usually consist in
+preventing them of a Sunday from shouting too loud over games of
+indoor football, and at other times from blowing holes through the
+cornice with shotguns. The case of the freshman adviser is much the
+same. His first duty is to expound to his charges the mysteries of the
+elective system, and to help each student choose his courses.
+According to the original intention, he was to exert as far as
+possible a beneficial personal influence on newcomers; but the result
+seldom follows the intention. Beyond the visit which each freshman is
+obliged to make to his adviser in order to have his list of electives
+duly signed, there is nothing except misdemeanor to bring the two
+within the same horizon. When the adviser takes pains to proffer
+hospitality, the freshman's first thought is that he is to be
+disciplined. When, as often happens, a proctor is also a freshman
+adviser, he unites the two administrative duties of an English tutor;
+but his position is much less favorable in that his duties are
+performed toward two distinct bodies of men. With time, tact, and
+labor, he might conceivably force himself into personal relationship
+with his fifty-odd charges; but the inevitable ground of meeting, such
+as the English tutor finds in his teaching, is lacking. An attempt to
+become acquainted is very apt to appear gratuitous. In point of fact,
+such acquaintance is scarcely expected by the university, and is
+certainly not paid for. What little an administrator earns is apt to
+be so much an hour (and not so very much) for teaching. A gratuitous
+office is so difficult that one hesitates to perform it gratuitously.
+If the young instructor is bent on making himself unnecessary trouble,
+there is plenty of opportunity in connection with his teaching; and
+here, of course, owing to the characteristic lack of organic
+coördination, he has to deal with a body of men who, except by rare
+accident, are quite distinct both from those whom he advises and
+those whom he proctorizes. The system at Harvard may be different in
+detail from that at other American universities; but wherever a large
+body of undergraduates are living under a single administrative
+system, it can scarcely be different in kind.
+
+Enough has been said to show that the only office which an
+administrator can perform is a police office. Where the college and
+the university are identical, the element of personal influence is
+necessarily eliminated. But if the college were divided into separate
+administrative units, the situation would be very different. The seven
+general and two special offices I have indicated might be discharged,
+as regards each undergraduate, by a dean and a few proctor-advisers;
+and as the students and their officers would be living in the same
+building, personal knowledge and influence might become the
+controlling force. The solution of the administrative problem is
+identical with the solution of the social and athletic problem, and in
+both cases a movement toward it is begun. If the student body is
+eventually divided into residential halls of the early mediæval type,
+much good will result, and probably nothing but good, even if the
+tutorial function proper is absent. As to the addition of the
+tutorial function, that is a question of extreme complexity and
+uncertainty, in order to grasp which it is necessary to review the
+peculiar educational institutions of American universities.
+
+
+III
+
+THE EDUCATIONAL PROBLEM
+
+As regards the American teaching system, the fact that the college so
+long remained identical with the university has caused little else
+than good. At Oxford and Cambridge, when a demand arose for
+instruction in new fields, the university could not meet it because it
+had little or no wealth and had surrendered its teaching function; and
+the score of richly endowed colleges, by force of their inertia,
+collectively resisted the demand. The enlargement in the scope of
+instruction has been of the slowest. In America, each new demand
+instantly created its supply. The moment the students in theology
+required more than a single professor, their tuition fees as well as
+other funds could be applied to the creation of a divinity school; and
+the professorships in law, medicine, and the technical professions
+were likewise organized into schools, each fully equipped under a
+separate faculty for the pursuit of its special aim. Thus the ancient
+college was developed by segregation into a fully organized modern
+university. American institutions are composed of a reduplication,
+not of similar colleges, but of distinct schools, each with its special
+subject to teach. This fact makes possible a far higher standard of
+instruction. The virtue of the administrative and social organization
+in the English university, as has been pointed out, results from
+division of the university into separate communities,--distinct
+organs, each with its separate activity. The virtue of the American
+university in its teaching functions results from a precisely similar
+cause.
+
+In the case of the college, one or two details have lately been the
+occasion of criticism. In the educational as in the social and
+administrative functions, the machinery is apparently overgrown. Until
+well into the nineteenth century, the body of instruction offered was
+much the same as in the English colleges of the seventeenth century,
+or in the pass schools of to-day,--a modified version of the mediæval
+trivium and quadrivium. When a new world of intellectual life was
+opened, most academic leaders regarded it with abhorrence. The old
+studies were the only studies to develop the manners and the mind; the
+new studies were barbarous, and dwarfed the understanding. All
+learning had been contained in a pint-pot, and must continue to be so.
+If the old curriculum had prevailed, the old system might have
+continued to serve, in spite of the enormous increase of students; but
+it did not. Discussions of the educational value of the new learning
+are still allowed to consume paper and ink; but the cause of the old
+pint-pot was lost decades ago. All branches are taught, and are open
+to all students.
+
+The live question to-day both in England and America is not whether we
+shall recognize the new subjects, but how and in what proportion we
+shall teach them. In England, where the colleges and the university
+are separate, the teaching and the examining are separate. The student
+prepares in college for an examination by the university. It is as a
+result of this that the subjects of instruction have been divided and
+organized into honor schools; and here again the division and
+organization have resulted in sounder and more efficient functioning.
+In America, such a division has never been made: the teaching and the
+degree-granting offices have remained identical. The professor in each
+"course" is also the examiner, and the freedom of choice of necessity
+goes not by groups of related studies but by small disconnected
+courses. As the field of recognized knowledge developed, new courses
+were added, and the student was granted a greater range of choice.
+Whereas of old all the instruction of the college might and had to be
+taken in four years, the modern courses could scarcely be exhausted in
+a full century. This American system, earliest advocated at Harvard,
+is called the elective system, and has made its way, in a more or less
+developed form, into all American universities worthy of the name. Its
+primary work was that of the Oxford honor schools--the shattering of
+the old pint-pot. It has done this work; but it is now in train to
+become no less a superstition than the older system, and is thus no
+less a menace to the cause of education.
+
+It is perhaps only natural, though it was scarcely to be expected,
+that the university which in late years has most severely criticised
+the elective system is that which a quarter of a century ago
+deliberately advocated it, and in the face of almost universal
+opposition justified it in the eyes of American educators. There has
+evidently been a miscalculation. Yet though Harvard has cautiously
+acknowledged its failure in the persons of no less authorities than
+Professor Münsterberg and Dean Briggs, the element of error has not
+yet been clearly stated, nor has the remedy been proposed. Many things
+have been said against the elective system, but they may all be summed
+up in one phrase: it is not elective. This is no specious paradox. It
+is the offer of free election that is specious.
+
+No offer could seem fairer. The student is at liberty to choose as he
+will. He may specialize microscopically or scatter his attention over
+the universe; he may elect the most ancient subjects or the most
+modern, the hardest or the easiest. No offer, I repeat, could seem
+fairer. But experience disillusions. Some day or other a serious
+student wakes up to the fact that he is the victim of--shall we say a
+thimble-rigging game? For example, let us take the case of a serious
+specialist. Of all the world's knowledge the serious specialist values
+only one little plot. A multitude of courses is listed in the
+catalogue, fairly exhausting his field. Delightful! Clearly he can see
+which walnut-shell covers the pea. He chooses for his first year's
+study four courses--the very best possible selection, the only
+selection, to open up his field. One moment: on closer scrutiny he
+finds that two of the four courses are given at the same hour, and
+that, therefore, he cannot take them in the same year. Still, there
+are at his command other courses, not so well adapted to his purposes,
+but sooner or later necessary. He chooses one. Hold again! On closer
+inspection he finds that appended to the course is a Roman numeral,
+and that the same numeral is against one of his other courses. After
+half an hour's search in the catalogue he finds that, though the two
+courses are given at different hours, and indeed on different days of
+the week, the mid-year and final examinations in both take place on
+the same days. Obviously these two cannot be taken in the same year.
+With dampened spirits his eye lights on a second substitute. He could
+easily deny himself this course; but it is vastly interesting, if not
+important, and he must arrange a year's work. Behold, this most
+interesting course was given last year, and will be given next year,
+but neither love nor money nor the void of a soul hungering for
+knowledge could induce the professor who gives it to deliver one
+sentence of one lecture; he is busy and more than busy with another
+course which will not be given next year. The specialist is at last
+forced to elect a course he does not really want. One entanglement as
+to hours of which the present deponent had knowledge forced a
+specialist in Elizabethan literature to elect--and, being a candidate
+for a degree with distinction, to get a high grade in--a course in the
+history of finance legislation in the United States. This was a tragic
+waste, for so many and so minute are the courses offered that the
+years at the student's disposal are all too few to cover even a
+comparatively narrow field. The specialist may well ruminate on the
+philosophy of Alice and her Wonderland jam. Yesterday he could elect
+anything, and to-morrow anything; but how empty is to-day!
+
+Highly as the modern university regards the serious specialist, a more
+general sympathy will probably be given to the man who is seeking a
+liberal education. Such a man knows that in four years at his disposal
+he cannot gain any real scientific knowledge even of the studies of
+the old-fashioned college curriculum. As taught now, at Harvard, they
+would occupy, according to President Eliot's report for 1894-95, twice
+four years. But by choosing a single group of closely related
+subjects, and taking honors in it, he hopes to master a considerable
+plot of the field of knowledge. I will not say that he chooses the
+ancient classics, for--though they are admirably taught in a general
+way in the great Oxford Honor School of Literæ Humaniores--the
+American student may be held to require, even in studying the
+classics, a larger element of scientific culture, which would take
+more time than is to be had. For the same reason I will not say that
+he chooses the modern languages and literatures, though such a choice
+might be defended. Let us say that he chooses a single modern
+language and literature--his own.[4] Surely this is not too large a
+field for four years' study. Of classics, mathematics, science, and
+history he has supposedly been given a working knowledge in the
+preparatory school. For the rest he relies on the elective system.
+
+Even in the beginning, like the specialist, he is unable to choose the
+courses he most wants, because of the conflict of the hours of
+instruction and examination; and this difficulty pursues him year by
+year, increasing as the subjects to be taken grow fewer and fewer. But
+let us dismiss this as an incidental annoyance. His fate is
+foreshadowed when he finds that the multitude of courses by which
+alone he could cover the entire field of English literature would fill
+twice the time at his disposal. Already he has discovered that the
+elective system is not so very elective. He sadly omits Icelandic and
+Gothic, and all but one half course is Anglo-Saxon. Some day he means
+to cover the ground by means of a history of literature and
+translations; but in point of fact, as the subjects are not at all
+necessary for his degree, and as he is overburdened with other work,
+he never does. He sticks to his last, and is the more willing to do
+so because, being wise beyond the wont of undergraduates, he knows
+that it will be well to fortify his knowledge of the English language
+and literature with a complementary knowledge of the history of the
+English people, and of the history and literature of the neighboring
+Germans and French.
+
+Having barely time for a rapid survey of these complementary subjects,
+he elects only the introductory courses. In the aggregate they require
+many precious hours, and to take them he is obliged to omit outright
+English literature of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries; but he
+knows that it is better to neglect a finial or two than the buttresses
+of the edifice he is building. Again he has miscalculated. After his
+complementary courses are begun, and it is too late to withdraw from
+them, he discovers even more clearly than the specialist how very
+unelective the elective system can be. It is the same old question of
+the thimble and the pea. These introductory courses are intended to
+introduce him to the study of history and of literature, not to
+complement his studies of English. What he wanted to know in English
+history was the social and the political movements, the vital and
+picturesque aspect; what he is taught is the sources and
+constitutions--the dry bones. In German and French he wanted to know
+the epochs of literature; he is taught the language, considered
+scientifically, or, at most, certain haphazard authors in whom he has
+only a casual interest. If he is studying for honors, he is obliged to
+waste enough time on these disappointing courses to reach a high grade
+in each. The system of free election is mighty, for he is a slave to
+it.
+
+This difficulty is typical. Thus a student of history or of German who
+wants to study Elizabethan literature for its bearing on his subject
+is obliged to spend one full course--a quarter of a year's work--on
+the language of four or five plays of Shakespeare before he is
+permitted to take a half course on Shakespeare as a dramatist; and
+even then all the rest of the Elizabethan period is untouched.
+
+Let us suppose that our student of English is wary as well as wise,
+preternaturally wary, and leaves all complementary subjects to private
+reading--for which he has no time. He is then able to devote himself
+to the three or four most important epochs in English literature. He
+has to leave out much that is of importance, so that he cannot hope to
+gain a synoptic view of the field as a whole; but of his few subjects
+he will at least be master. Here at last is the thimble that covers
+the pea. Not yet! In four courses out of five of those devoted to the
+greatest writers, the teacher's attention is directed primarily to a
+very special and scientific study of the language; the examination
+consists in explaining linguistic cruxes. Literary criticism, even of
+the most sober kind, is quite neglected. If the student learns only
+what is taught, he may attain the highest grades and the highest
+honors without being able in the end to distinguish accurately the
+spirit of Chaucer from that of Elizabethan literature.
+
+Furthermore, not every student is sufficiently well advised to know
+precisely what courses he requires to attain his end. For example, to
+gain an understanding of the verse forms and even the spirit of Middle
+English and Elizabethan English, it is necessary to know the older
+French and Italian; but, as it happened, our student was not aware of
+the fact until he broke his shins against it, and it was nobody's
+business to tell him of it. And even if he had been aware of it, he
+could not have taken those subjects without leaving great gaps in his
+English studies. He has graduated _summa cum laude_ and with highest
+honors in English; but he has not even a correct outline knowledge of
+his subject. His education is a thing of shreds and patches.
+
+Whatever may be the aim of the serious student, the elective system is
+similarly fatal to it. I must be content with a single instance more.
+The signal merit of the old-fashioned curriculum was that its
+insistence on the classics and mathematics insured a mental culture
+and discipline of a very high order, and of a kind that is impossible
+where the student elects only purely scientific courses, or courses in
+which he happens to be especially interested. Let us suppose that the
+serious student wishes to elect his courses so as to receive this
+discipline. His plight is indicated in "Some Old-fashioned Doubts
+about New-fashioned Education" which have lately been divulged[5] by
+the Dean of Harvard College, Professor Le B. R. Briggs. The
+undergraduate "may choose the old studies but not the old instruction.
+Instruction under an elective system is aimed at the specialist. In
+elective mathematics, for example, the non-mathematical student who
+takes the study for self-discipline finds the instruction too high for
+him; indeed, he finds no encouragement for electing mathematics at
+all." The same is true of the classics.
+
+One kind of student, to be quite candid, profits vastly by the
+elective system, namely, the student whose artistic instinct makes him
+ambitious of gaining the maximum effect, an A.B., with the minimum
+expenditure of means. History D is a good course: the lectures do not
+come until eleven o'clock, and no thought of them blunts the edge of
+the evening before. Semitic C is another good course--only two
+lectures a week, and you can pass it with a few evenings of cramming.
+If such a man is fortunate enough to have learned foreign languages in
+the nursery or in traveling abroad, he elects all the general courses
+in French and German. This sort of man is regarded by Dean Briggs with
+unwonted impatience; but he has one great claim to our admiration. Of
+all possible kinds of students, he alone has found the pea. For him
+the elective system is elective.
+
+The men who developed the elective system, it is quite unnecessary to
+say, had no sinister intention. They were pioneers of educational
+progress who revolted against the narrowness of the old curriculum.
+The nearest means of reform was suggested to them by the German plan,
+and they sought to naturalize this _in toto_ without regard to native
+needs and conditions. But the pioneer work of the elective system has
+been done, and the men who now uphold it in its entirety are clogging
+the wheels of progress no less than those who fought it at the outset.
+The logic of circumstances early forced them to the theory that all
+knowledge is of equal importance, provided only that it is
+scientifically pursued, and this position in effect they still
+maintain. You may elect to study Shakespeare and end by studying
+American finance legislation; but so long as you are compelled to
+study scientifically, bless you, you are free.
+
+The serenity of these men must of late have been somewhat clouded.
+Professor Hugo Münsterberg, as an editorial writer in "Scribner's
+Magazine" lately remarked, "has been explaining, gently but firmly,
+ostensibly to the teachers in secondary schools, but really to his
+colleagues in the Harvard faculty, that they are not imitating the
+German method successfully." In no way is the American college man in
+the same case as the German undergraduate. His preparatory schooling
+is likely to be three years in arrears, and, in any case, what he
+seeks is usually culture, not science. "The new notion of
+scholarship," this writer continues, "by which the degree means so
+much Latin and Greek, or the equivalent of them in botany or
+blacksmithing, finds no favor at all in what is supposed to be the
+native soil of the 'elective system.'" Dr. Münsterberg's own words,
+guarded as they are, are not without point: "Even in the college two
+thirds of the elections are haphazard, controlled by accidental
+motives; election, of course, demands a wide view and broad knowledge
+of the whole field.... A helter-skelter chase of the unknown is no
+election." The writer in "Scribner's" concludes: "It is not desirable
+that a man should sell his birthright for a mess of pottage, even if
+he gets the pottage. If he does not get it, as Dr. Münsterberg
+intimates, of course his state is even worse."
+
+Rough as the elective system is upon the student who aspires to be
+merely a scholar, it is rougher on the undergraduate who only wants to
+train his mind and to equip it for business and professional life. To
+him a purely scientific training is usually a positive detriment.
+Scrupulous exactitude and a sense of the elusiveness of all knowledge
+are an excellent and indispensable part of the bringing up of a
+scholar; but few things are more fitted, if pursued exclusively, to
+check the self-confidence of a normal man and to blight his will. Poor
+Richard had a formula for the case: "A handsaw is a very good thing,
+but not to shave with." Before taking a vigorous hold on the affairs
+of Wall Street or of Washington, our recent graduate has first to get
+away from most of the standards that obtain in the university, or at
+least to supplement them by a host of others which he should have
+learned there. In another passage in the article already quoted, Dean
+Briggs has touched the vital spot. He is speaking of the value, to
+teachers especially, of the peculiar fetich of Teutonized university
+instruction, the thesis, and of its liability to be of fictitious
+value. "Such theses, I suspect, have more than once been accepted for
+higher degrees; yet higher degrees won through them leave the winner
+farther from the best qualities of a teacher, remote from men and
+still more remote from boys. It was a relief the other day to hear a
+head-master say, 'I am looking for an under-teacher. I want first a
+man, and next a man to teach.'" What is true of teaching is even more
+obviously true of the great world of business and of politics. What it
+wants is men.
+
+The cause of the break-down of the elective system, as at present
+constituted, is to be found in the machinery of instruction. The
+office of the teacher has become inextricably mixed up with a totally
+alien office--university discipline. Attendance at lectures is the
+only means of recording a student's presence in the university, and
+success in the examination in lecture courses is the only basis for
+judging of his diligence. At the tolling of a bell the student leaves
+all other affairs to report at a certain place. In the Middle Ages, as
+we have seen, lectures were of necessity the main means of
+instruction. Books were rare and their prices prohibitive. The master
+read and the student copied. To-day, there are tens of thousands of
+books in every college library. Only in the higher courses are
+lectures necessary or profitable. But still instruction is carried on,
+even in the most general courses, by means of professorial lectures.
+Where great periods are covered by leaps and bounds, freshness or
+individuality of treatment is quite impossible. The tolling of the
+college bell dooms hundreds of students to hear a necessarily hurried
+and inarticulate statement of knowledge which has been carefully
+handled in printed form by the most brilliant writers, and to which a
+tutor might refer the student in a few minutes' conference. Modify the
+lecture system? It is the foundation of the police regulation. The
+boasted freedom in elective studies simmers down to this, that it
+enables the student to choose in what courses he shall be made the
+unwilling ally of the administrative officer. The lectures waste the
+time of the student and exhaust the energy of the teacher; but unless
+the lecturers give them and the studious attend, how can the
+university know that the shiftless stay away?
+
+It is necessary, moreover, for the administrator to judge of the
+student's success as well as of his diligence. Twice every year the
+professors hold an examination lasting for three hours in each of
+their several courses. Of late years an ingenious means has been
+devised for making the examination system an even more perfect ally of
+the police. In the middle of each term an examination of one hour is
+held to insure that the student has not only attended lectures but
+studied outside; and, in order to expose the procrastinator, it has
+become the custom for the examination to be given without warning.
+Like the lecture system, the examination system throws the onus of
+discipline on the studious and the teachers. Two thousand students
+write yearly 32,000 examination books. Quite obviously the most
+advanced of the professors cannot spare time for the herculean task of
+reading and duly grading their share of these books. They give over
+most of them to underpaid assistants. The logical result of such a
+system is that the examinations tend to be regarded merely as
+statements of fact, and the reading of the books merely as clerical
+labor. If academic distinctions are disprized in America, both in
+college and out of it, this is amply explained by the fact that they
+attest a student's diligence rather than his ability. They are
+awarded, like a Sunday-school prize, in return for a certain number of
+good-conduct checks.
+
+It is not enough that the machinery of instruction wastes the time of
+the student and debases the office of the examiner; it is, as I have
+said, the cause of the break-down of the elective system. As long as
+each student is required to pursue every study under the eye of the
+disciplinarian, the decision as to what he shall study rests not with
+his desires or his needs, but with an elaborate schedule of lectures
+and examinations. So excessive are the evils of the present system
+that no less a man than Professor William James has advocated the
+abolition of the examinations.
+
+This remedy is perhaps extreme; but the only alternative is almost as
+radical. It is to enable the student, at least the more serious
+student, to slip the trammels of the elective system, and to study
+rationally, and to be rationally examined in, the subject or group of
+subjects which he prefers. In a word, the remedy is to divide and
+organize our courses of instruction for the more serious students into
+groups corresponding in some measure to what the English call honor
+schools.
+
+It may be objected that already it is possible to read for honors. The
+objection will scarcely convince any one who has taken the
+examination. It is oral, and occupies an hour or two. The men who
+conduct it are leading men in the department, and are often of
+world-wide reputation. They are so great that they understand the
+nature of the farce they are playing. No candidate is expected to
+have covered the field of his honor subject even in the broadest
+outlines. When the astute student is not sure of an answer, he
+candidly admits the fact and receives credit for knowing that he does
+not know--a cardinal virtue to the scientific mind. If I may be
+allowed a personal instance, I went up for the examination in English
+literature in complete ignorance as to all but a single brief
+movement. When my ignorances were laid bare, the examiners most
+considerately confined their questions to my period. We had much
+pleasant conversation. Each of the examiners had imparted in his
+courses his latest rays of new light, and each in turn gave me the
+privilege of reflecting these rays to the others. For a brief but
+happy hour my importance was no less than that of the most eminent
+publication of the learned world. It need scarcely be said that such
+examinations are not supposed to have much weight in judging of the
+candidate's fitness. A more important test is a thesis studied from
+original sources, and the most important is good-conduct marks in a
+certain arbitrary number of set lecture courses. The policeman's
+examination is supreme.
+
+
+IV
+
+THE AMERICAN HALL
+
+The college has shown a tendency, as I have indicated, to divide in
+its social life into separate organizations for the purposes of
+residence, dining, and athletics. In the administrative life, at least
+the proctors and the freshman advisers are each in charge of separate
+bodies of undergraduates. In the educational life, a similar tendency
+is noticeable. Year by year there has been an increasing disposition
+to supplement lectures or to substitute them by what is in effect
+tutorial instruction. In the history courses, for example, the
+lectures and examinations have for some time been supplemented by
+private personal conferences. If the student is proceeding properly,
+he is encouraged; if not, he is given the necessary guidance and
+assistance. I do not know what the result has been in the teaching of
+history; but in the teaching of English composition, where the
+conferences have largely supplanted lectures, it has been an almost
+unmixed benefit. The instructor's comments are given a directness and
+a personal interest impossible either in the lecture-room or by means
+of written correction and criticism; and the students are usually
+eager to discuss their work and the means for bettering it. As the
+lecture system proves more and more inadequate, the tutorial
+instruction must necessarily continue to increase, and is not unlikely
+to afford the basis for a more sensibly devised scheme of honor
+schools.
+
+If the American college were organized into separate halls, it would
+be necessary and proper, as Mr. Bolles suggested, to place in each a
+Dean and administrative board; and the most economical plan of
+administration, as he pointed out, would be to give each administrator
+as many duties as possible toward a single set of pupils. Thus the
+proctor on each staircase of the hall would be the adviser of the men
+who roomed on it. It would be only a logical extension of the
+principle to give the proctor-adviser a tutorial office. All this
+indicates a reversion toward the golden age of the mediæval hall.
+
+Here is where the gain would lie: The administration of the hall would
+make it no longer necessary to rely on the lecture courses for police
+duty, and the wise guidance of a tutor would in some measure remove
+the necessity of the recurrent police examinations. Thus the student
+would be able to elect such courses only as the competent adviser
+might judge best for him; and if the faculty were relieved of the
+labor of unnecessary instruction and examination it would be possible,
+with less expense than the present system involves, to offer a
+well-considered honor examination, and to provide that the examination
+books should be graded not with mere clerical intelligence, but with
+the highest available critical appreciation. Thus and only thus can
+the American honor degree be given that value as an asset which the
+English honor degree has possessed for almost a century.
+
+It would by no means be necessary as at Oxford to make the honor
+examination the only basis for granting the degree. The fewer lecture
+courses which the student found available would be those in which the
+instruction is more advanced--the "university" courses properly
+speaking; and his examinations in these would be a criterion, such as
+Oxford is very much in need of, for correcting the evidence of the
+honor examination. Furthermore, in connection with one or more of
+these courses it would be easy for the student to prepare an honor
+thesis studied from the original sources under the constant advice of
+a university professor. Such an arrangement might be made to combine
+in any desired proportion the merits of the English honor schools
+with the merits of advanced instruction in America. With the
+introduction of the tutor, the American hall would be the complete
+counterpart of the mediæval hall of the golden age, and would solve
+the educational as well as the social and administrative problem.
+
+As to the details of the new system, experience would be the final
+teacher; but for a first experiment, the English arrangement is in its
+main outline suggestive. An American pass degree might be taken by
+electing, as all students now elect, a certain number of courses at
+random. For the increasing number of those who can afford only three
+years' study, a pass degree would probably prove of the greatest
+advantage. It was by making this sharp distinction between the pass
+degree and the honor degree that the English universities long ago
+solved the question, much agitated still in America, of the three
+years' course. For the honor men[6] two general examinations would
+probably suffice. For his second year honor examination (the English
+"Moderations") a student might select from three or four general
+groups. This examination would necessarily offer precisely that
+opportunity for mental culture the lack of which Dean Briggs laments
+as the worst feature of the elective system as at present conducted.
+Furthermore, it would be easy to arrange the second year honor groups
+so as to include only such subjects as are serviceable both for the
+purposes of a general education and to lead up to the subjects the
+student is likely to elect for final honors. For the final honor
+examination the student might choose from a dozen or more honor
+groups, in any one of which he would receive scientific culture of the
+most advanced type, while at the same time, by means of private
+reading under his tutor, he might fill in very pleasantly the outlines
+of his subject. It is probable that such a system would even
+facilitate the efforts of those who are endeavoring to transplant
+German standards. According to Professor Münsterberg, the student who
+specializes in the German university is a good two years or more in
+advance of the American freshman. The spirit of German instruction
+would thus require that the period of general culture be extended at
+least to the middle of the undergraduate course.
+
+Some such reorganization of our methods of teaching and examining, and
+I fear only this, would enable an undergraduate to choose what he
+wants and to pursue it with a fair chance of success. It would make
+the elective system elective.
+
+A concrete plan for an American hall will perhaps make the project
+clearer. The poorer students at Harvard have for some years had a
+separate dining-hall, Foxcroft, where the fare and the system of
+paying for it are adapted to the slenderest of purses. They have also
+lived mainly in certain primitive dormitories in which the rooms are
+cheapest. More than any other set of men except the clubmen they are a
+united body, or are capable of being made so. When next a bequest is
+received, might not the University erect a building in which a hundred
+or two of these men could live in common? The quadrangle would insure
+privacy, the first requisite of community life; the kitchen and
+dining-hall would insure the maximum comfort and convenience with the
+minimum expense. Nothing could contribute more to the self-respect and
+the general standing of the poorer students than a comfortable and
+well-ordered place and way of living, if only because nothing could
+more surely correct the idiosyncrasies in manners and appearance which
+are fostered by their present discomfort and isolation.
+
+The life of the hall would not of course be as strictly regulated as
+the life in an English college--perhaps no more strictly than in any
+other American college building. If in the hope of creating a closer
+community feeling stricter rules were adopted, they should be adopted,
+as in a mediæval hall, only by consent of the undergraduates.
+
+Such a hall would develop athletic teams of its own, and would produce
+university athletes. Under the present arrangement, when the poorer
+students are members of university teams, they may, and often do,
+become honorary members of the university clubs; but their lack of
+means and sometimes of the manner of the world make it difficult for
+them to be at home in the clubs; their social life is usually limited
+to a small circle of friends. If they had first been trained in the
+life of a hall, they would more easily fall in with the broader life
+outside; and instead of being isolated as at present, they would exert
+no small influence both in their hall and in the university. Few
+things could be better for the general life of the undergraduate than
+the coöperation of such men, and few things could be better for the
+members of a hall than to be brought by means of its leading members
+into close connection with the life of the university.
+
+If such a hall were successful, it could not fail to attract serious
+students of all sorts and conditions. At Oxford, Balliol has for
+generations been known as in the main unfashionable and scholarly;
+but it is seldom without a blue or two, and its eight has often been
+at the head of the river. As a result of all this, it never ceases to
+attract the more serious men from the aristocracy and even the
+nobility. In America, the success of one residential hall would
+probably lead to the establishment of others, so that in the end the
+life of the university might be given all the advantages of a dual
+organization.
+
+No change could be more far reaching and beneficial. The American
+institutions of the present are usually divided into two classes, the
+university, or "large college," and the "small college." The merit of
+the large colleges is that those fortunately placed in them gain
+greater familiarity with the ways of the world and of men, while for
+those who wish it, they offer more advanced instruction--the
+instruction characteristic of German universities. But to the
+increasing number of undergraduates who are not fortunately placed,
+their very size is the source of unhappiness; and for those
+undergraduates who wish anything else than scientific instruction,
+their virtues become merely a detriment. It is for this reason that
+many wise parents still prefer to intrust the education of their sons
+to the small colleges. These small colleges possess many of the
+virtues of the English universities; they train the mind and cultivate
+it, and at the same time develop the social man. If now the American
+university were to divide its undergraduate department into organized
+residential halls, it would combine the advantages of the two types of
+American institution, which are the two types of instruction the world
+over. Already our college life at its best is as happy as the college
+life in England; and the educational advantages of the four or five of
+our leading universities are rapidly becoming equal to those of the
+four or five leading universities in Germany. A combination of the
+residential hall and the teaching university would reproduce the
+highest type of the university of the Middle Ages; and in proportion
+as life and knowledge have been bettered in six hundred years, it
+would better that type. England has lost the educational virtues of
+the mediæval university, while Germany, in losing the residential
+halls, has lost its peculiar social virtues. When the American
+university combines the old social life with the new instruction, it
+will be the most perfect educational instruction in the history of
+civilization.
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[4] For a detailed statement as to the course such a student would be
+able to pursue under the English system of honor schools, see Appendix
+III.
+
+[5] _The Atlantic Monthly_, October, 1900.
+
+[6] For full details as to the scheme of an English honor school, see
+Appendix III.
+
+
+
+
+APPENDIX
+
+
+I. ATHLETIC TRAINING IN ENGLAND
+
+In one or two particulars it seemed to me that we might learn from the
+English methods of training. On the Oxford team we took long walks
+every other day instead of track work. Our instructions were to climb
+all the hills in our way. This was in order to bring into play new
+muscles as far as possible, so as to rest those used in running.
+Though similar walks are sometimes given in America as a preliminary
+"seasoning," our training, for months before a meeting, is confined to
+the track. This is not unwise as long as a runner's stride needs
+developing; and in the heat of our summers such walks as the English
+take might sometimes prove exhausting. Yet my personal observations
+convinced me that for distance runners--and for sprinters, too,
+perhaps--the English method is far better. Under our training the
+muscles often seem overpowered by nervous lassitude; at the start of a
+race I have often felt it an effort to stand. In England there was
+little or none of this; we felt, as the bottle-holders are fond of
+putting it, "like a magnum of champagne."
+
+This idea of long walks, which the English have arrived at
+empirically, has been curiously approved in America by scientific
+discovery. It has been shown that after muscles appear too stiff from
+exhaustion to move, they can be excited to action by electric
+currents; while the motor nerves on being examined after such fatigue
+are found to be shrunken and empty, as in extreme old age. The limit
+of muscular exertion is thus clearly determined by the limit of the
+energy of the motor nerve. Now in a perfectly trained runner, the
+heart and lung must obviously reach their prime simultaneously with
+the motor nerves used in running; but since these organs are ordained
+to supply the entire system with fuel, they will usually require a
+longer time to reach prime condition than any single set of nerves.
+Thus continual track work is likely to develop the running nerves to
+the utmost before the heart and lungs are at prime. Conversely stated,
+if the development of the running nerves is retarded so as to keep
+pace with the development of the heart and lungs, the total result is
+likely to be higher. All this amounts to what any good English trainer
+will tell you--that you must take long walks on up and down grades in
+order to rest your running muscles and at the same time give your
+heart and lungs plenty of work--that is, in order to keep from getting
+"track stale."
+
+The amount of work we did from day to day will best be understood,
+perhaps, by quoting one or two of the training-cards. For the hundred
+yards the training during the final ten days was as follows: _Monday_
+and _Tuesday_, sprints (three or four dashes of sixty yards at top
+speed); _Wednesday_, a fast 120 yards at the Queen's Club grounds;
+_Thursday_, walk; _Friday_, sprints; _Saturday_, 100 yards trial at
+Queen's Club; _Sunday_, walk; _Monday_, light work at Queen's Club;
+_Tuesday_, easy walk; _Wednesday_, inter-varsity sports. The man for
+whom this card was written happened to be over weight and short of
+training, or he would have had less track work. If he had been
+training for the quarter in addition to the hundred, he would have had
+fewer sprints, and, instead of the fast 120, a trial quarter a week
+before the sports, with perhaps a fast 200 on the following Friday.
+For the mile, the following is a characteristic week's work, ending
+with a trial: _Sunday_, walk; _Monday_, one lap (1/3 mile); _Tuesday_,
+two laps, fast-ish; _Wednesday_, walk; _Thursday_, easy mile;
+_Friday_, walk; _Saturday_, a two lap trial (at the rate of 4.30 for
+the mile). For the three miles, the following is a schedule of the
+first ten days (the walks are unusually frequent because the "first
+string" had a bruise on the ball of his foot): _Monday_, walk;
+_Tuesday_, walk; _Wednesday_, two slow laps at the Queen's Club;
+_Thursday_, walk; _Friday_, walk; _Saturday_, a long run at the
+Queen's Club; _Sunday_, walk; _Monday_, four laps, fast-ish, at the
+Queen's Club; _Tuesday_, walk; _Wednesday_, inter-varsity sports. The
+chief difference between this work and what we should give in America
+is in the matter of walking.
+
+
+II. CLIMATE AND INTERNATIONAL ATHLETICS
+
+The value of international contests as a basis for comparing English
+and American training is impaired by the fact that the visiting team
+is pretty sure to be under the weather, as may be indicated by
+summarizing the history of international contests. The first
+representatives we sent abroad, the Harvard four-oared crew of 1869,
+became so overtrained on the Thames on work which would have been only
+sufficient at home, that two of the four men had to be substituted.
+The substitutes were taken from the "second" crew, which had just come
+over from the race at Worcester. The men in this crew had been so
+inferior as oarsmen that they had been allowed to compete against Yale
+only after vigorous protest; but in the race against Oxford, owing
+probably to the brevity of their training in England, the substitutes
+pulled the strongest oars in the boat. The crew got off very well, but
+when the time came for the final effort, the two original members had
+not the nervous stamina to respond.
+
+The experience of the Yale athletes who competed against Oxford in
+1894 was much the same. Their performances in the games were so far
+below their American form that they won only the events in which they
+literally outclassed their opponents--the hammer, shot, and broad
+jump. They were sportsmen enough not to explain their poor showing,
+and perhaps they never quite realized how the soft and genial English
+summer had unnerved them; but several competent observers who had
+watched their practice told me that they lost form from day to day.
+Their downfall was doubtless aided by the fact that instead of
+training at Brighton or elsewhere on the coast, they trained in the
+Thames valley and at Oxford.
+
+The experience of the Cornell crew, of which I got full and frank
+information while crossing the Atlantic with them after the race, was
+along the same lines. Before leaving Ithaca, they rowed over the
+equivalent of the Henley course in time that was well under seven
+minutes, and not far from the Henley record of six minutes, fifty-one
+seconds. At Henley they rowed their first trial in seven minutes and
+three seconds, if my memory serves, and in consequence were generally
+expected to win. From that day they grew worse and worse. Certain of
+the eight went stale and had to be substituted. In the race the crew,
+like the earlier Harvard crew, went to pieces when they were called on
+for a spurt--the test of nerve force in reserve--and were beaten in
+wretchedly slow time. They had gone hopelessly stale on work which
+would have been none too much in America.
+
+The experience of the Yale crew in the year after was similar to that
+of Harvard and Cornell. The crew went to pieces and lost the race for
+the lack of precisely that burst of energy for which American
+athletes, and Yale in particular, are remarkable.
+
+Meantime one or two American athletes training at Oxford had been
+gathering experience, which, humble though it was, had the merit of
+being thorough. Mr. J. L. Bremer, who will be remembered in America as
+making a new world's record over the low hurdles, steadily lost
+suppleness and energy at Oxford, so that he was beaten in the quarter
+mile in time distinctly inferior to his best in America. Clearly, the
+effect of the English climate is to relax the nervous system and
+thereby to reduce the athlete's power both of sprinting _per se_ and
+of spurting at the finish of the race. My own experience in English
+training confirmed the conclusion, and pointed to an interesting
+extension of it. I was forced to conclude that the first few weeks in
+England are more than likely to undo an athlete, and especially for
+sprinting; and even if he stays long enough to find himself again, his
+ability to sprint is likely to be lessened. In the long run, on the
+other hand, the English climate produces staying power in almost the
+same proportion as it destroys speed.
+
+When the joint team of track athletes from Yale and Harvard went to
+England in 1899, the powers that were took advantage of past
+experiences, and instead of going to the Thames valley to train, they
+went to Brighton; and instead of doing most of their training in
+England, they gave themselves only the few days necessary to get their
+shore legs and become acquainted with the Queen's Club track. As a
+result, the team was in general up to its normal form, or above it,
+and, except for the fact that one of the men was ill, would have won.
+
+The experience of the English athletes who came to America in 1895
+points to a similar conclusion. Though the heat was intense and
+oppressive and most of the visitors were positively sick, one of the
+sprinters, in spite of severe illness, was far above his previous
+best, while all of the distance men went quite to pieces. Thus our
+climate would seem to reduce the staying power of the English
+athletes, and perhaps to increase the speed of sprinters.
+
+It appears on the whole probable that in these international contests
+the visiting athlete had best do as much as possible of his training
+at home, and it follows that the visiting team is at a distinct and
+inevitable disadvantage.
+
+
+III. AN OXFORD FINAL HONOR SCHOOL
+
+The scope and content of an English honor school is well illustrated
+in the following passage from the Oxford examination statutes, which
+treats of the final school in English literature. The system will be
+seen to be very different from a system under which a student may
+receive honors in ignorance of all but a single movement in English
+literature.
+
+
+§ 10. _Of the Honour School of English Language and Literature._
+
+1. The Examination in the School of English Language and Literature
+shall always include authors or portions of authors belonging to the
+different periods of English literature, together with the history of
+the English language and the history of English literature.
+
+The Examination shall also include Special Subjects falling within or
+usually studied in connexion with the English language and literature.
+
+2. Every Candidate shall be expected to have studied the authors or
+portions of authors which he offers (1) with reference to the forms of
+the language, (2) as examples of literature, and (3) in their relation
+to the history and thought of the period to which they belong.
+
+He shall also be expected to show a competent knowledge (1) of the
+chief periods of the English language, including Old English
+(Anglo-Saxon), and (2) of the relation of English to the languages
+with which it is etymologically connected, and (3) of the history of
+English literature, and (4) of the history, especially the social
+history, of England during the period of English literature which he
+offers.
+
+3. The Examination in Special Subjects may be omitted by Candidates
+who do not aim at a place in the First or Second Class.
+
+4. No Candidate shall be admitted to examination in the Final Honour
+School of English Language and Literature, unless he has either
+obtained Honours in some Final Honour School or has passed the First
+Public Examination [_i. e._ Moderation].
+
+5. The Examination shall be under the supervision of a Board of
+Studies.
+
+6. It shall be the duty of the Board of Studies in framing
+regulations, and also of the Examiners in the conduct of the
+Examination, to see that as far as possible equal weight is given to
+language and literature: provided always that Candidates who offer
+Special Subjects shall be at liberty to choose subjects connected
+either with language or with literature or with both.
+
+7. The Board of Studies shall by notice from time to time make
+regulations respecting the Examination; and shall have power--
+
+(1) To prescribe authors or portions of authors.
+
+(2) To specify one or more related languages or dialects to be offered
+either as a necessary or as an optional part of the Examination.
+
+(3) To name periods of the history of English literature, and to fix
+their limits.
+
+(4) To issue lists of Special Subjects in connexion either with
+language or with literature or with both, prescribing books or
+authorities where they think it desirable.
+
+(5) To prescribe or recommend authors or portions of authors in
+languages other than English, to be studied in connexion with Special
+Subjects to which they are intimately related.
+
+(6) To determine whether Candidates who aim at a place in the First or
+Second Class shall be required to offer more than one Special
+Subject.
+
+(_ii_) _Regulations of the Board of Studies for the Examinations in
+1901 and 1902._
+
+The subjects of examination in this School are--
+
+     I. Portions of English Authors.
+
+     II. The History of the English Language.
+
+     III. The History of English Literature.
+
+     IV. (In the case of those Candidates who aim at a
+     place in the First or Second Class) a Special Subject of
+     Language or Literature.
+
+I. ENGLISH AUTHORS.
+
+Candidates will be examined in the following texts:--
+
+     _Beowulf._
+
+     The texts printed in Sweet's _Anglo-Saxon Reader_.
+
+     _King Horn._
+
+     _Havelok._
+
+     Laurence Minot.
+
+     _Sir Gawain and the Green Knight._
+
+     Chaucer's _Canterbury Tales_, the _Prologue_ and the following
+     Tales:--
+
+       _The Knight's_, _The Man of Law's_, _The Prioress's_, _Sir
+       Thopas_, _The Monk's_, _The Nun's Priest's_, _The Pardoner's_,
+       _The Clerk's_, _The Squire's_, _The Second Nun's_, _The Canon's
+       Yeoman's_
+
+     _Piers Plowman_, the _Prologue_ and first seven _passus_ (text
+     B).
+
+     Shakespeare, with a special study of the following Plays:
+     _Midsummer Night's Dream_, _King John,_ _Much Ado about
+     Nothing_, _Macbeth_, _Cymbeline_.
+
+     Milton, with a special study of _Paradise Lost_.
+
+These texts are to be studied (1) with reference to the forms of the
+language; (2) as examples of literature; and (3) in their relation to
+the history and thought of the period to which they belong.
+
+After Milton no special texts are prescribed, but Candidates are
+expected to show an adequate knowledge of the chief authors.
+
+II. HISTORY OF THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE.
+
+Candidates will be examined in the Philology and History of the
+Language, in Gothic (the Gospel of St. Mark), and in Translation from
+Old English and Middle English authors not specially offered.
+
+III. HISTORY OF ENGLISH LITERATURE.
+
+The Examination in the History of English Literature will not be
+limited to the prescribed texts. It will include the history of
+criticism and of style in prose and verse; for these subjects,
+Candidates are recommended to consult the following works:--
+
+     Sidney, _Apology for Poetry_.
+
+     Daniel, _Defence of Rhyme_.
+
+     Dryden, _Essay of Dramatic Poesy_, and _Preface to Fables_.
+
+     Addison, Papers on Milton in the _Spectator_.
+
+     Pope, _Essay on Criticism_.
+
+     Johnson, _Preface to Shakespeare_ and _Lives of the Poets_.
+
+     Wordsworth, _Prefaces, etc., to Lyrical Ballads_.
+
+     Coleridge, _Biographia Literaria_.
+
+IV. SPECIAL SUBJECTS.
+
+Candidates who aim at a place in the First or Second Class will be
+expected to offer a Special Subject, which may be chosen from the
+following list:--
+
+     1. Old English Language and Literature to 1150 A. D.
+
+     2. Middle English Language and Literature, 1150-1400 A. D.
+
+     3. Old French Philology, with special reference to Anglo-Norman
+     French, together with a special study of the following texts:--
+
+       Computus of Philippe de Thaun, Voyage of St. Brandan, The Song
+       of Dermot and the Earl, Les contes moralisés de Nicole Bozon.
+
+     4. Scandinavian Philology, with special reference to Icelandic,
+     together with a special study of the following texts:--
+
+       Gylfaginning, Laxdæla Saga, Gunnlaugssaga Ormstungu.
+
+     5. Elizabethan literature, 1558-1637 A. D.
+
+     6. English literature, 1637-1700 A. D.
+
+     7. English literature, 1700-1745 A. D.
+
+     8. Wordsworth and his contemporaries, 1797-1850 A. D.
+
+     9. History of Scottish poetry to 1600 A. D.
+
+Candidates who desire to offer any other subject or period as a
+Special Subject must obtain the leave of the Board of Studies a year
+before the Examination.
+
+Candidates who offer a period of English Literature will be expected
+to show a competent knowledge of the History, especially the Social
+History, of England during such period.
+
+The following scheme of papers is contemplated:--
+
+     1. Beowulf and other Old English texts.
+
+     2. King Horn, Havelok, Minot, Sir Gawain.
+
+     3. Chaucer and Piers Plowman.
+
+     4. Shakespeare.
+
+     5. Milton.
+
+     6. History of the language.
+
+     7. Gothic--O. E. and M. E. translations.
+
+     8. } History of the Literature, including questions
+     9. } on the history of criticism. Two papers, (1)
+          to 1700, (2) after 1700.
+
+     10. Special Subjects.
+
+
+
+
+The Riverside Press
+
+_Electrotyped and printed by H. O. Houghton & Co._
+
+_Cambridge, Mass., U. S. A._
+
+
+
+
+
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+      An American at Oxford, by John Corbin.
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+<pre>
+
+The Project Gutenberg EBook of An American at Oxford, by John Corbin
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: An American at Oxford
+
+Author: John Corbin
+
+Release Date: December 1, 2011 [EBook #38180]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK AN AMERICAN AT OXFORD ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Melissa McDaniel and the Online Distributed
+Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net (This file was
+produced from images generously made available by The
+Internet Archive)
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+</pre>
+
+
+<div class="tnbox">
+<p class="center"><b>Transcriber's Note:</b></p>
+<p>Obvious typographical errors have been corrected.
+Inconsistent spelling and hyphenation in the original
+document have been preserved.</p>
+</div>
+<div class="figcenter p6">
+<img src="images/cover.jpg" width="304" height="500" alt="Cover" />
+</div>
+<div class="figcenter p6"><a name="illo1" id="illo1"></a>
+<img src="images/i_001.jpg" width="386" height="650" alt="TEA ON THE LAWN AT THE OXFORD UNION" />
+<p class="caption">TEA ON THE LAWN AT THE OXFORD UNION (page <a href="#Page_63">63</a>)</p>
+</div>
+
+<h1 class="p6">AN AMERICAN AT<br />
+OXFORD</h1>
+
+<p class="center">BY</p>
+
+<h2>JOHN CORBIN</h2>
+
+<p class="center s1">AUTHOR OF "SCHOOLBOY LIFE IN ENGLAND"</p>
+
+<p class="center"><i>WITH ILLUSTRATIONS</i></p>
+
+<div class="figcenter">
+<img src="images/logo.jpg" width="100" height="129" alt="logo" />
+</div>
+
+<p class="center p6">BOSTON AND NEW YORK<br />
+HOUGHTON, MIFFLIN AND COMPANY<br />
+The Riverside Press, Cambridge<br />
+1903</p>
+
+<p class="center p6 s1">COPYRIGHT, 1902, BY JOHN CORBIN<br />
+
+ALL RIGHTS RESERVED</p>
+
+<p class="center s1"><i>Published May, 1902</i></p>
+
+<p class="center p6">TO<br />
+
+A. F. C.</p>
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_v" id="Page_v">v</a></span></p>
+
+<p class="p6 b1 center">PREFACE</p>
+
+<p><span class="dropcap">B</span><span class="smcap">y</span> a curious coincidence, the day on which the
+last proof of this book was sent to the
+printer saw the publication of the will of the late
+Cecil Rhodes, providing that each of the United
+States is forever to be represented at Oxford by
+two carefully selected undergraduate students.
+That the plan will result in any speedy realization
+of the ideals of the great exponent of English
+power in the new worlds is perhaps not to
+be expected. For the future of American education,
+on the other hand, few things could be more
+fortunate. Native and independent as our national
+genius has always been, and seems likely to
+remain, it has always been highly assimilative.
+In the past, we have received much needed aliment
+from the German universities. For the present,
+the elements of which we have most need may best,
+as I think, be assimilated from England.</p>
+
+<p>Whether or not Americans at Oxford become
+imbued with Mr. Rhodes's conceptions as to the
+destiny of the English peoples, they can scarcely
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_vi" id="Page_vi">vi</a></span>
+fail to observe that Oxford affords to its undergraduates
+a very sensibly ordered and invigorating
+life, a very sensibly ordered and invigorating education.
+This, as I have endeavored to point out
+in the following pages, our American universities
+do not now afford, nor are they likely to afford it
+until the social and the educational systems are
+more perfectly organized than they have ever
+been, or seem likely to be, under the dominance
+of German ideals. If, however, the new Oxford-trained
+Americans should ever become an important
+factor in our university life, the future is
+bright with hope. We have assimilated, or are
+assimilating, the best spirit of German education;
+and if we were to make a similar draft on the
+best educational spirit in England, our universities
+would become far superior as regards their organization
+and ideals, and probably also as regards
+what they accomplish, to any in Europe. The purpose
+and result of an introduction of English
+methods would of course not be to imitate foreign
+custom, but to give fuller scope to our native character,
+so that if the American educational ideals
+in the end approximate the English more closely
+than they do at present, such a result would be
+merely incidental to the fact that the two countries
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_vii" id="Page_vii">vii</a></span>
+have at bottom much the same social character and
+instincts. If Mr. Rhodes's dream is to be realized,
+it will probably be in some such tardy and roundabout
+but admirably vital manner as this.</p>
+
+<p>At a superficial glance the testator's intention
+seems to have been to send the students to Oxford
+directly from American schools. Such a course,
+it seems to me, could only work harm. Even if
+the educational and residential facilities afforded
+at Oxford were on the whole superior to those of
+American universities, which they are not, the difference
+could not compensate the student for the
+loss of his American university course with all it
+means in forming lifelong friendships among his
+countrymen and in assimilating the national spirit.
+If, however, the Oxford scholarships were awarded
+to recent graduates of American universities, the
+greatest advantage might result. The student
+might then modify his native training so as to
+complete it and make it more effective. Now the
+wording of the testament requires only that the
+American scholars shall "commence residence as
+undergraduates." This they will be able to do
+whatever their previous training, and in fact this
+is what Americans at Oxford have always done in
+the past. The most valuable A.B. leaves the field
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_viii" id="Page_viii">viii</a></span>
+of human knowledge far from exhausted; and the
+methods of instruction and of examining at Oxford
+are so different from anything we know that it has
+even proved worth while for the American to repeat
+at Oxford the same studies he took in America.
+The executors of the will should be most
+vigorously urged to select the scholars from the
+graduates of American universities.</p>
+
+<p>The parts of this book that treat most intimately
+of Oxford life were written while in residence in
+Balliol College some six years ago. Most of the
+rest was written quite recently in London. Much
+of the matter in the following pages has appeared
+in "Harper's Weekly," "The Bachelor of Arts,"
+"The Forum," and "The Atlantic Monthly." It
+has all been carefully revised and rearranged, and
+much new matter added. Each chapter has gained,
+as I hope, by being brought into its natural relation
+with the other chapters; and the ideas that
+have informed the whole are for the first time adequately
+stated.
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_ix" id="Page_ix">ix</a></span></p>
+
+<p class="b1 p6 center">CONTENTS</p>
+
+<table border="0" cellpadding="5" cellspacing="2" summary="toc">
+<col width="10" />
+<col width="390" />
+<col width="200" />
+<tr>
+<td class="tdr s1">CHAP.</td>
+<td>&nbsp;</td>
+<td class="tdr s1">PAGE</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdl" colspan="2"><span class="smcap">Introductory</span></td>
+<td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_1">1</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdl" colspan="2">I.&nbsp;&nbsp;THE UNIVERSITY AND THE COLLEGE</td>
+<td>&nbsp;</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdr">I.</td>
+<td class="tdl"><span class="smcap">The University of Colleges</span></td>
+<td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_7">7</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdr">II.</td>
+<td class="tdl"><span class="smcap">The Oxford Freshman</span></td>
+<td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_10">10</a></td>
+
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdr">III.</td>
+<td class="tdl"><span class="smcap">A Day in an Oxford College</span></td>
+<td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_17">17</a></td>
+
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdr">IV.</td>
+<td class="tdl"><span class="smcap">Dinner in Hall</span></td>
+<td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_21">21</a></td>
+
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdr">V.</td>
+<td class="tdl"><span class="smcap">Evening</span></td>
+<td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_28">28</a></td>
+
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdr">VI.</td>
+<td class="tdl"><span class="smcap">The Mind of the College</span></td>
+<td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_37">37</a></td>
+
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdr">VII.</td>
+<td class="tdl"><span class="smcap">Club Life in the College</span></td>
+<td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_52">52</a></td>
+
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdr">VIII.</td>
+<td class="tdl"><span class="smcap">Social Life in the University</span></td>
+<td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_62">62</a></td>
+
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdr">IX.</td>
+<td class="tdl"><span class="smcap">The College and the University</span></td>
+<td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_74">74</a></td>
+
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdl" colspan="2">II.&nbsp;&nbsp;OXFORD OUT OF DOORS</td>
+<td>&nbsp;</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdr">I.</td>
+<td class="tdl"><span class="smcap">Slacking on the Isis and the Cherwell</span></td>
+<td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_81">81</a></td>
+
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdr">II.</td>
+<td class="tdl"><span class="smcap">As seen from an Oxford Tub</span></td>
+<td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_96">96</a></td>
+
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdr">III.</td>
+<td class="tdl"><span class="smcap">A Little Scrimmage with English Rugby</span></td>
+<td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_116">116</a></td>
+
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdr">IV.</td>
+<td class="tdl"><span class="smcap">Track and Field Athletics</span></td>
+<td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_132">132</a></td>
+
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdr">V.</td>
+<td class="tdl"><span class="smcap">English and American Sportsmanship</span></td>
+<td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_145">145</a></td>
+
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdl" colspan="2">III.&nbsp;&nbsp;THE COLLEGE AS AN EDUCATIONAL FORCE</td>
+
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdr">I.</td>
+<td class="tdl"><span class="smcap">The Passman</span></td>
+<td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_159">159</a></td>
+
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdr">II.</td>
+<td class="tdl"><span class="smcap">The Honor Schools</span></td>
+<td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_171">171</a></td>
+
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdr">III.</td>
+<td class="tdl"><span class="smcap">The Tutor</span></td>
+<td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_178">178</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdr">IV.</td>
+<td class="tdl"><span class="smcap">Reading for Examinations</span></td>
+<td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_184">184</a>
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_x" id="Page_x">x</a></span></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdr">V.</td>
+<td class="tdl"><span class="smcap">The Examination</span></td>
+<td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_190">190</a></td>
+
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdr">VI.</td>
+<td class="tdl"><span class="smcap">Oxford Qualities and their Defects</span></td>
+<td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_193">193</a></td>
+
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdr">VII.</td>
+<td class="tdl"><span class="smcap">The University and Reform</span></td>
+<td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_200">200</a></td>
+
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdr">VIII.</td>
+<td class="tdl"><span class="smcap">The University and the People</span></td>
+<td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_206">206</a></td>
+
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdl" colspan="2">IV.&nbsp;&nbsp;THE HISTORY OF THE UNIVERSITY AND THE
+COLLEGE</td>
+
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdr">I.</td>
+<td class="tdl"><span class="smcap">The University before the College</span></td>
+<td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_215">215</a></td>
+
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdr">II.</td>
+<td class="tdl"><span class="smcap">The Mediæval Hall</span></td>
+<td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_221">221</a></td>
+
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdr">III.</td>
+<td class="tdl"><span class="smcap">The College System</span></td>
+<td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_223">223</a></td>
+
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdr">IV.</td>
+<td class="tdl"><span class="smcap">The Golden Age of the Mediæval Hall</span></td>
+<td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_231">231</a></td>
+
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdr">V.</td>
+<td class="tdl"><span class="smcap">The Origin of the Modern Undergraduate</span></td>
+<td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_236">236</a></td>
+
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdr">VI.</td>
+<td class="tdl"><span class="smcap">The Insignificance of the Modern University</span></td>
+<td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_239">239</a></td>
+
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdr">VII.</td>
+<td class="tdl"><span class="smcap">The College in America</span></td>
+<td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_245">245</a></td>
+
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdl" colspan="2">V.&nbsp;&nbsp;THE PROBLEMS OF THE AMERICAN UNIVERSITY</td>
+
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdr">I.</td>
+<td class="tdl"> <span class="smcap">The Social and Athletic Problem</span></td>
+<td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_255">255</a></td>
+
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdr">II.</td>
+<td class="tdl"> <span class="smcap">The Administrative Problem</span></td>
+<td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_272">272</a></td>
+
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdr">III.</td>
+<td class="tdl"> <span class="smcap">The Educational Problem</span></td>
+<td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_281">281</a></td>
+
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdr">IV.</td>
+<td class="tdl"> <span class="smcap">The American Hall</span></td>
+<td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_301">301</a></td>
+
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdl" colspan="2">APPENDIX</td>
+
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdr">I.</td>
+<td class="tdl"> <span class="smcap">Athletic Training in England</span></td>
+<td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_313">313</a></td>
+
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdr">II.</td>
+<td class="tdl"> <span class="smcap">Climate and International Athletics</span></td>
+<td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_316">316</a></td>
+
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdr">III.</td>
+<td class="tdl"><span class="smcap">An Oxford Final Honor School</span></td>
+<td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_319">319</a></td>
+</tr>
+</table>
+
+<p class="center p6 b1">LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS</p>
+<table border="0" cellpadding="5" cellspacing="2" summary="toc">
+
+<col width="450" />
+<col width="50" />
+<tr>
+<td class="tdr">&nbsp;</td>
+<td class="tdr s1">PAGE</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdl"><i>Tea on the Lawn at the Oxford Union (page 63)</i></td>
+<td class="tdr"><i><a href="#illo1">Frontispiece</a></i></td>
+
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdl"><i>The Hall Staircase, Christ Church</i></td>
+<td class="tdr"><a href="#illo2">22</a></td>
+
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdl"><i>Magdalen Tower from the Bridge</i></td>
+<td class="tdr"><a href="#illo3">30</a></td>
+
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdl"><i>A Racing Punt and Punter</i></td>
+<td class="tdr"><a href="#illo4">84</a></td>
+
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdl"><i>Iffley Lock and Mill</i></td>
+<td class="tdr"><a href="#illo5">90</a></td>
+
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdl"><i>The Full Costume of an Eightsman</i></td>
+<td class="tdr"><a href="#illo6">100</a></td>
+
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdl"><i>The College Barges: Tubbing in November Floods</i></td>
+<td class="tdr"><a href="#illo7">106</a></td>
+
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdl"><i>The Last Day of the Bumping Races of the Summer
+Eights (1895)</i></td>
+<td class="tdr"><a href="#illo8">112</a></td>
+
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdl"><i>An English Rugby Line-up</i></td>
+<td class="tdr"><a href="#illo9">120</a></td>
+
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdl"><i>Throwing in the Ball</i></td>
+<td class="tdr"><a href="#illo10">124</a></td>
+
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdl"><i>New College Cloisters, Bell Tower, and Chapel</i></td>
+<td class="tdr"><a href="#illo11">224</a></td>
+
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdl"><i>New College Gardens&mdash;showing the Mediæval Wall of
+Oxford</i></td>
+<td class="tdr"><a href="#illo12">228</a></td>
+</tr>
+</table>
+<p class="center p6 b1">AN AMERICAN AT OXFORD</p>
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_1" id="Page_1">1</a></span></p>
+<p class="p2"><span class="dropcap">T</span><span class="smcap">he</span> great German historian of the United
+States, H. E. Von Holst, declares<a name="FNanchor_1" id="FNanchor_1" href="#Footnote_1" class="fnanchor">[1]</a> that,
+"in the sense attached to the word by Europeans,
+... there is in the United States as yet not a
+single university;" institutions like Johns Hopkins
+and Harvard he characterizes as "hybrids of college
+and university." In his survey of European
+usage, one suspects that Professor Von Holst failed
+to look beyond Germany. The so-called universities
+of England, for example, are mere aggregations
+of colleges; they have not even enough of
+the modern scientific spirit to qualify as hybrids,
+having consciously and persistently refused to adopt
+continental standards. The higher institutions of
+America belong historically to the English type;
+they have only recently imported the scientific
+spirit. To the great world of graduates and undergraduates
+they are colleges, and should as far as
+possible be kept so.</p>
+
+<p>Yet there is reason enough for calling them
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_2" id="Page_2">2</a></span>
+hybrids. In the teaching bodies of all of them
+the German, or so-called university, spirit is very
+strong, and is slowly possessing the more advanced
+of our recent graduates and undergraduates. Let
+us be duly grateful. The first result of this spirit
+is an extraordinary quickening and diffusion of
+the modern ideal of scholarship, a devotion to pure
+science amounting almost to a passion. As to the
+second result, we may or may not have cause to
+be grateful. Our most prominent educational
+leaders have striven consciously to make over our
+universities on the German plan. We are in the
+midst of a struggle between old and new forces,
+and at present the alien element has apparently
+the upper hand. The social ideal, which only a
+few years ago was virtually the same in England
+and America, has already been powerfully modified;
+and the concrete embodiment of the new scientific
+spirit, the so-called elective system, has
+transformed the peculiar educational institution of
+our Anglo-Saxon people.</p>
+
+<p>We have gone so far forward that it is possible
+to gain an excellent perspective on what we are
+leaving behind. In the ensuing pages I propose
+to present as plainly as I may the English university
+of colleges. I shall not hesitate to give
+its social life all the prominence it has in fact,
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_3" id="Page_3">3</a></span>
+devoting much space even to athletic sports. The
+peculiarity of the English ideal of education is
+that it aims to develop the moral and social virtues,
+no less than the mental&mdash;to train up boys
+to be men among men. Only by understanding
+this is it possible to sympathize with the system of
+instruction, its peculiar excellences, and its almost
+incredible defects. In the end I hope we shall
+see more clearly what our colleges have inherited
+from the parent institutions, and shall be able to
+judge how far the system of collegiate education
+expresses the genius of English and American
+people.</p>
+
+<p>At the present juncture of political forces in
+America this consideration has a special importance.
+The success with which we exert our influence
+upon distant peoples will depend upon what
+manner of young men we train up to carry it among
+them. If the graduates of German institutions are
+prepared to establish their civilization in the imperial
+colonies, the fact has not yet been shown. The
+colleges of England have manned the British Empire.</p>
+
+<p class="center p6 b1">I</p>
+
+<p class="center p2 b1">THE UNIVERSITY AND THE COLLEGE</p>
+
+<p class="center p6">I</p>
+
+<p class="center">THE UNIVERSITY OF COLLEGES
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_7" id="Page_7">7</a></span></p>
+
+<p class="p2"><span class="dropcap">O</span><span class="smcap">ne</span> of the familiar sights at Oxford is the
+American traveler who stops over on his
+way from Liverpool to London, and, wandering
+up among the walls of the twenty colleges from
+the Great Western Station, asks the first undergraduate
+he meets which building is the university.
+When an Oxford man is first asked this, he
+is pretty sure to answer that there isn't any university;
+but as the answer is taken as a rudeness,
+he soon finds it more agreeable to direct inquirers
+to one of the three or four single buildings, scattered
+hither and yon among the ubiquitous colleges,
+in which the few functions of the university
+are performed. A traveler from our middle West,
+where "universities" often consist of a single building,
+might easily set forth for London with the
+firm idea that the Ashmolean Museum or the Bodleian
+Library is Oxford University.</p>
+
+<p>To the undergraduate the university is an abstract
+institution that at most examines him two
+or three times, "ploughs" him, or graduates him.
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_8" id="Page_8">8</a></span>
+He becomes a member of it by being admitted into
+one of the colleges. To be sure, he matriculates
+also as a student of the university; but the ceremony
+is important mainly as a survival from the
+historic past, and is memorable to him perhaps
+because it takes place beneath the beautiful mediæval
+roof of the Divinity School; perhaps because
+he receives from the Vice-Chancellor a copy of the
+university statutes, written in mediæval Latin,
+which it is to be his chief delight to break. Except
+when he is in for "schools," as the examinations
+are called, the university fades beyond his
+horizon. If he says he is "reading" at Oxford,
+he has the city in mind. He is more likely to
+describe himself as "up at" Magdalen, Balliol, or
+elsewhere. This English idea that a university is
+a mere multiplication of colleges is so firmly fixed
+that the very word is defined as "a collection of
+institutions of learning at a common centre." In
+the daily life of the undergraduate, in his religious
+observances, and in regulating his studies, the
+college is supreme.</p>
+
+<p>To an American the English college is not at
+first sight a wholly pleasing object. It has walls
+that one would take to be insurmountable if they
+were not crowned with shards of bottles mortared
+into the coping; and it has gates that seem capable
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_9" id="Page_9">9</a></span>
+of resisting a siege until one notices that they
+are reinforced by a <i>cheval-de-frise</i>, or a row of bent
+spikes like those that keep the bears in their dens
+at the Zoo. Professor Von Holst would certainly
+regard it as a hybrid between a mediæval cloister
+and a nursery; and one easily imagines him producing
+no end of evidence from its history and traditions
+to show that it is so. Like so many English
+institutions, its outward and visible signs belong
+to the manners of forgotten ages, even while it is
+charged with a vigorous and very modern life. A
+closer view of it, I hope, will show that in spite
+of the barnacles of the past that cling to it&mdash;and
+in some measure, too, because of them&mdash;it is the
+expression of a very high ideal of undergraduate
+convenience and freedom.</p>
+
+<p class="center p6">II</p>
+
+<p class="center">THE OXFORD FRESHMAN<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_10" id="Page_10">10</a></span></p>
+
+<p class="p2"><span class="dropcap">W</span><span class="smcap">hen</span> a freshman comes up to his college,
+he is received at the mediæval gate by
+a very modern porter, who lifts boxes and bags
+from the hansom in a most obliging manner, and
+is presently shown to his cloistral chambers by
+a friendly and urbane butler or steward. To accommodate
+the newcomers in the more populous
+colleges, a measure is resorted to so revolutionary
+that it shocks all American ideas of academic propriety.
+Enough seniors&mdash;fourth and third year
+men&mdash;are turned out of college to make room for
+the freshmen. The assumption is that the upper
+classmen have had every opportunity to profit by
+the life of the college, and are prepared to flock
+by themselves in the town. Little communities of
+four or five fellows who have proved congenial live
+together in "diggings"&mdash;that is, in some townsman's
+house&mdash;hard by the college gate. This arrangement
+makes possible closer and more intimate
+relationship among them than would otherwise be
+likely; and after three years of the very free life
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_11" id="Page_11">11</a></span>
+within those sharded walls, a cloistered year outside
+is usually more than advisable, in view of the final
+examination. It cannot be said that they leave
+college without regret; but I never heard a word
+of complaint, and it is tacitly admitted that on the
+whole they profit by the arrangement.</p>
+
+<p>The more substantial furnishings in the rooms
+are usually permanent, belonging to the college:
+each successive occupant is charged for interest on
+the investment and for depreciation by wear. Thus
+the furniture is far more comfortable than in an
+American college room and costs the occupant less.
+Bed and table linen, cutlery, and a few of the more
+personal furnishings the student brings himself.
+If one neglects to bring them, as I confess I did
+through ignorance, the deficiency is supplied by the
+scout, a dignitary in the employ of the college, who
+stands in somewhat more than the place of a servant
+and less than that of a parent to half a dozen fellows
+whose rooms are adjacent. The scout levies on the
+man above for sheets, on the man below for knives
+and forks, and on the man across the staircase for
+table linen. There is no call for shame on the
+one part or resentment on the other, for is not
+the scout the representative of the hospitality of
+the college? "When you have time, sir," he
+says kindly, "you will order your own linen and
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_12" id="Page_12">12</a></span>
+cutlery." How high a state of civilization is implied
+in this manner of receiving a freshman can
+be appreciated only by those who have arrived
+friendless at an American university.</p>
+
+<p>The scout is in effect a porter, "goody," and eating-club
+waiter rolled into one. He has frequently a
+liberal dash of the don, which he has acquired by
+extended residence at the university; for among all
+the shifting generations of undergraduates, only
+he and the don are permanent. When he reaches
+middle age he wears a beard if he chooses, and
+then he is usually taken for a don by the casual
+visitor. There is no harm in this; the scout
+plays the part <i>con amore</i>, and his long breeding
+enables him to sustain it to a marvel. Yet for
+the most part the scout belongs with the world
+of undergraduates. He has his social clubs and
+his musical societies; he runs, plays cricket, and
+rows, and, finally, he meets the Cambridge scout
+in the inter-varsity matches. His pay the scout
+receives in part from the college, but mostly from
+the students, who give him two to four pounds a
+term each, according to his deserts. All broken
+bread, meat, and wine are his perquisites, and
+tradition allows him to "bag" a fair amount of
+tea, coffee, and sugar. Out of all this he makes
+a sumptuous living. I knew only one exception,
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_13" id="Page_13">13</a></span>
+and that was when four out of six men on a certain
+scout's staircase happened to be vegetarians, and
+five teetotalers. The poor fellow was in extremities
+for meat and in desperation for drink. There was
+only one more pitiable sight in college, and that
+was the sole student on the staircase who ate meat
+and drank wine; the scout bagged food and drink
+from him ceaselessly. At the end of one term the
+student left a half dozen bottles of sherry, which
+he had merely tasted, in his sideboard; and when
+he came back it was gone. "Where's my sherry,
+Betts?" he asked. "Sherry, sir? you ain't got
+no sherry." "But I left six bottles; you had no
+right to more than the one that was broken." "Yes,
+sir; but when I had taken that, sir, the 'arf dozen
+was broke." According to Oxford traditions the
+student had no recourse; and be it set down to his
+praise, he never blamed the scout. He bemoaned
+the fate that bound them together in suffering, and
+vented his spleen on total abstinence and vegetarianism.
+It may be supposed that the scout's antiquity
+and importance makes him a bad servant;
+in the land of the free I fear that it would; but
+at Oxford nothing could be more unlikely. The
+only mark that distinguishes the scout from any
+other class of waiters is that his attentions to your
+comfort are carried off with greater ease and
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_14" id="Page_14">14</a></span>
+dignity. It may be true that he is president of the
+Oxford Society of College Servants&mdash;the Bones or
+the Hasty Pudding of the scouts; that he stroked
+the scouts' eight in the townie's bumping races,
+during the long vac, and afterward rowed against
+the scouts' eight from Cambridge; that he captained
+the scouts' cricket eleven; that in consequence
+he is a "double blue" and wears the Oxford
+'varsity color on his hat with no less pride
+than any other "blue." Yet he is all the more
+bound, out of consideration for his own dignity,
+to show you every respect and attention.</p>
+
+<p>After the scout, the hosts of the college are the
+dons. As soon as the freshman is settled in his
+rooms, or sometimes even before, his tutor meets
+him and arranges for a formal presentation to the
+dean and master. All three are apt to show their
+interest in a freshman by advising him as to trying
+for the athletic teams, joining the college clubs
+and societies, and in a word as to all the concerns
+of undergraduate life except his studies&mdash;these
+come later. If a man has any particular gift, athletic
+or otherwise, the tutor introduces him to the
+men he should know, or, when this is not feasible,
+gives a word to the upper classmen, who take the
+matter into their own hands. If a freshman has
+no especial gift, the tutor is quite as sure to say
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_15" id="Page_15">15</a></span>
+the proper word to the fellows who have most talent
+for drawing out newcomers.</p>
+
+<p>In the first weeks of a freshman's residence
+he finds sundry pasteboards tucked beneath his
+door: the upper classman's call is never more than
+the formal dropping of a card. The freshman is
+expected to return these calls at once, and is
+debarred by a happy custom from leaving his card
+if he does not find his man. He goes again and
+again until he does find him. By direct introduction
+from the tutor or by this formality of calling,
+the freshman soon meets half a dozen upper classmen,
+generally second-year men, and in due time
+he receives little notes like this:&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot">
+<p><span class="smcap">Dear Smith</span>,&mdash;Come to my rooms if you can
+to breakfast with Brown and me on Wednesday
+at 8.30.</p>
+
+<p>
+<span class="left25">Yours sincerely,</span><br />
+<span class="smcap left65">A. Robinson</span>.</p>
+</div>
+
+<p>At table the freshman finds other freshmen whose
+interests are presumably similar to his own.</p>
+
+<p>No one supposes for a moment that all this is
+done out of simple human kindness. The freshman
+breakfast is a conventional institution for
+gathering together the unlicked cubs, so that the
+local influences may take hold of them. The reputation
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_16" id="Page_16">16</a></span>
+of the college in general demands that it
+keep up a name for hospitality; and in particular
+the clubs and athletic teams find it of advantage
+to get the run of all available new material. The
+freshman breakfast is nothing in the world but a
+variation of the "running" that is given newcomers
+in those American colleges where fraternity
+life is strong, and might even be regarded as a
+more civilized form of the rushes and cane sprees
+and even hazings that used to serve with us to
+introduce newcomers to their seniors. Many second-year
+breakfasts are perfunctory enough; the
+host has a truly British air of saying that since
+for better or for worse he is destined to look upon
+your face and abide by your deeds, he is willing
+to make the best of it. If you prove a "bounder,"
+you are soon enough dropped. "<i>I</i> shall soon
+be a second-year man," I once heard a freshman
+remark, "and then <i>I</i> can ask freshmen to breakfast,
+too, and cut them afterward." The point is
+that every fellow is thrown in the way of meeting
+the men of his year. If one is neglected in the
+end, he has no reason to feel that it is the fault
+of the college. As a result of this machinery for
+initiating newcomers, a man usually ceases to be
+a freshman after a single term (two months) of
+residence; and it is always assumed that he does.
+</p>
+
+<p class="center p6">III</p>
+
+<p class="center">A DAY IN AN OXFORD COLLEGE<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_17" id="Page_17">17</a></span></p>
+
+<p class="p2"><span class="dropcap">W</span><span class="smcap">hen</span> a freshman is once established in
+college, his life falls into a pleasantly varied
+routine. The day is ushered in by the scout,
+who bustles into the bedroom, throws aside the
+curtain, pours out the bath, and shouts, "Half
+past seven, sir," in a tone that makes it impossible
+to forget that chapel&mdash;or if one chooses, roll-call&mdash;comes
+at eight. Unless one keeps his six chapels
+or "rollers" a week, he is promptly "hauled"
+before the dean, who perhaps "gates" him. To
+be gated is to be forbidden to pass the college gate
+after dark, and fined a shilling for each night of
+confinement. To an American all this brings recollections
+of the paternal roof, where tardiness at
+breakfast meant, perhaps, the loss of dessert, and
+bedtime an hour earlier. I remember once, when
+out of training, deliberately cutting chapel to see
+with what mien the good dean performed his nursery
+duties. His calm was unruffled, his dignity
+unsullied. I soon came to find that the rules
+about rising were bowed to and indeed respected
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_18" id="Page_18">18</a></span>
+by all concerned, even while they were broken.
+They are distinctly more lax than those the fellows
+have been accustomed to in the public schools, and
+they are conceded to be for the best welfare of the
+college.</p>
+
+<p>Breakfast comes soon after chapel, or roll-call.
+If a man has "kept a dirty roller," that is, has
+reported in pyjamas, ulster, and boots, and has
+turned in again, the scout puts the breakfast before
+the fire on a trestle built of shovel, poker, and
+tongs, where it remains edible until noon. If a
+man has a breakfast party on, the scout makes
+sure that he is stirring in season, and, hurrying
+through the other rooms on the staircase, is presently
+on hand for as long as he may be wanted.
+The usual Oxford breakfast is a single course,
+which not infrequently consists of some one of the
+excellent English pork products, with an egg or
+kidneys. There may be two courses, in which
+case the first is of the no less excellent fresh fish.
+There are no vegetables. The breakfast is ended
+with toast and jam or marmalade. When one has
+fellows in to breakfast,&mdash;and the Oxford custom
+of rooming alone instead of chumming makes such
+hospitality frequent,&mdash;his usual meal is increased
+by a course, say, of chicken. In any case it leads
+to a morning cigarette, for tobacco aids digestion,
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_19" id="Page_19">19</a></span>
+and helps fill the hour or so after meals which an
+Englishman gives to relaxation.</p>
+
+<p>At ten o'clock the breakfast may be interrupted
+for a moment by the exit of some one bent on
+attending a lecture, though one apologizes for such
+an act as if it were scarcely good form. An appointment
+with one's tutor is a more legitimate
+excuse for leaving; but even this is always an
+occasion for an apology, in behalf of the tutor of
+course, for one is certainly not himself responsible.
+If a quorum is left, they manage to sit comfortably
+by the fire, smoking and chatting in spite of
+lectures and tutors, until by mutual consent they
+scatter to glance at the "Times" and the "Sportsman"
+in the common-room, or even to get in a bit
+of reading.</p>
+
+<p>Luncheon often consists of bread and cheese
+and jam from the buttery, with perhaps a half
+pint of bitter beer; but it may, like the breakfast,
+come from the college kitchen. In any case it is
+very light, for almost immediately after it everybody
+scatters to field and track and river for the
+exercise that the English climate makes necessary
+and the sport that the English temperament
+demands.</p>
+
+<p>By four o'clock every one is back in college
+tubbed and dressed for tea, which a man serves
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_20" id="Page_20">20</a></span>
+himself in his rooms to as many fellows as he has
+been able to gather in on field or river. If he is
+eager to hear of the games he has not been able to
+witness, he goes to the junior common-room or to
+his club, where he is sure to find a dozen or so of
+kindred spirits representing every sport of importance.
+In this way he hears the minutest details
+of the games of the day from the players themselves;
+and before nightfall&mdash;such is the influence
+of tea&mdash;those bits of gossip which in America
+are known chiefly among members of a team
+have ramified the college. Thus the function of
+the "bleachers" on an American field is performed
+with a vengeance by the easy-chairs before a common-room
+fire; and a man had better be kicked
+off the team by an American captain than have his
+shortcomings served up with common-room tea.</p>
+
+<p>The two hours between tea and dinner may be,
+and usually are, spent in reading.
+</p>
+
+<p class="center p6">IV</p>
+
+<p class="center">DINNER IN HALL<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_21" id="Page_21">21</a></span></p>
+
+<p class="p2"><span class="dropcap">A</span><span class="smcap">t</span> seven o'clock the college bell rings, and in
+two minutes the fellows have thrown on
+their gowns and are seated at table, where the
+scouts are in readiness to serve them. As a rule
+a man may sit wherever he chooses; this is one of
+the admirable arrangements for breaking up such
+cliques as inevitably form in a college. But in
+point of fact a man usually ends by sitting in some
+certain quarter of the hall, where from day to day
+he finds much the same set of fellows. Thus all
+the advantages of friendly intercourse are attained
+without any real exclusiveness. This may seem a
+small point; but an hour a day becomes an item
+in four years, especially if it is the hour when men
+are most disposed to be companionable.</p>
+
+<p>The English College hall is a miniature of
+Memorial Hall at Harvard, of which it is the prototype.
+It has the same sombrely beautiful roof,
+the same richness of stained glass. It has also the
+same memorable and impressive canvases, though
+the worthies they portray are likely to be the
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_22" id="Page_22">22</a></span>
+princes and prelates of Holbein instead of the
+soldiers, merchants, and divines of Copley and
+Gilbert Stuart. The tables are of antique oak,
+with the shadow of centuries in its grain, and the
+college plate bears the names and date of the
+Restoration. To an American the mugs he drinks
+his beer from seem old enough, but the Englishman
+finds them aggressively new. They are not,
+however, without endearing associations, for the
+mugs that preceded them were last used to drink
+a health to King Charles, and were then stamped
+into coin to buy food and drink for his soldiers.
+The one or two colleges that, for Puritan principles
+or thrift, or both, refused to give up their old
+plate, are not overproud of showing it.</p>
+
+<p>Across the end of the hall is a platform for
+high table, at which the dons assemble as soon as
+the undergraduates are well seated. On Sunday
+night they come out in full force, and from the
+time the first one enters until the last is seated,
+the undergraduates rattle and bang the tables,
+until it seems as if the glass must splinter. When,
+as often happens, a distinguished graduate comes
+up,&mdash;the Speaker of the Commons to Balliol, or
+the Prime Minister to Christ Church,&mdash;the enthusiasm
+has usually to be stopped by a gesture
+from the master or the dean.</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter"><a name="illo2" id="illo2"></a>
+<img src="images/i_036.jpg" width="423" height="650" alt="THE HALL STAIRCASE, CHRIST CHURCH" />
+<p class="caption">THE HALL STAIRCASE, CHRIST CHURCH</p>
+</div>
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_23" id="Page_23">23</a></span></p>
+
+<p>The dons at high table, like the British peers,
+mingle judicial with legislative functions. All
+disputes about sconces are referred to them, and
+their decrees are absolute. A sconce is a penalty
+for a breach of good manners at table, and is an
+institution that can be traced far back into the
+Middle Ages. The offenses that are sconcible
+may be summarized as punning, swearing, talking
+shop, and coming to hall after high table is in
+session. Take, for instance, the case of a certain
+oarsman who found the dinner forms rather too
+rigid after his first day on sliding seats. By way
+of comforting himself, he remarked that the Lord
+giveth and the Lord taketh away. Who is to
+decide whether he is guilty of profanity? The
+master, of course, and his assembled court of dons.
+The remark and the attendant circumstances are
+written on the back of an order-slip by the senior
+scholar present, and a scout is dispatched with it.
+Imagine, then, the master presenting this question
+to the dons: Is it profanity to refer by means of a
+quotation from Scripture to the cuticle one loses
+in a college boat? Suppose the dons decree that
+it is. The culprit has the alternative of paying
+a shilling to the college library, or ordering a tun
+of bitter beer. If he decides for beer, a second
+alternative confronts him: he may drink it down
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_24" id="Page_24">24</a></span>
+in one uninterrupted draft, or he may kiss the cup
+and send it circling the table. If he tries to floor
+the sconce and fails, he has to order more beer
+for the table; but if he succeeds, the man who
+sconced him has to pay the shot and order a second
+tun for the table. I never knew but one man
+to down a sconce. He did it between soup and
+fish, and for the rest of the evening was as drunk
+as ever was the Restoration lord who presented
+the silver tankard to the college.</p>
+
+<p>After hall the dons go to the senior common-room
+for the sweet and port. At Trinity they have one
+room for the sweet and another for port. The students,
+meanwhile, in certain of the colleges, may
+go for dessert to the college store; that is to say, to
+a room beneath the hall, where the fancy groceries
+of the college stock are displayed for sale. There
+are oranges from Florida and Tangiers, dainty
+maiden blush apples from New England, figs and
+dates from the Levant, prunes and prunelles from
+Italy, candied apricots from France, and the superb
+English hothouse grapes, more luscious than Silenus
+ever crushed against his palate. There are
+sweets, cigarettes, and cigars. All are spread
+upon the tables like a Venetian painting of abundance;
+but at either end of the room stand two
+Oxford scouts, with account-books in their hands.
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_25" id="Page_25">25</a></span>
+A fellow takes a Tangerine and, with a tap-room
+gesture, tilts to the scout as if to say, "Here's
+looking toward you, landlord;" or, "I drink to
+your bonny blue eyes." But he is not confronted
+by a publican or barmaid; only a grave underling
+of the college bursar, who silently records "Brown,
+orange, 2d.," and looks up to catch the next item.
+Two other fellows are flipping for cigars, and
+the second scout is gravely watching their faces to
+see which way the coin has fallen, recording the
+outcome without a sign. Some one asks, "How
+much are chocolate creams, Higgins?" "Three
+ha'pence for four, sir," is the answer, and the
+student urges three neighbors to share his penny'orth.
+The scout records, "Jones, c. c. 1½d."</p>
+
+<p>The minuteness of this bookkeeping is characteristic.
+The weekly battels (bills) always bear a
+charge of twopence for "salt, etc.;" and once,
+when I had not ordered anything during an entire
+day, there was an unspecified charge of a penny in
+the breakfast column. I asked the butler what
+it meant. He looked at me horrified. "Why,
+sir, that is to keep your name on the books." No
+penny, I suppose, ever filled an office of greater
+responsibility, and I still can shudder at so narrow
+an escape. I asked if such elaborate bookkeeping
+was not very expensive. In America, I said, we
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_26" id="Page_26">26</a></span>
+should lump the charges and devote the saving
+to hiring a better chef. He explained that it had
+always been so managed; that the chef was thought
+very good, sir; and that by itemizing charges the
+young gentlemen who wished were enabled to live
+more cheaply. Obviously, when it costs a penny
+merely to keep your name on the books, there is
+need to economize.</p>
+
+<p>After a quarter of an hour in the store the fellows
+drop off by twos and threes to read, or to take
+coffee in some one's room. With the coffee a glass
+of port is usually taken. Almost all the fellows
+have spirits and wines, which are sold by the college
+as freely as any other commodity. If a man
+wishes a cup served in his room, he has only to say
+so to his scout. If one waits long enough in the
+store, he is almost certain to be asked to coffee and
+wine. The would-be host circulates the room tapping
+the elect on the shoulder and speaking a quiet
+word, as they select Bones men at Yale. If half a
+dozen men are left in the store uninvited, one of
+them is apt to rise to the occasion and invite the
+lot. It scarcely matters how unpopular a fellow
+may be. The willingness to loaf is the touch of
+nature that makes all men kin.</p>
+
+<p>After coffee more men fall off to their books;
+but the faithful are likely to spend the evening
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_27" id="Page_27">27</a></span>
+talking or playing cards&mdash;bridge, loo, napp, and
+whist, with the German importation of skat and
+the American importation of poker. In one college
+I knew, there was a nomadic roulette wheel
+that wandered from room to room pursued by the
+shadow of the dean, but seldom failed of an evening
+to gather its flock about it.
+</p>
+
+<p class="center p6">V</p>
+
+<p class="center">EVENING<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_28" id="Page_28">28</a></span></p>
+
+<p class="p2"><span class="dropcap">I</span><span class="smcap">n</span> the evening, when the season permits, the
+fellows sit out of doors after dinner, smoking
+and playing bowls. There is no place in which
+the spring comes more sweetly than in an Oxford
+garden. The high walls are at once a trap for the
+first warm rays of the sun and a barrier against
+the winds of March. The daffodils and crocuses
+spring up with joy as the gardener bids; and the
+apple and cherry trees coddle against the warm
+north walls, spreading out their early buds gratefully
+to the mild English sun. For long, quiet
+hours after dinner they flaunt their beauty to the
+fellows smoking, and breathe their sweetness to
+the fellows playing bowls. "No man," exclaims
+the American visitor, "could live four years in
+these gardens of delight and not be made gentler
+and nobler!" Perhaps! though not altogether in
+the way the visitor imagines. When the flush of
+summer is on, the loiterers loll on the lawn full
+length; and as they watch the insects crawl among
+the grass they make bets on them, just as the
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_29" id="Page_29">29</a></span>
+gravest and most reverend seniors have been known
+to do in America.</p>
+
+<p>In the windows overlooking the quadrangle are
+boxes of brilliant flowers, above which the smoke
+of a pipe comes curling out. At Harvard some fellows
+have geraniums in their windows, but only
+the very rich; and when they began the custom
+an ancient graduate wrote one of those communications
+to the "Crimson," saying that if men put
+unmanly boxes of flowers in the window, how can
+they expect to beat Yale? Flower boxes, no sand.
+At Oxford they manage things so that anybody
+may have flower boxes; and their associations are
+by no means unmanly. This is the way they do
+it. In the early summer a gardener's wagon from
+the country draws up by the college gate, and the
+driver cries, "Flowers! Flowers for a pair of old
+bags, sir." <i>Bags</i> is of course the fitting term for
+English trousers&mdash;which don't fit; and I should
+like to inform that ancient graduate that the window
+boxes of Oxford suggest the very badge of
+manhood.</p>
+
+<p>As long as the English twilight lingers, the men
+will sit and talk and sing to the mandolin; and
+I have heard of fellows sitting and talking all
+night, not turning in until the porter appeared to
+take their names at roll-call. On the eve of May
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_30" id="Page_30">30</a></span>
+day it is quite the custom to sit out, for at dawn
+one may go to see the pretty ceremony of heralding
+the May on Magdalen Tower. The Magdalen choir
+boys&mdash;the sweetest songsters in all Oxford&mdash;mount
+to the top of that most beautiful of Gothic
+towers, and, standing among the pinnacles,&mdash;pinnacles
+afire with the spirituality of the Middle Ages,
+that warms all the senses with purity and beauty,&mdash;those
+boys, I say, on that tower and among those
+pinnacles, open their mouths and sing a Latin song
+to greet the May. Meantime, the fellows who
+have come out to listen in the street below make
+catcalls and blow fish horns. The song above is
+the survival of a Romish, perhaps a Druidical,
+custom; the racket below is the survival of a Puritan
+protest. That is Oxford in symbol! Its dignity
+and mellowness are not so much a matter of
+flowering gardens and crumbling walls as of the
+traditions of the centuries in which the whole life
+of the place has deep sources; and the noblest of
+its institutions are fringed with survivals that run
+riot in the grotesque.</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter"><a name="illo3" id="illo3"></a>
+<img src="images/i_046.jpg" width="395" height="650" alt="MAGDALEN TOWER FROM THE BRIDGE" />
+<p class="caption">MAGDALEN TOWER FROM THE BRIDGE</p>
+</div>
+
+<p>If a man intends to spend the evening out of
+college, he has to make a dash before nine o'clock;
+for love or for money the porter may not let an
+inmate out after nine. One man I knew was able
+to escape by guile. He had a brother in Trinity
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_31" id="Page_31">31</a></span>
+whom he very much resembled, and whenever he
+wanted to go out, he would tilt his mortarboard
+forward, wrap his gown high about his neck, as it
+is usually worn of an evening, and bidding the
+porter a polite good-night, say, "Charge me to my
+brother, Hancock, if you please." The charge is
+the inconsiderable sum of one penny, and is the
+penalty of having a late guest. Having profited
+by my experience with the similar charge for keeping
+my name on the college books, I never asked
+its why and wherefore. Both are no doubt survivals
+of some mediæval custom, the authority of
+which no college employee&mdash;or don, for the matter
+of that&mdash;would question. Such matters interest
+the Oxford man quite as little as the question
+how he comes by a tonsil or a vermiform appendix.
+They are there, and he makes the best of them.</p>
+
+<p>If a fellow leaves college for an evening, it is for
+a foregathering at some other college, or to go to
+the theatre. As a rule he wears a cloth cap. A
+"billycock" or "bowler," as the pot hat is called,
+is as thoroughly frowned on now in English colleges
+as it was with us a dozen years ago. As for
+the mortarboard and gown, undergraduate opinion
+rather requires that they be left behind. This is
+largely, no doubt, because they are required by law
+to be worn. So far as the undergraduates are concerned,
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_32" id="Page_32">32</a></span>
+every operative statute of the university,
+with the exception of those relating to matriculation
+and graduation, refers to conduct in the
+streets after nightfall, and almost without exception
+they are honored in the breach. This is out
+of disregard for the Vice-Chancellor of the university,
+who is familiarly called the Vice, because
+he serves as a warning to others for the practice
+of virtue. The Vice makes his power felt in
+characteristically dark and tortuous ways. His
+factors are two proctors, college dons in daytime,
+but skulkers after nightfall, each of whom has his
+bulldogs, that is, scouts employed literally to spy
+upon the students. If these catch you without
+cap or gown, they cause you to be proctorized or
+"progged," as it is called, which involves a matter
+of five shillings or so. As a rule there is little
+danger of progging, but my first term fell in evil
+days. For some reason or other the chest of the
+university showed a deficit of sundry pounds, shillings,
+and pence; and as it had long ceased to need
+or receive regular bequests,&mdash;the finance of the
+institution being in the hands of the colleges,&mdash;a
+crisis was at hand. A more serious problem had
+doubtless never arisen since the great question was
+solved of keeping undergraduates' names on the
+books. The expedient of the Vice-Chancellor was
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_33" id="Page_33">33</a></span>
+to summon the proctors, and bid them charge their
+bulldogs to prog all freshmen caught at night without
+cap and gown. The deficit in the university
+chest was made up at five shillings a head.</p>
+
+<p>One of the Vice-Chancellor's rules is that no
+undergraduate shall enter an Oxford "pub." Now
+the only restaurant in town, Queen's, is run in
+conjunction with a pub, and was once the favorite
+resort of all who were bent on breaking the monotony
+of an English Sunday. The Vice-Chancellor
+resolved to destroy this den of Sabbath-breaking,
+and the undergraduates resolved no less
+firmly to defend their stronghold. The result
+was a hand-to-hand fight with the bulldogs, which
+ended so triumphantly for the undergraduates that
+a dozen or more of them were sent down. In the
+articles of the peace that followed, it was stipulated,
+I was told, that so long as the restaurant
+was closed Sunday afternoons and nights, it should
+never suffer from the visit of proctor or bulldog.
+As a result, Queen's is a great scene of undergraduate
+foregatherings. The dinners are good
+enough and reasonably cheap; and as most excellent
+champagne is to be had at twelve shillings the
+bottle, the diners are not unlikely to get back to
+college a trifle buffy, in the Oxford phrase.</p>
+
+<p>By an interesting survival of mediæval custom,
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_34" id="Page_34">34</a></span>
+the Vice-Chancellor has supreme power over the
+morals of the town, and any citizen who transgresses
+his laws is visited with summary punishment.
+For a tradesman or publican to assist in
+breaking university rules means outlawry and ruin,
+and for certain offenses a citizen may be punished
+by imprisonment. Over the Oxford theatre the
+Vice-Chancellor's power is absolute. In my time
+he was much more solicitous that the undergraduate
+be kept from knowledge of the omnipresent
+woman with a past than that dramatic art should
+flourish, and forbade the town to more than one
+excellent play of the modern school of comedy that
+had been seen and discussed in London by the
+younger sisters of the undergraduates. The woman
+with a present is virtually absent.</p>
+
+<p>Time was when no Oxford play was quite successful
+unless the undergraduates assisted at its
+first night, though in a way very different from
+that which the term denotes in France. The
+assistance was of the kind so generously rendered
+in New York and Boston on the evening of an
+athletic contest. Even to-day, just for tradition's
+sake, the undergraduates sometimes make a row.
+A lot of B. N. C. men, as the clanny sons of
+Brazenose College call themselves, may insist that
+an opera stop while the troupe listen to one of
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_35" id="Page_35">35</a></span>
+their own excellent vocal performances; and I
+once saw a great sprinter, not unknown to Yale
+men, rise from his seat, face the audience, and,
+pointing with his thumb over his shoulder at the soubrette,
+announce impressively, "Do you know, I
+rather <i>like</i> that girl!" The show is usually over
+just before eleven, and then occurs an amusing, if
+unseemly, scramble to get back to college before
+the hour strikes. A man who stays out after ten
+is fined threepence; after eleven the fine is sixpence.
+When all is said, why shouldn't one sprint
+for threepence?</p>
+
+<p>If you stay out of college after midnight, the
+dean makes a star chamber offense of it, fines you
+a "quid" or two, and like as not sends you down.
+This sounds a trifle worse than it is; for if you
+must be away, your absence can usually be arranged
+for. If you find yourself in the streets after
+twelve, you may rap on some friend's bedroom
+window and tell him of your plight through the
+iron grating. He will then spend the first half
+of the night in your bed and wash his hands in
+your bowl. With such evidence as this to support
+him, the scout is not apt, if sufficiently retained,
+to report a suspected absence. I have even known
+fellows to make their arrangements in advance
+and spend the night in town; but the ruse has its
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_36" id="Page_36">36</a></span>
+dangers, and the penalty is to be sent down for
+good and all.</p>
+
+<p>It is owing to such regulations as these that life
+in the English college has the name of being cloistral.
+Just how cloistral it is in spirit no one
+can know who has not taken part in a rag in the
+quad; and this is impossible to an outsider, for at
+midnight all visitors are required to leave, under a
+heavy penalty to their host.
+</p>
+
+<p class="center p6">VI</p>
+
+<p class="center">THE MIND OF THE COLLEGE<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_37" id="Page_37">37</a></span></p>
+
+<p class="p2"><span class="dropcap">A</span><span class="smcap">ny</span> jubilation is a rag; but the most interesting
+kind, though perhaps the least frequent,
+takes the direction of what we call hazing.
+It is seldom, however, as hazing has come to be
+with us, a wanton outbreak. It is a deliberate
+expression of public opinion, and is carried on
+sedately by the leading men of the college. The
+more I saw of it, the more deeply I came to respect
+it as an institution.</p>
+
+<p>In its simplest if rarest form it merely consists
+in smashing up a man's room. The only affair of
+this kind which I saw took place in the owner's
+absence; and when I animadverted on the fact, I
+was assured that it would have turned out much
+worse for the man's feelings if he had been present.
+He was a strapping big Rugbeian, who had
+come up with a "reputter," or reputation, as a
+football player, and had insisted on trying first off
+for the 'varsity fifteen. He had promptly been
+given the hoof for being slow and lazy, and when
+he condescended to try for the college fifteen, his
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_38" id="Page_38">38</a></span>
+services were speedily dispensed with for the same
+reason. As he still carried his head high, it was
+necessary to bring his shortcomings home to him
+in an unmistakable manner. Brutal as I thought
+the proceeding, and shameful to grown men, it
+did him good. He became a hard-working and
+lowly minded athlete, and prospered. I am not
+prepared to say that the effect in this particular
+instance did not justify the means.</p>
+
+<p>A series of judicial raggings was much more edifying.
+Having pulled their culprit out of bed
+after midnight, the upper classmen set him upon
+his window-seat in pyjamas, and with great solemnity
+appointed a judge, a counsel for the prosecution,
+and a counsel for the defense. Of the
+charges against him only one or two struck home,
+and even these were so mingled with the nonsense
+of the proceedings that their sting was more or
+less blunted. The man had been given over to his
+books to the neglect of his personal appearance. It
+was charged that in pretending to know his subjunctives
+he was ministering to the vanity of the
+dean, who had written a Latin grammar, and that
+by displaying familiarity with Hegel he was boot-licking
+the master, who was a recently imported
+Scotch philosopher. Then the vital question was
+raised as to the culprit's personal habits. Heaven
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_39" id="Page_39">39</a></span>
+defend him now from his legal defender! It was
+urged that as he was a student of Literæ Humaniores,
+he might be excused from an acquaintance
+with the scientific commodity known as H<sub>2</sub>O: one
+might ignore anything, in fact, if only one were
+interested in Literæ Humaniores. By such means
+as this the face of the college is kept bright and
+shining.</p>
+
+<p>Here is a round robin, addressed to the best of
+fellows, a member of the 'varsity shooting team
+and golf team. He was a Scotchman by birth and
+by profession, and even his schoolboy days at Eton
+had not divested him of a Highland gait.</p>
+
+<p>"Whereas, Thomas Rankeillor, Gent, of the University
+of Oxford, has, by means of his large feet,
+uncouth gait, and his unwieldy brogues, wantonly
+and with malice destroyed, mutilated, and
+otherwise injured the putting greens, tees, and golf
+course generally, the property of the Oxford University
+Golf Club, whereof he is a member, and</p>
+
+<p>"Whereas, 2, The said Thomas Rankeillor, etc.,
+has by these large feet, uncouth gait, and unwieldy
+brogues aforesaid, raised embankments, groins, and
+other bunkers, hazards, and impediments, formed
+unnecessary roads, farm roads, bridle paths, and
+other roads, on the putting greens, tees, and golf
+course generally, aforesaid; excavated sundry and
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_40" id="Page_40">40</a></span>
+diverse reservoirs, tanks, ponds, conduits, sewers,
+channels, and other runnels, needlessly irrigating
+the putting greens, tees, and golf course generally
+aforesaid, and</p>
+
+<p>"Whereas, 3, The said Thomas Rankeillor, etc.,
+has by those large feet, uncouth gait, and unwieldy
+brogues aforesaid, caused landslips, thus demolishing
+all natural hills, bunkers, and other excrescences,
+and all artificial hillocks, mounds, hedges,
+and other hazards,</p>
+
+<p>"Hereby we, the circumsigned, do request, petition,
+and otherwise entreat the aforesaid</p>
+
+<p>"<span class="smcap">Thomas Rankeillor, Gent, of the University
+of Oxford</span>, to alter, transform, and otherwise
+modify his uncouth gait, carriage, and general mode
+of progression; to buy, purchase, or otherwise acquire
+boots, shoes, and all other understandings of
+reasonable size, weight, and material; and finally
+that he do cease from this time forward to wear,
+use, or in any way carry the aforesaid brogues.</p>
+
+<p>"Given forth this the 17th day of March,
+1896."</p>
+
+<p>At times rougher means are employed. At
+Brazenose there happened to be two men by the
+same name, let us say, of Gaylor, one of whom had
+made himself agreeable to the college, while the
+other had decidedly not. One midnight a party
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_41" id="Page_41">41</a></span>
+of roisterers hauled the unpopular Gaylor out of
+his study, pulled off his bags, and dragged him by
+the heels a lap or two about the quad. This form
+of discipline has since been practiced in other colleges,
+and is called debagging. The popular Gaylor
+was ever afterward distinguished by the name
+of Asher, because, according to the Book of Judges,
+Asher abode in his breaches.</p>
+
+<p>Not dissimilar correctives may be employed, in
+extreme need, against those mightiest in authority.
+A favorite device is to screw the oak of an objectionable
+don. Mr. Andrew Lang, himself formerly
+a don at Merton, reports a conversation&mdash;can
+it have been a personal experience?&mdash;between
+a don standing inside a newly screwed oak and his
+scout, who was tendering sympathy from the staircase.
+"What <i>am</i> I to do?" cried the don. "Mr.
+Muff, sir," suggested the scout, "when 'e's screwed
+up, sir, <i>'e</i> sends for the blacksmith." At Christ
+Church, "The House," as it is familiarly called,
+much more direct and personal methods have been
+employed. Not many years ago a censor (whose
+office is that of the dean at other colleges) stirred
+up unusual ill-will among his wards. They pulled
+him from his bed, dragged him into Tom Quad,&mdash;Wolsey's
+Quad,&mdash;and threw him bodily among the
+venerable carp of the Mercury Pond. Then they
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_42" id="Page_42">42</a></span>
+gathered about in a circle, and, when he raised his
+head above the surface, thrust him under with
+their walking-sticks. Something like forty of them
+were sent down for this, and the censor went traveling
+for his health.</p>
+
+<p>The memory of this episode was still green when
+the Duke of Marlborough gave a coming of age
+ball at Blenheim Palace, and invited over literally
+hundreds of his Oxford friends. In other colleges
+the undergraduates were permitted to leave Oxford
+for the night, but at the House the censor stipulated
+that they be within the gates, as usual, by
+midnight. This would have meant a break-neck
+drive of eight miles after about fifteen minutes
+at the ball, and was far more exasperating to
+the young Britons than a straightforward refusal.
+That evening the dons sported their oaks, and
+carefully bolted themselves within. The night
+passed in so deep a silence that, for all they
+knew, the ghost of Wolsey might have been
+stalking in his cherished quadrangle, the glory of
+building which the Eighth Henry so unfeelingly
+appropriated. As morning dawned, the common-room
+gossips will tell you, the dons crawled furtively
+out of bed, and shot their bolts to find
+whether they had need of the blacksmith. Not a
+screw had been driven. The morning showed why.
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_43" id="Page_43">43</a></span>
+On the stately walls of Tom Quad was painted
+"Damn the Dons!" and again in capital letters,
+"Damn the Dons!" and a third time, in larger
+capitals, "Damn the Dons!" There were other
+inscriptions, less fit to relate; and stretching along
+one whole side of the quad, in huge characters, the
+finely antithetical sentence: "God bless the Duke
+of Marlborough." The doors of the dean's residence
+were smeared with red paint; and against a
+marble statue of the late Dean Liddell, the Greek
+lexicographer, a bottle of green ink had been
+smashed. Two hundred workmen, summoned
+from a neighboring building, labored two days
+with rice-root brushes and fuller's earth, but with
+so little effect that certain of the stones had to be
+replaced in the walls, and endless scrubbings
+failed to overcome the affinity between the ink and
+the literary Liddell. The marble statue has been
+replaced by one of plaster.</p>
+
+<p>Compared with the usual Oxford rag, the upsetting
+of Professor Silliman's statue in the Yale
+campus by means of a lasso dwindles into insignificance,
+and the painting of 'varsity stockings on
+John Harvard, which so scandalized the undergraduates
+that they repaired the damage by voluntary
+subscriptions, might be regarded as an act of
+filial piety.
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_44" id="Page_44">44</a></span></p>
+
+<p>The more I learned of Oxford motives, the less
+anxious I was to censure the system of ragging.
+In an article I wrote after only a few months' stay,
+I spoke of it as boyish and undignified; and most
+Americans, I feel sure, would likewise hold up the
+hand of public horror. Yet I cannot be wholly
+thankful that we are not as they. To the undergraduates,
+ragging is a survival of the excellently
+efficient system of discipline in the public schools,
+where the older boys have charge of the manners
+and morals of the younger; and historically, like
+public school discipline, it is an inheritance from
+the prehistoric past. In the Middle Ages it was
+apparently the custom to hold the victim's nose
+literally to the grindstone. In the schools, to be
+sure, the Sixth Form take their duties with great
+sobriety of conscience&mdash;which is not altogether
+the case in college; but the difference of spirit is
+perhaps justifiable. For a properly authorized
+committee of big schoolboys to chastise a youngster
+who has transgressed is not unnatural, and the
+system that provides for it has proved successful
+for five centuries; but for men to adopt the same
+attitude towards a fellow only a year or two their
+junior would be preposterous. Horseplay is a necessary
+part of the game. The end in both is the
+same: it is to bring each individual under the influence
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_45" id="Page_45">45</a></span>
+of the traditions and standards of the institution
+of which he has elected to be a part. Just
+as the system of breakfasting freshmen is by no
+means as altruistic as it at first appears, the practice
+of ragging is by no means as brutal. It is as
+if the college said: We have admitted you and
+welcomed you, opening up the way to every avenue
+of enjoyment and profit, and it is for our common
+good, sir, that you be told of your shortcomings.
+The most diligent and distinguished scholar is not
+unlikely to be most in need of a pointed lesson in
+personal decorum; and the man who was not Asher
+may be thankful all his life for the bad quarter of
+an hour that taught him the difference between
+those who do and those who do not abide in their
+breaches.</p>
+
+<p>With regard to the dons, a similar case might
+be made. Any one who assumes an authority over
+grown men that is so nearly absolute should be
+held to strict honesty and justice of dealing. So
+far as I could learn, the Christ Church dons who
+were so severely dealt with were both unjust and
+insincere, and I came to sympathize in some measure
+with the undergraduates at the House, who
+were half humorously inclined to regard the forty
+outcasts as martyrs.</p>
+
+<p>This is not to argue that all American hazing
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_46" id="Page_46">46</a></span>
+is justifiable. In many cases, especially of late
+years, it has been as silly and brutal as the most
+puritanical moralists have declared. To steal the
+Louisburg Cross from above the door of the Harvard
+Library was vandalism if you wish&mdash;it was
+certainly a very stupid proceeding; and to celebrate
+a really notable athletic victory by mutilating
+the pedestal of the statue of John Harvard
+was not only stupid, but unworthy of a true sportsman.
+How much better to make an end with
+painting 'varsity stockings on the dear old boy's
+bronze legs, and leave the goody to wash them off
+next day. What I wish to point out is that where
+there is vigorous public spirit, it may be more efficiently
+expressed by hazing than by a very nor'easter
+of Puritan morality.</p>
+
+<p>A tradition of the late master of Balliol, Jowett,
+the great humanist, would seem to show that
+he held some such opinion. It was his custom in
+his declining years to walk after breakfast in the
+garden quad, and whenever there were evidences
+of a rag, even to the extent of broken windows, he
+would say cheerily to his <i>fidus Achates</i>, "Ah, Hardie,
+the mind of the college is still vigorous; it has
+been expressing itself." The best possible justification
+of the cloistral restrictions of English college
+life is the facility with which the mind of the
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_47" id="Page_47">47</a></span>
+college expresses itself. It is by no means fantastic
+to hint that the decline of well-considered hazing
+in American colleges has come step by step
+with the breaking up of the bonds of hospitality
+and comradeship that used to make them well-organized
+social communities.</p>
+
+<p>I have not come to this philosophy without deep
+experience. On one occasion after Hall, I was
+flown with such insolence against college restrictions
+that the <i>cheval-de-frise</i> above the back
+gate seemed an affront to a freeborn American.
+Though the porter's gate was still open, it was imperatively
+necessary to scale that roller of iron
+spikes. I was no sooner astride of it than a mob
+of townspeople gathered without, and among them
+a palsied beggar, who bellowed out that he would
+hextricate me for 'arf a crown, sir. I have seldom
+been in a less gratifying position; and when
+I had clambered back into college, I ruefully recalled
+the explanation my tutor had given me of
+the iron spikes and bottle shards,&mdash;an explanation
+that at the time had shaken my sides with laughter
+at British absurdity. My tutor had said that if
+the fellows were allowed to rag each other in the
+open streets and smash the townspeople's windows,
+the matter would be sure to get into the papers
+and set the uninitiated parent against the universities.
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_48" id="Page_48">48</a></span>
+In effect, the iron spikes and the stumps
+of bottles are admirable, not so much because they
+keep the undergraduate in, as because they keep
+the public out; and since the public includes all
+people who wish to hextricate you for 'arf a crown,
+sir, my mind was in a way to be reduced to that
+British state of illogic in which I regarded only
+the effect.</p>
+
+<p>As a last resort I carefully sounded the undergraduates
+as to whether they would find use for
+greater liberty. They were not only content with
+their lot, but would, I found, resent any loosening
+of the restrictions. To give them the liberty of
+London at night or even of Oxford, they argued,
+would tend to break up the college as a social
+organization and thus to weaken it athletically;
+for at Oxford they understand what we sometimes
+do not, that a successful cultivation of sports goes
+hand in hand with good comradeship and mutual
+loyalty.</p>
+
+<p>The only question remaining was of the actual
+moral results of the semi-cloistral life. Such
+outbreaks of public opinion as I have described
+are at the worst exceptional; they are the last
+resort of outraged patience. The affair at Christ
+Church is unexampled in modern times. Many a
+man of the better sort goes through his four years
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_49" id="Page_49">49</a></span>
+at the university without either experiencing or
+witnessing undergraduate violence. As for drinking,
+in spite of the fact that wine and spirits are
+sold to undergraduates by the college at any and
+all times and in any and all quantities, there
+seemed to be less excessive indulgence than, for
+instance, at Harvard or at Yale. And the fact
+that what there was took place for the most part
+within the college walls was in many respects
+most fortunate. When fellows are turned loose
+for their jubilations amid the vices of a city, as is
+usually the case with us, the consequences to their
+general morality are sometimes the most hideous.
+In an English college the men to whom immorality
+seems inevitable&mdash;and such are to be found in
+all communities&mdash;have recourse to London. But
+as their expeditions take place in daylight and
+cold blood, and are, except at great risk, cut short
+when the last evening train leaves Paddington
+shortly after dinner, it is not possible to carry
+them off with that dazzling air of the man of the
+world that in America lures so many silly freshmen
+into dissipations for which they have no natural
+inclination. This little liberty is apparently
+of great value. The cloistral vice, which seems
+inevitable in the English public schools, is robbed
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_50" id="Page_50">50</a></span>
+of any shadow of palliation. A fellow who continues
+it is thought puerile, if nothing worse.
+When it exists, it is more likely to be the result
+of the intimate study of the ancient classics, and
+is then even more looked down upon by the robust
+Briton as effeminate or decadent. The subject,
+usually difficult or impossible to investigate, happened
+to be on the surface at the time of my residence
+because of the sensational trial of an Oxford
+graduate in London. I was satisfied that the
+general body of undergraduates was quite free of
+contamination. On the whole, I should say that
+the restrictions of college life in England are far
+less dangerous than the absolute freedom of life
+in an American college. Under our system a few
+men profit greatly; they leave college experienced
+in the ways of the world and at the same time
+thoroughly masters of themselves. But it is a
+strong man&mdash;perhaps a blasphemous one&mdash;that
+would ask to be led into temptation. The best
+system of college residence, I take it, is that which
+develops thoroughly and spontaneously the normal
+social instincts, and at the same time leaves men
+free moral agents. In a rightly constituted fellow,
+in fact, the normal social life constitutes the
+only real freedom. Those frowning college walls,
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_51" id="Page_51">51</a></span>
+which we are disposed to regard as instruments of
+pedagogical tyranny, are the means of nourishing
+the normal social life, and are thus in effect the
+bulwarks of a freer system than is known to
+American universities.
+</p>
+
+<p class="center p6">VII</p>
+
+<p class="center">CLUB LIFE IN THE COLLEGE<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_52" id="Page_52">52</a></span></p>
+
+<p class="p2"><span class="dropcap">A</span><span class="smcap">s</span> a place for the general purposes of residence&mdash;eating
+and sleeping, work and play&mdash;the
+English college is clearly quite as well organized
+and equipped as any of the societies, clubs,
+or fraternities of an American university. And
+whereas these are in their very nature small and
+exclusive, the college is ample in size and is consciously
+and effectively inclusive; the very fact of
+living in it insures a well-ordered life and abundant
+opportunity for making friends. Yet within
+this democratic college one finds all sorts of clubs
+and societies, except those whose main purpose
+is residential, and these are obviously not necessary.</p>
+
+<p>By far the larger proportion of the clubs are
+formed to promote the recognized undergraduate
+activities. No college is without athletic and debating
+clubs, and there are musical and literary
+clubs almost everywhere. Membership in all of
+them is little more than a formal expression of the
+fact that a man desires to row, play cricket or
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_53" id="Page_53">53</a></span>
+football, to debate, read Shakespeare, or play the
+fiddle. Yet they are all conducted with a degree
+of social amenity that to an American is as surprising
+as it is delightful.</p>
+
+<p>The only distinctively social feature of the athletic
+clubs is the wine, which is given to celebrate
+the close of a successful season. A boating wine
+I remember was held in a severe and sombre old
+hall, built before Columbus sailed the ocean blue.
+It was presided over by a knot of the dons, ancient
+oarsmen, whose hearts were still in the sport.
+They sat on the dais, like the family of a baron
+of the Middle Ages, while the undergraduates sat
+about the tables like faithful retainers. All the
+sportsmen of the college were invited, and everybody
+made as much noise as he could, especially
+one of the boating men, who went to the piano and
+banged out a song of triumph he had written,
+while we all tumbled into the chorus. One of the
+fellows&mdash;I have always taken it as a compliment
+to my presence&mdash;improvised a cheer after the
+manner not unknown in America, which was given
+with much friendly laughter. "Quite jolly, isn't
+it!" he remarked, with the pride of authorship,
+"and almost as striking as your cry of 'Quack,
+quack, quack!'" He had heard the Yale men give
+their adaptation of the frog chorus at the athletic
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_54" id="Page_54">54</a></span>
+games between Oxford and Yale. About midnight
+the college butler passed a loving cup of
+mulled wine of a spicy smoothness to fill your
+veins with liquid joy. The recipe, I was told,
+had been handed down by the butlers of the college
+since the fourteenth century, being older than
+the hall in which we were drinking. I have no
+doubt it was the cordial Chaucer calls Ypocras,
+which seems to have brought joy to his warm old
+heart. After the loving cup had gone about, the
+fellows cleared away the tables and danced a stag.
+At this stage of the game the dons discreetly
+faded away, and the wine resolved itself into a
+good-natured rag in the quad that was ended only
+by daylight and the dean. I have seen many
+feasts to celebrate athletic victory and the breaking
+of training, but none as homelike and pleasant
+all through as the wine of an Oxford college.</p>
+
+<p>The debating clubs have of necessity a distinct
+social element, for where there is much talk, food
+and drink will always be found; and with the
+social element there is apt to be some little exclusiveness.
+In Balliol there are three debating clubs,
+and they are of course in some sense rivals. Like
+the fraternities in an American college, they look
+over the freshmen each year pretty closely; and
+the freshmen in turn weigh the clubs. One freshman
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_55" id="Page_55">55</a></span>
+gave his verdict as follows: "The fellows in
+A are dull, and bathe; the fellows in B are clever,
+and sometimes bathe; the fellows in C are supposed
+to be clever." The saying is not altogether
+a pleasant one, but will serve to indicate the range
+of selection of members. In spite of social distinctions,
+few fellows need be excluded who care to
+debate or are clubable in spirit. As a system, the
+clubs are inclusive rather than exclusive.</p>
+
+<p>Each club convenes at regular intervals, usually
+in the rooms of such members as volunteer to be
+hosts. The hour of meeting is directly after dinner,
+and while the men gather and settle down to
+the business of the evening, coffee, port, and tobacco
+are provided out of the club treasury. The
+debates are supposed to be carried on according to
+the strictest parliamentary law, and the man who
+transgresses is subject to a sharp rebuff. On one
+occasion, when the question of paying members of
+Parliament was up, one speaker gravely argued
+that the United States Senate was filled with politicians
+who were attracted by the salary. Though
+I had already spoken, I got up to protest. The
+chairman sat me down with the greatest severity&mdash;amid
+a broad and general smile. I had neglected,
+I suppose, the parliamentary remark that
+I arose to a point of fact. A member's redress in
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_56" id="Page_56">56</a></span>
+such instances is to rag the president at the time
+when, according to custom, interpellations are in
+order; and as a rule he avails himself of this
+opportunity without mercy. On one occasion, a
+fellow got up in the strictest parliamentary manner
+and asked the president&mdash;a famous shot on
+the moors&mdash;whether it was true, as reported, that
+on the occasion when he lately fell over a fence
+three wrens and a chipping sparrow fell out of his
+game-bag. Such ragging as the chair administers
+and receives may not aid greatly in rational debate,
+but it certainly has its value as a preparation
+for the shifts and formalities of parliamentary life.
+It is the first duty of a chairman, even the president
+of the Oxford Union, to meet his ragging
+with cheerfulness and a ready reply, and the first
+duty of all debaters is to be interesting as well as
+convincing. In American college debating there
+is little of such humor and none of such levity.
+The speakers are drafted to sustain or to oppose a
+position, often without much reference to their convictions,
+and are supposed to do so to the uttermost.
+The training is no doubt a good one, for life
+is largely partisan; but a man's success in the
+world depends almost as much on his tact and good
+sense as on his strenuosity.</p>
+
+<p>The Englishman's advantage in address is sometimes
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_57" id="Page_57">57</a></span>
+offset by deficiencies of information. In a
+debate on Home Rule, one argument ran somewhat
+as follows: It is asserted that the Irish are irresponsible
+and lacking in the sense of administrative
+justice. To refute this statement, I have only to
+point to America, to the great metropolis of New
+York. There, as is well known, politics are exclusively
+in the hands of Irish citizens, who, denied the
+right of self-government&mdash;as the American colonies
+were denied similar freedom, I need scarcely
+point out with what disastrous results to the empire&mdash;the
+Irish immigrants in America, I say, are
+evincing their true genius for statesmanship in their
+splendid organization known as Tammany Hall.</p>
+
+<p>In the better clubs, the debates are often well
+prepared and cogent. I remember with particular
+gratitude a discussion as to whether the English
+love of comfort was not an evidence of softening
+morals. The discussion was opened with a paper
+by a young Scotchman of family and fortune.
+More than any other man I met he had realized
+the sweetness and pleasantness of Oxford, and all
+the delights of the senses and of the mind that surround
+the fellows there; and the result of it was,
+as it has so often been with such men, a craving
+for the extreme opposite of all he had known, for
+moral earnestness and austerity. What right, he
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_58" id="Page_58">58</a></span>
+questioned, had one to buy a book which, with ever
+so little more effort, he might read in the Bodleian,
+while all the poor of England are uneducated?
+And was it manly or in any way proper to spend
+so much time and interest on things that are merely
+agreeable? The sense of the meeting seemed to be
+that comfort in daily life is an evil only when it
+becomes an end in itself, a self-indulgence; and that
+a certain amount of it is necessary to fortify one for
+the most strenuous and earnest work in the world.
+I think that debate made us realize, as we never
+could have realized without it, to what serious end
+England makes the ways of her young men so
+pleasant; yet the more deeply I lived into the life
+of the university, the more deeply I questioned, as
+the young Scotchman did, whether the line between
+the amenities and the austerities was not somewhat
+laxly drawn.</p>
+
+<p>The only purely social club, and therefore the
+only really exclusive one, is the wine club. In Balliol
+there is a college rule against wine clubs, which
+seems to be due partly to a feeling against social
+exclusiveness, and partly perhaps to a distrust of
+purely convivial gatherings. The purpose of a
+wine club was served quite as well, however, by
+an organization that was ostensibly for debating.
+The notices of meetings were usually a parody of
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_59" id="Page_59">59</a></span>
+the notices of the meetings of genuine debating
+clubs, and the chief business of the secretary was
+to concoct them in pleasing variety. For instance,
+it would be <i>Resolved</i>, that this House looks with
+disfavor upon the gradual introduction of a continental
+sabbath into England; or <i>Resolved</i>, that
+this House looks with marked disfavor upon the
+assumption that total abstinence is a form of intemperance.
+On the evening when the House was
+defending total abstinence, our host's furniture
+and tea-things suffered some damage, and as I was
+in training, I found it advisable to leave early. As
+I slipped out, the president of the club, a young
+nobleman, who was himself at the time in training
+for the 'varsity trial eights, called me back and
+said with marked sobriety that he had just thought
+of something. "You are in for the mile run, aren't
+you? And in America you have always run the
+half. Well, then, if you find the distance too long
+for you, just don't mind at all about the first part
+of the race, but when you get to the last part, run
+as you run a half mile. Do it in two minutes, and
+you can't help beating 'em." He bade me good-night
+with a grave and authoritative shake of the hand.
+If he recalled his happy thought next morning, he
+was unable to avail himself of it, for I grieve to
+say that in the 'varsity trial race, which came only
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_60" id="Page_60">60</a></span>
+a few days later, he missed his blue by going badly
+to pieces on the finish.</p>
+
+<p>The meeting at which this occurred was exceptional.
+For the most part the fellows were moderate
+enough, and at times I suspected the wine
+club of being dull. Certainly, we had no such fun
+as at the more general jubilations&mdash;a rag in the
+quad or a boating wine. I doubt if any one would
+have cared so very much to belong to the club if
+it had not afforded the only badge of social distinction
+in college, and if this had not happened
+to be an unusually pretty hatband. However successful
+a wine club may be, moreover, it is of far
+less consequence than similar clubs in America.
+In the first place, since there are one or more of
+them in each of the twenty colleges, the number
+of men who belong to them is far greater relatively,
+which of course means far less exclusion. In the
+second place, and this is more important, the fellows
+who do not belong are still able to enjoy the
+life which is common to all members of the college.
+In general, the social walls of Oxford are like the
+material ones. Far from being the means of undue
+exclusion and of the suppression of public feeling,
+they are the live tissues in which the vital functions
+of the place are performed.</p>
+
+<p>Until well along in the nineteenth century, this
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_61" id="Page_61">61</a></span>
+life in the college was about the only life; but of
+late years the university has begun to feel its unity
+more strongly, and in social and intellectual life, as
+in athletics, it has become for the first time since
+the Middle Ages an organic whole.
+</p>
+
+<p class="center p6">VIII</p>
+
+<p class="center">SOCIAL LIFE IN THE UNIVERSITY<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_62" id="Page_62">62</a></span></p>
+
+<p class="p2"><span class="dropcap">T</span><span class="smcap">he</span> first formal organization of the life of
+the university was, as its name records, the
+Oxford Union, an institution of peculiar interest
+to Americans because our universities, though
+starting from a point diametrically opposite, have
+arrived at a state of social disorganization no less
+pronounced than that which the Union was intended
+to remedy. Harvard, which has progressed
+farthest along the path of social expansion and disintegration,
+has already made a conscious effort to
+imitate the Union. The adamantine spirit of Yale
+is shaken by the problems of the Sophomore societies;
+and it will not be many decades before other
+universities will be in a similar predicament. It
+will not be amiss, therefore, to consider what the
+Oxford Union has been and is. If Americans
+have not clearly understood it even when attempting
+to imitate it, one should at least remember that
+it would not be easy for an Oxford man to explain
+it thoroughly.</p>
+
+<p>The Union was founded in 1823, and was primarily
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_63" id="Page_63">63</a></span>
+for debating. In fact, it was the only university
+debating society. Its members were carefully
+selected for their ability in discoursing on
+the questions of the day. In its debates Gladstone,
+Lord Rosebery, the Marquis of Salisbury, and
+countless other English statesmen of recent times
+got their first parliamentary training. Its present
+fame in England is largely based upon this fact;
+but its character has been metamorphosed. Early
+in its history it developed social features; and
+though it was still exclusive in membership, little
+by little men of all kinds were taken in. At this
+stage of its development, the Union was not unlike
+those vast political clubs in London in which any
+and all principles are subordinated to the kitchen
+and the wine cellar. The debates, though still of
+first-rate quality, became more and more an incident;
+the club was chiefly remarkable as the epitome
+of all the best elements of Oxford life. The
+library was filled with men reading or working at
+special hobbies; the reading and smoking rooms
+were crowded; the lawn was daily thronged with
+undergraduates gossiping over a cup of tea; the
+telegram board, the shrine of embryo politicians
+watching for the results from a general election,
+was apt to be profaned by sporting men scanning
+it for the winners of the Derby or the Ascot. In
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_64" id="Page_64">64</a></span>
+a word, the Union held the elect of Oxford, intellectual,
+social, and sporting. This is the Union
+remembered by the older graduates, and except for
+a single feature, namely, that it was still exclusive,
+this is the Union that has inspired the projectors
+of the Harvard Union.</p>
+
+<p>The Oxford man of the later day knows all too
+well that this Union is no more. Some years ago,
+responding to a democratic impulse that has been
+very strong of late at Oxford, the Union threw
+down all barriers; virtually any man nowadays
+may join it, and its members number well beyond
+a thousand. The result is not a social millennium.
+The very feature of inclusiveness that is to be
+most prominent in the Union at Harvard destroyed
+the character of the Oxford Union as a representative
+body. To the casual observer it still looks
+much as it did a dozen years ago; but its glory
+has departed. In any real sense of the word it is
+a Union no more. The men who used to give it
+character are to be found in smaller clubs, very
+much like the clubs of an American university.</p>
+
+<p>The small university debating clubs are the Russell,
+the Palmerston, the Canning, and the Chatham,
+each of which stands for some special stripe
+of political thought, and each of which has a
+special color which&mdash;sure sign of the pride of exclusiveness&mdash;it
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_65" id="Page_65">65</a></span>
+wears in hatbands. The clubs
+meet periodically&mdash;often weekly&mdash;in the rooms
+of members. Sometimes a paper is read which is
+followed by an informal discussion; but the usual
+exercise is a formal debate. Time was when the
+best debates came off at the Union, and writers of
+leading articles in London papers even now look
+to it as a political weather-vane. The debates
+there are still earnest and sometimes brilliant, and
+to have presided over them is a distinction of
+value in after life; but as far as I could gather,
+their prestige is falling before the smaller debating
+clubs. The main interest at the Union appeared
+to centre in the interpellation of the president,
+which is carried on much as in the House of Commons,
+though with this difference, that, following
+the immemorial custom, it is turned into ragging.
+When this is over, the major part of the audience
+clears out to the smoking and reading rooms. In
+the smaller clubs the exercises are not only serious,
+but&mdash;in spite of the preliminary ragging,
+which no function at Oxford may flourish without&mdash;they
+are taken seriously. The clubs really
+include the best forensic ability of Oxford. At
+the end of each year they give dinners, at which
+new and old members gather, while some prominent
+politician from Westminster holds forth on
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_66" id="Page_66">66</a></span>
+the question of the hour. In a word, these clubs,
+collectively, are what the Union once was&mdash;the
+training school of British statesmen.</p>
+
+<p>The university social clubs are of a newness that
+shocks even an American; but it would not be
+quite just to account for the fact by regarding
+them as mere offshoots, like the debating clubs, of
+a parent Union. Until the nineteenth century,
+there really was no university at Oxford, at least in
+modern times. The colleges were quite independent
+of one another socially and in athletics, and
+each of them provided all the necessary instruction
+for its members. The social clubs which now
+admit members from the university at large began
+life as wine clubs of separate colleges, and even
+to-day the influence of the parent college is apt
+to predominate. The noteworthy fact is that in
+proportion as the social prestige of the Union has
+declined, these college wine clubs, like the small
+debating clubs, have gained character and prestige.</p>
+
+<p>The oldest of these is the Bullingdon, which is
+not quite as old, I gathered, as the Institute of 1770
+at Harvard, and, considered as a university organization,
+it is of course much younger. It was originally
+the Christ Church wine club, and to-day
+it is dominated by the sporting element of Christ
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_67" id="Page_67">67</a></span>
+Church, which is the most aristocratic of Oxford
+colleges. In former years, it is said, the club had
+kennels at Bullingdon, and held periodic hunts
+there; and it is still largely composed of hunting
+men. To-day it justifies its name mainly by having
+an annual dinner beneath the heavy rafters of
+a mediæval barn at Bullingdon. On these, as on
+other state occasions, the members wear a distinctive
+costume&mdash;no doubt a tradition from the time
+when men generally wore colors&mdash;which consists
+of a blue evening coat with white facings and brass
+buttons, a canary waistcoat, and a blue tie. This
+uniform is no doubt found in more aristocratic
+wardrobes than any other Oxford trophy. The
+influence of the Bullingdon is indirectly to discourage
+athletics, which it regards as unaristocratic
+and incompatible with conviviality; so that Christ
+Church, though the largest of Oxford colleges and
+one of the wealthiest, is of secondary importance
+in sports. For this reason the Bullingdon has suffered
+a partial eclipse, for the middle-class spirit
+which is invading Oxford has given athletic sports
+the precedence over hunting, while expensive living
+and mere social exclusiveness are less the vogue.
+By a curious analogy, one of the oldest and most
+exclusive of the clubs at Harvard is similarly out
+of sympathy with the athletic spirit.
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_68" id="Page_68">68</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Another old and prominent college wine club
+that has come to elect members from without is the
+Ph&oelig;nix of Brazenose, the uniform of which is perhaps
+more beautiful than the Bullingdon uniform,
+consisting of a peculiar dark wine-colored coat,
+brass buttons, and a light buff waistcoat. In general,
+the college wine clubs are more or less taking
+on a university character. The Annandale Club
+of Balliol, for instance, has frequent guests from
+outside, and often elects them to membership out
+of compliment. At the formal wines the members
+have the privilege of inviting outside guests.</p>
+
+<p>The most popular and representative Oxford
+club is Vincent's, which owes its prominence to the
+fact that it expresses the enthusiasm of modern
+Oxford for athletics. It was founded only a
+third of a century ago, but it must be remembered
+that inter-varsity boat races did not become usual
+until 1839, nor a fixture until 1856; that the first
+inter-varsity athletic meeting came in 1864, and the
+first inter-varsity football game as late as 1873.
+Vincent's was originally composed largely of men
+from University College, which was at that time a
+leader in sports; but later it elected many men
+from Brazenose, then in the ascendant. When
+Brazenose became more prominent in athletics, it
+gained a controlling influence in Vincent's; and
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_69" id="Page_69">69</a></span>
+when it declined, as it lately did, the leadership
+passed on. The name Vincent's came from a
+printer's shop, above which the club had its rooms.
+Any second year man is eligible; in fact, until a
+few years ago, freshmen were often taken in. The
+limit of members is ninety, but as the club is
+always a dozen or so short of this, no good fellow
+is excluded for lack of a place. When a man is
+proposed, his name is written in a book, in which
+space is left for friends in the club to write their
+names in approval. After this, elections are in
+the hands of a committee. Like all Oxford clubs,
+Vincent's will always, I suppose, lean towards
+men of some special college or group of colleges;
+yet it is careful to elect all clubable blues, and,
+in point of fact, is representative of the university
+at large, as, for instance, the Hasty Pudding
+Club at Harvard, or the senior societies at Yale, to
+which, on the whole, it most nearly corresponds.</p>
+
+<p>The most democratic, as well as one of the most
+recent of the more purely social clubs, is the Gridiron.
+It is a dining rather than a social club, and
+one may invite to his board as many guests who
+are not members as he chooses. Any good fellow
+is eligible, though here, again, a man in one of the
+less known colleges might fail to get in from lack
+of acquaintances on the election committee.
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_70" id="Page_70">70</a></span></p>
+
+<p>The Union has long lost prestige before this development
+of small exclusive clubs. Politically,
+socially, and even in that most essential department,
+the kitchen, it holds a second place. If you
+ask men of the kind that used to give it its character
+why they never go there, they will tell you,
+in the most considerate phrase, how the pressure
+of other undergraduate affairs is so great that they
+have not yet found time; and this is quite true.
+They may add that next year they intend to make
+the time, for they believe that one should know all
+kinds of men at Oxford; and they are quite sincere.
+But next year they are more preoccupied
+than ever. If Oxford is united socially, it is not
+because of the Oxford Union.</p>
+
+<p>In addition to the clubs which are mainly social,
+there is the usual variety of special organizations.
+These, as a rule, are of recent growth. The Musical
+Union has frequent meetings for practice, and
+gives at least one concert a year. The Dramatic
+Society, the O.U.D.S., as it is popularly called,
+will be seen to be a very portentous organization.
+In America, college men give comic operas and
+burlesques, usually writing both the book and the
+music themselves; and when they do, there is apt
+to be a Donnybrook Fair for vulnerable heads in
+the faculty. So well is musical nonsense adapted to
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_71" id="Page_71">71</a></span>
+the calibre of the undergraduate mind that college
+plays sometimes find their way to the professional
+stage, and to no small general favor. At Oxford
+the Vice-Chancellor, who is a law to himself and to
+the university, has decreed that there shall be no fun
+and nonsense. If the absurdities of donnishness
+are all too fair a mark for the undergraduate wit,
+the Vice-Chancellor has found a very serviceable
+scapegoat. He permits the undergraduates to present
+the plays of Shakespeare. Surely Shakespeare
+can stand the racket. The aim of the O.U.D.S.
+seems to be to get as many blues as possible into
+the cast of a Shakespearean production, with the
+idea, perhaps, of giving Oxford its full money's
+worth. I remember well the sensation made by the
+most famous of all university athletes,&mdash;a "quadruple
+blue," who played on four university teams,
+was captain of three of them, and held one world's
+record. The play was "The Merchant of Venice,"
+and the athlete in question was the swarthy Prince
+of Morocco. Upon opening the golden casket his
+powers of elocution rose to unexpected heights.
+Fellows went again and again to hear him cry,
+"O hell! what have we here?" In one way, however,
+the performances of the O.U.D.S. are
+really noteworthy. Not even the crudest acting
+can entirely disguise the influences of birth and
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_72" id="Page_72">72</a></span>
+environment; and few Shakespearean actors have
+as fine a natural carriage as those companies of
+trained athletes. For the first time, perhaps, on
+any stage, the ancient Roman honor more or less
+appeared in Antonio, and there were really two
+gentlemen in Verona. For this reason&mdash;or, what
+is more likely, merely because the plays are given
+by Oxford men&mdash;the leading dramatic critics of
+London run up every year for the O.U.D.S.
+performance, and talk learnedly about it in their
+dignified periodicals. Both the musical and the
+dramatic societies have an increasing social element,
+and the dramatic society has a house of its
+own.</p>
+
+<p>Of at least one association I happened upon, I
+know of no American parallel. One Sunday afternoon,
+a lot of fellows who had been lunching each
+other in academic peace were routed from college
+by a Salvation Army gathering that was sending
+up the discordant notes of puritanical piety just
+outside the walls. In the street near by we came
+upon a quiet party of undergraduates in cap and
+gown. They were standing in a circle, at the foot
+of the Martyr's Memorial, and were alternately
+singing hymns and exhorting the townspeople who
+gathered about. Their faces were earnest and
+simple, their attitude erect. If they were conscious
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_73" id="Page_73">73</a></span>
+of doing an unusual thing, they did not show it. I
+don't remember that they moved any of us to repent
+the pleasantness of our ways, but I know that
+they filled the most careless of us with a very definite
+admiration. One of the fellows said that he
+thought them mighty plucky, and that they had
+the stuff at least out of which sportsmen are made.
+The phrase is peculiarly British, but in the undergraduate
+vernacular there is no higher epithet of
+praise. In America there are slumming societies
+and total abstinence leagues; but I never knew any
+body of men who had the courage to stand up in
+the highway and preach their gospel to passers-by.
+</p>
+
+<p class="center p6">IX</p>
+
+<p class="center">THE COLLEGE AND THE UNIVERSITY<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_74" id="Page_74">74</a></span></p>
+
+<p class="p2"><span class="dropcap">T</span><span class="smcap">he</span> distinctive feature of the social organization
+of Oxford life is said to be the colleges.
+Fifty years ago the remark held good, but to-day
+it requires an extension. The distinctive feature
+is the duality of the social organization: a man
+who enters fully into undergraduate affairs takes
+part both in the life of the college and in the life
+of the university. The life of the college, in so
+far as it is wholesome, is open to all newcomers;
+it is so organized as to exert powerfully upon
+them the force of its best influences and traditions,
+and is thus in the highest degree inclusive.
+The life of the university, in so far as it is vigorous,
+is in the main open only to those who bring
+to it special gifts and abilities, and is therefore
+necessarily exclusive. In college, one freely enjoys
+all that is fundamental in the life of a young
+man&mdash;a pleasant place to sleep in and to dine
+in, pleasant fellows with whom to work and to
+play. In the university, one finds scope for his
+special capacities in conviviality or in things of
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_75" id="Page_75">75</a></span>
+the mind. More than any other institution, the
+English university thus mirrors the conditions of
+social life in the world at large, in which one is
+primarily a member of his family, and takes part
+in the life of the outside community in proportion
+as his abilities lead him.</p>
+
+<p>The happiest thing about all this is that it affords
+the freest possible interplay of social forces.
+As soon as a newcomer gains distinction, as he
+does at once if he has the capacity, he is noticed
+by the leading men of the college, and is thus in
+a way to be taken into the life of the university.
+From the college breakfast it is only a step to
+the Gridiron, from the college eight to Vincent's,
+and from the debating society to the Chatham
+or the Canning. These, like all undergraduate
+clubs, are in yearly need of new members, and
+the older men in college are only too glad to urge
+the just claims of the younger for good-fellowship
+sake, and for the general credit of their institution.</p>
+
+<p>Even when a fellow has received all the university
+has to offer, he is still amenable to the duality
+of Oxford life. In American institutions, in proportion
+as a man is happily clubbed, he is by the
+very nature of the social organization withdrawn
+from his college mates; but at Oxford he still
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_76" id="Page_76">76</a></span>
+dines in Hall, holds forth at the college debating
+society, plays on the college teams, and, until his
+final year, he lives within the college walls. First,
+last, and always his general life is bound up with
+that of the college.</p>
+
+<p>The prominent men thus become a medium by
+which every undergraduate is brought in touch
+with the life of the university. The news of the
+athletic world is reported at Vincent's over afternoon
+tea; and at dinner time the men who have
+discussed it there relate it to their mates in the
+halls of a dozen colleges. A celebrated debater
+brings the news of the Union or of the smaller
+clubs; and whatever a man's affiliations in the
+university, he can scarcely help bringing the report
+of them back with him. In an incredibly
+short time all undergraduate news, and the judgments
+upon it of those best qualified to judge,
+ramify the college; and men who seldom stir beyond
+its walls are brought closely in touch with
+the innermost spirit of the university life. Here,
+again, those forbidding walls make possible a freedom
+of social interplay which is unknown in
+America. The real union of Oxford, social, athletic,
+and intellectual, is quite apart from the so-called
+Oxford Union; it results from the nice
+adjustment between the general residential life of
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_77" id="Page_77">77</a></span>
+the colleges and the specialized activities of the
+university.</p>
+
+<p>The immediate effect of this union is the humble
+one of making the present life of the undergraduate
+convenient and enjoyable; but its ultimate
+effect is a matter of no little importance.
+Every undergraduate, in proportion to his susceptibilities
+and capacities, comes under the influence
+of the social and intellectual traditions of Oxford,
+which are the traditions of centuries of the best
+English life. In Canada and Australia, South
+Africa and India, you will find the old Oxonian
+wearing the hatband, perhaps faded and weather-stained,
+that at Oxford denoted the thing he was
+most proud to stand for; and wherever you find
+him, you will find also the manners and standards
+of the university, which are quite as definite a part
+of him, though perhaps less conspicuous. Without
+a large body of men animated by such traditions,
+it is no exaggeration to say that it would
+not have been possible to build up the British
+empire. If the people of the United States are
+to bear creditably the responsibilities to civilization
+that have lately fallen to them, or have been
+assumed, there is urgent need for institutions that
+shall similarly impose upon our young men the
+best traditions and influences of American life.</p>
+
+<p class="center p6 b1">II</p>
+
+<p class="center p2 b1">OXFORD OUT OF DOORS
+</p>
+
+<p class="center p6">I</p>
+
+<p class="center">SLACKING ON THE ISIS AND THE CHERWELL<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_81" id="Page_81">81</a></span></p>
+
+<p class="p2"><span class="dropcap">T</span><span class="smcap">he</span> dual development of college and university,
+with all its organic coördinations, exists
+also in the sports of Oxford. The root and trunk
+of the athletic spirit lies in the colleges, though its
+highest development is found in university teams.
+To an American, this athletic life of the college
+will be found of especial interest, for it is the basis
+of the peculiar wholesomeness and moderation of
+Oxford sports. If the English take their pleasures
+sadly, as they have been charged with doing ever
+since Froissart hit upon the happy phrase, they
+are not so black a pot but that they are able to
+call us blacker; in the light of international contests,
+they have marveled at the intensity with
+which our sportsmen pursue the main chance. The
+difference here has a far deeper interest than the
+critic of boating or track athletics often realizes.
+Like the songs of a nation, its sports have a definite
+relation to its welfare: one is tempted to say,
+let me rule the games of my countrymen and who
+will may frame their laws. At least, I hope to
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_82" id="Page_82">82</a></span>
+be pardoned if I speak with some particularity of
+the out-of-door life, and neglect the lofty theme
+of inter-varsity contests for the humbler pursuits
+of the common or garden undergraduate.</p>
+
+<p>The origin of the boating spirit is no doubt
+what the Oxonian calls slacking, for one has to
+learn to paddle in a boat before he can row to
+advantage; and in point of fact the bumping races
+are supposed to have originated among parties of
+slackers returning at evening from up the river.
+If I were to try to define what a slacker is, I suppose
+you could answer that all Oxford men are
+slackers; but there are depths beneath depths of
+<i>far niente</i>. The true slacker avoids the worry and
+excitement of breakfast parties and three-day
+cricket matches, and conserves his energies by
+floating and smoking for hours at a time in his
+favorite craft on the Isis and the Cherwell&mdash;or
+"Char," as the university insists on calling it. He
+is a day-dreamer of day-dreamers; and despised as
+he is by the more strenuous Oxford men, who yet
+stand in fear of the fascination of his vices, he is
+as restful a figure to an American as a negro basking
+on a cotton-wharf, and as appealing as a beggar
+steeped in Italian sunlight. Merely to think
+of his uninterrupted calm and his insatiable appetite
+for doing nothing is a rest to occidental
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_83" id="Page_83">83</a></span>
+nerves; and though one may never be a roustabout
+and loaf on a cotton-wharf, one may at any
+time go to Oxford and play through a summer's
+day at slacking.</p>
+
+<p>Before you come out, you must make the acquaintance
+of the O.U.H.S.&mdash;that is, the University
+Humane Society. In the winter, when there
+is skating, the Humane Society man stands by the
+danger spot with a life-buoy and a rope; and in
+the summer, when the streams swarm with pleasure-craft,
+he wanders everywhere, pulling slackers
+out of the Isis and the Char. In view of the
+fact that, metaphorically speaking at least, you
+can shake hands with your neighbors across either
+of these streams, the Humane Society man is not
+without his humors.</p>
+
+<p>You may get yourself a tub or a working-boat
+or a wherry, a rob-roy or a dinghy, for every craft
+that floats is known on the Thames; but the favorite
+craft are the Canadian canoe and the punt.
+The canoe you will be familiar with, but your
+ideas of a punt are probably derived from a farm-built
+craft you have poled about American duck-marshes&mdash;which
+bears about the same relationship
+to this slender, half-decked cedar beauty that
+a canal-boat bears to a racing-shell.</p>
+
+<p>During your first perilous lessons in punting,
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_84" id="Page_84">84</a></span>
+you will probably be in apprehension of ducking
+your mentor, who is lounging among the cushions
+in the bow. But you cannot upset the punt any
+more than you can discompose the Englishman;
+the punt simply upsets you without seeming to be
+aware of it. And when you crawl dripping up the
+bank, consoled only by the fact that the Humane
+Society man was not at hand with his boat-hook
+to pull you out by the seat of the trousers, your
+mentor will gravely explain how you made your
+mistake. Instead of bracing your feet firmly on
+the bottom and pushing with the pole, you were
+leaning on the pole and pushing with your feet.
+When the pole stuck in the clay bottom, of course
+it pulled you out of the boat.</p>
+
+<p>Steering is a matter of long practice. When
+you want to throw the bow to the left, you have
+only to pry the stern over to the right as you are
+pulling the pole out of the water. To throw the
+bow to the right, ground the pole a foot or so wide
+of the boat, and then lean over and pull the boat
+up to it. That is not so easy, but you will learn
+the wrist motion in time. When all this comes
+like second nature, you will feel that you have
+become a part of the punt, or rather that the punt
+has taken life and become a part of you.</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter"><a name="illo4" id="illo4"></a>
+<img src="images/i_084.jpg" width="383" height="650" alt="A RACING PUNT AND PUNTER" />
+<p class="caption">A RACING PUNT AND PUNTER</p>
+</div>
+
+<p>A particular beauty of punting is that, more
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_85" id="Page_85">85</a></span>
+than any other sport, it brings you into personal
+contact, so to speak, with the landscape. In a few
+days you will know every inch of the bottom of
+the Char, some of it perhaps by more intimate
+experience than you desire. Over there, on the
+outer curve of the bend, the longest pole will not
+touch bottom. Fight shy of that place. Just
+beyond here, in the narrows, the water is so shallow
+that you can get the whole length of your
+body into every sweep. As for the shrubbery on
+the bank, you will soon learn these hawthorns,
+if only to avoid barging into them. And the
+Magdalen chestnut, which spreads its shade so
+beautifully above the water just beyond, becomes
+quite familiar when its low-reaching branches have
+once caught the top of your pole and torn it from
+your hands.</p>
+
+<p>The slackers you see tied up to the bank on
+both sides of the Char are always here after
+luncheon. An hour later their craft will be as
+thick as money-bugs on the water, and the joys of
+the slackers will be at height. You won't, as a
+rule, detect happiness in their faces, but it is always
+obvious in the name of the craft. One man
+calls his canoe "Vix Satis," which is the mark the
+university examining board uses to signify that a
+man's examination paper is a failure. Another has
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_86" id="Page_86">86</a></span>
+"P.T.O." on his bows&mdash;the "Please Turn Over"
+which an Englishman places at the bottom of a
+card where we say "Over." Still another calls his
+canoe the "Non-conformist Conscience"&mdash;which,
+as you are expected to remark, is very easily upset.
+All this makes the slacker even happier than if he
+were so un-English as to smile his pleasure, for
+he has a joke ready-made on his bow, where there
+is no risk of any one's not seeing it.</p>
+
+<p>These pollard willows that line the bank are not
+expected to delight your eye at first sight, but as
+you see them day after day, they grow on you like
+the beauty of the bull-terrier pup that looks at you
+over the gunwale of the boat tied beneath them.
+They have been topped to make their roots strike
+deeper and wider into the soil, so that when the
+freshets come in the spring the banks will stand
+firm. The idea came some centuries ago from
+Holland, but has been so thoroughly Englished
+that the university, and, indeed, all England,
+would scarcely be itself without its pollard willows.
+And though the trees are not in themselves graceful,
+they make a large part of the beauty of the
+river scenery. The sun is never so golden as up
+there among their quivering leaves, and no shadow
+is so deep as that in the water at their feet.</p>
+
+<p>The bar of foam ahead of us is the overflow
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_87" id="Page_87">87</a></span>
+from the lasher&mdash;that is to say, from the still
+water above the weir. The word "lasher" is obsolete
+almost everywhere else in England, and even
+to the Oxford mind it describes the lashing overflow
+rather than the <i>lache</i> or <i>slack</i> water above.
+When we "shoot the lasher," as the phrase goes,
+you will get a hint as to why the obsolete term
+still clings to this weir. Those fellows beyond
+who have tied up three deep to the bank are
+waiting to see us get ducked; but it is just as
+easy to shoot the lasher as to upset in it; and
+with that swarm of slackers watching, it makes a
+difference which you do. We have only to get up
+a fair pace and run into it on a diagonal. The
+lashing torrent will catch our bows, but we shall
+be half over before it sweeps them quite around;
+and then it will catch the stern in turn, and whirl
+the bow back into the proper direction. A sudden
+lurching of the bow, the roaring of a torrent
+beneath, a dash of spray&mdash;and we are in still
+water again.</p>
+
+<p>In order to reach the inn at Marston by four we
+must pole on. If we were true slackers, to be sure,
+we should have brought a spirit lamp and a basket
+of tea, and tied up in the first convenient nook on
+the bank; but these are heights of slacking to
+which the novice cannot aspire. Just beyond here
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_88" id="Page_88">88</a></span>
+we shall have to give the Thames Conservancy man
+threepence to roll the punt around a weir. If
+there were ladies with us, we should have to let
+them walk a quarter of a mile on shore, for just
+above is Parson's Pleasure, the university bathing-hole;
+and these men, who would not let the
+Yale and the Cornell athletes appear in sleeveless
+"zephyrs," plunge into a frequented waterway
+without any zephyrs at all.</p>
+
+<p>Above Parson's Pleasure we emerge from Mesopotamia&mdash;as
+the pretty river bottom is called in
+which the Char divides into several channels&mdash;and
+come in sight of the 'varsity cricket-ground.
+There is a game on against a picked eleven from
+the Marylebone Club; and every few minutes, if
+we waited, we might see the statuesque figures in
+white flannel suddenly dash after a ball or trot
+back and forth between the wickets. Few slackers
+have had energy to get beyond this point; and as
+we pole among the meadows, the cuckoo's homely
+voice emphasizes the solitude, singing the same
+two notes it sang to Shakespeare&mdash;and to Chaucer
+before him, for the matter of that.</p>
+
+<p>At Marston, having ordered tea of the red-cheeked
+housewife, it is well to ask the innkeeper
+for credit. He is a Parisian, whose sociological
+principles, it is said, were the cause of his venturing
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_89" id="Page_89">89</a></span>
+across the Channel&mdash;in Paris, a man will even
+go as far as that for his opinions; and while his
+cheery English spouse, attended by troops of his
+red-cheeked boys, brings out the thin buttered
+bread, he will revile you. What business have you
+to ask an honest yeoman to lend you money? If
+he were to go down to Oxford and ask the first
+gentleman he met to lend him half a crown to feed
+his starving family, should he get it? Should he?
+And what right have you to come to his house&mdash;his
+<i>home</i>!&mdash;and demand food at his board? You
+are a gentleman; but what is a gentleman? A
+gentleman is the dregs of the idleness of centuries!
+Then he will declaim about his plans for the renovation
+of the world. All this time his well-fed
+wife has been pouring out the tea and slicing the
+Genoa cake; and now, with a smile of reassurance,
+she takes our names and college. But the innkeeper's
+eloquence does not flag, and it will not
+until you tell him with decision that you have had
+enough. This you are loath to do, for he has furnished
+you with a new ideal of happiness. The
+cotton-wharf negro sometimes wants leisure, the
+repose of the cricketer is at times rudely broken in
+upon, and even the slacker is liable to his ducking;
+but to stand up boldly against the evils of the
+world and to picture the new Utopia while your
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_90" id="Page_90">90</a></span>
+wife averts all practical consequences, this is <i>otium
+cum dignitate</i>.</p>
+
+<p>This journey up the Char, though all-popular
+with the undergraduate, is not the only one worth
+taking. We might have gone down the Isis to the
+Iffley Mill and the sleepy little Norman church
+near by. This would have taken us through the
+thick of the college crews training for the summer
+eights. But the rules of the river are so complicated
+that no man on earth who has not given
+them long hours of study can understand them;
+and if an eight ran into us, we should be fined a
+quid or two&mdash;one quid for a college eight, and
+two for the 'varsity. Below Iffley, indeed, there is
+as much clear punting as you could desire, and here
+you are in the full current of Thames pleasure-boats.
+The towing-path skirts the water, so that
+when you are tired of punting you can get out and
+tow your craft. The stretch of river here I hold
+memorable as the scene of the only bit of dalliance
+I ever witnessed in this most sentimental of environments.
+A young man and a young woman
+had tied the painter of their punt to the middle of
+a paddle, and shoulder by shoulder were loitering
+along the river-side. Twenty yards behind, three
+other men and a baffled chaperon were steering the
+punt clear of the bank, and boring one another.</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter"><a name="illo5" id="illo5"></a>
+<img src="images/i_110.jpg" width="650" height="399" alt="IFFLEY LOCK AND MILL" />
+<p class="caption">IFFLEY LOCK AND MILL</p>
+</div>
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_91" id="Page_91">91</a></span></p>
+
+<p>The best trip on the Isis is into the backwaters.
+These are a mesh of tiny streams that break free
+from the main current above Oxford and lose
+themselves in the broad bottom-lands. The islands
+they form were chosen in the Dark Ages as the
+sites of religious houses; for not only was the land
+fertile, but the network of deep, if tiny, streams
+afforded defense from the heathen, while the main
+channel of the Thames afforded communication
+with the Christian world. The ruins of these, or
+of subsequent monasteries, remain to-day brooding
+over a few Tudor cottages and hamlets, with a mill
+and a bakery and an inn or two to sustain life in the
+occasional undergraduate who lazes by in his canoe.</p>
+
+<p>The most interesting of these ruins is Wytham.
+The phrase is exact, for the entire hamlet was
+built from a venerable religious house shortly after
+the dissolution of the monasteries. You can imagine
+the size of Wytham. If you don't watch
+very closely as you paddle up the sedgy backwater,
+you will miss it entirely, and that would be a pity,
+for its rude masonry, thatched roofs, and rustic
+garden fronts seem instinct with the atmosphere
+of Tudor England. The very tea roses, nodding
+languidly over the garden wall, smell, or seem to
+smell, as subtly sweet as if they had been pressed
+for ages between the leaves of a mediæval romance.
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_92" id="Page_92">92</a></span></p>
+
+<p>I am not quite sure that they do, though, for
+these ancient hamlets have strange ways of pulling
+the wool&mdash;a true golden fleece, to be sure&mdash;over
+American eyes. Once at twilight I heard a knot
+of strolling country men and women crooning a
+tune which was so strangely familiar that I immediately
+set it down as a village version of one of
+the noble melodies of that golden age when English
+feeling found its natural vent in song. As it
+drew nearer, I suddenly recognized it. It was a far-away
+version of "Mammy's Little Alabama Coon."</p>
+
+<p>I have still faith, though, in a certain mediæval
+barmaid I chanced upon in the backwaters. The
+circumstances of our meeting were peculiar. As I
+drifted along one Sunday, perched on an after-thwart
+of the canoe, the current swept me toward
+a willow that leaned over the water, and I put up
+my hand to fend off. I chanced to be laughing to
+myself at the time at the thought of a fellow who,
+only the day before at the lasher, had tried to do
+the same thing. The lasher was forcing his punt
+against the willow on the opposite bank, whereupon,
+to my heart's delight, he lazily tried to fend
+it off with his arms. The punt refused to be
+fended off, and he stooped with an amusing effect
+of deliberation plump into the water. He was
+hauled out by the O.U.H.S. man hard by.
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_93" id="Page_93">93</a></span></p>
+
+<p>I was interrupted in these pleasant reminiscences
+by the roaring of waters about my ears, mingled
+with a boorish guffaw from one of the fellows
+behind me.... But I started to tell about the
+mediæval barmaid. Making my way to a bakehouse
+up the stream, I hung my coat and trousers
+before the fire on a long baker's pole, and put
+my shoes inside the oven on a dough tray. My
+companion of the horse-laugh hung my shirt on
+a blossoming almond-tree, and then left for the
+lunch hamper. He had scarcely gone when I
+heard the rustle of skirts at the door. "What
+do you want?" I cried. "I want my dinner,"
+was the friendly reply. It was the barmaid
+of a neighboring public house, in her Sunday
+frock.</p>
+
+<p>When she saw me she smiled, but maintained a
+dignity of port that&mdash;I insist upon it&mdash;was instinct
+with the simple and primitive modesty of the
+Middle Ages. It was the modesty of the people
+before whom Adam in the Chester mystery play
+was required by the stage directions to "stand
+nakyd and not be ashamyd." My barmaid advised
+me to take off my stockings and hang them up before
+the fire. The advice I admit came as a shock,
+but on reflection I saw that it was capital. For
+one happy moment I lived in the broad, wholesome
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_94" id="Page_94">94</a></span>
+atmosphere of the Middle Ages. It was like a
+breath from Chaucer's England.</p>
+
+<p>Then the baker rushed into the room, in a cutaway
+Sunday coat of the latest style. He had
+baked for an Oxford college so long that he had
+become infected with the squeamish leaven of the
+nineteenth century. He called the girl a huzzy,
+and, taking her by the shoulder, hustled her into
+the garden, and then passed her plum pudding
+out to her gingerly through a crack in the door.
+He covered me with apologies and a bath-robe;
+but I did not mind either, for as the barmaid ran
+back to the inn she was laughing what I still insist
+upon believing to have been the simple joyous
+laughter of the Middle Ages.</p>
+
+<p>But we must hurry to get back to college in
+time for dinner. And even at that we shall have
+to stop here at Magdalen bridge and give a street
+boy sixpence to take the punt the rest of the way.
+We land at the foot of the tower just as the late
+afternoon sun is gilding its exquisite pinnacles,
+and the chimes in its belfry are playing the prelude
+to the hour of seven. It is a melody worth
+all the Char and the Isis, with all their weirs
+and their willows. Other mediæval chimes fill
+you with a delicious sorrow for the past; but when
+they cease, and the great bell tolls out the hour,
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_95" id="Page_95">95</a></span>
+you think only of the death of time. It leaves
+you sadly beneath the tower, in the musty cellarage.
+But the melody that the Magdalen chimes
+utter is full of the fervid faith, the aspirations, of
+our fathers. It lifts you among the gilded pinnacles,
+or perhaps ever so little above them.
+</p>
+
+<p class="center p6">II</p>
+
+<p class="center">AS SEEN FROM AN OXFORD TUB<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_96" id="Page_96">96</a></span></p>
+
+<p class="p2"><span class="dropcap">T</span><span class="smcap">o</span> the true slacker, the college barges that
+line the Isis are an object of aversion, for
+into them sooner or later every fellow who loves
+the water finds his way, and then there is an end
+of slacking. Each of the barges is a grammar
+school of oarsmanship, where all available men are
+taught everything, from what thickness of leather
+to wear on the heels of their boating-shoes to the
+rhythm in rowing by which alone an eight can
+realize its full speed; and from the barges issues
+a navy of boats and boating-men more than ten
+times as large as that of an American university.
+When Mr. R. C. Lehmann arrived at Cambridge
+to coach the Harvard crew, he was lost in admiration
+of the Charles River and the Back Bay, and
+in amazement at the absence of boats on them. At
+either Yale or Harvard it would be easy to give
+space to both of the fleets that now swarm on the
+slender Isis and threadlike Cam. We have water
+enough&mdash;as a Congressman once remarked of our
+fighting navy&mdash;it is only the boats that are lacking.
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_97" id="Page_97">97</a></span>
+The lesson we have to learn of our English
+cousins is not so much a matter of reach and
+swing, outrigger and blades, as a generous and
+wholesome interest in boating for the sake of the
+boat and of the water; and it is less apparent in
+an Oxford 'varsity eight than in the humblest tub
+of the humblest college.</p>
+
+<p>The first suggestion that I should go out to be
+tubbed came from the gray-bearded dean of the
+college, who happened at the time to be taking me
+to the master for formal presentation. I told him
+that I had tried for my class crew, and that three
+days on the water had convinced the coach that I
+was useless. He fell a pace behind, looked me
+over, and said that I might at least try. As this
+was his only advice, I did not forget it; and when
+my tutor, before advising me as to my studies, also
+urged me to row, I gave the matter some serious
+thought.</p>
+
+<p>I found subsequently that every afternoon, between
+luncheon and tea, the college was virtually
+deserted for field, track, and river; and it dawned
+upon me that unless I joined the general exodus I
+should temporarily become a hermit. Still, my
+earlier unhappy experience in rowing was full in
+mind, and I set out for the barge humble in spirit,
+and prepared to be cursed roundly for three days,
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_98" id="Page_98">98</a></span>
+and "kicked out," or, as they say in Oxford,
+"given the hoof," on the fourth.</p>
+
+<p>Few memories could be so unhappy, however, as
+to resist the beauty of the banks of the Isis. At
+New Haven, the first impression an oarsman gets is
+said to be an odor so unwelcome that it is not to
+be endeared even by four years of the good-fellowship
+and companionship of a Yale crew. At Harvard,
+the Charles&mdash;"Our Charles," as Longfellow
+spoke of it in a poem to Lowell&mdash;too often presents
+aspects which it would be sacrilege to dwell on.
+What the "royal-towered Thame" and "Camus,
+reverend sire," may have been in the classic days
+of English poetry it is perhaps safest not to inquire;
+suffice it that to-day they are&mdash;and especially
+the Thames&mdash;all that the uninitiated imagine
+"our Charles." Nowhere does the sun stream
+more cheerfully through the moist gray English
+clouds; nowhere is the grass more green, the ivy
+more luxuriant, and the pollard willows and slender
+elms and poplars more dense in foliage. And
+every building, from the thatched farm-cottage in
+Christ Church meadow to the Norman church at
+Iffley, is, as it were, more native and more a part
+of creation than the grass and trees. The English
+oarsman, it is true, cannot be as conscious of
+all this as an American visitor. Yet the love of
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_99" id="Page_99">99</a></span>
+outdoors, which has been at work for centuries
+in beautifying the English landscape, is not the
+least part of the British sporting instinct. Where
+an American might loiter in contemplation of these
+woods, fields, and streams, an Englishman shoots,
+hunts, crickets, and rows in them.</p>
+
+<p>When you enter the barge on the river, you
+feel keenly the contrast with the bare, chill boathouses
+of the American universities. On the centre
+tables are volumes of photographs of the crews and
+races of former years; the latest sporting papers
+are scattered on chairs and seats; and in one corner
+is a writing-table, with note-paper stamped
+"Balliol Barge, Oxford." There is a shelf or two
+of bound "Punches," and several shelves of books&mdash;"Innocents
+Abroad" and "Indian Summer,"
+beside "Three Men in a Boat" and "The Dolly
+Dialogues." On the walls are strange and occult
+charts of the bumping races from the year one&mdash;which,
+if I remember rightly, is 1837. At the far
+end of the room is a sea-coal fire, above which
+shines the prow of a shell in which the college
+twice won the Ladies' Plate at Henley.</p>
+
+<p>The dressing-room of the barge is sacred to the
+members of the eight, who at the present season
+are engaged in tubbing the freshmen in the hope
+of finding a new oar or two. At the appointed
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_100" id="Page_100">100</a></span>
+hour they appear, in eightsman blazers if it is fair,
+or in sou'westers if it is not&mdash;sad to relate, it
+usually is not&mdash;and each chooses a couple of men
+and leads them out to the float. Meanwhile, with
+the rest of the candidates&mdash;freshmen, and others
+who in past years have failed of a place in the
+torpids&mdash;you lounge on easy-chairs and seats,
+reading or chatting, until your own turn comes to
+be tubbed. It is all quiet like a club, except that
+the men are in full athletic dress.</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter"><a name="illo6" id="illo6"></a>
+<img src="images/i_122.jpg" width="405" height="650" alt="THE FULL COSTUME OF AN EIGHTSMAN" />
+<p class="caption">THE FULL COSTUME OF AN EIGHTSMAN</p>
+</div>
+
+<p>The athletic costume is elaborate, and has been
+worn for a generation&mdash;since top-hats and trousers
+were abandoned, in fact&mdash;in more or less its
+present form. It consists of a cotton zephyr, flannel
+shorts flapping about the knees, and socks, or
+in winter Scotch hose gartered above the calves.
+The sweater, which, in cold weather, is worn on the
+river, has a deep V neck, supplemented when the
+oarsman is not in action by a soft woolen scarf
+or cloud. Over all are worn a flannel blazer and
+cap embroidered with the arms of the college.
+This uniform, with trifling variations, is used in
+all sports on field and river, and it is infinitely
+more necessary, in undergraduate opinion, than
+the academic cap and gown which the rules of the
+university require to be worn after dark. This
+seemingly elaborate dress is in effect the most
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_101" id="Page_101">101</a></span>
+sensible in the world, and is the best expression I
+know of the cheerful and familiar way in which an
+Englishman goes about his sports. Reduced to its
+lowest terms, it is no more than is required by
+comfort and decency. With the addition of sweater,
+scarf, blazer, and cap, it is presentable in social
+conversation&mdash;indeed, in the streets of the city.
+It is in consequence of this that an afternoon in
+the barge is&mdash;except for the two tubbings on the
+river&mdash;so much like one spent in a club.</p>
+
+<p>In America an oarsman wears socks and trunks
+which are apt to be the briefest possible. If he
+wears a shirt at all, it is often a mere ribbon
+bounding the three enormous apertures through
+which he thrusts his neck and shoulders. Before
+going on the river he is likely to shiver, in spite of
+the collar of his sweater; and after he comes in,
+his first thought is necessarily of donning street
+clothes. There is, in consequence, practically no
+sociability in rowing until the crews are selected
+and sent to the training-table. A disciple of Sartor
+Resartus would be very likely to conclude that,
+until American rowing adapts itself to the English
+costume, it must continue to be&mdash;except for the
+fortunate few&mdash;the bare, unkindly sport it has
+always been.</p>
+
+<p>All this time I have had you seated in an armchair
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_102" id="Page_102">102</a></span>
+beside the sea-coal fire. Now an eightsman
+comes into the barge with two deep-breathing
+freshmen, and nods us to follow him to the boat
+the three have just quitted. On a chair by the
+door as we go out are several pads, consisting of a
+rubber cloth faced with wool. These are <i>spongeo
+pilenes</i>, or so I was told, which in English are
+known as Pontius Pilates&mdash;or Pontiuses for short.
+The eightsman will advise you to take a Pontius to
+protect your white flannel shorts from the water
+on the seat; for there is always a shower threatening,
+unless indeed it is raining. Every one knows,
+however, including the eightsman, that the wool is
+a no less important part of the Pontius than the
+rubber: it will save you many painful impressions
+of the dinner form in hall.</p>
+
+<p>We are already on the river, and pair-oars,
+fours, and eights are swarming about us. "Come
+forward," cries our coach, "ready&mdash;paddle!"
+and we take our place in the procession of craft
+that move in one another's wake down the narrow
+river. The coach talks pleasantly to us from time
+to time, and in the course of an afternoon we get a
+pretty good idea of what the English stroke consists
+in.</p>
+
+<p>The sun bursts through the pearl-gray clouds,
+and glows in golden ponds on the dense verdure of
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_103" id="Page_103">103</a></span>
+grass and trees. "Eyes in the boat," shouts the
+stern voice of conscience; but the coach says, "See,
+fellows. Here's a 'varsity trial eight. Watch
+them row, and you will see what the stroke looks
+like. Those fellows in red caps belong to the
+Leander."</p>
+
+<p>Their backs are certainly not all flat, and to an
+American eye the crew presents a ragged appearance
+as a whole; but a second glance shows that
+every back swings in one piece from the hips, and
+that the apparent raggedness is due to the fact
+that the men on the bow side swing in one line,
+while those on the stroke side swing in another
+parallel line. They sway together with absolute
+rhythm and ease, and the boat is set on a rigidly
+even keel. Our coach looks them over critically,
+especially his three college-mates, one of whom at
+least he hopes will be chosen for the 'varsity eight.
+No doubt he aimed at a blue himself two years
+ago, when he came up; but blues are not for every
+man, even of those who row well and strongly.
+He watches them until they are indistinguishable
+amid the myriad craft in the distance. "It's
+jolly fine weather," he concludes pleasantly, with a
+familiar glance at the sky, which you are at liberty
+to follow. "Come forward. Ready&mdash;paddle!"
+We are presently in the barge again with the other
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_104" id="Page_104">104</a></span>
+fellows. A repetition of this experience after half
+an hour ends the day's work.</p>
+
+<p>When I tried for the freshman crew in America,
+I was put with seven other unfortunates into a
+huge clinker barge, in charge of the sophomore
+coxswain. On the first day I was told to mind
+the angle on my oar. On the second day I was
+told to keep my eyes in the boat, damn me! On
+the third day, the sophomore coxswain wrought
+himself into a fury, and swore at me for not keeping
+the proper angle. When I glanced out at my
+blade he yelled, "Damn you, eyes in the boat!"
+This upset me so that I forgot thereafter to keep a
+flat back at the finish of the stroke. When we
+touched the float he jumped out, looked at my
+back, brought his boot against it sharply, and told
+me that there was no use in trying to row unless
+I could hold a flat back and swing my body between
+my knees. That night I sat on a dictionary
+with my feet against the footboard and tried to
+follow these injunctions, until my back seemed
+torn into fillets, but it would not come flat. I
+never went down to the river again, and it was
+two years before I summoned courage to try another
+sport. The bullyragging sophomore coxswain
+I came to know very well in later years,
+and found him as courteous and good-hearted as
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_105" id="Page_105">105</a></span>
+any man. To this day, if I mention our first
+meeting, he looks shy, and says he doesn't remember
+it. He says that the flat back is a discarded
+fetish in Harvard boating circles, that even
+before the advent of Mr. Lehmann cursing and
+kicking were largely abandoned; and moreover
+(<i>fortissimo</i>) that the freshman crew he helped to
+curse and kick into shape was the only one in ten
+years that won.</p>
+
+<p>After a fortnight's tubbing in pair-oars, the better
+candidates are tubbed daily in fours, and the
+autumn races are on the horizon. At the end of
+another week the boats are finally made up, and
+the crews settle down to the task of "getting together."
+Each of the fours has at least one seasoned
+oarsman to steady it, and is coached from
+the coxswain's seat by a member of the college
+eight. Sometimes, if the November floods are not
+too high, the coach runs or bicycles along the towing-path,
+where he can see the stroke in profile.
+If a coach swears at his men, there is sure to have
+been provocation. His favorite figure of speech
+is sarcasm. At the end of a heart-breaking burst
+he will say, "Now, men, get ready to <i>row</i>," or, "I
+say, fellows, wake up; <i>can't you make a difference?</i>"
+The remark of one coach is now a tradition&mdash;"All
+but four of you men are rowing
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_106" id="Page_106">106</a></span>
+badly, and they're rowing damned badly!" This
+convention of sarcasm is by no means old. One
+of the notable personages in Eights' Week is a
+little man who is pointed out to you as the Last
+of the Swearing Coaches. <i>Tempora mutantur.</i>
+Perhaps my friend the ex-coxswain is in line for
+a similar distinction.</p>
+
+<p>When the fours are once settled in their tubs,
+the stroke begins to go much better, and the daily
+paddle is extended so as to be a real test of
+strength and endurance for the new men, and for
+the man from the torpid a brisk practice spin.
+Even at this stage very few of the new men are
+"given the hoof;" the patience of the coachers is
+monumental.</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter"><a name="illo7" id="illo7"></a>
+<img src="images/i_130.jpg" width="650" height="384" alt="THE COLLEGE BARGES: TUBBING IN NOVEMBER FLOODS" />
+<p class="caption">THE COLLEGE BARGES: TUBBING IN NOVEMBER FLOODS</p>
+</div>
+
+<p>The tubbing season is brought to an end with
+a race between the fours. Where there are half a
+dozen fours in training, two heats of three boats
+each are rowed the first day, and the finals between
+the best two crews on the following day.
+The method of conducting these races is characteristic
+of boating on the Isis and the Cam. As
+the river is too narrow to row abreast, the crews
+start a definite distance apart, and row to three
+flags a mile or so up the river, which are exactly
+as far apart as the boats were at starting. At
+each of these flags an eightsman is stationed. In
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_107" id="Page_107">107</a></span>
+the races I saw they flourished huge dueling pistols,
+and when the appropriate crew passed the
+flag, the appropriate man let off his pistol. The
+crew that is first welcomed with a pistol-shot wins.
+These races are less exciting than the bumping
+races; yet they have a picturesque quality of their
+own, and they settle the question of superiority
+with much less rowing. The members of the winning
+four get each a pretty enough prize to remember
+the race by, and the torpidsman at stroke
+holds the "Junior fours cup" for the year.</p>
+
+<p>The crowning event of the season of tubbing is
+a wine, to which are invited all boating-men in
+college, and the representative athletes in other
+sports. In Balliol it is called the "Morrison
+wine," as the races are called "Morrison fours,"
+in honor of an old Balliol man, a 'varsity oar and
+coach, who established the fund for the prizes.
+The most curious thing about this affair is that
+it is not given, as it would be in America, at the
+expense of the college, or even of the men who
+have been tubbed, but at the expense of those who
+are finally chosen to row in the races.</p>
+
+<p>To my untutored mind the hospitality of English
+boating seemed a pure generosity. It made
+me uncomfortable at first, with the sense that I
+could never repay it; but I soon got over this, and
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_108" id="Page_108">108</a></span>
+basked in it as in the sun. The eightsmen devote
+their afternoons to coaching you because there are
+seats to be filled in the torpid and in the eight;
+they speak decently because they find that in the
+long run decency is more effective; and they hold
+the wine because they wish to honor the sport in
+which they have chosen to stake their reputations
+as athletes. In a word, where in America we row
+by all that is self-sacrificing and loyal, in England
+the welfare of boating is made to depend upon
+its attractiveness as a recreation and a sport; if
+it were not enjoyable to the normal man, nothing
+could force fellows into it.</p>
+
+<p>The relationship of the autumn tubbing and its
+incidental sociability to the welfare of the sport
+in the college and in the university seems remote
+enough to the American mind, for out of the score
+of fellows who are tubbed only three or four, on
+an average, go farther in the sport. Yet it is typical
+of the whole; and it will help us in following
+the English boating season. Throughout the year
+there are two converging currents of activity in
+boating. On the one hand, the tubs in the autumn
+term develop men for the torpids, which
+come on during the winter term; and the torpids
+develop men for the summer eights. On the
+other hand, the 'varsity trials in the autumn term
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_109" id="Page_109">109</a></span>
+develop men for the 'varsity eight, which trains
+and races in the winter term; and the 'varsity
+oarsmen, like the men who have prospered in tubs
+and torpids, end the season in the eights of their
+respective colleges. The goal of both the novice
+and the veteran is thus the college eight.</p>
+
+<p>The torpid is, so to speak, the understudy to the
+college eight. In order to give full swing to the
+new men, no member of the eight of the year
+before is allowed to row in it; and the leading
+colleges man two torpids&mdash;sometimes even three.
+The training here is much more serious than in
+the tubs; wine, spirits, and tobacco are out of
+order. The races, which are conducted like the
+celebrated May Eights, are rowed in midwinter&mdash;in
+the second of the three Oxford terms&mdash;under
+leaden skies, and sometimes with snow piled up
+along the towing-path. On the barges, instead of
+the crowds of ladies, gayly dressed and bent on
+a week of social enjoyment, one finds knots of
+loyal partisans who are keen on the afternoon's
+sport. The towing-path, too, is not so crowded as
+in May Week; but nothing could surpass the din
+of pistols and rattles and shouting that accompanies
+the races. If the men in the torpid do not
+learn how to row the stroke to the finish under the
+excitement of a race, it is not for the lack of
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_110" id="Page_110">110</a></span>
+coaching and experience. When the torpids break
+training, there are many ceremonies to signalize
+the return to the flesh-pots: one hardly realizes
+that the weeks of sport and comradeship have all
+gone to the filling of a place or two in the college
+eight.</p>
+
+<p>All this time, while the tubs and torpids have
+been training up new men, the 'Varsity Boat Club,
+whose home is on the shore of the Isis opposite the
+row of college barges, has also, so to speak, been
+doing its tubbing. The new men for the 'varsity
+are chiefly those who have come to the front
+in the May Eights of the previous year&mdash;oars of
+two or three seasons' standing; though occasionally
+men are taken directly from the Eton eight,
+which enters yearly for the Ladies' Plate at Henley.
+The new men will number ten or a dozen;
+and early in the autumn they are taken out in
+tubs. They are soon joined by as many of last
+year's blues as are left in Oxford. The lot is
+divided into two eights, as evenly matched as possible,
+which are coached separately. These are
+called the Trial Eights, or 'Varsity Trials. To
+"get one's trials" is no mean honor. It is the
+<i>sine qua non</i> of membership to the Leander&mdash;admittedly
+the foremost boating club of the world.
+Toward the end of the first term there is a race
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_111" id="Page_111">111</a></span>
+of two and a half miles between the two trial
+eights at Moulsford, where the Thames is wide
+enough to permit the two boats to race abreast.
+Of the men who row in the trials the best ten or
+a dozen are selected to train for the 'varsity during
+the winter term.</p>
+
+<p>Of the training of the 'varsity eight it is not
+necessary to speak here at length. The signal
+fact is that the men are so well schooled in the
+stroke, and so accustomed to racing, that a season
+of eight weeks at Oxford and at Putney is enough
+to fit them to go over the four miles and a quarter
+between Putney and Mortlake with the best possible
+results. The race takes place in March, just
+after the close of the winter term.</p>
+
+<p>The series of races I have mentioned gives some
+idea of the scheme and scope of English boating,
+but it is by no means exhaustive. The strength
+of the boating spirit gives rise to no end of casual
+and incidental races. Chief among these are the
+coxswainless fours, which take place about the middle
+of the autumn term, while the trials are on the
+river. The crews are from the four or five chief
+boating colleges, and are made up largely from
+the men in the 'varsity trials. The races have
+no relation that I could discover to the 'varsity
+race; the only point is to find which college has
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_112" id="Page_112">112</a></span>
+the best four, and it is characteristic that merely
+for the sport of it the training of the 'varsity
+trials is interrupted.</p>
+
+<p>After the 'varsity race the members of the crew
+rest during what remains of the Easter vacation,
+and then take their places in the boats of their
+respective colleges. Here they are joined by the
+other trials men, the remaining members of last
+year's college eight, and the two or three men
+who have come up from the torpids. Now begins
+the liveliest season in boating. Every afternoon
+the river is clogged with eights rowing to Iffley or
+to Sandford, and the towing-path swarms with
+enthusiasts. The course in the May bumping
+races is a mile and a quarter long&mdash;the same as
+the course of the torpids&mdash;and the crews race
+over it every day for a week, with the exception of
+an intervening Sunday, each going up a place or
+down a place in the procession daily according as
+it bumps or is bumped. These races, from the
+point of view of the expert oarsman, are far less
+important than the 'varsity race; yet socially they
+are far more prominent, and the enthusiasm they
+arouse among the undergraduates is incomparable.
+The vitality of Oxford is in the colleges: the university
+organizations are the flowers of a very
+sturdy root and branch.</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter"><a name="illo8" id="illo8"></a>
+<img src="images/i_138.jpg" width="650" height="379" alt="THE LAST DAY OF THE BUMPING RACES OF THE SUMMER EIGHTS (1895)" />
+<p class="caption">THE LAST DAY OF THE BUMPING RACES OF THE SUMMER EIGHTS (1895)</p>
+</div>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_113" id="Page_113">113</a></span></p>
+
+<p>The difference between American and English
+boating is that we lack the root and branches of
+the college system. In a university of from three
+to four thousand men there are, in addition to the
+'varsity crew, four class crews and perhaps a few
+scratch crews. In England, each of the score of
+colleges, numbering on an average something like
+one hundred and fifty men apiece, mans innumerable
+fours, one or more eight-oared torpids, and the
+college eight. A simple calculation will show that
+with us one man in fifty to seventy goes in for the
+sport, while in England the proportion is one man
+in five to seven.</p>
+
+<p>The difference in spirit is as great as the difference
+in numbers. In America, the sole idea
+in athletics, as is proclaimed again and again, is
+to beat the rival team. No concession is made to
+the comfort or wholesomeness of the sport; men
+are induced to train by the excellent if somewhat
+grandiose sentiment that they owe it to the university
+to make every possible sacrifice of personal
+pleasure. Our class crews, which have long ceased
+to represent any real class rivalry, are maintained
+mainly in the hope of producing 'varsity material.
+The result of these two systems is curiously at
+variance with the intention. At Oxford, where
+rowing is very pleasant indeed, and where for
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_114" id="Page_114">114</a></span>
+the greater part of the year the main interest
+centres in college crews, the 'varsity reaches a high
+degree of perfection, and the oarsmen, without
+quite being aware of the fact, represent their university
+very creditably; while at Yale, and until
+recently at Harvard, the subsidiary crews have
+been comparative failures in producing material,
+and the 'varsity is in consequence somewhat in the
+position of an exotic, being kept alive merely by
+the stimulus of inter-varsity rivalry.</p>
+
+<p>The recent improvement at Harvard is due to
+Mr. Rudolph C. Lehmann, the celebrated Cambridge
+and Leander oar who coached the Harvard
+crews of 1897 and 1898, in the sportsmanlike
+endeavor to stimulate a broader and more expert
+interest in boating. His failure to bring either of
+the crews to victory, which to so many of us signified
+the utter failure of his mission, has had
+more than a sufficient compensation in the fact that
+he established at Harvard something like the English
+boating system. Anything strictly similar to
+the torpids and eights is of course out of the question,
+because we have no social basis such as the
+colleges afford for rivalry in boating; but the lack
+of colleges has in a measure been remedied by
+creating a factitious rivalry between improvised
+boating clubs, and the system of torpids and eights
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_115" id="Page_115">115</a></span>
+has been crudely imitated in the so-called graded
+crews. A season of preliminary racing has thus
+been established, on the basis of which the candidates
+for the 'varsity crew are now selected, so that
+instead of the nine months of slogging in the tank
+and on the river, in which the more nervous and
+highly organized candidates were likely to succumb
+and the stolid men to find a place in the boat, the
+eight is made up as at Oxford of those who have
+shown to best advantage in a series of spirited races.
+Crude as the new Harvard system is as compared
+with the English system, it has already created a
+true boating spirit, and has trained a large body
+of men in the established stroke, placing the sport
+at Harvard on a sounder basis than at any other
+American university. It has thus been of infinitely
+more advantage, by the potentiality of an example,
+than any number of victories at New London. To
+realize the full benefit of the system of graded
+crews and preliminary races, it is only necessary
+to supersede the arbitrary and meaningless division
+into clubs by organizations after the manner of
+English colleges which shall represent something
+definite in the general life of the university.
+</p>
+
+<p class="center p6">III</p>
+
+<p class="center">A LITTLE SCRIMMAGE WITH ENGLISH RUGBY<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_116" id="Page_116">116</a></span></p>
+
+<p class="p2"><span class="dropcap">T</span><span class="smcap">he</span> relationship between the colleges and the
+university exists in a greater or less degree
+in all sports. There is a series of matches among
+the leading colleges in cricket, and a "cup tie" in
+Association football. These sports are almost as
+popular as rowing, and have many excellences
+which it would be pleasant to point out and profitable
+perhaps to emulate; but it seems best to
+concentrate attention on the sports which are best
+understood in America, such as Rugby football and
+athletics. The workings of the college system may
+be most clearly seen in them, and the spirit of
+English sportsmanship most sympathetically appreciated.</p>
+
+<p>The rivalry between the Association and the
+Rugby games has made English football players
+quite unexpectedly sensitive to comparisons. I
+had scarcely set foot upon a Rugby field when
+I was confronted with the inevitable question as
+to English Rugby and American. I replied that
+from a hasty judgment the English game seemed
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_117" id="Page_117">117</a></span>
+haphazard and inconsequent. "We don't kill one
+another, if that's what you mean by 'inconsequent,'"
+my companion replied; and I soon found
+that a report that two players had been killed in
+the Thanksgiving Day match of the year before
+had never been contradicted in England. "That
+is the sport," my friend continued, "which Caspar
+Whitney says, in his 'Sporting Pilgrimage,' has improved
+English Rugby off the face of the earth!"</p>
+
+<p>The many striking differences between English
+and American Rugby arise out of the features of
+our game known as "possession of the ball" and
+"interference." In the early days of the American
+game, many of the most sacred English traditions
+were unknown, and the wording of the English
+rules proved in practice so far from explicit
+that it was not possible to discover what it meant,
+much less to enforce the rules.</p>
+
+<p>One of the traditions favored a certain comparative
+mildness of demeanor. The American
+players, on the contrary, favored a campaign of
+personal assault for which the general rules of the
+English scrummage lent marked facilities. It soon
+became necessary in America to line the men up
+in loose order facing each other, and to forbid violent
+personal contact until the actual running with
+the ball should begin. This clearly made it necessary
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_118" id="Page_118">118</a></span>
+that the sides should in turn put the ball
+in play, and consequently should alternately have
+possession of it. Under this arrangement, each
+side is in turn organized on the offensive and the
+defensive.</p>
+
+<p>The upshot of this was that the forwards, who
+in the parent English game have only an incidental
+connection with the running of the backs, become
+a part of each successive play, opening up the way
+for the progress of the ball. According to the English
+code, this made our forwards off-side, so that
+the rule had to be changed to fit the new practice.
+It then appeared that if the forwards could play
+ahead of the ball, the backs could do so too; and
+here you have the second great American feature.
+The result of "possession" of the ball and "interference"
+is an elaborate and almost military code
+of tactics unknown in the English game.</p>
+
+<p>In the course of time I had unusual facilities for
+observing English Rugby. During the Morrison
+wine which ended the season of tubbing on the
+river, the captain of the Balliol fifteen threw his
+arms about me, and besought me to play on the
+team. He had not a single three-quarters, he said,
+who could get out of his own way running. I
+pleaded an attack of rheumatism and ignorance of
+the game. He said it did not matter. "And I'm
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_119" id="Page_119">119</a></span>
+half blind," I added. "So am I," he interrupted,
+"but we'll both be all right in the morning." I
+said I referred to the fact that I was very near-sighted;
+but he took all excuses as a sign of resentment
+because he had failed to invite me to
+breakfast in my freshman term; he appeared to
+think it his duty to breakfast all possible candidates.
+Such are the courtesies of an English captain,
+and such are the informalities of English
+training.</p>
+
+<p>The next morning the captain wrote me that
+there was a match on against Merton, and asked
+me to come out a quarter of an hour before the
+rest for a little coaching. A quarter of an hour to
+learn to play football! In spite of the captain's
+predictions of the night before, I was not so sure
+that he was yet "all right;" so I went out to
+the porter's lodge and scanned the bulletin board.
+My name stared me in the face. I had scarcely
+time to take luncheon and don a pair of football
+shorts.</p>
+
+<p>The practice my coach gave me consisted in running
+the length of the field three or four times,
+passing the ball back and forth as we went. His
+instructions with regard to the game were equally
+simple. To keep in proper position I had only to
+watch my Merton <i>vis-à-vis</i> and take a place symmetrical
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_120" id="Page_120">120</a></span>
+with his. When the enemy heeled the
+ball out of the "scrummage" to their quarter-back,
+putting us for the moment on the defensive, I was
+to watch my man, and, if the ball was passed
+to him, to tackle him. If he passed it before I
+could tackle him I was still to follow him, leaving
+the man who took the ball to be watched by my
+neighbor, in order that I might be on hand if my
+man received it again. An American back, when
+his side is on the defensive, is expected to keep his
+eye on his <i>vis-à-vis</i> while the ball is being snapped
+back; but his main duty is to follow the ball. An
+English back under similar circumstances is expected
+only to follow his man. If our side happened
+to heel out the ball from the scrum and one
+of our three-quarters began to run with it, we were
+on the offensive, and the other three-quarters and
+I were to follow at his heels, so that when he was
+about to be tackled&mdash;"collared," the English say&mdash;he
+could pass it on to us. There is, as I have
+said, no such thing as combined "interference"
+among the backs. A player who gets between the
+man with the ball and the enemy's goal is rankly
+off-side. It is not to be understood that the captain
+coached all this information into me. I had
+to buttonhole him and pump it out word by word.
+Coaching of any sort is all but unknown on English
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_121" id="Page_121">121</a></span>
+football fields. What there is of the game
+is learned at school&mdash;or in the nursery!</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter"><a name="illo9" id="illo9"></a>
+<img src="images/i_148.jpg" width="650" height="423" alt="AN ENGLISH RUGBY LINE-UP" />
+<p class="caption">AN ENGLISH RUGBY LINE-UP<br />
+To the left of the scrum, two half backs and six three-quarter backs face each other in pairs</p>
+</div>
+
+<p>When the opposing teams scattered over the
+field for the kick-off, I noticed with satisfaction
+that there was not a spectator on the grounds to
+embarrass me. It is so in almost all English college
+games&mdash;the fellows are more than likely to
+have sports of their own on, and anyway, what is
+the use in hanging round the fields where other
+fellows are having all the fun?</p>
+
+<p>On the kick-off, luckily, the ball did not come
+to my corner of the field, for I could scarcely have
+seen it, much less caught it. Our side returned
+the kick and the "scrum" formed. The nine forwards
+gathered compactly in a semi-ellipse, bent
+their bodies together in a horizontal plane, with
+their heads carefully tucked beneath the mass, and
+leaned against the opposing mass of forwards, who
+were similarly placed. When the two scrums were
+thoroughly compacted, the umpire tossed the ball
+on the ground beneath the opposing sets of legs,
+whereupon both sides began to struggle. The
+scrum in action looks like a huge tortoise with
+a score of legs at each end, which by some unaccountable
+freak of nature are struggling to walk
+in opposite directions. The sight is certainly awe-inspiring,
+and it was several days before I realized
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_122" id="Page_122">122</a></span>
+that it masked no abstrusely working tactics; there
+is little, if anything, in it beyond the obvious grunting
+and shoving.</p>
+
+<p>The backs faced each other in pairs ranged out
+on the side of the scrum that afforded the broader
+field for running. The legs in the Balliol scrum
+pushed harder and the bodies squirmed to more
+advantage, for our men had presently got the ball
+among their feet. They failed to hold it there,
+however, and it popped out into a half-back's
+hands. He passed it quickly to one of my companions
+at three-quarters, who dodged his man
+and ran toward the corner of the field. I followed,
+and just as the full-back collared him he passed
+the ball to me. Before I had taken three rheumatic
+strides I had two men hanging at my back;
+but when they brought me down, the ball was just
+beyond the line. The audience arose as one man&mdash;to
+wit, the referee, who had been squatting on
+the side lines&mdash;and shouted, "Played. Well
+played!" I had achieved universal fame. During
+the rest of the game the Balliol scrum, which
+was a very respectable affair of its kind, kept the
+ball to itself, while we backs cooled our heels.</p>
+
+<p>A few days later, in a game against Jesus, the
+scrums were more evenly matched, and the ball
+was heeled out oftener. I soon found that my
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_123" id="Page_123">123</a></span>
+eyes were not sharp enough to follow quick passing;
+and when, just before half-time, a punt came
+in my direction, I was horrified to see the ball multiply
+until it looked like a flock of balloons. As
+luck had it, I singled out the wrong balloon to
+catch. Jesus fell on the ball just as it bounced
+over the goal-line. In the second half the captain
+put one of the forwards in my place, and put me
+in the scrum.</p>
+
+<p>The play here was more lively, though scarcely
+more complex or difficult. Each forward stuck
+his head beneath the shoulders of the two men in
+front of him, grasped their waists, and then heaved,
+until, when the ball popped out of the scrum, the
+word came to dissolve. There were absolutely no
+regular positions; the man who was in the front
+centre of one scrummage might be in the outskirts
+of the next. On some teams, I found, by inquiry,
+a definite order is agreed on, but this is regarded
+as of doubtful advantage.</p>
+
+<p>When the umpire or a half-back tosses the ball
+into the scrummage, there are, at an ultimate analysis,
+four things that can happen. First, the two
+sides may struggle back and forth, carrying the
+ball on the ground at their feet; this play is called a
+"pack." Second, the stronger side may cleave the
+weaker, and run down the field, dribbling the ball
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_124" id="Page_124">124</a></span>
+yard by yard as they go, until either side picks it
+up for a run, or else drops on it and cries "down."
+Third, one side may be able to "screw the scrum,"
+a man&oelig;uvre which almost rises to the altitude of
+a "play." The captain shouts "Right!" or perhaps
+"Left!" and then his forwards push diagonally,
+instead of directly, against their opponents.
+The result is very like what we used to call a
+revolving wedge, except that, since the ball is carried
+on the ground, the play eventuates, when successful,
+in a scattering rush of forwards down the
+field, dribbling the ball at their feet, just as when
+the scrum has been cloven. The fourth possibility
+is that the side that gets the ball amongst its
+eighteen legs allows it to ooze out behind, or, if its
+backs are worthy of confidence, purposely heels it
+out. Thereupon results the play I have already
+described: one of the half-backs pounces upon it
+and passes it deftly to the three-quarters, who run
+with it down the field, if necessary passing it back
+and forth. In plays which involve passing or dribbling,
+English teams sometimes reach a very high
+degree of skill: few sights on the football field
+are more inspiring than to see a "combination"
+of players rush in open formation among their
+opponents, shifting the ball from one to another
+with such rapidity and accuracy as to elude all
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_125" id="Page_125">125</a></span>
+attempts to arrest it. As a whole, the game of the
+forwards is much more fun than that of the backs,
+though decidedly less attractive in the eyes of the
+spectators&mdash;a consideration of slight importance
+on an English field!</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter"><a name="illo10" id="illo10"></a>
+<img src="images/i_154.jpg" width="650" height="403" alt="THROWING IN THE BALL" />
+<p class="caption">THROWING IN THE BALL</p>
+</div>
+
+<p>Just as I began to get warmed to my new work
+I smashed my nose against the head of a Balliol
+man who was dodging back into the push. The
+captain told me that I need not finish the game;
+but as it is against the English rules to substitute
+players and we were still far from sure of winning,
+I kept to my grunting and shoving. At the end
+of the game the captain very politely gave me the
+hoof. This was just what I expected and deserved;
+but I was surprised to find that the fellows had
+objected to my playing the game through with a
+bloody nose. They would have preferred not to
+be bled upon.</p>
+
+<p>This regard for pleasantness and convenience,
+which to an American is odd enough, is characteristic
+even of 'varsity football. The slenderness of
+the preliminary training of a 'varsity fifteen is incredible
+to any American who has not witnessed
+it. To sift the candidates there is a freshman
+match and a senior match, with perhaps one or
+two "squashes"&mdash;that is to say, informal games&mdash;besides.
+And even these tests are largely a
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_126" id="Page_126">126</a></span>
+matter of form. Men are selected chiefly on their
+public school reputations or in consequence of
+good work on a college fifteen. The process of
+developing players, so familiar to us, is unknown.
+There is no coaching of any kind, as we understand
+the word. When a man has learned the
+game at his public school or in his college, he has
+learned it for all time, though he will, of course,
+improve by playing for the university. The need
+of concentrated practice is greatly lessened by the
+fact that the soft English winter allows as long a
+season of play as is desired. The team plays a
+game or two a week against the great club teams
+of England&mdash;Blackheath, Richmond, London
+Scottish, Cardiff, Newport, and Huddersfield&mdash;with
+perhaps a bit of informal kicking and punting
+between times. When the weather is too bad,
+it lays off entirely.</p>
+
+<p>All this does not conduce to the strenuousness
+of spirit Americans throw into their sports. In an
+inter-varsity match I saw the Oxford team which
+was fifty per cent. better allow itself to be shoved
+all over the field: it kept the game a tie only by
+the rarest good fortune. It transpired later that
+the gayeties of Brighton, whither the team had
+gone to put the finishing touches on its training,
+had been too much for it. In an American university
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_127" id="Page_127">127</a></span>
+such laxity would be thought the lowest
+depth of unmanliness, but I could not see that any
+one at Oxford really resented it; at most it was a
+subject for mild sarcasm. You can't expect a team
+to be in the push everywhere!</p>
+
+<p>This lack of thorough preparation is even more
+characteristic of the international teams&mdash;England,
+Ireland, Scotland, and Wales&mdash;that yearly
+play for the championship of Great Britain. They
+are chosen from the most brilliant players in the
+leading clubs, and local jealousy makes the task of
+choosing most delicate. The temptation is to take
+a man or two impartially from each of the great
+fifteens. As the international teams take little or
+no practice as a whole, the tendency in the great
+games is to neglect the finer arts of dribbling and
+passing in combination&mdash;the arts for which each
+player was severally chosen&mdash;and revert to the
+primitive grunting and shoving. In the great
+games, accordingly, the team which is man for man
+inferior as regards the fine points may prevail by
+sheer strength, so that the result is liable to be
+most unsatisfactory. Some years ago, owing to
+local jealousy, the Welsh international had to be
+chosen mainly from a single club&mdash;with the result
+that it won the championship; and in 1901 the
+canny Scotch team won by intentionally selecting
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_128" id="Page_128">128</a></span>
+its members, in spite of local jealousy, on the score
+of their familiarity with one another's play.</p>
+
+<p>The very rules under which the game is played
+are calculated to moderate the struggle. As a
+result of the rule against substituting, to which I
+have referred, any extreme of hard play in the
+practice games, such as lays off dozens of good
+American players yearly, is not likely to be encouraged.
+Of course good men "crock," as they
+call it; but where an injury is practically certain
+to disqualify a man from the inter-varsity match,
+the football limp and the football patch can
+scarcely be regarded as the final grace of athletic
+manhood. Willful brutality is all but unknown;
+the seriousness of being disqualified abets the normal
+English inclination to play the game like a
+person of sense and good feeling. The physical
+effect of the sport is to make men erect, lithe,
+and sound. And the effect on the nervous system
+is similar. The worried, drawn features of the
+American player on the eve of a great contest are
+unknown. An Englishman could not understand
+how it has happened that American players have
+been given sulphonal during the last nights of
+training. English Rugby is first of all a sport,
+an exercise that brings manly powers into play;
+as Hamlet would say, the play's the thing. It is
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_129" id="Page_129">129</a></span>
+eminently an enjoyable pastime, pleasant to watch,
+and more pleasant to take part in.</p>
+
+<p>That our American game is past hoping for on
+the score of playability is by no means certain.
+As the historical critics of literature are fond of
+saying, a period of rapid development is always
+marked by flagrant excesses, and the development
+of modern American football has been of astonishing
+rapidity. Quite often the game of one season
+has been radically different from the games of all
+preceding seasons. This cannot continue always,
+for the number of possible variations is obviously
+limited, and when the limit is reached American
+Rugby will be, like English Rugby, the same old
+game year in and year out. Everybody, from the
+youngest prep. to the oldest grad., will know it
+and love it.</p>
+
+<p>The two vital points in which our game differs
+from the English&mdash;"possession of the ball" and
+"interference"&mdash;are both the occasion of vigorous
+handling of one's opponents. When an American
+player is tackled, he seldom dares to pass the ball
+for fear of losing possession of it, so that our rule
+is to tackle low and hard, in order to stop the ball
+sharply, and if possible to jar it out of the runner's
+grasp. In England, it is still fair play to grab a
+man by the ankle. This is partly because of the
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_130" id="Page_130">130</a></span>
+softness of the moist thick English turf; but more
+largely because, as passing is the rule, the tackler
+in nine cases out of ten aims at the ball. The
+result is that a man is seldom slammed to the
+earth as he would be in our game. It is this fact
+that enables the English player to go bare-kneed.</p>
+
+<p>The danger from interference in the American
+game is also considerable. When a man is blocked
+off, he is liable to be thrown violently upon the far
+from tender bosom of our November mother-earth.
+Any one familiar with the practice of an American
+eleven will remember the constant cry of the
+coaches: "Knock your man on the ground! Put
+him out of the play!" It has been truly enough
+said that the American game has exaggerated the
+most dangerous features of the two English games&mdash;the
+tackling of English Rugby and the "charging"
+or body-checking of the Association game.</p>
+
+<p>Yet this is only a partial statement of the case.
+These elements of possession of the ball and interference
+have raised our game incalculably above
+the English game as a martial contest. Whereas
+English Rugby has as yet advanced very little beyond
+its first principles of grunting and shoving,
+the American game has always been supreme as
+a school and a test of courage; and it has always
+tended, albeit with some excesses, toward an incomparably
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_131" id="Page_131">131</a></span>
+high degree of skill and strategy.
+Since American football is still in a state of transition,
+it is only fair to judge the two games by
+the norm to which they are severally tending. The
+Englishman has on the whole subordinated the
+elements of skill in combination to the pleasantness
+of the sport, while the American has somewhat
+sacrificed the playability of the game to his
+insatiate struggle for success and his inexhaustible
+ingenuity in achieving it. More than any
+other sport, Rugby football indicates the divergent
+lines along which the two nations are developing.
+By preferring either game a man expresses his
+preference for one side of the Atlantic over the
+other.
+</p>
+
+<p class="center p6">IV</p>
+
+<p class="center">TRACK AND FIELD ATHLETICS<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_132" id="Page_132">132</a></span></p>
+
+<p class="p2"><span class="dropcap">I</span><span class="smcap">n</span> track and field athletics, the pleasantness and
+informality of English methods of training
+reach a climax. In America we place the welfare
+of our teams in the hands of a professional trainer,
+who, through his aide-de-camp, the undergraduate
+captain, is apt to make the pursuit of victory pretty
+much a business. Every autumn newcomers are
+publicly informed that it is their duty to the university
+to train for the freshman scratch games.
+At Oxford, I was surprised to find, there was not
+only no call for candidates, but no trainer to whom
+to apply for aid. The nearest approach to it was
+the groundsman at the Iffley Running Grounds, a
+retired professional who stoked the boilers for the
+baths, rolled the cinder-path, and occasionally acted
+as "starter." As his "professional" reputation as
+a trainer was not at stake in the fortunes of the
+Oxford team, his attitude was humbly advisory.
+The president of the Athletic Club never came near
+the grounds, being busy with rowing on a 'varsity
+trial eight, and later with playing Association football
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_133" id="Page_133">133</a></span>
+for the university. To one accustomed to
+train not only for the glory of his alma mater but
+for the reputation of his trainer, the situation was
+uninspiring.</p>
+
+<p>As I might have expected, the impetus to train
+came from the college. I was rescued from a fit
+of depression by a college-mate, a German, who
+wanted some one to train with. At school he had
+run three miles in remarkable time; but later, when
+an officer in the German army, his horse had rolled
+over him at the finish of a steeple-chase, and the
+accident had knocked out his heart; so he was going
+to try to sprint. I advised him against all training,
+and the groundsman shook his head. Yet he
+was set upon showing the Englishmen in Balliol
+that a German could be a sportsman. This was
+no idle talk, as I found later, when he fainted in
+the bath after a fast hundred, and failed by no
+one knows how little of coming to. We were soon
+joined by a third Balliol man, a young Greek poet,
+whose name is familiar to all who are abreast of
+the latest literary movement at Athens. He was
+taking up with athletics because of his interest in
+the revival of the ancient glories of Greece. When
+I asked him what distance suited him best&mdash;whether
+he was a sprinter or a runner&mdash;he answered
+with the sweet reasonableness of the Hellenic
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_134" id="Page_134">134</a></span>
+nature that any distance would suit him that
+suited me. A motlier trio than we, I suppose,
+never scratched a cinder-path. Yet the fellows in
+our college seemed almost as interested as they
+were amused; and we soon found that even so
+learned a place as Balliol would have been glad
+to bolster its self-esteem by furnishing its quota
+of "running blues." What was lacking in the
+way of stimulus from the university was more
+than made up for by the spontaneous interest of
+the fellows in college.</p>
+
+<p>The rudimentary form of athletics is in meetings
+held by the separate colleges. These occur
+throughout the athletic season, namely, the autumn
+term and the winter term; and as hard on to a
+score of colleges give them, they come off pretty
+often. The prizes are sums of money placed with
+the Oxford jeweler, to be spent in his shop as the
+winners see fit. In America, the four classes, which
+are the only sources of athletic life independent
+of the university, are so moribund socially that it
+never occurs to them to get out on the track for
+a day's sport. It is true that we sometimes hold
+inter-class games, but the management of these is
+in the hands of the university; they are inspired
+solely by a very conscious attempt to develop new
+men, and to furnish the old ones with practice in
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_135" id="Page_135">135</a></span>
+racing. The vitality of the athletic spirits in the
+English colleges is witnessed by the fact that an
+Oxford college frequently meets a fit rival at Cambridge
+in a set of dual games just for the fun of it.</p>
+
+<p>The only bond between the numerous college
+meetings and the university sports is a single event
+in each, called a strangers' race, which is open to all
+comers. The purpose of these races is precisely
+that of our inter-class meetings&mdash;to give all promising
+athletes practice in competition. As the
+two prizes in each strangers' race average five
+pounds and thirty shillings respectively, the races
+are pretty efficient. Though the "blues" sometimes
+compete&mdash;Cross made his record of 1m.
+54&nbsp;<sup>2</sup>&frasl;<sub>5</sub>s. for the half mile in one of them&mdash;they
+generally abandon them to the new men of promise.
+While the president and the "blues"
+generally are rowing and playing football, the colleges
+thus automatically develop new material for
+the team.</p>
+
+<p>The climax of the athletic meetings of the
+autumn term is the freshman sports, held on two
+days, with a day's interval. The friends of the
+various contestants make up a far larger audience
+than one finds at similar sports in America; and
+a brass band plays while the races are on. The
+whole thing is decidedly inspiring; and for the
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_136" id="Page_136">136</a></span>
+first time one is brought face to face with the fact
+that there are inter-varsity games in store.</p>
+
+<p>When the winter term opens, bleak and rainy,
+the strangers' races bring out more upper classmen.
+By and by the "blues" themselves appear
+in sweater, muffler, and blazer, and "paddle" about
+the track to supple their muscles and regain disused
+racing strides. At the end of a fortnight I
+noticed a middle-aged gentleman with whom the
+prominent athletes conferred before and after each
+day's work. I soon found that he was Mr. C. N.
+Jackson, a don of Hertford College, who should
+always be remembered as the first hurdler to finish
+in even time. It is he who&mdash;save the mark&mdash;takes
+the place of our American trainers. At one
+of our large American universities about this time,
+as I afterwards learned, a very different scene
+was enacting. The trainer and the captain called
+a mass-meeting and collected a band of Mott
+Haven champions of the past to exhort the University
+to struggle free from athletic disgrace.
+Though the inter-varsity games were nearly four
+months in the future&mdash;instead of six or seven
+weeks as at Oxford&mdash;those ancient athletes aroused
+such enthusiasm that 268 men undertook the three
+months of indoor training. To one used to such
+exhortations, the Oxford indifference was as chilling
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_137" id="Page_137">137</a></span>
+as the weather we were all training in. Mr.
+Jackson seemed never to notice me; and how could
+I address him when he had not even asked me to
+save the university from disgrace? I was forced
+to the unheroic expedient of presenting a card of
+introduction. To my surprise, I found that he
+had been carefully watching my work from day to
+day, but had not felt justified in giving advice
+until I asked for it.</p>
+
+<p>Even during the final period of training, everything
+happened so pleasantly and naturally that I
+had none of the nervous qualms common among
+American athletes. At first I thought I missed the
+early morning walks our teams take daily, the companionship
+and jollity of the training-table, and the
+sense that the team was making a common sacrifice
+for an important end. Yet here, too, the college
+made up in a large measure for what I failed to
+find in the university. One of our eightsmen was
+training with a scrub four that was to row a crew
+of schoolboys at Winchester; and we had a little
+course of training of our own. Every morning we
+walked out for our dip to Parson's Pleasure, and
+breakfasted afterward beneath an ancient ivied
+window in the common room. In the pleasantness
+and quiet of those sunlit mornings, I began to
+realize that our training-table mirth, which is sometimes
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_138" id="Page_138">138</a></span>
+so boisterous, is in part at least due to intense
+excitement and overwrought nerves. And
+the notion of self-sacrifice, which appeals to us so
+deeply, seemed absurd where we were all training
+for the pleasure and wholesomeness of sport, and
+for the sake of a ribbon of blue.</p>
+
+<p>The interest the university took in our welfare
+became made manifest when the "first strings"
+were sent off to Brighton for the change in climate
+which all English teams require before great
+games. Some of the rest of us, who had nowhere
+else to go, went with them, but most of the men
+went home to train. The second string in the three
+miles stayed up at Oxford for commemoration, and
+joined us after three consecutive nights of dancing.
+He said that he found he needed staying up work.</p>
+
+<p>Every morning at Brighton the president made
+the round of our quarter of the hotel shortly before
+eight o'clock, and spoiled our waking naps to rout
+us out for our morning's walk, which included a
+plunge into the Channel. For breakfast, as indeed
+for all our meals, we had ordinary English fare, with
+the difference only that it was more abundant.</p>
+
+<p>On alternate days our training consisted in cross-country
+walks of ten or a dozen miles. Our favorite
+paths led along the chalk cliffs, and commanded
+a lordly view of the Channel. Sometimes,
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_139" id="Page_139">139</a></span>
+for the sake of variety, we went by train to the
+Devil's Dyke and tramped back over the downs,
+now crossing golf-links and now skirting cornfields
+ablaze with poppies. All this walking filled our
+lungs with the Brighton air, and by keeping our
+minds off our races, prevented worry. Sprinters
+and distance men walked together, though the
+sprinters usually turned back a mile or two before
+the rest. The rate prescribed was three and a half
+miles an hour; but our spirits rose so high that we
+had trouble in keeping it below five.<a name="FNanchor_2" id="FNanchor_2" href="#Footnote_2" class="fnanchor">[2]</a></p>
+
+<p>The training dinners furnished the really memorable
+hours of the day. A half-pint of "Burton
+bitter" was a necessity, and a pint merely rations.
+If one preferred, he might drink Burgundy <i>ad lib.</i>,
+or Scotch and soda. After trials there was champagne.
+When I told the fellows that in America
+our relaxation consists in ice-cream for Sunday
+dinner, they set me down as a humorist. After
+dinner, instead of coffee and tobacco, we used to
+go out to the West Pier, which was a miniature
+Coney Island, and amuse ourselves with the various
+attractions. The favorite diversion was seeing
+the Beautiful Living Lady Cremated. The attraction
+was the showman, who used to give an elaborate
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_140" id="Page_140">140</a></span>
+oration in Lancashire brogue. Every word
+of it was funny, but especially the closing sentence:
+"The Greeks 'ad a ancient custom of porun' a liebation
+on the cinders of the departud, which custom,
+gentlemen, we omits." We used to laugh so
+heartily at this that the showman would join in,
+and even the beautiful living lady would snicker
+companionably, as she crawled away beneath the
+stage. If the reader is unable to see the fun of
+it, there is no help for him&mdash;except, perhaps,
+an English training dinner.</p>
+
+<p>The rest of the evenings we used to spend in
+strolling about among the crowd, breathing the
+salt air, and listening to the music. We did not
+lack companionship, for the Oxford and Cambridge
+cricket elevens were at Brighton, and the entire
+Cambridge athletic team. Many of the cricketers,
+and not a few of the Cambridge athletes&mdash;whom
+the Oxford men called "Cantabs," and sometimes
+even "Tabs"&mdash;paraded the place puffing bulldog
+pipes. The outward relationship between the rival
+teams was simply that of man to man. If one
+knew a Cambridge man he joined him, and introduced
+the fellows he happened to be walking with.
+One day the Cambridge president talked frankly
+about training, urging us to take long walks, and
+inviting us to go with his men. The only reason
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_141" id="Page_141">141</a></span>
+we did not go was that our day for walking happened
+to be different from theirs.</p>
+
+<p>The days on which we did our track work we
+spent largely in London, at the Queen's Club
+grounds, in order to get a general sense of the
+track and of the conditions under which the sports
+were to take place. Sometimes, however, we ran
+at Preston Park, on the outskirts of Brighton.</p>
+
+<p>On the day of the inter-varsity meeting, our
+team came together as a whole for the first time in
+the dressing-rooms of the Queen's Club. The fellows
+dropped in one by one, in frock coats, top hats,
+and with a general holiday air. The Oxford broad-jumper,
+who was the best man at the event in England,
+had been so busy playing cricket all season,
+and smoking his pipe with the other cricketers
+on the pier at Brighton, that he had not had time
+even to send to Oxford for his jumping-shoes. In
+borrowing a pair he explained that unless a fellow
+undertook the fag of thorough training, he could
+jump better without any practice. Our weight-thrower,
+a freshman, had surprised himself two
+days previously by making better puts than either
+of the Cambridge men had ever done; but as
+nobody had ever thought it worth while to coach
+him, he did not know how he had done it, and was
+naturally afraid he couldn't do it again. He
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_142" id="Page_142">142</a></span>
+showed that he was a freshman by appearing to
+care whether or not he did his best; but even his
+imagination failed to grasp the fact that the team
+which won was to have the privilege of meeting
+Yale in America. As it turned out, if either of
+these men had taken his event, Oxford, instead of
+Cambridge, would have met Yale.</p>
+
+<p>As I went out to start in my race, the question
+of half-sleeves which Englishmen require in all
+athletic contests was settled in my mind. The
+numberless seasonable gowns in the stands and
+the innumerable top hats ranged on all sides about
+the course made me feel as if I were at a lawn
+party rather than at an athletic meeting. I suffered
+as a girl suffers at her first evening party, or
+rather as one suffers in those terrible dreams where
+one faces the problem of maintaining his dignity
+in company while clad in a smile or so. Waiving
+the question of half-sleeves, I should have consented
+to run in pyjamas.</p>
+
+<p>In the race I had an experience which raised a
+question or two that still offer food for reflection.
+As my best distance&mdash;a half mile&mdash;was not included
+in the inter-varsity program, I ran in the
+mile as second string. There was a strong wind
+and the pace was pretty hot, even for the best of
+us, namely, the Cambridge first string, who had won
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_143" id="Page_143">143</a></span>
+the race the year before in 4 min. 19&nbsp;<sup>4</sup>&frasl;<sub>5</sub> sec.,&mdash;the
+fastest mile ever run in university games. As
+the English score in athletic games, only first places
+count, and on the second of the three laps I found
+myself debating whether it is not unnecessarily
+strenuous to force a desperate finish where the
+only question is how far a man can keep in front
+of the tail end. Several of the fellows had already
+dropped out in the quietest and most matter of
+fact manner; and as we were finishing the lap
+against the wind, I became a convert to the English
+code of sportsmanship.</p>
+
+<p>As the bunch drew away from me and turned
+into the easy going of the sheltered stretch, I was
+filled with envy of them, and with uncontrollable
+disgust at myself, the like of which I had never
+felt when beaten, however badly, after making a
+fair struggle. And when I saw them finishing
+against the hurricane, striding as if they were running
+upstairs, I felt the heroism of a desperate
+finish as I had never done before. It did not help
+matters when I realized that it was the last race I
+was ever to run.</p>
+
+<p>At the Sports' dinner that night at the Holborn
+Restaurant, I pocketed some of my disgust. The
+occasion was so happy that I remember wishing
+we might have something like it after our meetings
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_144" id="Page_144">144</a></span>
+at home, for good-fellowship chastens the
+pride of winning and gives dignity to honest defeat.
+There was homage for the victors and humorous
+sympathy for the vanquished. Light blue and
+dark blue applauded and poked fun at each other
+impartially. Sir Richard Webster, Q. C., now
+Lord Chief Justice, himself an old blue, presided
+at the dinner, and explained how it was that the
+performances of his day were really not to be
+sneezed at; and the young blues, receiving their
+prizes, looked happy and said nothing. After
+dinner, we divided into squads and went to the
+Empire Theatre of Varieties, Cantab locking arms
+with Oxonian. By supper time, at St. James', I
+was almost cheerful again.</p>
+
+<p>Yet the disgust of having quitted that race has
+never left me. The spirit of English sportsmanship
+will always seem to me very gracious and
+charming. As a nation, I think we can never be
+too thankful for the lesson our kinspeople have to
+teach us in sportsmanly moderation and in chivalry
+toward an opponent. But every man must draw
+his own line between the amenities of life and the
+austerities; and I know one American who hopes
+never again to quit a contest, even a contest in
+sport, until he has had the humble satisfaction of
+doing his best.
+</p>
+
+<p class="center p6">V</p>
+
+<p class="center">ENGLISH AND AMERICAN SPORTSMANSHIP<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_145" id="Page_145">145</a></span></p>
+
+<p class="p2"><span class="dropcap">T</span><span class="smcap">he</span> prevalence of out-of-door sports in England,
+and the amenity of the English sporting
+spirit, may be laid, I think, primarily, to the
+influence of climate. Through the long, temperate
+summer, all nature conspires to entice a man
+out of doors, while in America sunstroke is imminent.
+All day long the village greens in England
+are thronged with boys playing cricket in many-colored
+blazers, while every stream is dotted with
+boats of all sorts and descriptions; and in the
+evenings, long after the quick American twilight
+has shut down on the heated earth, the English
+horizon gives light for the recreations of those
+who have labored all day. In the winter the result
+is the same, though the cause is very different.
+Stupefying exhalations rise from the damp earth,
+and the livelong twilight that does for day forces
+a man back for good cheer upon mere animal
+spirits. In the English summer no normal man
+could resist the beckoning of the fields and the
+river. In the winter it is sweat, man, or die.
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_146" id="Page_146">146</a></span></p>
+
+<p>It is perhaps because of the incessant call to be
+out of doors that Englishmen care so little to have
+their houses properly tempered. At my first dinner
+with the dons of my college, the company
+assembled about a huge sea-coal fire. On a rough
+calculation the coal it consumed, if used in one of
+our steam-heaters, would have heated the entire
+college to incandescence. As it was, its only effect
+seemed to be to draw an icy blast across our ankles
+from mediæval doors and windows that swept the
+fire bodily up the chimney, and left us shivering.
+One of the dons explained that an open fire has
+two supreme advantages: it is the most cheerful
+thing in life, and it insures thorough ventilation.
+I agreed with him heartily, warming one ankle in
+my palms, but demurred that in an American
+winter heat was as necessary as cheerfulness and
+ventilation. "But if one wears thick woolens,"
+he replied, "the cold and draught are quite endurable.
+When you get too cold reading, put on your
+great-coat." I asked him what he did when he
+went out of doors. "I take off my great-coat. It is
+much warmer there, especially if one walks briskly."
+Some days later, when I went to dine with my
+tutor, my hostess apologized for the chill of the
+drawing-room. "It will presently be much warmer,"
+she added; "I have always noticed that when
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_147" id="Page_147">147</a></span>
+you have sat in a room awhile, it gets warm from
+the heat of your bodies." She proved to be right.
+But when we went into the dining-room, we found
+it like a barn. She smiled with repeated reassurances.
+Again she proved right; but we had hardly
+tempered the frost when we had to shift again
+to the drawing-room, which by this time again
+required, so to speak, to be acclimated. Meanwhile
+my tutor, who was of a jocular turn of mind,
+diverted our thoughts from our suffering by ragging
+me about American steam heat, and forced
+me, to his infinite delight, to admit that we aim
+to keep our rooms warmed to sixty-eight degrees
+Fahrenheit. Needless to say, this don was an athlete.
+As the winter wore away, I repeatedly saw
+him in Balliol hockey squashes, chasing the ball
+about with the agility of a terrier pup. At nightfall,
+no doubt, he returned to his wife and family
+prepared to heat any room in the house to the
+required temperature. Heaven forbid that I should
+resent the opprobrium Englishmen heap upon our
+steam heat! I merely wish to point out that the
+English have failed as signally as we, though for the
+opposite reason, in making their houses habitable
+in the winter, and that an Englishman is forced
+into athletics to resist the deadly stupefaction of
+a B&oelig;otian climate, and to keep his house warm.
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_148" id="Page_148">148</a></span></p>
+
+<p>In a sportsman it would be most ungracious to
+inveigh against English weather. The very qualities
+one instinctively curses make possible the full
+and varied development of outdoor games, which
+Americans admire without stint. Our football
+teams do day labor to get fit, and then, after a
+game or so, the sport is nipped in the bud. To
+teach our oarsmen the rudiments of the stroke we
+resort to months of the galley-slavery of tank-rowing.
+Our track athletes begin their season in the
+dead of winter with the dreary monotony of wooden
+dumb-bells and pulley-weights, while the baseball
+men are learning to slide for bases in the cage.
+In England the gymnasium is happily unknown.
+Winter and summer alike the sportsman lives
+beneath the skies, and the sports are so diverse
+and so widely cultivated that any man, whatever
+his mental or physical capacity, finds suitable
+exercise that is also recreation.</p>
+
+<p>It is because of this universality of athletic
+sports that English training is briefer and less
+severe. The American makes, and is forced to
+make, a long and tedious business of getting fit,
+whereas an Englishman has merely to exercise
+and sleep a trifle more than usual, and this only
+for a brief period. Our oarsmen work daily from
+January to July, about six months, or did so before
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_149" id="Page_149">149</a></span>
+Mr. Lehmann brought English ideas among
+us; the English 'varsity crews row together nine
+or ten weeks. Our football players slog daily for
+six or seven weeks; English teams seldom or
+never "practice," and play at most two matches a
+week. Our track athletes are in training at frequent
+intervals throughout the college year, and
+are often at the training-table six weeks; in England
+six weeks is the maximum period of training,
+and the men as a rule are given only three days
+a week of exercise on the cinder-track. To an
+American training is an abnormal condition; to an
+Englishman it is the consummation of the normal.</p>
+
+<p>The moderation of English training is powerfully
+abetted by a peculiarity of the climate.
+The very dullness and depression that make exercise
+imperative also make it impossible to sustain
+much of it. The clear, bright American sky&mdash;the
+sky that renders it difficult for us to take
+the same delight in Italy as an Englishman takes,
+and leads us to prefer Ruskin's descriptions to
+the reality&mdash;cheers the American athlete; and
+the crispness of the atmosphere and its extreme
+variability keeps his nerves alert. An English
+athlete would go hopelessly stale on work that
+would scarcely key an American up to his highest
+pitch.
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_150" id="Page_150">150</a></span></p>
+
+<p>The effect of these differences on the temperament
+of the athlete is marked. The crispness and
+variety of our climate foster nervous vitality at
+the expense of physical vitality, while the equability
+of the English climate has the opposite
+effect. In all contests that require sustained
+effort&mdash;distance running and cross-country running,
+for example&mdash;we are in general far behind;
+while during the comparatively few years in which
+we have practiced athletic sports we have shown,
+on the whole, vastly superior form in all contests
+depending upon nervous energy&mdash;sprinting, hurdling,
+jumping, and weight-throwing.</p>
+
+<p>Because of these differences of climate and of
+temperament, no rigid comparisons can be made
+between English and American training; but it is
+probably true that English athletes tend to train
+too little. Mr. Horan, the president of the Cambridge
+team that ran against Yale at New Haven,
+said as much after a very careful study of American
+methods; but he was not convinced that our
+thoroughness is quite worth while. The law of
+diminishing returns, he said, applies to training as
+to other things, so that, after a certain point, very
+little is gained even for a great sacrifice of convenience
+and pleasantness. Our American athletes
+are twice as rigid in denying the spirit for
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_151" id="Page_151">151</a></span>
+an advantage, Mr. Horan admitted, of enough to
+win by.</p>
+
+<p>The remark is worth recording: it strikes the
+note of difference between English and American
+sportsmanship. After making all allowances for
+the conditions here and abroad that are merely
+accidental, one vital difference remains. For better
+or for worse, a sport is a sport to an Englishman,
+and whatever tends to make it anything else
+is not encouraged; as far as possible it is made
+pleasant, socially and physically. Contests are
+arranged without what American undergraduates
+call diplomacy; and they come off without jockeying.
+It is very seldom that an Englishman forgets
+that he is a man first and an athlete afterwards.
+Yet admirable as this quality is, it has its
+defects, at least to the transatlantic mind. Even
+more, perhaps, than others, Englishmen relish
+the joy of eating their hearts at the end of a
+contest, but they have no taste for the careful preparation
+that alone enables a man to fight out a
+finish to the best advantage. It is no doubt true,
+as the Duke of Wellington said, that the battle of
+Waterloo was won on the playing-fields of England;
+but for any inconsiderable sum I would agree
+to furnish a similar saying as to why the generals
+in South Africa ran into ambush after ambush.
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_152" id="Page_152">152</a></span></p>
+
+<p>In America, sportsmanship is almost a religion.
+Fellows mortify the flesh for months and leave no
+means untried that may help to bring honor to
+their college; or if they don't, public opinion
+brings swift and sure retribution. It is true that
+this leads to excesses. Rivalries are so strong that
+undergraduates have been known to be more than
+politic in arranging matches with each other. So
+the graduate steps in to moderate the ardor of
+emulation, and often ends by keeping alive ancient
+animosities long after they would have been
+forgotten in the vanishing generations of undergraduates.
+The Harvard eleven wants to play the
+usual football game; but it is not allowed to, because
+a committee of graduates sees fit to snub
+Yale; the athletic team wants to accept a challenge
+from Oxford and Cambridge, but it is not
+allowed to because Pennsylvania, which is not
+challenged, has a better team, and it is the policy
+of the university (which has an eye to its graduate
+schools) to ingratiate sister institutions. In a
+word, the undergraduates are left to manage their
+studies while the faculty manages their pastimes.</p>
+
+<p>When a contest is finally on, excesses are rampant.
+Of occasional brutalities too much has perhaps
+been said; but more serious errors are unreproved.
+There is a tradition that it is the duty of
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_153" id="Page_153">153</a></span>
+all non-athletes to inspire the 'varsity teams by
+cheering the play from the side lines; and from
+time to time one reads leading articles in the college
+papers exhorting men to back the teams.
+The spectator is thus given an important part in
+every contest, and after a 'varsity match he is
+praised or blamed, together with the members of
+the team, according to his deserts. Yale may outplay
+Harvard, but if Harvard sufficiently out-cheers
+Yale she wins, and to the rooters belong
+the praise. In baseball games especially, a season's
+championship is not infrequently decided by
+the fact that the partisans of one side are more
+numerous, or for other reasons make more noise.
+These are serious excesses, and are worthy of the
+pen of the robustest reformer; but after all has
+been said they are incidents, and in the slow
+course of time are probably disappearing.</p>
+
+<p>The signal fact is that our young men do what
+they do with the diligence of enthusiasm, and with
+the devotion that inspires the highest courage.
+It is not unknown that, in the bitterness of failure,
+American athletes have burst into tears. When
+our English cousins hear of this they are apt to
+smile, and doubtless the practice is not altogether
+to be commended; but in the length and breadth
+of a man's experience there are only two or three
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_154" id="Page_154">154</a></span>
+things one would wish so humbly as the devotion
+that makes it possible. Such earnestness
+is the quintessence of Americanism, and is probably
+to be traced to the signal fact that in the
+struggle of life we all start with a fighting chance
+of coming out on top. Whatever the game, so
+long as it is treated as a game, nothing could be as
+wholesome as the spirit that tends to make our
+young men play it for all it is worth, to do everything
+that can be done to secure victory with personal
+honor. In later years, when these men stand
+for the honor of the larger alma mater, on the field
+of battle or in the routine of administration, it is
+not likely that they will altogether forget the virtues
+of their youth.</p>
+
+<p>The superiority of English sportsmanship arises,
+not from the spirit of the men, but from the breadth
+of the development of the sports, and this, climate
+aside, is the result of the division of the university
+into colleges. The average college of only a hundred
+and fifty men maintains two football teams&mdash;a
+Rugby fifteen and an Association eleven&mdash;an
+eight and two torpids, a cricket eleven, and
+a hockey eleven. Each college has also a set of
+athletic games yearly. If we add the men who
+play golf, lawn and court tennis, rackets and fives,
+who swim, box, wrestle, and who shoot on the
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_155" id="Page_155">155</a></span>
+ranges of the gun club, the total of men schooled
+in competition reaches eighty to one hundred. A
+simple calculation will show that when so many are
+exercising daily, few are left for spectators. Not
+a bench is prepared, nor even a plank laid on the
+spongy English turf, to stand between the hanger-on
+and pneumonia. A man's place is in the field of
+strife; to take part in athletic contests is almost
+as much a matter of course as to bathe. Of late
+years there has been a tendency in England to believe
+that the vigor of undergraduates&mdash;and of all
+Englishmen, for the matter of that&mdash;is in decadence.
+As regards their cultivation of sports at
+least, the reverse is true. Contests are more numerous
+now than ever, and are probably more earnestly
+waged. What is called English decadence is in
+reality the increasing superiority of England's
+rivals.</p>
+
+<p>Quite aside from the physical and moral benefit
+to the men engaged, this multiplication of contests
+has a striking effect in lessening the importance of
+winning or losing any particular one of them. It
+is more powerful than any other factor in keeping
+English sports free from the excesses that have
+so often characterized our sports. From time to
+time a voice is raised in America as of a prophet
+of despair demanding the abolition of inter-university
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_156" id="Page_156">156</a></span>
+contests. As yet the contests have not
+been abolished, and do not seem likely to be.
+Might it not be argued without impertinence that
+the best means of doing away with the excesses in
+question is not to have fewer contests, but more of
+them? If our universities were divided into residential
+units, corresponding roughly to the English
+colleges, the excesses in particular contests
+could scarcely fail to be mitigated; and what is
+perhaps of still higher importance, the great body
+of non-athletes would be brought directly under
+the influence of all those strong and fine traditions
+of undergraduate life which centre in the spirit of
+sportsmanship.</p>
+
+<p>
+<span class="smcap">Note.</span> For a discussion of the influences of climate in international
+athletics, see <a href="#AppII">Appendix II</a>.</p>
+
+<p class="center p6 b1">III</p>
+
+<p class="center p2 b1">THE COLLEGE AS AN EDUCATIONAL
+FORCE
+</p>
+
+<p class="center p6">I</p>
+
+<p class="center">THE PASSMAN<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_159" id="Page_159">159</a></span></p>
+
+<p class="p2"><span class="dropcap">I</span><span class="smcap">n</span> the educational life of Oxford, as in the
+social and athletic life, the distinctive feature,
+at least to the American mind, is the duality
+of organization in consequence of which an
+undergraduate is amenable first to his college and
+then to the university: the college teaches and
+the university examines. In America, so far as the
+undergraduate is concerned, the college and the
+university are identical: the instructor in each
+course of lectures is also the examiner. It follows
+from this that whereas in America the degree is
+awarded on the basis of many separate examinations&mdash;one
+in each of the sixteen or more "courses"
+which are necessary for the degree&mdash;in England
+it is awarded on the basis of a single examination.
+For three or four years the college tutor labors
+with his pupil, and the result of his labors is
+gauged by an examination, set and judged by the
+university. This system is characteristic of both
+Cambridge and Oxford, and for that matter, of all
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_160" id="Page_160">160</a></span>
+English education; and the details of its organization
+present many striking contrasts to American
+educational methods.</p>
+
+<p>Sir Isaac Newton's happy thought of having a
+big hole in his door for the cat and a little hole for
+the kitten must have first been held up to ridicule
+by an American. In England, the land of classes,
+it could hardly fail of full sympathy. In America
+there is but one hole of exit, though men differ in
+their proportions as they go out through it. In
+England there are passmen and classmen.</p>
+
+<p>To say that the passman is the kitten would not
+be altogether precise. He is rather a distinct species
+of undergraduate. More than that, he is the
+historic species, tracing his origin quite without
+break to the primal undergraduate of the Middle
+Ages. He is a tradition from the time when the
+fund of liberal knowledge was so small that the
+university undertook to serve it all up in a pint-pot
+to whoever might apply. The pint-pot still
+exists at Oxford; and though the increasing knowledge
+of nine centuries long ago overflowed its
+brim, the passman still holds it forth trustfully to
+his tutor. The tutor patiently mingles in it an
+elixir compounded of as many educational simples
+as possible, and then the passman presents it to
+the examiners, who smile and dub him Bachelor
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_161" id="Page_161">161</a></span>
+of Arts. After three years, if he is alive and pays
+the sum of twelve pounds, they dub him Master.</p>
+
+<p>The system for granting the pass degree is, in
+its broader outlines, the same as for all degrees.
+In the first examination&mdash;that for matriculation&mdash;it
+is identical for passmen and classmen. This
+examination is called "responsions," and is, like its
+name, of mediæval origin. It is the equivalent of
+the American entrance examination; but by one
+of the many paradoxes of Oxford life it was for
+centuries required to be taken after the pupil had
+been admitted into residence in one of the colleges.
+In the early Middle Ages the lack of preparatory
+schools made it necessary first to catch your undergraduate.
+It was not until the nineteenth century
+that a man could take an equivalent test before
+coming up, for example at a public school; but it
+is now fast becoming the rule to do so; and it is
+probable that all colleges will soon require an
+entrance examination. In this way two or three
+terms more of a student's residence are devoted to
+preparation for the two later and severer university
+tests.</p>
+
+<p>The subjects required for matriculation are easy
+enough, according to our standards. Candidates
+offer: (1) The whole of arithmetic, and either (<i>a</i>)
+elementary algebra as far as simple equations involving
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_162" id="Page_162">162</a></span>
+two unknown quantities, or (<i>b</i>) the first
+two books of Euclid; (2) Greek and Latin grammar,
+Latin prose composition, and prepared translation
+from one Greek and one Latin book. The
+passages for prepared translation are selected from
+six possible Greek authors and five possible Latin
+authors. The influence of English colonial expansion
+is evident in the fact that candidates who
+are not "European British subjects" may by special
+permission offer classical Sanskrit, Arabic,
+or Pali as a substitute for either Greek or Latin:
+the dark-skinned Orientals, who are so familiar a
+part of Oxford life, are not denied the right to
+study the classics of their native tongues. Thus
+the election of subjects is a well-recognized part of
+responsions, though the scope of the election does
+not extend to science and the modern languages.</p>
+
+<p>Once installed in the college and matriculated
+in the university, both passman and honor man are
+examined twice and twice only. The first public
+examination, more familiarly called "moderations,"
+or "mods," takes place in the middle of an undergraduate's
+course. Here the passmen have only
+a single subject in common with the men seeking
+honors, namely, the examination in Holy Scripture,
+or the Rudiments of Faith and Religion,
+more familiarly called "Divinners," which is to
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_163" id="Page_163">163</a></span>
+say Divinities. The subject of the examination is
+the gospels of St. Luke and St. John in the Greek
+text; and either the Acts of the Apostles or the
+two books of Kings in the Revised Version. As
+in all Oxford examinations, cram-books abound
+containing a reprint of the questions put in recent
+examinations; and, as many of these questions
+recur from year to year, the student of Holy Scripture
+is advised to master them. A cram-book
+which came to my notice is entitled "The Undergraduate's
+Guide to the Rudiments of Faith and
+Religion," and contains, among other items of
+useful information: tables of the ten plagues; of
+the halting-places during the journey in the wilderness;
+of the twelve apostles; and of the seven
+deacons. The book recommends that the kings of
+Judah and Israel, the journeys of St. Paul, and
+the Thirty-nine Articles shall be committed to
+memory. The obviously pious author of this guide
+to the rudiments of these important accomplishments
+speaks thus cheerfully in his preface: "The
+compiler feels assured that if candidates will but
+follow the plan he has suggested, no candidate of
+even ordinary ability need have the least fear of
+failure." According to report, it is perhaps not
+so easy to acquire the rudiments of faith and religion.
+In a paper set some years ago, as one of
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_164" id="Page_164">164</a></span>
+the examiners informed me, a new and unexpected
+question was put: "Name the prophets and discriminate
+between the major and the minor." One
+astute passman wrote: "Far be it from me to
+make discriminations between these wise and holy
+men. The kings of Judah and Israel are as follows."
+Unless a man passes the examination, he
+has to take it again, and the fee to the examiner is
+one guinea. "This time I go through," exclaimed
+an often ploughed passman. "I need these guineas
+for cigars." Those who are not "European British
+subjects" may substitute certain sacred works in
+Sanskrit, Arabic, or Pali; and those who object
+for conscientious scruples to a study of the Bible
+may substitute the Phædo of Plato; but the sagacious
+undergraduate knows that if he does this he
+must have no conscientious scruples against harder
+work.</p>
+
+<p>In America there is no such examination, so far
+as I know. At Harvard an elective course in
+the history and literature of the Jews is given by
+the Semitic department; and if this does not
+insure success in acquiring the rudiments of faith
+and religion, it was, on one occasion at least, the
+means of redoubling the attendance at chapel.
+Just before the final examination, it transpired
+that the professor in charge of the course was conducting
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_165" id="Page_165">165</a></span>
+morning service, and was giving five minute
+summaries of Jewish history. For ten days
+the front pews were crowded with waistcoats of
+unwonted brilliance; the so-called sports who had
+taken the course as a snap were glad to grind it up
+under the very best auspices.</p>
+
+<p>Let me not be misunderstood. In the long run,
+the English undergraduates no doubt add greatly
+to their chances of spiritual edification. At the
+very least they gain a considerable knowledge of
+one of the great monuments of the world's literature.
+In America the Bible is much less read in
+families than in England, so that it would seem
+much more important to prescribe a course in Biblical
+history and literature. At one time Professor
+Child gave a course in Spenser and the English
+Bible, and is said to have been moved at times
+when reading before his classes to a truly Elizabethan
+access of tears. Some years before the
+great master died, he gave up the course in despair
+at the Biblical ignorance of his pupils. The usual
+Harvard undergraduate cannot name five of the
+prophets, with or without discrimination, or be certain
+of five of the kings of Judah. As I write this,
+I am painfully uncertain as to whether there were
+as many as five.</p>
+
+<p>But to return to our muttons. The remaining
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_166" id="Page_166">166</a></span>
+subjects for pass moderations are: (1) Portions of
+three classic authors, two Greek and one Latin, or
+two Latin and one Greek. The passages of each
+author to be studied are prescribed, but the candidate
+may elect, with certain slight limitations, from
+eight Greek and eight Latin authors "of the best
+age." As in the case of responsions and Holy
+Scripture, Sanskrit, Arabic, or Pali may be substituted
+for either Greek or Latin. The examination
+covers not only grammar and literature, but any
+question arising out of the text. Besides these are
+required: (2) Latin prose composition; (3) sight
+translation of Greek and Latin; and (4) either
+logic or the elements of geometry and algebra.</p>
+
+<p>The final pass examination allows a considerable
+range of election. Three general subjects must be
+offered. At least one of these must be chosen from
+the following: Greek, Latin, Sanskrit, Persian,
+German, and French. If a candidate wishes, he
+may choose two of his three subjects in ancient
+language, literature, and history, or in modern language,
+literature, history, and economics. The
+remaining one or two subjects may be chosen from
+a dozen courses ranging through the elements of
+mathematics, natural science, law, and theology.
+This range of choice is very different from that in
+America, in that a student is not permitted freely
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_167" id="Page_167">167</a></span>
+to elect subjects without reference to one another.
+For the pass degree, no considerable originality or
+grasp of the subject is necessary, any more than for
+an undistinguished degree in an American college;
+but the body of necessary facts is pretty sure to be
+well ordered, if not digested. The idea of grouping
+electives is the fundamental difference between
+English and American education. In the case of
+the honor man it will be seen to be of chief importance.</p>
+
+<p>In order to take the Oxford degree, it is further
+necessary to be in residence three years, and a man
+may reside four years before going up for his final
+examination. The period of study&mdash;or loafing&mdash;may
+be broken in various ways; and it is characteristic
+that though a man may anticipate his time
+and take his last examination before the last term
+of his third year, he is required to reside at the
+university, studies or no studies, until the minimum
+residence is completed. Nothing could indicate
+more clearly the importance which is attached to
+the merely social side of university life.</p>
+
+<p>It is, in fact, as a social being that the passman
+usually shines. You may know him most often
+from the fact that you sight him in the High by
+a waistcoat of many colors. At night he is apt
+to evade the statutes as to academicals; but if he
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_168" id="Page_168">168</a></span>
+wears his gown, he wraps it about his neck as if it
+were a muffler, and tilts his mortar-board at all
+angles. He is the genius of the fox terrier and
+the bulldog pipe; he rides to the hounds, and is
+apt in evading the vice-chancellor's regulations as
+to tandems and four-in-hands. Or perhaps he sits
+comfortably in his rooms discoursing lightly of the
+impious philosophies that are the studies of the
+classman, and writes Horatian verse for the "Isis"
+and the "Oxford Magazine." He does anything,
+in fact, that is well-bred, amusing, and not too
+strenuous. Curiously enough, it sometimes happens
+that he does sufficient reading on his own account
+to give him no little real culture. Of late
+there has been a reaction in favor of the pass
+school as affording a far better general education.</p>
+
+<p>If the passman loiters through the three or four
+years, it is mainly the fault&mdash;or the virtue&mdash;of
+the public school he comes from. Of late the best
+public schools have had so strong and admirable
+an influence that boys have often been kept in
+them by their parents until they reach the age
+limit, generally nineteen. By this time they have
+anticipated most of the studies required for a pass
+degree in the university, and find little or nothing
+to do when they go up but to evade their tutors
+and to "reside." It is by this means, as the satirist
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_169" id="Page_169">169</a></span>
+long ago explained, that Oxford has become an
+institution of such great learning. Every freshman
+brings to it a little knowledge and no graduate
+takes any away.</p>
+
+<p>There is reason in all this. In the first place,
+as I have said, the passman is the historical undergraduate,
+and little short of a convulsion could
+disestablish him&mdash;that is the best of British reasons.
+Moreover, to be scrupulously just, the passman
+knows quite as much as the American student
+who barely takes a degree by cramming a
+few hours with a venal tutor before each of his
+many examinations, and perhaps more than the
+larger proportion of German students who confine
+their serious interests to the duel and the Kneipe,
+and never graduate. And then, the Oxonian
+argues amiably, if it were not for the pass schools,
+the majority of the passmen would not come to
+Oxford at all, and would spend their impressionable
+period in some place of much less amenity.
+Clearly, they learn all that is necessary for a gentleman
+to know, and are perhaps kept from a
+great deal that is dangerous to young fellows with
+money and leisure. It means much to the aristocracy
+and nobility of England that, whatever their
+ambitions and capacities, they are encouraged by
+the pursuit of a not too elusive A.B. to stay four
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_170" id="Page_170">170</a></span>
+years in the university. Even the ambitious student
+profits by the arrangement. Wherever his
+future may lie, in the public service, in law, medicine,
+or even the church, it is of advantage to know
+men of birth and position&mdash;of far greater advantage,
+from the common sensible English point of
+view, than to have been educated in an atmosphere
+of studious enthusiasm and exact scholarship.
+</p>
+
+<p class="center p6">II</p>
+
+<p class="center">THE HONOR SCHOOLS<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_171" id="Page_171">171</a></span></p>
+
+<p class="p2"><span class="dropcap">T</span><span class="smcap">he</span> modern extension of the world's knowledge,
+with the corresponding advance in
+educational requirements, which are perhaps the
+most signal results of the nineteenth century,
+could not fail to exert a powerful influence on all
+university teaching. In the United States, the
+monument to its influence is the elective system.
+In England, it is the honor schools. Both countries
+felt the inadequacy of the antique pint-pot
+of learning. The democratic New World has not
+dreamed of making a sharp distinction between
+the indifferent and the ambitious. Under the
+lead of the scientific spirit of the German universities,
+it has placed the noblest branches of
+human knowledge on a par with the least twig of
+science. With characteristic conservatism England
+kept the old pint-pot for the unscholarly, to
+whom its contents are still of value, though extending
+its scope to suit the changing spirit of the
+age; and for those who felt the new ambitions
+it made new pint-pots, each one of which should
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_172" id="Page_172">172</a></span>
+contain the essence gathered from a separate field
+of learning. The new pint-pots are the honor
+schools, and the children of the new ambition are
+the honor men.</p>
+
+<p>The honor schools of Oxford are eight in number.
+Here again the English conservatism is
+evident. The oldest of them, literæ humaniores,
+which was at first the only honor school, has
+for its subject-matter a thorough view of classical
+language, literature, and thought. It is an
+<i>édition de luxe</i> of the old pass school. Because
+of the nobility of its proportions, it is familiarly
+called "greats," and it justifies its name by
+enrolling almost half of all Oxford candidates
+for the honor degree. An overwhelming majority
+of famous Oxford graduates have taken their
+degree in "greats." The other schools are sometimes
+known as the minor schools. Mathematics
+was originally a part of the school in literæ humaniores,
+but was soon made into a separate
+school. Since then schools have been established
+in six new subjects&mdash;natural science, jurisprudence,
+modern history, theology, Oriental studies,
+and English. Under our elective system, a student
+continues through his four years, choosing
+each year at random, or as the fates decree, this,
+that, or the other brief "course." Under the
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_173" id="Page_173">173</a></span>
+honor system a man decides sooner or later which
+one of the several branches he most desires, and
+sets out to master it.</p>
+
+<p>An Oxford man's decision may be made at the
+outset; but far the larger number of men defer
+the choice. They do this by reading for moderations,
+for pass moderations as well as honor mods
+may be followed by an honor school at finals.
+The subject-matter for honor mods is, roughly
+speaking, the same as for pass mods&mdash;the classics
+and kindred studies; but the field covered is considerably
+more extended, and to take a high class
+the student is required to exhibit in his examination
+papers no little grasp of the subjects as a
+whole, and if possible to develop his own individuality
+in the process. Having done with moderations,
+an honor man is forced to choose a final
+school. The logical sequence of honor mods is
+literæ humaniores; but one may choose instead
+modern history, theology, Oriental studies, or
+English.</p>
+
+<p>The men who commit themselves to a choice at
+the outset are those who go in for science or jurisprudence.
+These men begin by reading for a
+form of moderations known as science preliminaries
+or jurisprudence preliminaries.</p>
+
+<p>The exact sequence of examinations is fixed only
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_174" id="Page_174">174</a></span>
+by common sense. The school of history is open
+to those who have taken pass mods, and even to
+those who have taken the jurisprudence preliminary,
+though mods is usually preferred in order to
+give a man the use of the necessary languages. If
+a science man's chief work is to be in astronomy
+or physics, which require some mathematics, he
+may take the mathematical mods, and devote only
+the second half of his course to science.</p>
+
+<p>Even after a man has chosen his subject and
+begun to work on it with his tutor, there is considerable
+range of election. As classical mods are
+supposed to cover all the subjects essential to
+polite education, election is mainly a question as
+to the ancient authors read. If a man knows what
+final school he is to enter, he may choose his
+authors accordingly. Thus, a history man chooses
+the ancient historians; a man who intends to enter
+the school in English literature, the ancient poets
+and dramatists. In addition to such authors, all
+candidates for classical mods choose, according to
+their future needs, one of four subjects: the history
+of classical literature, comparative classical
+philology, classical archæology, and logic. The
+preliminary examinations in natural science and
+in jurisprudence are concerned with a general
+view of the field, and thus do not admit of much
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_175" id="Page_175">175</a></span>
+variation, whatever the branch to be pursued later;
+and the same is true of mathematical moderations.
+A man who chooses any one of these three honor
+schools has made the great choice of bidding
+good-by to the classics.</p>
+
+<p>In the final schools the range of choice is greater
+than at moderations, and is greater in some schools
+than in others. Literæ humaniores offers the
+least scope for election. The reason is that the
+subject-matter is a synthetic view of the classic
+world entire. Still, in so vast a field, a student
+perforce selects, laying emphasis on those aspects
+of the ancient world which he considers (or which
+he expects the examining board to consider) of
+most interest and importance. It has been objected
+even at Oxford that such a course of study
+gives a student little or no training in exact scholarship.
+The examination statutes accordingly give
+a choice of one among no less than forty special
+subjects, the original sources of which a man may
+thresh out anew in the hope of adding his iota to
+the field of science; and, on six months' notice, a
+student may, under approval, select a subject of
+his own. The unimportance of this part of the
+"greats" curriculum is evident in the fact that it
+is recommended, not required.</p>
+
+<p>The history school requires the student to cover
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_176" id="Page_176">176</a></span>
+the constitutional and political history of England
+entire, political science and economy, with economic
+history, constitutional law, and political and descriptive
+geography. It also requires a special
+subject "carefully studied with reference to the
+original authorities," and a period of general history.
+If a student does not aim at a first or second
+class at graduation, he may omit certain parts
+of all this. In any case, he has to choose from
+the general history of the modern world one special
+period for a more detailed examination. In the
+school of natural science, the student, after filling
+in the broad outlines of the subject for his preliminary,
+must choose for his final examination
+one of the following seven subjects: physics, chemistry,
+animal physiology, zoölogy, botany, geology,
+and astronomy. Besides the written examination,
+a "practical" examination of three hours is required
+to show the student's ability at laboratory
+work. These three honor schools are the most
+important, and may be regarded as representative.
+After a man has taken one honor degree, for
+example, in literæ humaniores, he may take another,
+for example, in modern history. He then
+becomes a double honor man, and if he has got a
+first class in both schools, he is a "double first."</p>
+
+<p>In America, the election of studies goes by fragmentary
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_177" id="Page_177">177</a></span>
+subjects, and the degree is awarded for
+passing some four such subjects a year, the whole
+number being as disconnected, even chaotic, as the
+student pleases or as chance decrees. In England,
+the degree is granted for final proficiency in a
+coherent and well-balanced course of study; but
+within this not unreasonable limit there is the
+utmost freedom of election. The student first
+chooses what honor school he shall pursue, and
+then chooses the general lines along which he shall
+pursue it.
+</p>
+
+<p class="center p6">III</p>
+
+<p class="center">THE TUTOR<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_178" id="Page_178">178</a></span></p>
+
+<p class="p2"><span class="dropcap">I</span><span class="smcap">n</span> preparing for his two "public examinations,"
+the pupil is solely in the hands of a college
+tutor. Any familiar account of the Oxford don is
+apt to make him appear to the American, and especially
+to the German mind, a sufficiently humble
+person. His first duty is the very unprofessional
+one of making newcomers welcome. He invites
+his pupils to breakfast and to dinner, and introduces
+them to their fellows so that they shall enter
+easily into the life of the college; he tells them
+to go in for one or another of the various undergraduate
+activities. As a teacher, moreover, his
+position is strikingly similar to that of the venal
+tutors in our universities, who amiably keep lame
+ducks from halting, and temper the frost of the
+examination period to gilded grasshoppers. It is
+all this that makes the American scholar so apt to
+smile at the tutor, and the German, perhaps, to
+sniff. The tutor is not easily put down. If he
+replies with anything more than a British silence,
+it is to say that after all education cannot be quite
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_179" id="Page_179">179</a></span>
+dissociated from a man's life among his fellows.
+And then there is the best of all English reasons
+why the tutor should think well of his vocation: it
+is approved by custom and tradition. Newman,
+Pusey, Jowett, Pater, Stubbs, Lang, and many
+such were tutors, and they thought it well worth
+while to spend the better part of each day with
+their pupils.</p>
+
+<p>Homely as are the primary duties of the tutor,
+it is none the less necessary that certain information
+should be imparted. The shadow of the
+examiners looms across the path twice in the three
+or four years of an undergraduate's life. There
+is no dodging it: in order to get a degree, certain
+papers must be written and well written. Here
+is where the real dignity of the tutor resides, the
+attribute that distinguishes him from all German
+and American teachers. He is responsible to the
+college that his pupils shall acquit themselves well
+before the examiners,&mdash;that the reputation of the
+college shall be maintained. By the same token,
+the examiners are responsible to the university
+that its degrees shall be justly awarded, so that
+the course of education in England is a struggle
+of tutor against examiner. In Germany and in
+America, an instructor is expected to be a master
+of his subject; he may be or may not be&mdash;and
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_180" id="Page_180">180</a></span>
+usually is not&mdash;a teacher. In England, a tutor
+may be a scholar, and often is not. His success
+is measured first and foremost by the excellence of
+the papers his pupils write. Is Donkin of Balliol
+a good tutor? Well, rather, he has got more firsts
+than any don in Oxford; by which is meant of
+course that his pupils have got the firsts. A college
+is rated partly by its number of blues and
+partly by its number of firsts. For a tutor to lead
+his pupils to success is as sacred a duty as for an
+athletic undergraduate to play for the university.
+The leisurely, not to say loafing, tutor of eighteenth-century
+tradition has been reformed out of
+existence. If the modern tutor fails of any high
+attainment as a scholar, it is mainly because he is
+required to be a very lively, strenuous, and efficient
+leader of youth.</p>
+
+<p>The means by which the tutor conducts his
+charges in the narrow path to success in the schools
+are characteristic. The secret lies in gaining the
+good-will of the pupil. Thus any breakfasts,
+luncheons, and dinners that the hospitable tutor
+gives to his pupils while they are learning the
+ways of the place are bread cast upon the waters
+in a very literal sense. For a decent fellow to
+neglect the just wishes of a teacher to whom he is
+indebted is easy enough on occasions; but systematically
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_181" id="Page_181">181</a></span>
+to shirk a genuine debt of gratitude without
+losing caste with one's self requires supreme
+ingenuity. If you don't want to get into the
+clutches of your tutor, don't take the least chance
+of getting to like him. This is the soundest advice
+ever given by the wary upper classman. It
+has not been ordained by nature that the soul of
+the teacher is sib to the soul of the taught, but
+clearly, by exercising the humanities, the irrepressible
+conflict may be kept within bounds.</p>
+
+<p>Sometimes harsher measures are necessary.
+Then a man is sent up to the Head of the college,
+which is not at all a promotion. One fellow used
+to tell a story of how Jowett, the quondam master
+of Balliol, chastised him. When he reported, the
+Master was writing, and merely paused to say:
+"Sit down, Mr. Barnes, you are working with Mr.
+Donkin, are you not?" The culprit said he was,
+and sat down. Jowett wrote on, page after page,
+while the undergraduate fidgeted. Finally Jowett
+looked up and remarked: "Mr. Donkin says you
+are not. Good-morning." After that the undergraduate
+was more inclined to work with Mr.
+Donkin.</p>
+
+<p>For graver offenses a man is imprisoned within
+the paradise behind the college walls&mdash;"gated,"
+the term is. One fellow I knew&mdash;a third year
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_182" id="Page_182">182</a></span>
+man who roomed out of college&mdash;was obliged to
+lodge in the rooms of the dean, Mr. J. L. Strachan
+Davidson. The two turned out excellent
+friends. No one could be altogether objectionable,
+the undergraduate explained, whose whiskey
+and tobacco were as good as the dean's. In extreme
+cases a man may be sent down, but if this
+happens, he must either have the most unfortunate
+of dispositions, or the skin of a rhinoceros against
+tact and kindness.</p>
+
+<p>It is by similar means that the don maintains
+his intellectual ascendency. Nothing is more foreign
+to Oxford than an assumption of pedagogic
+authority. Mr. Hilaire Belloc, who is now not
+unknown in London as a man of letters, used to
+tell of a memorable encounter with Jowett. Mr.
+Belloc was holding forth in his vein of excellent
+enthusiasm with regard to his countrymen. For a
+long time Jowett listened with courteously qualified
+assent, but finally said: "Mr. Belloc, do you
+know the inscription which is said to stand above
+the gate to Hell?" Mr. Belloc was ready with
+the familiar line from Dante. "No, Mr. Belloc,
+<i>Ici on parle français</i>." The oratory of even a
+president of the Oxford Union broke down in
+laughter. Under such a system a mutual confidence
+increases day by day between teacher and
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_183" id="Page_183">183</a></span>
+taught, which may end in a comradeship more intimate
+than that between father and son.</p>
+
+<p>Our universities are fast adopting the German
+or pseudo-German idea that an advanced education
+consists merely in mastering the subject one
+may choose to pursue. The point of departure is
+the "course." If we gain the acquaintance of
+Lowell or Longfellow, Agassiz, Child, or Norton,
+we have to thank our lucky stars. In England,
+the social relationship is the basis of the system
+of instruction.
+</p>
+
+<p class="center p6">IV</p>
+
+<p class="center">READING FOR EXAMINATIONS<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_184" id="Page_184">184</a></span></p>
+
+<p class="p2"><span class="dropcap">H</span><span class="smcap">ow</span> easy is the course of Oxford discipline
+on the whole is evident in the regulations
+as to the times for taking the examinations. The
+earliest date when a man may go up for moderations
+is his fifth term after matriculation. As
+there are four terms a year, this earliest date falls
+at the outset of his second year. For a passman
+there is apparently no time beyond which it is forbidden
+to take mods, or finals either. An honor
+man may repeat his attempts at mods until eight
+terms are gone&mdash;two full and pleasant years; that
+is, he may take mods in any of three terms&mdash;almost
+an entire year. For finals he may go up as
+early as his eleventh term, and as late as his sixteenth&mdash;giving
+a latitude of more than a year. If
+he wishes to take a final examination in a second
+subject, he may do so up to his twentieth term.
+Clearly, the pupil's work is done without pressure
+other than the personal influence of the tutor.
+When an American student fails to pass his examinations
+on the hour, he is disclassed and put on
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_185" id="Page_185">185</a></span>
+probation, the penalty of which is that he cannot
+play on any of the athletic teams. On this point,
+at least, the Oxford system of discipline is not the
+less childish of the two.</p>
+
+<p>As to the nature of the work done, it is aptly
+expressed in the Oxford term, "reading." The
+aim is not merely to acquire facts. From week to
+week the tutor is apt to meet his pupils, and especially
+the less forward ones, in familiar conversation,
+often over a cup of tea and a cigarette. He
+listens to the report of what the pupil has lately
+been reading, asks questions to see how thoroughly
+he has comprehended it, and advises him
+as to what to read next. When there are several
+pupils present, the conference becomes general,
+and thus of greater advantage to all. In the discussions
+that arise, opposing views are balanced,
+phrases are struck out and fixed in mind, and the
+sum of the pupil's knowledge is given order and
+consistency. The best tutors consciously aim at
+such a result, for it makes all the difference between
+a brilliant and a dull examination paper,
+and the examiners highly value this difference.</p>
+
+<p>The staple of tutorial instruction is lectures. In
+the old days the colleges were mutually exclusive
+units, each doing the entire work of instruction
+for its pupils. This arrangement was obviously
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_186" id="Page_186">186</a></span>
+wasteful, in that it presupposed a complete and
+adequate teaching force in each of the twenty
+colleges. Latterly, a system of "intercollegiate
+lectures" has been devised, under which a tutor
+lectures only on his best subjects and welcomes
+pupils from other colleges. These intercollegiate
+tutorial lectures are quite like lecture courses at an
+American college, except that they are not used as
+a means of police regulation. Attendance is not
+compulsory, and there are no examinations. A man
+issues from the walls of his college for booty, and
+comes back with what he thinks he can profit by.</p>
+
+<p>The importance of the university examinations
+is thus proportionate to their rarity. The examiners
+are chosen from the best available members
+of the teaching force of the university; they are
+paid a very considerable salary, and the term of
+service is of considerable length. The preparation
+for the examination, at least as regards honor
+men, has a significance impossible under our system.
+Matters of fact are regarded mainly as
+determining whether a man shall or shall not get
+his degree; the class he receives&mdash;there are four
+classes&mdash;depends on his grasp of facts and upon
+the aptitude of his way of writing. No man can
+get either a first or a second class whose knowledge
+has not been assimilated into his vitals, and
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_187" id="Page_187">187</a></span>
+who has not attained in some considerable degree
+the art of expression in language.</p>
+
+<p>One of the incidents of reading is a set of
+examinations set by the colleges severally. They
+take place three times a year, at the end of each
+term, and are called collections&mdash;apparently from
+the fact that at this time certain college fees used
+to be collected from the students. The papers are
+set by the dons, and as is the case with all tutorial
+exercises, the results have nothing at all to do with
+the class a man receives in the public examinations&mdash;mods
+and finals. I was surprised to find that
+it was rather the rule to crib; and my inquiries
+disclosed a very characteristic state of affairs. One
+man, who was as honorable in all respects as most
+fellows, related how he had been caught cribbing.
+His tutor took the crib and examined it carefully.
+"Quite right," he said. "In fact, excellent. Don't
+be at any pains to conceal it. By the finals, of
+course, you will have to carry all these things in
+your head; at present, all we want to know is
+how well you can write an examination paper."
+The emphasis as to the necessity of knowing how
+to write was quite as genuine as the sarcasm. These
+examinations have a further interest to Americans.
+They are probably a debased survival of examinations
+which in centuries past were a police regulation
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_188" id="Page_188">188</a></span>
+to test a student's diligence, and thus had
+some such relation to a degree as our hour examinations,
+midyears, and finals. In other words,
+they suggest a future utility for our present midyears
+and finals, if ever a genuine honor examination
+is made requisite for an American honor
+degree.</p>
+
+<p>For the greater part of his course, an undergraduate's
+reading is by no means portentous. It
+was Dr. Johnson, if I am not mistaken, whose aim
+was "five good hours a day." At Oxford, this is
+the maximum which even a solid reading man requires
+of himself. During term time most men
+do much less, for here is another of the endlessly
+diverting Oxford paradoxes: passman and classman
+alike aim to do most of their reading in vacations.
+As usual, a kernel of common sense may
+be found. If the climate of England is as little
+favorable to a strenuous intellectual life as it is
+to strenuous athleticisms, the climate of Oxford is
+the climate of England to the <i>n</i>th power. A man's
+intellectual machinery works better at home in the
+country. And even as the necessity of relaxation
+is greater at Oxford, so is the chance of having
+fun and of making good friends&mdash;of growing used
+to the ways of the world of men. The months at
+the university are the heyday of life. The home
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_189" id="Page_189">189</a></span>
+friends and the home sports are the same yesterday
+and forever. The university clearly recognizes all
+this. It rigidly requires a man to reside at Oxford
+a certain definite time before graduation; but how
+and when he studies and is examined, it leaves
+to his own free choice. A man reads enough
+at Oxford to keep in the current of tutorial
+instruction, and to get on the trail of the books
+to be wrestled with in vacation.
+</p>
+
+<p class="center p6">V</p>
+
+<p class="center">THE EXAMINATION<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_190" id="Page_190">190</a></span></p>
+
+<p class="p2"><span class="dropcap">W</span><span class="smcap">hen</span> mods and finals approach, the tune
+is altered. Weeks and months together
+the fellows dig and dig, morning, noon, and night.
+All sport and recreation is now regarded only as
+sustaining the vital forces for the ordeal. Sometimes,
+in despair at the distractions of Oxford life,
+knots of fellow sufferers form reading parties, gain
+permission to take a house together in the country,
+and draw up a code of terrible penalties against
+the man who suggests a turn at whist, the forbidden
+cup, or a trip to town. From the simplest
+tutorial cram-book to the profoundest available
+monograph, no page is left unturned. And this
+is only half. The motto of Squeers is altered.
+When a man knows a thing, he goes and writes it.
+Passages apt for quotation are learned by rote;
+phrases are polished until they are luminous;
+periods are premeditated; paragraphs and sections
+prevised. An apt epigram turns up in talk or in
+reading&mdash;the wary student jots it down, polishes
+it to a point, and keeps it in ambush to dart it at
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_191" id="Page_191">191</a></span>
+this or that possible question. One man I knew
+was electrified with Chaucer's description of the
+Sergeant of the Law,&mdash;</p>
+
+<p class="blockquot">
+No wher so bisy a man as he ther nas,<br />
+And yet he semed bisier than he was;&mdash;
+</p>
+
+<p>and fell into despair because he could not think of
+any historical personage in his subject-matter to
+whom it might aptly apply. On the other hand,
+there was Alfred the Great, whose character was
+sure to be asked for. Did I know any line of
+Chaucer that would hit off Alfred the Great? So
+unusual to quote Chaucer.</p>
+
+<p>All this sort of thing has, of course, its limits.
+In the last days of preparation, the brains are few
+that do not reel under their weight of sudden
+knowledge; the minds are rare that are not dazzled
+by their own unaccustomed brilliance. The superlatively
+trained athlete knocks off for a day or two
+before an important contest&mdash;and perhaps has a
+dash at the flesh-pots by way of relaxing tension
+from the snapping point. So does the over-read
+examinee. He goes home to his sisters and his
+aunts, and to all the soothing wholesomeness of
+English country life.</p>
+
+<p>And then that terrible week of incessant examinations!
+All the facts and any degree of style
+will fail to save a man unless he has every resource
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_192" id="Page_192">192</a></span>
+ready at command. No athletic contest, perhaps
+no battle, could be a severer test of courage. Life
+does not depend upon the examination, but a living
+may. In America, degrees are more and more
+despised; but in England, it still pays to disarrange
+the alphabet at the end of one's name, or
+to let it be known to a prospective employer that
+one is a first-class honor man. The nature of the
+young graduate's employment and his salary too
+have a pretty close correspondence with his class
+at graduation. If he can add a blue to a first, the
+world is his oyster. The magnitude of the issue
+makes the examinee&mdash;or breaks him. Brilliant
+and laborious students too often come off with a
+bare third, and happy audacity has as often brought
+the careless a first. It may seem that the ordeal
+is unnecessarily severe; but even here the reason
+may be found, if it be only granted that the aim
+of a university is to turn out capable men. The
+honor examination requires some knowledge, more
+address, and most of all pluck&mdash;pluck or be
+plucked, as the Cambridge phrase is; and these
+things in this order are what count in the life of
+the British Empire.
+</p>
+
+<p class="center p6">VI</p>
+
+<p class="center">OXFORD QUALITIES AND THEIR DEFECTS<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_193" id="Page_193">193</a></span></p>
+
+<p class="p2"><span class="dropcap">U</span><span class="smcap">nder</span> the German-American system, the
+main end is scholarly training. Our graduates
+are apt to have the Socratic virtue of knowing
+how little they know&mdash;and perhaps not much besides.
+Even for the scholar this knowledge is not
+all. Though the English undergraduate is not
+taught to read manuscripts and decipher inscriptions&mdash;to
+trace out knowledge in its sources&mdash;the
+examination system gives him the breadth of view
+and mental grasp which are the only safe foundations
+of scholarship. If he contributes to science,
+he usually does so after he has left the university.
+The qualities which then distinguish him are rare
+among scholars&mdash;sound common sense and catholicity
+of judgment. Such qualities, for instance,
+enabled an Oxford classical first to recognize Schliemann's
+greatness while yet the German universities
+could only see that he was not an orthodox researcher
+according to their standards. If a man
+were bent on obtaining the best possible scholarly
+training, he probably could not do better than to
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_194" id="Page_194">194</a></span>
+take an English B. A. and then a German or an
+American Ph.D. As for the world of deeds and
+of men, the knowledge which is power is that
+which is combined with address and pluck; and
+the English system seems based on practical sense,
+in that it lays chief stress on producing this rare
+combination.</p>
+
+<p>To attribute to the honor schools the success
+with which Englishmen have solved the problems
+of civic government and colonial administration
+would be to ignore a multitude of contributory
+causes; but the honor schools are highly characteristic
+of the English system, and are responsible
+for no small part of its success. A striking illustration
+of this may be seen in the part which the
+periodical press plays in public affairs. In America,
+nothing is rarer than a writer who combines
+broad information with the power of clear and
+convincing expression. The editor of any serious
+American publication will bear me out in the
+observation that, notwithstanding the multitude of
+topics of the deepest and most vital interest, it is
+difficult to find any one to treat them adequately;
+and any reader can satisfy himself on this point
+by comparing the best of our periodicals with the
+leading English reviews. Now the writing of a
+review article requires nothing more nor less than
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_195" id="Page_195">195</a></span>
+the writing of a first-class examination paper, even
+to the element of pluck; for to marshal the full
+forces of the mind in the pressure of public life
+or of journalism requires self-command in a very
+high degree. The same thing is as obvious in the
+daily papers. The world is filled with English
+newspaper men who combine with reportorial training
+the power of treating a subject briefly and tellingly
+in its broadest relations.</p>
+
+<p>The public advantage of this was not long ago
+very aptly exemplified. When our late war suddenly
+brought us face to face with the fact that
+our national destiny had encountered the destinies
+of the great nations of the world, the most thoughtful
+people were those who felt most doubt and
+uncertainty; the more one considered, the less
+could one say just what he thought. At that
+crisis a very clear note was sounded. The London
+correspondents of our papers&mdash;Englishmen, and
+for the most part honor men&mdash;presented the issue
+to us from British and imperialistic point of view
+with a vigor and conviction that had immediate
+effect, as we all remember, and gave the larger
+part of the nation a new view of the crisis, and a
+new name for it. It was not until weeks later that
+our own most thoughtful writers as a body perceived
+the essential difference between our position
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_196" id="Page_196">196</a></span>
+and that of Great Britain, and we have scarcely
+yet discarded the word "imperialism." The knowledge,
+address, and pluck&mdash;or shall we call it
+audacity?&mdash;of the English correspondents enabled
+them to make a stroke of state policy. This is
+only one of many citable instances.</p>
+
+<p>To the robustious intelligence of the honor man,
+it must be admitted, the finer enthusiasm of scientific
+culture is likely to be a sealed book. The
+whole system of education is against it. Even if
+a student is possessed by the zeal for research, few
+tutors, in their pursuit of firsts, scruple to discourage
+it. "That is an extremely interesting
+point, but it will not count for schools." One student
+in a discussion with his tutor quoted a novel
+opinion of Schwegler's, and was confuted with the
+remark, "Yes, but that is the German view." It
+is this tutor who is reported to have remarked:
+"What I like about my subject is that when you
+know it you know it, and there's an end of it."
+His subject was that tangle of falsehood and misconception
+called history. It must, of course, be
+remembered in extenuation that with all his social
+and tutorial duties, the don is very hard worked.
+And considering the pressure of the necessary preparation
+for schools, the temptation to shun the
+byways is very great.
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_197" id="Page_197">197</a></span></p>
+
+<p>The examining board for each school is elected
+by the entire faculty of that school from its own
+members; and though it is scarcely possible for an
+unscrupulous examiner to frame the questions to
+suit his own pupils, there is nothing to prevent the
+tutor from framing his pupils' knowledge to meet
+the presumptive demands of the examiners. "We
+shall have to pay particular attention to Scottish
+history, for Scotus is on the board, and that is his
+hobby." In the school of literæ humaniores, no
+one expects either pupil or tutor to go far into
+textual criticism, philology, or archæology. These
+branches are considered only as regards their results.
+In history, a special subject has to be studied
+with reference to its original sources, but its relative
+importance is small, and a student is discouraged
+from spending much time on it. Stubbs's
+"Select Charters" are the only original documents
+required, and even with regard to these all conclusions
+are cut and dried.</p>
+
+<p>To be sure there is a science school, but few men
+elect it, and it is in distinctly bad odor. In the
+slang of the university it is known as "stinks,"
+and its laboratories as "stink shops." One must
+admit that its unpopularity is deserved. As it is
+impossible that each of the twenty colleges should
+have complete apparatus, the laboratories are maintained
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_198" id="Page_198">198</a></span>
+by the university, and not well maintained,
+for the wealth of Oxford is mainly in the coffers
+of the colleges. The whole end of laboratory work
+at Oxford is to prepare the student for a "practical
+examination" of some three hours. The Linacre
+professor has made many strenuous efforts,
+and has delivered much pointed criticism, but he
+has not yet been able to place the school on a
+modern or a rational basis. In his nostrils, perhaps,
+more than those of the university, the school
+of science is unsavory.</p>
+
+<p>Many subjects of the highest practical importance
+are entirely ignored. No advanced instruction
+is offered in modern languages and literatures
+except English, and the school in English is only
+six years old and very small. No one of the technical
+branches that are coming to be so prominent
+a part of American university life is as yet recognized.</p>
+
+<p>The Oxford honor first knows what he knows
+and sometimes he knows more. Few things are as
+distressing as the sciolism of a second-rate English
+editor of a classic. The mint sauce quite forgets
+that it is not Lamb. The English minor reviewer
+exhibits the pride of intellect in its purest form.
+The don perhaps intensifies these amiable foibles.
+There is an epigram current in Oxford which the
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_199" id="Page_199">199</a></span>
+summer guide will tell you Jowett wrote to celebrate
+his own attainments:&mdash;</p>
+
+<p class="blockquot">
+Here I am, my name is Jowett;<br />
+<span class="i1">I am the master of Balliol College.</span><br />
+All there is to know, I know it.<br />
+<span class="i1">What I know not is not knowledge.</span>
+</p>
+
+<p>This is clearly a satire written against Jowett, and
+it would be more clearly a legitimate satire if
+aimed at the generality of dons.
+</p>
+
+<p class="center p6">VII</p>
+
+<p class="center">THE UNIVERSITY AND REFORM<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_200" id="Page_200">200</a></span></p>
+
+<p class="p2"><span class="dropcap">T</span><span class="smcap">his</span> tale of Oxford shortcomings is no news
+to the English radical. The regeneration
+of the university has long been advocated. On the
+one hand, the reformers have tried to make it possible,
+as it was in the Middle Ages, to live and
+study at Oxford without being attached to any
+of the colleges; on the other, they have tried to
+bring into the educational system such modern
+subjects and methods of study as are cultivated in
+Germany, where the new branches have been
+so admirably grafted on the mediæval trunk. In
+general it must be said that Oxford is becoming
+more democratic and even more studious; but the
+advance has come in spite of the constitution of the
+university. All studied attempts at reform have
+proved almost ludicrously futile.</p>
+
+<p>In order to combat the monopoly of the colleges,
+and to build up a body of more serious students
+without their walls, a new order of "unattached"
+students was created. The experiment has no
+doubt been interesting, but it cannot be said that
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_201" id="Page_201">201</a></span>
+it has revived the glorious democracy and the intellectual
+enthusiasm of the mediæval university.
+Few things could be lonelier, or more profitless
+intellectually, than the lot of the unattached students.
+Excluded by the force of circumstances
+from the life of the colleges, they have no more
+real life of their own than the socially unaffiliated
+in American universities. They have been forced
+to imitate the organization of the colleges. They
+lunch and dine one another as best they can, hold
+yearly a set of athletic games, and place a boat in
+the college bumping races. They have thus come
+to be precisely like any of the colleges, except that
+they have none of the felicities, social or intellectual,
+that come from life within walls.</p>
+
+<p>From time to time the introduction of new honor
+schools is proposed to keep pace with modern learning.
+A long-standing agitation in favor of a school
+in modern languages was compromised by the
+founding of the school in English; but it is not
+yet downed, and before the century is over may
+yet rise to smite conservatism. Coupled with this
+there is an ever-increasing desire to cultivate research.
+As yet these agitations have had about
+as much effect as the kindred agitation that led to
+the rehabilitation of the unattached student.</p>
+
+<p>The Bodleian Library is a treasure chest of the
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_202" id="Page_202">202</a></span>
+rarest of old books and of unexplored documents;
+but nothing in the Bod counts for schools, and so
+the shadow of an undergraduate darkens the door
+only when he is showing off the university to his
+sisters&mdash;and to other fellows'. When I applied
+for permission to read, the fact that I wore a commoner's
+gown, as I was required to by statute
+while reading there, almost excluded me. If I
+had been after knowledge useful in the schools,
+no doubt I should have been obliged to consult a
+choice collection of well-approved books across the
+way in the camera of the Radcliffe. In America,
+a serious student is welcome to range in the stack,
+and to take such books as he needs to his own
+rooms. Some few researchers come to the Bodleian
+from the world without to spend halcyon days beneath
+the brave old timber roof of Duke Humphrey's
+Library; but any one used to the freedom
+of books in America would find very little encouragement
+to do so. The librarian is probably an
+eminently serviceable man according to the traditions
+of the Bodleian; but there are times when
+he appears to be a grudging autocrat intrenched
+behind antique rules and regulations. In the
+Middle Ages it was the custom to chain the books
+to the shelves, as one may still observe in the
+quaint old library of Merton College. The modern
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_203" id="Page_203">203</a></span>
+method at the Bodleian would seem to be a refinement
+on the custom. And what is not known
+about the Bodleian in the Bodleian would fill a
+library almost as large. In the picture gallery
+hangs a Van Dyck portrait of William Herbert,
+Earl of Pembroke, a former chancellor of the university,
+a nephew of Sir Philip Sydney, son of
+Mary, Countess of Pembroke, and the once reputed
+patron to whom Shakespeare addressed the first
+series of his sonnets. The librarian did not know
+how or when the portrait came into the possession
+of the University, or whether it was an original;
+and not being required to know by statute, he did
+not care to find out, and did not find out.</p>
+
+<p>The crowning absurdity of the educational system
+is the professors, and here is an Oxford paradox
+as yet unredeemed by a glimmering of reason.
+When I wanted assistance as to a thesis
+on which I was working, my tutor referred me to
+the Regius Professor of Modern History, who he
+thought would be more likely than any one else to
+know about the sources of Elizabethan literature.</p>
+
+<p>Few as are the professors, they are all too many
+for the needs of Oxford. They are learned and
+ardent scholars, many of them with a full measure
+of German training in addition to Oxford culture.
+But in proportion as they are wise and able they
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_204" id="Page_204">204</a></span>
+are lifted out of the life of the university. They
+lecture, to be sure, in the schools; and now and
+then an undergraduate evades his tutor long
+enough to hear them. Several young women may
+be found at their feet&mdash;students from Somerville
+and Lady Margaret. When the subject and the
+lecturer are popular, residents of the town drop in.
+But as regards the great mass of undergraduates,
+wisdom crieth in the streets. The professors are
+as effectually shelved as ever their learned books
+will be when the twentieth century is dust. "The
+university, it is true," Mr. Brodrick admits in
+his "History of Oxford," "has yet to harmonize
+many conflicting elements which mar the symmetry
+of its institutions."</p>
+
+<p>This torpor in which the university lies is no
+mere matter of accident. I quote from Mr. Gladstone's
+Romanes Lecture, delivered in 1892:&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>"The chief dangers before the English universities
+are probably two: one that in [cultivating?]
+research, considered as apart from their
+teaching office, they should relax and consequently
+dwindle [as teachers?]; the other that, under
+pressure from without, they should lean, if ever
+so little, to that theory of education, which would
+have it to construct machines of so many horse
+power rather than to form character, and to rear
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_205" id="Page_205">205</a></span>
+into true excellence the marvelous creature we call
+man; which gloats upon success in life, instead of
+studying to secure that the man shall ever be
+greater than his work, and never bounded by it,
+but that his eye shall boldly run&mdash;</p>
+
+<p class="blockquot">
+Along the line of limitless desire."</p>
+
+<p>Few will question the necessity of rising above
+the sphere of mere science and commercialism;
+but many will question whether the way to rise is
+not rather by mastering the genius of the century
+than by ignoring it. It is scarcely too much to
+say that the greatest intellectual movement of the
+nineteenth century, though largely the work of
+English scientists, has left no mark on Oxford
+education. If, as Professor Von Holst asserts,
+the American universities are hybrids, Oxford
+and Cambridge cannot be called universities at
+all.
+</p>
+
+<p class="center p6">VIII</p>
+
+<p class="center">THE UNIVERSITY AND THE PEOPLE<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_206" id="Page_206">206</a></span></p>
+
+<p class="p2"><span class="dropcap">A</span><span class="smcap">s</span> a result of the narrowness of the scope
+of Oxford teaching, the university has
+no relation to the industrial life of the people&mdash;a
+grave shortcoming in a nation which is not
+unwilling to be known as a nation of shopkeepers.
+The wail of the British tradesman is not unfamiliar.
+Wares "made in Germany" undersell
+English wares that used to command the market;
+and being often made of a cheaper grade to suit
+the demands of purchasers, the phrase "made in
+Germany" is clearly indicative of fraudulent intention.</p>
+
+<p>Certain instances are exceptionally galling.
+Aniline dyes were first manufactured from the
+residuum of coal tar in Great Britain. But enterprising
+Germany, which has coal-fields of its own,
+sent apprentices to England who learned the
+manufacture, and then by means of the chemistry
+taught in the German universities, revolutionized
+the process, and discovered how to extract new
+colors from the coal tar, so that now the bulk of
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_207" id="Page_207">207</a></span>
+aniline dyes are made in Germany. Obviously,
+the German chemist is a perfidious person. The
+Yankee is shrewd and well taught in the technical
+professions. He makes new and quite unexampled
+tools, and machinery of all sorts. It takes
+the Briton some years to be sure that these are
+not iniquitous&mdash;a Yankee trick; but in the end
+he adopts them. Even then, to the Briton's surprise,
+the Yankee competes successfully. A commission
+(no German spy) is sent to America to
+find out why, and on its return gleefully reports
+that the Yankee works his tools at a ruinous rate,
+driving them so hard that in a decade it will be
+necessary to reëquip his plant entire. At the end
+of the decade, the conservative Englishman's tools
+are as good as if they had been kept in cotton batting;
+but by this time the Yankee has invented
+newer and more economical devices, and when he
+reëquips his plant with them he is able to undersell
+the English producer even more signally. The
+honest British manufacturer sells his old tools to
+an unsuspecting brother in trade and adopts the
+new ones. The Yankee machinist is obviously as
+perfidious as the German chemist. The upper
+middle classes in England realize that the destinies
+of Great Britain and America run together,
+and they are very hospitable to Americans, but
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_208" id="Page_208">208</a></span>
+the industrial population hate us scarcely less than
+they hate the Germans.</p>
+
+<p>All this is, of course, not directly chargeable to
+the English universities: but the fact remains that
+in Germany and in America the educational system
+is the most powerful ally of industry. Here
+again the English radical is on his guard. From
+time to time, in letters to the daily papers or
+political speeches before industrial audiences, the
+case is very clearly stated. In a recent epistolary
+agitation in "The Times" it was shown that
+whereas American and German business men learn
+foreign languages, Englishmen attempt to sell their
+wares by means of interpreters, and do not even
+have their pamphlets and prospectuses translated.
+Admitting the facts, one gentleman gravely urged
+that if only the English would stick out the fight,
+their language would soon be the business language
+of the world. If it is the conscious purpose of the
+nation to make it so, it might be of advantage to
+spell the language as it has been pronounced in
+the centuries since Chaucer; already with some
+such purpose the Germans are adopting Roman
+characters. But at least it will be many decades
+before English is the Volapük of business, and
+meantime England is losing ground. From the
+point of view of the mere outsider, it would seem
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_209" id="Page_209">209</a></span>
+of little moment to England what language is used,
+if the profits of the business transacted accrue to
+Russian, German, and American corporations.</p>
+
+<p>It has even been strongly urged that commercial
+and technical subjects be taught in the universities.
+Cambridge and the University of Glasgow have
+already a fund with this in view; and the new
+Midland University at Birmingham, of which Mr.
+Joseph Chamberlain is chancellor, is to be mainly
+devoted to commercial science and engineering.
+It cannot be foretold that the ancient universities
+will hold their own against the modern. In a speech
+at Birmingham (January 17, 1901), Mr. Chamberlain
+said: "Finance is the crux of the situation.
+Upon our finance depends entirely the extent
+to which we shall be able to develop this new
+experiment. With us, in fact, money is the root
+of all good. I am very glad to say that the promises
+of donations which, when I last addressed
+you, amounted to £330,000, have risen since then
+to an estimated amount of about £410,000....
+Now £410,000 is a large sum. I heard the other
+day that the University of Cambridge, which has
+for some time past been appealing for further assistance,
+has only up to the present time received
+£60,000. I most deeply regret that their fund is
+not larger, and I regret also that ours is so small."
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_210" id="Page_210">210</a></span>
+Oxford has apparently not entered the new competition
+even in a half-hearted manner. For centuries
+it has been the resort of the nobility and
+aristocracy, the "governing classes," and though
+the spirit of the age has so far invaded it as to
+have been in Mr. Gladstone's eyes its chief danger,
+the university has as yet only the slenderest connection
+with the industrial life of the nation.</p>
+
+<p>The virtues of the Oxford educational system,
+like those of the social and athletic life, are pretty
+clearly traceable in the main to the division of the
+university into colleges; at least, it is hard to see
+how anything other than this could have suggested
+the idea of having one body to teach the student
+and another to examine him. And they have a
+strong family likeness one to another, the concrete
+result being a highly sturdy and effective character.
+But the educational system differs from the
+social and athletic system in that the defects of its
+qualities are the more vigorous. As far as these
+defects result from the educational system, they
+are chargeable not so much to the preponderance
+of the colleges as to the torpor of the university;
+and they are powerfully abetted by the Oxford
+tradition as to the nature and function of a liberal
+education. This has not always been the case
+at Oxford. To understand the situation more
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_211" id="Page_211">211</a></span>
+clearly, it is necessary to review in brief the origin
+and the growth of the colleges, and the extinction
+of the mediæval university. This will throw further
+light on Oxford's social history. We shall thus be
+better able to judge how and to what extent the
+college system offers a solution for the correction
+of our American instruction.</p>
+
+<p class="center p6 b1">IV</p>
+
+<p class="center p2 b1">THE HISTORY OF THE UNIVERSITY AND
+THE COLLEGE
+</p>
+
+<p class="center p6">I</p>
+
+<p class="center">THE UNIVERSITY BEFORE THE COLLEGE<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_215" id="Page_215">215</a></span></p>
+
+<p class="p2"><span class="dropcap">I</span><span class="smcap">n</span> the beginning was the university. The colleges
+were as unimportant as the university
+is now. If it be admitted that the university
+exists to-day, they were less important; for there
+were no colleges. The origin of the university was
+probably due to a migration of students in 1167
+from the then world-famous University of Paris.
+The first definite mention of a <i>studium generale</i>
+at Oxford, or assembly of masters of the different
+faculties, dates from 1185, when Giraldus Cambrensis,
+as he himself relates, read his new work,
+"Topographia Hibernia," before the citizens and
+scholars of the town, and entertained in his hostel
+"all the doctors of the different faculties."</p>
+
+<p>At this time, and for many centuries afterward,
+Oxford, like other mediæval universities, was a
+guild, and was not unlike the trade guilds of the
+time. Its object was to train and give titles to
+those who dealt in the arts and professions. The
+master tanner was trained by his guild to make
+leather, and he made it; the master of arts was
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_216" id="Page_216">216</a></span>
+trained by the university to teach, and he taught.
+He was required to rent rooms in the university
+schools, for a year and even two, and to show that
+he deserved his title of master by lecturing in them,
+and conducting "disputations." The masters lived
+directly from the contributions of their hearers,
+their means varying with the popularity of their
+lectures; and the students were mainly poor clerks,
+who sought degrees for their money value.</p>
+
+<p>The lectures were mere dictations from manuscript,
+necessitated by the lack of accessible texts.
+The students copied the lectures verbatim for
+future study. The instruction in arts covered the
+entire field of secular knowledge, the "seven arts,"
+the trivium (grammar, rhetoric, and logic or dialectic),
+and the quadrivium (music, arithmetic, geometry,
+and astronomy). The lectures were the main
+and often the only means of imparting knowledge.
+The disputations were scholastic arguments&mdash;debates&mdash;on
+some set question, and were conducted
+by the masters. They were the practical
+application of what the student had learned from
+the lectures, and were the chief means of intellectual
+training. Besides attending lectures and
+disputing, the candidate for the degree had to pass
+an examination; but the great test of his acquirement
+seems to have been the skill with which he
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_217" id="Page_217">217</a></span>
+used his knowledge in debate. Thus the formal
+disputations occupied very much the same place as
+the modern written examinations, and they must
+have required very much the same rare combination
+of knowledge, address, and pluck. All learning
+was in a pint-pot; but it was a very serviceable
+pint-pot.</p>
+
+<p>The university education did not make a man
+above the work of the world: it made him an engine
+of so many horse power to perform it. It
+brought him benefices in that great sphere of activity,
+the mediæval Church, and important posts
+in that other sphere of mediæval statecraft, which
+was so often identified with the Church. If the
+clerk was above the carpenter, it was not because
+he came from a different station in life, for he
+often did not: it was because his work was more
+important. And he was far above the carpenter.
+It was a strenuous, glorious life, and the man of
+intelligence and training found his level, which
+is the highest. The kings and the nobility were
+warriors, and may have affected to despise education;
+but they were far from despising educated
+men. The machinery of state was organized and
+controlled by clerks from the university. If the
+scientific and mechanical professions had existed
+then, there is no doubt that they would not have
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_218" id="Page_218">218</a></span>
+been despised as to-day, but would have had full
+recognition.</p>
+
+<p>Socially, the university was chaos. In the absence
+of colleges, all the students lived with the
+townsmen in "chamberdekyns," which appear to
+be etymologically and historically the forbears of
+the "diggings" to which the fourth year man now
+retreats when he has been routed from college by
+incoming freshmen and by the necessity of reading
+for his final examination. But such discipline
+as is now exerted over out-of-college students was
+undreamed of. In his interesting and profoundly
+scholarly history of the universities of the Middle
+Ages, the Rev. Hastings Rashdall gives a vivid
+picture of mediæval student life, which was pretty
+much the same in all the universities of Europe.
+Boys went up to the university at as early an age
+as thirteen, and the average freshman could not
+have been older than fifteen; yet they were allowed
+almost absolute liberty. Drunkenness was rarely
+treated as a university offense; and for introducing
+suspicious women into his rooms, it was only
+on being repeatedly caught that an undergraduate
+was disciplined. At the University of Ingolstadt,
+a student who had killed another in a drunken
+quarrel had his scholastic effects and garments
+confiscated by the university. He may have been
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_219" id="Page_219">219</a></span>
+warned to be good in future, but he was not
+expelled. "It is satisfactory to add," Rashdall
+continues, "that at Prague, a Master of Arts, believed
+to have assisted in cutting the throat of a
+Friar Bishop, was actually expelled." The body
+of undergraduates was "an undisciplined student-horde."
+Hende Nicholas, in Chaucer's "Miller's
+Tale," is, it must be admitted, a lively and adventuring
+youth; but he might have been much
+livelier without being untrue to student life in
+chamberdekyns.</p>
+
+<p>The townspeople seem to have been the not
+unnatural fathers of the tradesmen and landlords
+of modern Oxford; and the likeness is well borne
+out in the matter of charges. But where to-day
+a man sometimes tries amiably to beat down the
+landlord's prices, the way of the Middle Ages was
+to beat down the landlord. As the student was in
+many cases of the same station in life as the townsman,
+he naturally failed to command the servility
+with which the modern undergraduate is regarded.
+Both sides used to gird on their armor, and meet
+in battles that began in bloodshed and often ended
+in death. Pages of Rashdall's history are filled
+with accounts of savage encounters between town
+and gown, which are of importance historically as
+showing the steps by which the university achieved
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_220" id="Page_220">220</a></span>
+the anomalous legal dominance over the city which
+it still in some measure retains. For our present
+purpose, it is enough to note that mediæval Oxford
+was unruly, very. "Fighting," says Rashdall,
+"was perpetually going on in the streets of Oxford....
+There is probably not a single yard of ground
+in any part of the classic High Street that lies
+between St. Martin's and St. Mary's [almost a
+quarter of a mile] which has not at one time or
+other been stained with human blood. There are
+historic battlefields on which less has been spilt."</p>
+
+<p>As if this were not enough, there were civil feuds.
+In the Middle Ages, sectional differences were
+more obvious and more important than now; and
+the first subdivision of the universities, both in
+England and on the Continent, was by "nations."
+At Oxford there were two nations; and if, when
+the north countryman rubbed elbows with the
+south countryman, he was offended by his silken
+gown and soft vowels, he rapped him across the
+pate. Hence more strife and bloodshed. Amid
+all this disorder there was a full measure of mediæval
+want and misery. At best, the student of
+moderate means led a precarious life; and poor
+students, shivering, homeless, and starved, lived by
+the still reputable art of the beggar. Something
+had to be done.</p>
+
+<p class="center p6">II</p>
+
+<p class="center">THE MEDIÆVAL HALL<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_221" id="Page_221">221</a></span></p>
+
+<p class="p2"><span class="dropcap">T</span><span class="smcap">he</span> mediæval spirit of organization, which
+resulted in so many noble and deathless institutions,
+was not slow in exerting itself against
+the social chaos of the university. Out of chaos
+grew the halls, and out of the halls the colleges.
+The first permanent organizations of student life
+were small, and had their origin in the immediate
+wants of the individual. To gain the economy of
+coöperation and the safety of numbers, the students
+at Oxford, as at Paris and elsewhere, began to live
+in separate small colonies under one roof. These
+were called aulæ or halls. They were no less interesting
+in themselves than for the fact that they
+were the germ out of which the Oxford college
+system grew.</p>
+
+<p>At first the halls appear to have been mere
+chance associations. Each had a principal who
+managed its affairs; but the principal had no official
+status, and might even be an undergraduate.
+The halls correspond roughly to the fraternities
+of American college life. Their internal rule
+was absolutely democratic. The students lived together
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_222" id="Page_222">222</a></span>
+by mutual consent under laws of their own
+framing, and under a principal of their own electing.
+They were quite without fear or favor of the
+university. The principal's duties were to lease
+the hall, to be a sort of over-steward of it, and
+to lead in enforcing the self-imposed rules of the
+community. His term of office, like his election,
+depended on the good-will of his fellows; if he
+made himself disliked, they were quite at liberty
+to take up residence elsewhere. In the thirteenth
+century there was really no such thing as university
+discipline. The men who lived in the halls
+came and went as they pleased, and were as free
+as their contemporary in chamberdekyns to loiter,
+quarrel, and carouse. Chaucer's "Reeve's Tale"
+gives us a glimpse into "Soler Halle at Cantebregge,"
+from which it would appear that the
+members were quite as loose and free as Hende
+Nicholas, their Oxford contemporary. But the
+liberty was an organized liberty. In contrast with
+the chaos of the life of the students in chamberdekyns,
+the early halls must have been brave places
+to work and to play in, and one might wish that a
+fuller record had been left of the life in them. It
+was their fate to be obscured by the greater splendor
+and permanence of the colleges to which they
+paved the way.
+</p>
+
+<p class="center p6">III</p>
+
+<p class="center">THE COLLEGE SYSTEM<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_223" id="Page_223">223</a></span></p>
+
+<p class="p2"><span class="dropcap">T</span><span class="smcap">he</span> English college, roughly speaking, is a
+mediæval hall supported by a permanent
+fund which the socii or fellows administer. The
+first fund for the support of scholars was bequeathed
+in 1243, but it can scarcely be regarded
+as marking the first college, for it provided for two
+scholars only, and these lived where they pleased.
+In 1249 William of Durham bequeathed a fund
+for the support of ten or more masters of arts. At
+first these also lived apart; it was only in 1280,
+after the type of the English college had been
+fixed, that they were formed into the body now
+known as University College. The first organized
+community at Oxford was founded by Sir John
+de Balliol some little time before 1266; but the
+allowances to the scholars, as was the case in colleges
+of the University of Paris, after which it was
+doubtless modeled, were not from a permanent
+fund, being paid annually by the founder. Balliol
+cannot therefore be regarded as the first characteristic
+English college. It was not until 1282 that
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_224" id="Page_224">224</a></span>
+Sir John's widow, Dervorguilla, adopted the new
+English idea by making the endowment of the
+"House of Balliol" permanent, and placing it
+under the management of the fellows.</p>
+
+<p>The real founder of the English college was
+Walter de Merton. In 1264 Walter provided by
+endowment for the permanent maintenance of
+twenty scholars, who were to live together in a hall
+as a community; and in 1274 he drew up the
+statutes which fix the type of the earliest English
+college. The principal of Merton was not, like the
+principal of a mediæval hall, the temporary head of
+a chance community, but a permanent head with
+established power; and he had to manage, not
+the periodic contributions of free associates, but a
+landed estate held in permanent trust. He was
+called "warden," a title which the head of Merton
+retains to this day. This idea of a body supported
+in a permanent residence by a permanent fund is
+perhaps of monastic origin, and was accompanied
+by certain features of brotherhood rule. The
+scholars lived a life of order and seclusion which
+was in striking contrast to the life of the students
+in chamberdekyns, and even of those in the halls.
+But with the monastic order they had also the monastic
+democracy, so that in one way the government
+of the college was strikingly similar to that
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_225" id="Page_225">225</a></span>
+of the halls. Vacancies in the community were
+filled by coöptation, and the warden was elected
+by the thirteen senior fellows from their own number.
+Though partly monastic in constitution, the
+Hall of Merton was not properly a religious body.
+The fellows took no vows, and seem rather to have
+been expected to enter lay callings. This College
+of Merton was the result of a gradual development
+of the hall along monastic lines&mdash;a lay brotherhood
+of students. It was destined to work a revolution
+in English university life and in English
+university teaching. The constitutions of University
+and Balliol were, as I have indicated,
+remodeled on the lines of Merton; and other colleges
+were founded as follows: Exeter, 1314;
+Oriel, 1324; Queens, 1341; and Canterbury, now
+extinct, 1362, most of which were profoundly influenced
+by the constitution of Merton.</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter"><a name="illo11" id="illo11"></a>
+<img src="images/i_256.jpg" width="650" height="407" alt="NEW COLLEGE CLOISTERS, BELL TOWER, AND CHAPEL" />
+<p class="caption">NEW COLLEGE CLOISTERS, BELL TOWER, AND CHAPEL</p>
+</div>
+
+<p>It was at first no part of the duty of the
+elders (socii, or, as Chaucer calls them, felawes)
+to teach the younger. The scholars of the college
+received the regular mediæval education in the
+university. But even in Merton the germ of tutorial
+instruction was present. Twelve "parvuli"
+who were not old enough, or sufficiently used to
+the Latin tongue, to profit by the lectures and disputations
+of the university, lived in or near the
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_226" id="Page_226">226</a></span>
+colleges and were taught by a grammar master;
+and it appears that even the older scholars might,
+"without blushing," consult this grammar master
+on matters that "pertained to his faculty." In his
+relation to these older students the grammar master
+may be regarded as the precursor of the system
+of tutorial instruction.</p>
+
+<p>The first college to develop regular undergraduate
+instruction within its walls was "S. Marie
+College of Winchester in Oxford," founded in
+1379, by William of Wykeham. "S. Marie's"
+brought in so many innovations that it came to be
+called "New College," a title which, incongruously
+enough, it has retained for more than five hundred
+years. Wykeham's first innovation was to place
+the grammar master, for the greater good of his
+pupils, at the head of a "college" of seventy boys
+at Winchester, thus outlining the English system
+of public schools. New College was accordingly
+able to exclude all who had not attained the ripe
+age of fifteen. The effect of this innovation on
+the college was peculiar. When the boys came up
+from Winchester, they appear to have been farther
+advanced than most of the undergraduates attending
+lectures and disputes in the university schools;
+in any case, Wykeham arranged that the older fellows
+should supplement the university teaching by
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_227" id="Page_227">227</a></span>
+private tuition within the college. Little by little
+the New College type succeeded that of Merton.
+Magdalen College, founded in 1448, carried the
+tutorial system to its logical end by endowing lectureships
+in theology, metaphysics, and natural
+philosophy. The older colleges&mdash;those of the
+Merton type&mdash;little by little followed this new
+example, so that by the end of the Middle Ages it
+was possible for a student to receive his entire instruction
+within the walls of his college. In Wolsey's
+splendid foundation, Cardinal College (1522),
+now styled Christ Church, there was a still more
+ample endowment for professorships. At first the
+college instruction was regarded as supplementary
+to the university teaching, though it soon became
+far more important. The masters of the university
+continued to read lectures on the recognized subjects,
+living as of old on fees from those who chose
+to listen; but they were clearly unable to compete
+with the endowed tutors and professors of the colleges.
+By the beginning of the fifteenth century,
+the mediæval teaching master was disappearing.
+The only real teaching in arts&mdash;by all odds the
+most popular branch of study at Oxford&mdash;was
+given within the colleges and halls.</p>
+
+<p>The discipline of the earlier colleges was much
+severer than that of to-day, but the difference is
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_228" id="Page_228">228</a></span>
+one of degree rather than of kind. The lectures
+in schools began at six, instead of nine; and at
+any hour it was forbidden to leave the college except
+on a studious errand. When attending out-of-college
+lectures, all scholars were required to go
+and come in a body; and in one set of statutes even
+a chaplain was forbidden to leave the gates, except
+to go to lectures or to the library, without taking
+at least one companion, who, in the antique phrase
+of the statute, was to be a "witness of his honest
+conversation." There were only two meals a day,
+dinner at ten and supper at five. Breakfast, now
+the great rallying-point of Oxford hospitality, was
+the invention of a more luxurious age. Of athletics
+there was none, or next to none. The only
+licensed hilarities were certain so-called "honest
+jokes," with which the tutors were in at least
+one case required to regale their pupils after dinner,
+and a "potation" which was permitted after
+supper, perhaps as an offset to the "honest jokes."</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter"><a name="illo12" id="illo12"></a>
+<img src="images/i_262.jpg" width="650" height="397" alt="NEW COLLEGE GARDENS" />
+<p class="caption">NEW COLLEGE GARDENS<br />
+
+Showing the mediæval wall of Oxford</p>
+</div>
+
+<p>The severity of these regulations is mainly explainable
+in the fact that the inmates of the colleges
+were fed, clothed, and housed out of the endowment,
+and might thus be reasonably expected
+to give a good account of themselves. Furthermore,
+they were most of them mere boys. A statute
+dating as late as 1527 requires that "scholars"
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_229" id="Page_229">229</a></span>
+shall be at least twelve years old. At fourteen or
+fifteen a scholar might become a fellow. The average
+age of "determining" as bachelor of arts was
+little if at all over seventeen. At nineteen, the
+age at which the modern Oxonian comes up from
+the public schools, the mediæval student might, if
+he were clever, be a master of arts, lecturing and
+disputing in schools for the benefit of the bachelors
+and scholars of the university.</p>
+
+<p>The modern Oxonian delights to tell visiting
+friends that he is forbidden by statute to play
+marbles on the steps of the Bodleian, and to roll
+hoop in the High; but if a mediæval master of
+arts were to "come up" to-day, he would be
+amused, not that so many rules framed for his
+boyish pupils of old should be applied to grown
+men, but that the men so obviously require a check
+to juvenile exuberance. Yet this much has been
+gained, that the outgrown restrictions of college
+life have kept Oxford wholesomely young. The
+survivals of the monastic system meanwhile have
+kept it wholesomely democratic.</p>
+
+<p>After the colleges reached their full development,
+the extinction of the mediæval university as
+an institution for teaching was largely a matter of
+form. The quietus was given in 1569. The Earl
+of Leicester, then chancellor, ordered that the
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_230" id="Page_230">230</a></span>
+government should be in the hands of the chancellor,
+doctors, proctors, and the heads of the colleges
+and halls. In 1636 (the year of the founding
+of the first American college) the statutes of
+the university were revised and codified by Archbishop
+Laud; the sole authority was placed in the
+hands of an oligarchy composed of the leading
+dons of the colleges. The government was limited
+to the vice-chancellor, the proctors, and the
+heads of houses, and the vice-chancellor and the
+proctors were elected in sequence by each of the
+colleges from its own members. The teaching of
+the university was now legally as well as actually
+in the hands of the college tutors, and the examination
+was in the hands of a board chosen by the
+colleges. University lectures were still delivered
+in the schools by the regent masters, but they had
+ceased to play any important part in Oxford education.
+</p>
+
+<p class="center p6">IV</p>
+
+<p class="center">THE GOLDEN AGE OF THE MEDIÆVAL HALL<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_231" id="Page_231">231</a></span></p>
+
+<p class="p2"><span class="dropcap">L</span><span class="smcap">ike</span> the colleges, the halls meanwhile tended
+gradually towards an organized community
+life. The starting-point was a regulation that the
+principal should give the university security for
+the rent of the house. The logical result of this
+was that the principal became the representative
+of the university, and the hall one of its recognized
+institutions. The advantage of living in
+separate communities meantime had become so
+clearly evident that by the middle of the fifteenth
+century chamberdekyns were abolished. All students
+not living in a college were required to live
+in a hall. It was thus that the halls lost some of
+their democratic independence. At this period in
+their development they may be roughly compared
+to such modern American halls as Claverly at
+Harvard, where the residents govern their own
+affairs in the main, admitting newcomers only by
+vote, but are all alike subject to the authority of
+a resident university proctor. The analogy is by
+no means close, for the principal of the mediæval
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_232" id="Page_232">232</a></span>
+hall was not so much a resident policeman as the
+actual head of the community.</p>
+
+<p>As the colleges developed tutorial instruction,
+the halls followed suit; the local administrator
+became responsible not only for the social régime,
+but for the tuition of the undergraduates. The
+halls thus differed from the college mainly in that
+they had no corporate existence such as is necessary
+to an endowed institution. The mediæval
+hall was now in its golden age; it was a well-conceived
+instrument for all the purposes of residence
+and of education. It is especially to be
+noted that the régime of the community was still
+in the main democratic. Though the head was
+appointed by the university, he had to be accepted
+by vote of the undergraduates, a provision that
+was still observed, at least in one instance, until
+the close of the nineteenth century.</p>
+
+<p>The discipline of the halls of the fifteenth century,
+severe though it was by comparison with that
+of the earliest halls, was far less severe than the
+discipline in the colleges. It was quite as much
+as the university could accomplish, according to
+Rashdall, "to prevent students expelled from one
+hall being welcomed at another, to prevent the
+masters themselves condoning or sharing the worst
+excesses of their pupils, to compel fairly regular
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_233" id="Page_233">233</a></span>
+attendance at lectures and other university or college
+exercises, to require all students to return
+home by curfew at 8 or 9 <span class="smcap">p.m.</span>, to get the outer
+doors of the pedagogy locked till morning, and to
+insist on the presence of a regent throughout the
+night." When the early habits of the community
+generally are remembered, it will be evident that
+these regulations still allowed a vast deal of liberty,
+or rather of license. Boys of fifteen or sixteen
+living in the very centre of large and densely
+populated towns were in general perfectly free to
+roam about the streets up to the hour at which
+all respectable citizens were accustomed, if not
+actually compelled by town statutes, to retire to
+bed.</p>
+
+<p>The halls were reduced in number by the wars
+of the Roses and by a period of intellectual stagnation
+that followed, but they still numbered
+seventy-one, as against eighteen colleges (including
+those maintained by monasteries, which disappeared
+with the Reformation); and the number of
+their students is estimated at seven hundred, as
+against three hundred in the colleges. In the light
+of subsequent development it seems probable that
+it would have been far better for the university if
+the halls had remained the characteristic subdivision.
+Their fate was decided not by any inherent
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_234" id="Page_234">234</a></span>
+superiority on the part of the colleges, but by the
+force of corporate wealth.</p>
+
+<p>Even in the fifteenth century, the halls were
+tending to pass into the possession of the colleges,
+and later events made the tendency a fact. "As
+stars lose their light when the sun ariseth," says
+an ancient Cambridge worthy, "so all these hostels
+decayed by degrees when endowed colleges began
+to appear." The Reformation, and a recurrent
+pestilence, "the sweating sickness," a kind of
+inflammatory rheumatism due apparently to the
+unwholesome situation of the university, resulted
+in a sharp falling off in the number of students.
+The colleges lived on, however thinned their ranks,
+by virtue of the endowments; but the halls disappeared
+with the students who had frequented
+them. In 1526 it was recorded that sixteen had
+lately been abandoned. When the numbers of the
+university swelled again under Elizabeth, the increase
+found place partly in the few halls that
+were left, but mainly in the colleges. In 1602
+there were only eight halls, and these were all
+mere dependencies of separate colleges. "<i>Singulæ
+singulis a colegiis pendent</i>," as a contemporary
+expresses it. Only one of these, St. Edmund Hall,
+now retains even a show of the old democratic
+independence, and this has lately been brought
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_235" id="Page_235">235</a></span>
+into closer subjection to Queen's College. Socially
+as well as educationally, the mediæval university
+faded before the organization and endowment of
+the colleges. The life of Oxford was concentrated
+in a dozen or more separate institutions, and so
+thoroughly concentrated that there was little association,
+intellectual or social, between any two of
+them.
+</p>
+
+<p class="center p6">V</p>
+
+<p class="center">THE ORIGIN OF THE MODERN UNDERGRADUATE<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_236" id="Page_236">236</a></span></p>
+
+<p class="p2"><span class="dropcap">I</span><span class="smcap">f</span> the tutors of New College were epoch-making,
+the amplitude and splendor of its social
+life were no less so. Its original buildings are in
+such perfect preservation that it is hard to believe
+that they are almost the oldest in Oxford, and
+that the New College quadrangle is the father of
+all quads. The establishment of the "head" was
+of similar dignity. The master of Balliol received
+forty shillings yearly; the warden of New College,
+forty pounds. In the statutes of an old Cambridge
+college we find it required that since it
+would be "indecent" for the master to go afoot,
+and "scandalous" to the college for him to "conducere
+hackeneye," he might be allowed one horse.
+The warden of New College had a coach and six.
+As century followed century the value of the endowments
+increased, and the scale of living was
+proportionately raised. The colleges in general
+became the home of comfort, and sometimes of a
+very positive luxury.
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_237" id="Page_237">237</a></span></p>
+
+<p>In the colleges of the Middle Ages the students
+were the <i>socii</i>, and were maintained by the endowment.
+These are the dons and foundationers, or
+scholarship men, of to-day. But the comfort and
+order of the life in the colleges were very attractive,
+and the sons of the rich were early welcomed
+as "gentlemen commoners," precursors of the modern
+"commoners." The statutes of Magdalen make
+the first clear provision for receiving and teaching
+such "non-foundation" students. They permit
+the admission of twenty <i>filii nobilium</i> as <i>commensales</i>,
+or commoners, in the vernacular. At first
+these were few and unimportant; in the centuries
+during which the numbers of the university were
+at an ebb, they could easily be accommodated
+within the depleted colleges. When the university
+increased under Elizabeth, the idea of living
+in halls in the mediæval fashion, as we have seen,
+was obsolescent, so that the result of the increase
+was to enlarge the colleges. Thus, largely as a
+matter of chance, the commoners of to-day, the characteristic
+and by far the larger part of the undergraduate
+body, live under a régime invented for
+the endowed scholars of the Middle Ages, and the
+democratic license of the mediæval undergraduate
+at large has given way to a democratic rule of
+commoners in colleges. Though the commoner is
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_238" id="Page_238">238</a></span>
+no longer called a gentleman commoner, he is more
+than likely to come from a family of position and
+means, for the comfort of life in the colleges is
+expensive. All this has transformed Oxford from
+a mediæval guild of masters and apprenticed students,
+a free mart of available knowledge, into a
+closely organized anteroom to social and professional
+life.
+</p>
+
+<p class="center p6">VI</p>
+
+<p class="center">THE INSIGNIFICANCE OF THE MODERN
+UNIVERSITY<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_239" id="Page_239">239</a></span></p>
+
+<p class="p2"><span class="dropcap">T</span><span class="smcap">hough</span> the university as a teaching body
+pined before the rising colleges, and for
+centuries lay in a swoon, it was not dead. It was
+kept alive by certain endowments for lecturers.
+But so thoroughly did the college tutors supply all
+undergraduate needs that, unless walls indeed have
+ears, the lectures were never heard. The professors
+gradually abandoned the university schools
+and gave the unattended lectures in their own
+houses. Such lectures were known as "study lectures."
+Even these gave way to silence. An odd
+situation was caused by the fact that there were
+also salaries paid to university proctors, a part
+of whose duty it was to see that the professorial
+lectures were properly given. When a proctor appeared,
+the learned professor would snatch up his
+manuscript and read until his auditor got tired
+and left. This was one case in which a thief was
+not the person to catch a thief; such energy on
+the part of the proctor was unusual, and was regarded
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_240" id="Page_240">240</a></span>
+as in extremely bad form. The abuse proceeded
+so far that in some cases, when hearers
+appeared at the appointed hour, the professors
+refused point blank to read their lectures. The
+climax of the farce was that at graduation students
+were fined for having cut these lectures that had
+never been given. When Samuel Johnson was
+fined for neglecting a college lecture to go "sliding
+on Christ Church Meadow," he exclaimed,
+"Sir, you have fined me twopence for missing a
+lecture that was not worth a penny!" His untimely
+departure from Oxford has lamentably left
+us to conjecture what he would have said upon
+paying the university fines at graduation for cutting
+lectures that had never been given.</p>
+
+<p>Even the university examinations became farcical.
+Under the Laudian statutes the very examiners became
+corrupt. Instead of a feast of reason and a
+flow of soul, the wary student provided his examiner
+with good meat and wine; and the two, with what
+company they bade in, got gloriously drunk together.
+B. A. meant Bacchanal of Arts. Even
+when the forms of examination were held to, the farce
+was only less obvious. A writer in <i>Terræ Filius</i>,
+March 24, 1721, tells us that the examination consisted
+in "a formal repetition of a set of syllogisms
+upon some ridiculous question in logick, which the
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_241" id="Page_241">241</a></span>
+candidates get by rote, or perhaps read out of their
+caps, which lie before them." These commodious
+sets of syllogisms were called strings, and descended
+from undergraduate to undergraduate in a regular
+succession like themes and mechanical drawings in
+an American club or fraternity. "I have in my
+custody a book of strings upon most or all of the
+questions discussed in a certain college noted for
+its ratiocinative faculty; on the first leaf of which
+are these words: <i>Ex dono Richardi P&mdash;&mdash; e primæ
+classi benefactoris munificentissimi</i>." Lord Eldon
+took his degree at University College by an examination
+that consisted of two questions: "What
+is the meaning of Golgotha?" and "Who founded
+University College?" It was, no doubt, the bearers
+of degrees thus achieved who owned those marvelous
+libraries of the eighteenth century, which
+consisted of pasteboard boxes exquisitely backed in
+tooled calf, and labeled with the names of the
+standard Greek and Latin classics.</p>
+
+<p>The decline of the university teaching and examination
+did not result in a corresponding rise in
+the colleges. Each of the dozen and more institutions
+was supposed, as I have said, to keep a separate
+faculty in arts, and often in law and theology
+as well. If there had been any incentive to ambition,
+the colleges might have vied with one another
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_242" id="Page_242">242</a></span>
+in their impossible task, or at least have gone far
+enough to bring about a reform. But they were
+rich and did not care. The wealth of collegiate
+endowments, that had begun by ruining the university,
+ended by ruining the colleges. There were
+still earnest teachers and students at Oxford, but
+they were not the rule. The chief energies of the
+tutors were spent in increasing their salaries by a
+careful management of the estates, and in evading
+their pupils. In "the splendid foppery of a well-turned
+period" Gibbon thus pictures the dons of
+Magdalen in 1752: "Their deep and dull potations
+excused the brisk intemperance of youth." Only
+one result was possible. In 1821 T. J. Hogg,
+Shelley's college-mate at University College, referred
+to Oxford as a seat of learning. "Why do
+you call it so?" Shelley cried indignantly. "Because,"
+Hogg replied, "it is a place in which
+learning sits very comfortably, well thrown back
+as in an easy chair, and sleeps so soundly that
+neither you nor I nor anybody else can wake her."
+Permanent endowments had transferred the seat
+of learning from a nobly indigent university to
+the colleges, and the deep and dull potations of
+endowed tutors had put it asleep on the common-room
+chairs.</p>
+
+<p>The nineteenth century did not altogether arouse
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_243" id="Page_243">243</a></span>
+it. "The studies of the university," according to
+the testimony of the Oxford Commission of 1850,
+"were first raised from their abject state by a
+statute passed in 1800." Heretofore all students
+had pursued the same studies, and there was no distinction
+to be gained at graduation except the mere
+fact of becoming a Bachelor of Arts. The statute
+of 1800 provided that such students as chose might
+distinguish themselves from the rest by taking
+honors; and for both passman and honor man it
+provided a dignified and quite undebauchable university
+examining board. At first the subjects
+studied were, roughly speaking, the same for passman
+and honor man; the difference was made by
+raising the standard of the honor examination.
+The examination followed the mediæval custom in
+being mainly oral; and though it soon came to be
+written, it still preserves the tradition of the mediæval
+disputation by including a <i>viva voce</i> which is
+open to the attendance of the public. Throughout
+the nineteenth century the development consisted
+mainly in adding a few minor schools.</p>
+
+<p>The good and bad features of the English college
+system as a whole should not be hard to distinguish.
+In all social aspects the colleges are as
+nearly perfect as human institutions are capable of
+becoming, and they are the foundation of an unequaled
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_244" id="Page_244">244</a></span>
+athletic life. Educationally, their qualities
+are mixed. For the purpose of common or garden
+English gentlemen, nothing could be better than a
+happy combination of tutorial instruction and university
+examining. For the purposes of scholarly
+instruction in general, and of instruction in the
+modern sciences and mechanic arts in particular,
+few things could be worse than the system as at
+present construed.</p>
+
+<p>To exult over the superiority of American institutions
+in so many of the things that make up a
+modern university would not be a very profitable
+proceeding. Let us neglect the imperfections of
+Oxford. It is of much greater profit to consider
+the extraordinary social advantages that arise from
+the division of the university into colleges, and the
+educational advantages of the honor schools. These
+are points with regard to which we are as poor as
+Oxford is poor in the scope of university instruction.</p>
+
+<p>The point will perhaps be clearer for a brief
+review of the manner in which our college system
+grew out of the English. The development is the
+reverse of what we have just been considering. In
+England, the colleges overshadowed the university
+and sapped its life. With us, the university has
+overshadowed the college and is bidding fair to
+annihilate it.
+</p>
+
+<p class="center p6">VII</p>
+
+<p class="center">THE COLLEGE IN AMERICA<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_245" id="Page_245">245</a></span></p>
+
+<p class="p2"><span class="dropcap">I</span><span class="smcap">n</span> 1636 the Commonwealth of Massachusetts
+passed an act to establish a "schoole or colledge,"
+and set apart a tract of land in "New
+Towne" as its seat, which they called Cambridge.
+Our Puritan forefathers had carried from the
+English university the conviction that "sound
+learning" is the "root of true religion," and were
+resolved, in their own vigorous phrase, that it
+should not be "buried in the graves of the fathers."
+In 1638 a master of arts of Emmanuel College,
+Cambridge, John Harvard, bequeathed to the new
+institution his library and half his fortune, some
+£780. A timber building was erected and a corporation
+formed which bore the donor's name.
+From the regulations in force in 1655 it is evident
+that in its manner of life, its laws of government,
+the studies taught, and the manner of granting the
+degree, Harvard College was a close counterpart of
+the English college of the early seventeenth century,
+its very phraseology including such terms as
+"disputing," "proceeding," "determining." It was
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_246" id="Page_246">246</a></span>
+the first institution of higher education in British
+America. Until the founding of the first state
+university, the University of Virginia, in 1819, the
+constitution afforded the principal model for subsequent
+foundations, and to-day colleges of the
+Harvard type are perhaps the strongest factor in
+American education. Harvard thus transplanted
+to American soil the full measure of the traditions
+of the Middle Ages, many of which exist in a modified
+form to-day.</p>
+
+<p>In "Harvard College by an Oxonian" Dr.
+George Birkbeck Hill suggests that John Harvard
+expected others to found similar institutions which
+collectively were to reproduce the University of
+Cambridge in New England. The supposition is
+by no means impossible, and the manuscript records
+in the Harvard Library would perhaps reward research.
+But whatever the intention, it is abundantly
+clear that in the full English sense of the word
+no second college was established at Cambridge.
+The first constitution was in all essentials the same
+as that of to-day. Hutchinson's "History of Massachusetts"
+records (1676): "There are but four
+fellowships, the two seniors have each 30<i>l.</i> per
+ann. and the two juniors 15<i>l.</i>, but no diet is allowed:
+There are tutors to all such as are admitted students....
+The government of these colledges is
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_247" id="Page_247">247</a></span>
+in the governor and magistrates of Massachusetts
+and the president of the colledge, together with the
+teaching elders of the six adjacent towns." The
+fellows are the forbears of the modern corporation,
+the tutors of the faculty; and though the institution
+has been separated from the state, the "teaching
+elders" are the earliest overseers. Furthermore,
+the endowment of Harvard has remained undivided;
+and generations elapsed before the present
+very un-English division was made by which the
+teaching force is separated into independent faculties
+for arts and the various professions. From the
+first the "college" was a "university" in that it
+granted degrees; and less than twenty years after
+its founding the two terms are used as synonymous;
+an appendix to what is called the charter of Harvard
+"College" calls the institution a "University."
+This confusion of terms still persists, and
+is found at most other American institutions, the
+constitutions of which were largely modeled after
+that of Harvard. For generations the endowments
+and the teaching force of the American college and
+university were identical. Thus as regards its constitution
+the typical American university is a single
+English college writ large.</p>
+
+<p>Almost from the outset, however, there were, in
+one sense of the word, several colleges. In "An
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_248" id="Page_248">248</a></span>
+Inventory of the whole Estate of Harv<sup>d</sup> Colledge
+taken by the President &amp; Fellows as they find the
+same to be Decemb. 10, 1654," the first two items
+are as follows:&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>"Imp<sup>r</sup>s. The building called the old colledge, conteyning
+a Hall, Kitchen, Buttery, Cellar, Turrett
+&amp; 5 Studeys &amp; therin 7 chambers for students in
+them. A Pantry &amp; small corne Chamber. A library
+&amp; Books therin, vallued at 400<sup>lb</sup>.</p>
+
+<p>"It. Another house called Goffes colledge, &amp;
+was purchased of Edw: Goffe. conteyning five
+chambers. 18 studyes. a kitchen cellar &amp; 3 garretts."<a name="FNanchor_3" id="FNanchor_3" href="#Footnote_3" class="fnanchor">[3]</a></p>
+
+<p>It is to be noted that "Old Colledge," which
+was Harvard's building, had a kitchen, buttery,
+and cellar, a pantry and a small corn chamber,
+and was thus primitively modeled after an English
+hall or college. Presumably the inmates,
+like their cousins across the water, dined in the
+hall. As for "Goffe's colledge," granting that
+the punctuation of the inventory is intentional, it
+had a kitchen cellar, which would seem to imply
+a kitchen; and it is not impossible that there
+should be a comma after "kitchen." No hall is
+mentioned, and it is hardly likely that there could
+have been so imposing a room in what was built
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_249" id="Page_249">249</a></span>
+for a private house; but it would have been possible
+and natural to serve meals in the largest of the five
+"chambers." A third building Hutchinson's history
+describes as "a small brick building called the
+Indian Colledge, where some few Indians did study,
+but now it is a printing house," the first printing
+house in British America. The two earliest buildings
+at Harvard would thus be the abodes of separate
+communities, and though I can find no intimation
+as to the Indian College, it can scarcely be
+doubted that since it was established for the separate
+use of the redskins, it contained a separate
+living-plant. A later record shows that there was
+a separate kitchen in the first Stoughton Hall.</p>
+
+<p>These early "colledges" at Harvard are more
+properly termed halls, and such as survived are
+now so called. They had probably little in common
+with the democratic English halls of the Middle
+Ages. Both at Oxford and at Cambridge the
+halls of the seventeenth century were, as I have
+said, mere pendants of the colleges; they must
+have had a separate character as a social community
+and a certain independence; but if they had
+separate endowments, they did not manage them,
+and each of them depended for its instruction
+mainly on the college to which it was affiliated.
+The printed records of the early American halls are
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_250" id="Page_250">250</a></span>
+too meagre to warrant definite conclusions; but
+they seem to show that the halls were conceived in
+the spirit of the English hall of the seventeenth
+century, in that they provided for separate social
+and residential communities without separate endowment
+or teaching force. If the increase of
+students at Harvard had been rapid, it is not unlikely
+that many new halls would have been established,
+each the home of a complete community;
+but for half a century the number fluctuated between
+fifteen and thirty. If we take the English
+estimate of two hundred and fifty as the largest
+feasible size for a single community, the limit
+was not reached until as late as 1840. By 1676
+the timber "colledge" built at the charge of Mr.
+Harvard, which bore his name, had been superseded
+by the first Harvard Hall, which Hutchinson
+describes as "a fair pile of brick building covered
+with tiles by reason of the late Indian warre not
+yet finished.... It contains twenty chambers for
+students, two in a chamber, a large hall which
+serves for a chapel; over that a convenient library."
+In these ample accommodations it was found that
+the student body could be most conveniently and
+cheaply fed as a single community. Thus, like the
+idea of a group of colleges with separate finances
+and teaching bodies, the idea of separate residential
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_251" id="Page_251">251</a></span>
+halls must have passed away with the generation
+of divines educated in England. The American
+college and the American university remained identical,
+not only educationally and in their finances,
+but as a social organization. This fact has caused
+a curious reversion in America toward the mediæval
+type of university, both socially and educationally.</p>
+
+<p>As the university has expanded, it has declined
+socially: to-day the residential life is only a degree
+better than that in the ancient chamberdekyns.
+Educationally, the reversion has been fortunate:
+the university is alive to the needs of the life about
+it. If it here resembles the modern German universities,
+this is largely due to the fact that both
+have more faithfully preserved the system and the
+spirit of the Middle Ages: the resemblance is
+quite as much a matter of native growth in America
+as of foreign imitation. In England, the mediæval
+idea of a multiplicity of residential bodies
+has survived, and the educational idea of the
+mediæval university has perished. In Germany,
+the educational idea has survived, and the old community
+life has perished. In America, the two
+ideas have survived by virtue of their identity.
+But for the same reason both are in a rudimentary
+and very imperfect state of development.
+</p>
+
+<p class="center p6 b1">V</p>
+
+<p class="center p2 b1">THE PROBLEMS OF THE AMERICAN UNIVERSITY
+</p>
+
+<p class="center p6">I</p>
+
+<p class="center">THE SOCIAL AND ATHLETIC PROBLEM<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_255" id="Page_255">255</a></span></p>
+
+<p class="p2"><span class="dropcap">T</span><span class="smcap">he</span> imperfection of the modern American
+university in its social organization has been
+stated with the utmost clearness and authority, at
+least as regards Harvard. The "Harvard Graduates'
+Magazine" for September, 1894, published
+posthumously an article by Frank Bolles, late secretary
+of the college, entitled "The Administrative
+Problem." "In the present state of affairs," says
+Mr. Bolles, "student social life is stunted and distorted....
+There is something very ugly in the
+possibility of a young man's coming to Cambridge,
+and while here sleeping and studying alone in a
+cheerless lodging, eating alone in a dismal restaurant,
+feeling himself unknown, and so alone in his
+lectures, his chapel, and his recreations, and not
+even having the privilege of seeing his administrative
+officers, who know most of his record, without
+having to explain to them at each visit who he is
+and what he is, before they can be made to remember
+that he is a living, hoping, or despairing part
+of Harvard College."
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_256" id="Page_256">256</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Some of these men who fail to find a place in
+the social community meet their isolation grimly
+and are embittered against life. Others, after a
+few months or a year of lonesomeness and neglect,
+give up their university career broken-hearted, and
+by so doing perhaps take the first step in a life of
+failures. One man of whom I happened to know
+confided to his daily themes a depth of misery of
+which it can only be hoped that it was hysterical.
+At night when he heard a step on his staircase he
+prayed that it might be some one coming to see
+him. The tide of undergraduate life and of joy
+in living flowed all about him and left him thirsting.
+If a man finds sweetness in the uses of such
+adversity, it can only be by virtue of the firmest
+and calmest of tempers. Sometimes fellows starve
+physically without a friend with whom to share
+their hardship, living perhaps on bread, milk, and
+oatmeal, which they cook over the study lamp.
+Occasionally one hears disquieting rumors that
+such short rations have resulted in disease and
+even death before the authorities were aware. If
+this be so, the hardships of life in the earliest
+mediæval university, though far enough removed
+from us to be picturesque, could hardly have been
+more real.</p>
+
+<p>The sickness of the body politic has been portrayed
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_257" id="Page_257">257</a></span>
+with artistic sympathy and veracity by Mr.
+C. M. Flandrau, in his "Harvard Episodes,"
+the wittiest and most searching of studies of undergraduate
+life. It is no doubt for this reason
+that the book is both read and resented by the
+healthy and unthinking college man.</p>
+
+<p>To dwell on such individual instances would be
+unpleasant. The point of importance is to show
+how the social chaos affects the health of the
+community as a whole. As it happens, we have a
+barometer. For better or for worse, the moving
+passion of the undergraduate body, aside from
+studies, is athletic success. If athletics prosper, it
+is because the life of the college finds an easy and
+natural expression; if athletics languish, there is
+pretty sure to be some check on wholesome functioning.</p>
+
+<p>The causes of Harvard's abundant failures and
+the remedies have been a fertile theme of discussion.
+One cause is obvious. The rivals with distressing
+frequency have produced better teams. Every
+one knows that what Cambridge chooses to call
+Yale luck is nine parts Yale pluck; and the quality
+is well developed at Princeton, Pennsylvania,
+and elsewhere. But why is it developed at these
+places more than at Harvard? The explanations
+are legion. The first cry was bad coaching. This
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_258" id="Page_258">258</a></span>
+was repeated until the fault was corrected, at least
+in part, and until every one was wholly tired of
+hearing the explanation. Then came the cry of
+bad physical training. This in turn was repeated
+until it brought partial remedy and total weariness
+of the agitation. By and by, all other complaints
+having been worn threadbare, Harvard's defeat
+was attributed to the fog on Soldier's Field. It
+is not unlikely that the fog will be dissipated
+and the athletes duly benefited. Yet it is far
+from certain that this will make the athletic body
+sound.</p>
+
+<p>The fault lies deeper than Yale pluck&mdash;or even
+the fog on Soldier's Field. It is to be found in
+the conditions, social, administrative, and even educational,
+which are at the basis of the life of the
+university. If these conditions were peculiar to
+Harvard, it would decidedly not be worth while
+to discuss them publicly. But they are inherent
+in the type of university of which Harvard is the
+earliest and most developed example, and are destined
+to crop out in every American institution of
+learning in proportion as it grows, as Harvard has
+grown, from the English college of a few decades
+ago into the Teutonized university of the present
+and of the future. In considering the causes, it is
+necessary to speak concretely of our one eminent
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_259" id="Page_259">259</a></span>
+example; but the main fact brought out will be
+applicable in greater or less degree to the present
+or future of any American college.</p>
+
+<p>The sources of Harvard's weakness are mainly
+social. When the college was small, it had its
+share of victory; but almost from the year when it
+began to outgrow its rivals, its prowess declined.
+Forty years ago, and even less, the undergraduate
+constitution of American institutions was, roughly
+speaking, that of the colleges of Oxford and Cambridge:
+a freshman was measurably sure of falling
+into easy relationship with the fellows of his class
+and of other classes, and thus of finding his level
+or his pinnacle in athletic teams and in clubs.
+Considered as a machine for developing good fellows
+and good sportsmen, it was well adjusted and
+well oiled; it worked. But it was not capable of
+expansion. Two or three hundred fellows can live
+and even dine together with comfort and an increase
+of mutual understanding; they soon become
+an organized community. When a thousand or
+two live as a single community and dine at one
+board (let us call it dining), the social bond relaxes.
+Next door neighbors are unknown to one
+another, having no common ground of meeting,
+and even the college commons fail to bring them
+together. The relaxing influence of the hour spent
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_260" id="Page_260">260</a></span>
+at table and in the subsequent conversation, during
+which social intercourse should most freely
+flourish, is quite lost. The undergraduate body is
+a mob, or at best an aggregation of shifting cliques.
+If men live in crowds or in cliques, their life is
+that of crowds or of cliques, and is unprofitable
+both to themselves and to the community that
+should prosper by their loyal activity.</p>
+
+<p>It is true that there are societies and clubs, but
+these also to a certain degree have been swamped
+in the rising tide of undergraduates. With freshman
+classes as large as those of to-day, the old
+social machinery becomes incapable of sifting the
+clubable from the less clubable, those who deserve
+recognition in the body of undergraduates from
+those who do not. The evil is increased by the
+fact that as a rule in America the social life is
+organized early in the undergraduate course, so
+that the men who fail of election in the first year
+or two have failed for good. There are, to be
+sure, cases in which men who have later developed
+signal merit have been taken into the all-important
+societies and clubs of the upper classmen, and
+sometimes these societies make a special and most
+creditable effort thus to remedy the failures of the
+system; but the men who are thus elected are an
+exception, and an exception of the kind that proves
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_261" id="Page_261">261</a></span>
+the rule. Unless a man has been prominent in
+one of the large preparatory schools, or becomes
+prominent in athletics in the first year or so, there
+is only one way to make sure of meeting such fellows
+as he wishes to know, and that is both to
+choose friends and to avoid them with an eye to
+social chances, a method which is scarcely to be
+commended. As the incoming classes grow larger,
+there is an increasingly large proportion of undergraduates
+who fail to qualify in the first year or
+two in any of these ways. Throughout their
+course they neither receive benefit from the general
+life of the university nor contribute to it.
+They are often of loyal and disinterested character,
+and they not infrequently develop into men
+of exceptional ability in all of the paths of undergraduate
+life; not a few of them have been 'varsity
+captains. But instead of exerting the influence
+on the welfare of the university which such men
+might and should exert, they find it impossible to
+get into the main currents, and revolve impotently
+on the outside, each in the particular eddy where
+fate has thrust him.</p>
+
+<p>At Harvard, where the evil has long been recognized,
+a remedy has been sought in increasing the
+membership of the great sophomore and senior
+societies, the Institute of 1770 and the Hasty Pudding
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_262" id="Page_262">262</a></span>
+Club. The result has been the reverse of
+what was intended. The larger the club the less
+compact its life and its influence,&mdash;what a few
+men have gained the club has lost. The tendency
+toward disintegration is confirmed by a peculiarity
+of the organization of the societies. The first half
+of the members of the Institute form a separate
+club, the D. K. E., or Dickey. From this the second
+half are excluded, becoming a sort of social
+fringe; they often form a part of the mob that
+dines at Memorial or of the cliques that dine in
+boarding-houses, and are only a shade less excluded
+than the rest from the centres of the college
+life. If this inner club, the Dickey, were the
+instrument of a united and efficient public spirit,
+the case would not be so bad, but its members in
+turn are split into a number of small clubs; as a
+social organization the Dickey is mainly a name.
+If now these small clubs took a strong part in the
+general life of the college, the case would still not
+be so bad; but each spends its main strength in
+struggling with the others to secure as many members
+as possible from the first ten of the Dickey.
+They are scarcely to be regarded as engines of
+public spirit.</p>
+
+<p>The same is true of the great senior society, the
+Hasty Pudding. Its most prominent members
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_263" id="Page_263">263</a></span>
+belong to the few small clubs of upper classmen;
+the rest are as much a social fringe as the later
+tens of the Institute. And the senior clubs, like
+the clubs of the under classmen, are more interested
+in their private politics than in the policy of
+the college as a whole. At Yale the senior societies
+still exert a strong and generally wholesome influence,
+but at Harvard they have long ceased to do
+so, if they ever did. In proportion as a man is successful
+in the social world the system lifts him out
+of the body of undergraduate life. The reward of
+athletic distinction or of good-fellowship is a sort
+of pool pocket, upon getting into which a man is
+definitely out of the game. The leaders in the
+college life, social and athletic, are chosen on the
+superficial tests of the freshman year, and are
+not truly representative; and the organization of
+which they become a part is calculated only to
+suppress general and efficient public spirit. The
+outer layers are dead wood and the kernels sterile.
+This is at least one reason why Harvard does not
+oftener win.</p>
+
+<p>In all this there is no place for a philosophy of
+despair. The spirit of the undergraduate, clubbed
+and unclubbed, is normal and sound. The efforts
+which the clubs themselves make from time to
+time to become representative are admirably public
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_264" id="Page_264">264</a></span>
+spirited; and there is no less desire on the part
+of the outsiders to live for the best interests of the
+college. On the day of an athletic contest the
+university is behind the team, heart and lungs;
+and when defeat comes it is felt alike by all conditions
+of men. From time to time ancient athletes
+journey to Cambridge to exhort the undergraduate
+body to pull together; and it is a poor orator indeed
+who cannot set in motion strong currents of
+enthusiasm. Half an hour of earnest talk on the
+strenuous life from Theodore Roosevelt has often
+been known to raise a passion of aspiration that
+has positively lasted for weeks. But the social
+system cannot be galvanized into life and functioning.
+The undergraduates aspire and strive, but
+every effort is throttled by a Little Old Man of the
+Sea. When all is said and done, the mob and
+the cliques remain mob and cliques; with discord
+within and exclusive without, there is small hope
+of organized efficiency.</p>
+
+<p>At Yale the oligarchic spirit of the senior societies
+is compact and operative where that of the
+Harvard clubs is not; but Yale also is being
+swamped. The vast and increasing mob of the
+unaffiliated has several times within the last decade
+shown a shocking disrespect for the sacred
+authority of the captains; and the non-representative
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_265" id="Page_265">265</a></span>
+character of the sophomore societies, from
+which the senior societies are recruited, has been
+a public scandal. One result of this disorder is
+that the ancient athletic prestige is slipping away,
+or is so far in abeyance that it is again a question
+whether Harvard or Yale has&mdash;shall we say the
+worse team? The case of the older universities is
+typical. Other institutions are expanding as fast
+or faster, and it is only a question of time when
+the increase of numbers will swamp the social
+system.</p>
+
+<p>That there is something rotten in the state of
+Denmark has of late been officially recognized, at
+least at Harvard. In order to create a general
+social and athletic life in the community a Union
+has been established, modeled on the Oxford
+Union. It would be pleasant to picture the College
+House of the future shaking hands with Claverly,
+the Phi Beta Kappa linking elbows with the
+Porcellian, and the fellows who now, in spite of
+a desire to be sociable, have lived through four
+years of solitary confinement each in his petty
+circle, enjoying the bosom friendship of all the
+men they may desire to know. It would be pleasant
+but perhaps not altogether warrantable, when
+one considers the essential nature of the Union.</p>
+
+<p>The Oxford Union of celebrity, as has been
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_266" id="Page_266">266</a></span>
+pointed out in an earlier chapter, is a thing of the
+past. It was an exclusive institution, in which no
+attempt was made to foster universal brotherhood.
+When it was thrown open to the entire undergraduate
+world, it lost caste and authority. The elect
+flocked by themselves each in his own exclusive
+club. If the Harvard Union had been modeled
+on the old exclusive Oxford Union, it might perhaps
+have been equally efficient in bringing together
+a broadly representative body of men. But
+it was modeled on the modern democratic Union.
+Here is a plain case: When the Oxford Union
+ceased to be exclusive, its best elements flocked by
+themselves, and the result is a growth of small
+exclusive clubs. At Harvard the exclusive clubs
+and societies are both ancient and honorable, and,
+moreover, very comfortable, and it hardly seems
+likely that their members will rout themselves out
+of their cosy corners to join the merry rout at the
+Harvard Union.</p>
+
+<p>This is not to cast a gloomy eye upon the new
+university club; it is rather by way of emphasizing
+the importance of the work it has to do, and
+will succeed in doing. Hitherto the lounging
+grounds of the unaffiliated (alas! that in such an
+alma mater so many are forever unaffiliated!)
+have been public billiard-rooms and tobacco shops.
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_267" id="Page_267">267</a></span>
+For the solace of a midnight supper one had to go
+to the locally familiar straw-hatted genius of the
+sandwich, and for the luxury of a late breakfast to
+John of the Holly Tree. And John the Orange
+Man! Great worthies these, ancient and most
+honorable. But even in the enchantment of retrospect
+they somehow or other explain why so many
+fellows choose to live, for the most part, in small
+cliques in one another's rooms and cultivate the
+deadly chafing-dish. For the unaffiliated&mdash;by far
+the larger part of each class&mdash;the new club-house
+will be a Godsend. It is much more fun to cut a
+nine-o'clock lecture if you are sure of a comfortable
+chair at breakfast and a real napkin; and
+even in the brutal gladness of youth, it is pleasant
+at a midnight supper to be seated. And then,
+after that athletic dinner at Memorial, a place to
+loaf quietly over a pipe with whatever congenial
+spirit one finds, and listen to the clicking of billiard-balls!
+It is also proposed that the 'varsity
+athletes have their training tables at the new
+Union, so that any fellow may come to know them
+clothed and in their right minds. I fancy that the
+new club will leave those old worthies a trifle lonesome,
+and will banish the chafing-dish forever.</p>
+
+<p>The spirit of an old graduate somehow takes
+kindly to the idea of a place like that. How the
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_268" id="Page_268">268</a></span>
+spirit of Bishop Brooks, for instance, would enjoy
+slipping in of an evening for the cigar they have
+denied him in the house erected in his memory!
+And for the graduate in the flesh the club-house
+will be no less welcome, especially if he is unlucky
+enough not to have a club of his own to go back
+to. To love one's alma mater it is, of course, not
+necessary to have a club; but it somehow interferes
+with the sentiment of a home-coming to be
+obliged to go back to Boston by trolley for luncheon
+and dinner, and to eat it among aliens. In
+the new Union it will even be possible to put up
+for the night. A long step has been made in
+advance of the old unhappy order. Yet the new
+Union leaves the vital evil in the community life
+as far as ever from solution.</p>
+
+<p>What the authorities have failed to do consciously
+may, according to present indications, be
+accomplished, in some manner at least, by an unconscious
+growth. When Memorial became inadequate
+to the mere demand for seating-room, new
+dining-halls were established. In the future it is
+possible that these new halls may be kept within
+the line where community life becomes impossible
+and mob life begins. If they could be, the problem
+would be at least one step nearer solution.
+But to gain the highest effect of community organization,
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_269" id="Page_269">269</a></span>
+it is necessary that the men who dine in the
+same hall shall live near one another. Under the
+present system this rarely happens, and when it
+does, it does not even follow that they know one
+another by sight. Until the halls represent some
+real division in undergraduate life&mdash;separate and
+organized communities&mdash;they must remain the resort
+of a student mob.</p>
+
+<p>Fortunately, another movement is discernible in
+the direction of separate residential organization.
+Already certain of the dormitories in American
+universities are governed democratically by the
+inmates: no student is admitted except by order
+of a committee of the members. The fraternity
+houses so widely diffused in America offer a still
+better example, almost a counterpart, of the halls
+of the golden age of the mediæval university. Any
+considerable development of hall or fraternity life
+in the great universities would result in a dual
+organization of the kind that has proved of such
+advantage in England, so that a man would have
+his residence in a small democratic community, and
+satisfy his more special interests in the exclusive
+clubs of the university. In such an arrangement
+the hall would profit by the clubman as the clubman
+would gain influence through the hall. All
+undergraduates would thus be united in the general
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_270" id="Page_270">270</a></span>
+university life in a way which is now undreamed
+of, and which is unlikely, as I think, even
+in the new Harvard Union.</p>
+
+<p>The tendency toward division in the dining-halls
+and the dormitories is evident also in athletics;
+but here it is very far from unconscious. The
+division by classes long ago ceased to be an adequate
+means of developing material for the 'varsity
+teams, and when the English rowing coach, Mr. R.
+C. Lehmann, was in charge of the Harvard oarsmen,
+he outlined a plan for developing separate
+crews not unlike the college crews of England.
+This system has since been effected with excellent
+results. Separate boating clubs have been established,
+each of which has races among its own
+crews and races with the crews of its rivals. Only
+one thing has prevented the complete success of
+the system. The division into clubs is factitious,
+representing no real rivalry such as exists among
+English colleges. To supply this rivalry, it is
+only necessary that each boat club shall represent
+a hall. The same division would of course be
+equally of benefit in all branches of sport. The
+various teams within the university would then
+represent a real social rivalry, such as has long
+ceased to exist. This could scarcely fail to produce
+the effect that has been so remarkable at the
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_271" id="Page_271">271</a></span>
+English universities. As in England, a multiplication
+of contests would on the one hand develop far
+better university material, and on the other hand
+it would lessen rather than exaggerate the excessive
+importance of intercollegiate contests.
+</p>
+
+<p class="center p6">II</p>
+
+<p class="center">THE ADMINISTRATIVE PROBLEM<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_272" id="Page_272">272</a></span></p>
+
+<p class="p2"><span class="dropcap">T</span><span class="smcap">he</span> administrative evil of the American university,
+as typified in Harvard, Mr. Bolles
+described even more vividly than the social evil.
+The bare fact of the problem he stated as follows:
+"In 1840 the college contained 250 students; in
+1850, 300; in 1860, 450; in 1870, 600; in 1880,
+800; in 1890, 1300; in 1894, 1600." He then
+pointed out that the only means the authorities have
+found for meeting this increasing demand on the
+administrative office is, not to divide the students
+into separate small bodies each under a single administrator,
+but to divide the duties of administration
+among several officers. Thus each of the added
+officers is required to perform his duty toward the
+entire student body. It is apparently assumed that
+he can discharge one duty toward two or three
+thousand students as intelligently as in former years
+he could discharge two or three duties toward two
+or three hundred. By this arrangement the most
+valuable factor in administration is eliminated&mdash;personal
+knowledge and personal contact between
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_273" id="Page_273">273</a></span>
+the administrator and his charges. It is said that
+the members of the administrative board of the college&mdash;professors
+whose time is of extreme value to
+the university and to the world, and who receive no
+pay as administrators&mdash;sit three hours a night three
+nights in the week deciding the cases that come
+before them, not from personal knowledge of the
+undergraduates concerned, but from oral and documentary
+reports. "It is only by a fiction that
+the Recorder [or the Dean, or the member of the
+administrative board] can be assumed to have any
+personal knowledge of even a half of the men
+whose absences he counts, whose petitions he acts
+upon, and against whose delinquencies he remonstrates;
+yet the fiction is maintained while its
+absurdity keeps on growing.... If the rate of
+growth and our present administrative system are
+maintained, the Dean and Recorder of Harvard
+College will [in 1950] be personally caring for
+6500 individuals, with all of whom they will be
+presumed to have an intelligent acquaintance."</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Bolles lived through the period in which a
+brilliant band of German-trained American professors,
+having made over our educational system
+as far as possible on German lines, were endeavoring
+to substitute German discipline, or lack of it, for
+the traditional system of collegiate residence which
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_274" id="Page_274">274</a></span>
+aims to make the college a well-regulated social community.
+At one time these reformers rejoiced in the
+fact that Harvard students attended the ice carnival
+at Montreal or basked in the Bermudan sun
+while the faculty had no means of knowing where
+they were and no responsibility for the success of
+their college work. The Overseers, however, were
+not in sympathy with the Teutonized faculty, and
+soon put an end to this; but the reformers were,
+and perhaps still are, only waiting the opportunity
+to establish again the Teutonic license. "It is
+sometimes said," Mr. Bolles continues, "that Harvard
+may eventually free itself from all its remaining
+parental responsibility and leave students'
+habits, health, and morals to their individual care,
+confining itself to teaching, research, and the granting
+of degrees. Before it can do this, it must be
+freed from dormitories. As long as fifteen hundred
+of its students live in monastic quarters provided
+or approved by the university, so long must the
+university be held responsible by the city, by parents,
+and by society at large, for the sanitary and
+moral condition of such quarters. The dormitory
+system implies and necessitates oversight of health
+and morals. The trouble to-day is that the administrative
+machinery in use is not capable of doing
+all that is and ought to be expected of it.... If it
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_275" id="Page_275">275</a></span>
+be determined openly that the health and morals
+of Harvard undergraduates are not to occupy the
+attention of the Dean and Board of the college,
+then the present system may be perpetuated, but
+if this determination is not reached, then either the
+system must be changed or the present attempt to
+accomplish the impossible will go on until something
+snaps."</p>
+
+<p>Since Mr. Bolles's day there has been much earnest
+effort to solve the administrative problem; but
+the difficulties have increased rather than diminished.
+The duties of the Dean are still much the
+same as when the freshman class numbered one
+hundred instead of five. Only the Dean has been
+improved. He is at least five times as human and
+five times as earnest as any other Dean; but the
+freshman class keeps on growing, and when he has
+satisfied his very exacting conscience and retires
+(or, not having satisfied his conscience, perishes),
+no man knows where his better is to be found. Of
+the Secretary and the Recorder and his assistants
+Mr. Bolles has spoken. A Regent has among
+other duties a general charge of the rooms the
+fellows live in, and usually makes each room and
+its occupant a yearly visit&mdash;which the occupant,
+in the perversity of undergraduate nature, regards
+as a visitation. Then there is the physician. So
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_276" id="Page_276">276</a></span>
+large a proportion of the undergraduates were found
+to be isolated and unhappy in their circumstances,
+and remote from the knowledge of the authorities,
+that it became necessary to appoint some one to
+whom they might appeal in need. Thus the details
+as to each undergraduate's residence are in the
+hands of seven different officials, each of whom, in
+order to attain the best results, requires a personal
+acquaintance with the thousands of undergraduates.
+Furthermore the entire body of undergraduates
+changes every four years. If every administrator
+had the commodity of lives commonly attributed
+to the cat, the duties of their offices would still be
+infinitely beyond them.</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Bolles suggested a solution of the administrative
+problem: "If the college is too large for its
+dean and administrative board to manage in the
+way most certain to benefit its students, it should
+be divided, using as a divisor the number ...
+which experts may agree in thinking is the number
+of young men whom one dean and board should
+be expected to know and govern effectively."</p>
+
+<p>When Mr. Bolles wrote, one class of administrative
+officer and one only was limited in his duties
+to a single small community: in each building in
+which students lived, a proctor resided who was
+supposed to see that the Regent's orders were
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_277" id="Page_277">277</a></span>
+enforced. Since then another step has been taken
+in the same direction; a board of advisers has been
+established, each member of which is supposed to
+have a helpful care of twenty-five freshmen. These
+two officials, it will be seen, divide the administrative
+duties of an English tutor. That they
+represent a step toward Mr. Bolles's solution of
+the administrative difficulty has probably never
+occurred to the authorities; and as yet it must be
+admitted the step is mainly theoretical. The position
+of both, as I know from sad personal experience,
+is such that their duties, like those of all
+other administrators, resolve into a mere matter of
+police regulation. The men are apt to resist all
+friendly advances. In the end, a proctor's activities
+usually consist in preventing them of a Sunday
+from shouting too loud over games of indoor football,
+and at other times from blowing holes through the
+cornice with shotguns. The case of the freshman
+adviser is much the same. His first duty is to
+expound to his charges the mysteries of the elective
+system, and to help each student choose his courses.
+According to the original intention, he was to
+exert as far as possible a beneficial personal influence
+on newcomers; but the result seldom follows
+the intention. Beyond the visit which each
+freshman is obliged to make to his adviser in
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_278" id="Page_278">278</a></span>
+order to have his list of electives duly signed,
+there is nothing except misdemeanor to bring the
+two within the same horizon. When the adviser
+takes pains to proffer hospitality, the freshman's
+first thought is that he is to be disciplined. When,
+as often happens, a proctor is also a freshman
+adviser, he unites the two administrative duties of
+an English tutor; but his position is much less
+favorable in that his duties are performed toward
+two distinct bodies of men. With time, tact, and
+labor, he might conceivably force himself into personal
+relationship with his fifty-odd charges; but
+the inevitable ground of meeting, such as the English
+tutor finds in his teaching, is lacking. An
+attempt to become acquainted is very apt to appear
+gratuitous. In point of fact, such acquaintance
+is scarcely expected by the university, and
+is certainly not paid for. What little an administrator
+earns is apt to be so much an hour (and
+not so very much) for teaching. A gratuitous
+office is so difficult that one hesitates to perform
+it gratuitously. If the young instructor is bent
+on making himself unnecessary trouble, there is
+plenty of opportunity in connection with his teaching;
+and here, of course, owing to the characteristic
+lack of organic coördination, he has to deal
+with a body of men who, except by rare accident,
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_279" id="Page_279">279</a></span>
+are quite distinct both from those whom he advises
+and those whom he proctorizes. The system at
+Harvard may be different in detail from that at
+other American universities; but wherever a large
+body of undergraduates are living under a single
+administrative system, it can scarcely be different
+in kind.</p>
+
+<p>Enough has been said to show that the only
+office which an administrator can perform is a
+police office. Where the college and the university
+are identical, the element of personal influence
+is necessarily eliminated. But if the college were
+divided into separate administrative units, the
+situation would be very different. The seven general
+and two special offices I have indicated might
+be discharged, as regards each undergraduate, by
+a dean and a few proctor-advisers; and as the students
+and their officers would be living in the
+same building, personal knowledge and influence
+might become the controlling force. The solution
+of the administrative problem is identical with
+the solution of the social and athletic problem, and
+in both cases a movement toward it is begun.
+If the student body is eventually divided into residential
+halls of the early mediæval type, much good
+will result, and probably nothing but good, even
+if the tutorial function proper is absent. As to
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_280" id="Page_280">280</a></span>
+the addition of the tutorial function, that is a
+question of extreme complexity and uncertainty,
+in order to grasp which it is necessary to review
+the peculiar educational institutions of American
+universities.
+</p>
+
+<p class="center p6">III</p>
+
+<p class="center">THE EDUCATIONAL PROBLEM<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_281" id="Page_281">281</a></span></p>
+
+<p class="p2"><span class="dropcap">A</span><span class="smcap">s</span> regards the American teaching system, the
+fact that the college so long remained identical
+with the university has caused little else than
+good. At Oxford and Cambridge, when a demand
+arose for instruction in new fields, the university
+could not meet it because it had little or no wealth
+and had surrendered its teaching function; and
+the score of richly endowed colleges, by force of
+their inertia, collectively resisted the demand.
+The enlargement in the scope of instruction has
+been of the slowest. In America, each new demand
+instantly created its supply. The moment
+the students in theology required more than a single
+professor, their tuition fees as well as other funds
+could be applied to the creation of a divinity
+school; and the professorships in law, medicine,
+and the technical professions were likewise organized
+into schools, each fully equipped under a
+separate faculty for the pursuit of its special
+aim. Thus the ancient college was developed by
+segregation into a fully organized modern university.
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_282" id="Page_282">282</a></span>
+American institutions are composed of a
+reduplication, not of similar colleges, but of distinct
+schools, each with its special subject to teach.
+This fact makes possible a far higher standard of
+instruction. The virtue of the administrative and
+social organization in the English university, as
+has been pointed out, results from division of the
+university into separate communities,&mdash;distinct
+organs, each with its separate activity. The virtue
+of the American university in its teaching
+functions results from a precisely similar cause.</p>
+
+<p>In the case of the college, one or two details
+have lately been the occasion of criticism. In the
+educational as in the social and administrative
+functions, the machinery is apparently overgrown.
+Until well into the nineteenth century, the body
+of instruction offered was much the same as in
+the English colleges of the seventeenth century, or
+in the pass schools of to-day,&mdash;a modified version
+of the mediæval trivium and quadrivium. When
+a new world of intellectual life was opened, most
+academic leaders regarded it with abhorrence.
+The old studies were the only studies to develop
+the manners and the mind; the new studies were
+barbarous, and dwarfed the understanding. All
+learning had been contained in a pint-pot, and
+must continue to be so. If the old curriculum had
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_283" id="Page_283">283</a></span>
+prevailed, the old system might have continued
+to serve, in spite of the enormous increase of students;
+but it did not. Discussions of the educational
+value of the new learning are still allowed
+to consume paper and ink; but the cause of the
+old pint-pot was lost decades ago. All branches
+are taught, and are open to all students.</p>
+
+<p>The live question to-day both in England and
+America is not whether we shall recognize the
+new subjects, but how and in what proportion we
+shall teach them. In England, where the colleges
+and the university are separate, the teaching and
+the examining are separate. The student prepares
+in college for an examination by the university.
+It is as a result of this that the subjects of
+instruction have been divided and organized into
+honor schools; and here again the division and
+organization have resulted in sounder and more
+efficient functioning. In America, such a division
+has never been made: the teaching and the degree-granting
+offices have remained identical. The
+professor in each "course" is also the examiner,
+and the freedom of choice of necessity goes not
+by groups of related studies but by small disconnected
+courses. As the field of recognized knowledge
+developed, new courses were added, and the
+student was granted a greater range of choice.
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_284" id="Page_284">284</a></span>
+Whereas of old all the instruction of the college
+might and had to be taken in four years, the modern
+courses could scarcely be exhausted in a full
+century. This American system, earliest advocated
+at Harvard, is called the elective system,
+and has made its way, in a more or less developed
+form, into all American universities worthy of the
+name. Its primary work was that of the Oxford
+honor schools&mdash;the shattering of the old pint-pot.
+It has done this work; but it is now in train to
+become no less a superstition than the older system,
+and is thus no less a menace to the cause of
+education.</p>
+
+<p>It is perhaps only natural, though it was scarcely
+to be expected, that the university which in late
+years has most severely criticised the elective system
+is that which a quarter of a century ago deliberately
+advocated it, and in the face of almost
+universal opposition justified it in the eyes of
+American educators. There has evidently been a
+miscalculation. Yet though Harvard has cautiously
+acknowledged its failure in the persons of
+no less authorities than Professor Münsterberg and
+Dean Briggs, the element of error has not yet been
+clearly stated, nor has the remedy been proposed.
+Many things have been said against the elective
+system, but they may all be summed up in one
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_285" id="Page_285">285</a></span>
+phrase: it is not elective. This is no specious
+paradox. It is the offer of free election that is
+specious.</p>
+
+<p>No offer could seem fairer. The student is at
+liberty to choose as he will. He may specialize
+microscopically or scatter his attention over the
+universe; he may elect the most ancient subjects
+or the most modern, the hardest or the easiest.
+No offer, I repeat, could seem fairer. But experience
+disillusions. Some day or other a serious
+student wakes up to the fact that he is the victim
+of&mdash;shall we say a thimble-rigging game? For
+example, let us take the case of a serious specialist.
+Of all the world's knowledge the serious
+specialist values only one little plot. A multitude
+of courses is listed in the catalogue, fairly exhausting
+his field. Delightful! Clearly he can see
+which walnut-shell covers the pea. He chooses for
+his first year's study four courses&mdash;the very best
+possible selection, the only selection, to open up his
+field. One moment: on closer scrutiny he finds
+that two of the four courses are given at the same
+hour, and that, therefore, he cannot take them in
+the same year. Still, there are at his command
+other courses, not so well adapted to his purposes,
+but sooner or later necessary. He chooses one.
+Hold again! On closer inspection he finds that appended
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_286" id="Page_286">286</a></span>
+to the course is a Roman numeral, and that
+the same numeral is against one of his other courses.
+After half an hour's search in the catalogue he
+finds that, though the two courses are given at different
+hours, and indeed on different days of the
+week, the mid-year and final examinations in both
+take place on the same days. Obviously these two
+cannot be taken in the same year. With dampened
+spirits his eye lights on a second substitute.
+He could easily deny himself this course; but it is
+vastly interesting, if not important, and he must
+arrange a year's work. Behold, this most interesting
+course was given last year, and will be given
+next year, but neither love nor money nor the void
+of a soul hungering for knowledge could induce the
+professor who gives it to deliver one sentence of
+one lecture; he is busy and more than busy with
+another course which will not be given next year.
+The specialist is at last forced to elect a course he
+does not really want. One entanglement as to hours
+of which the present deponent had knowledge forced
+a specialist in Elizabethan literature to elect&mdash;and,
+being a candidate for a degree with distinction, to
+get a high grade in&mdash;a course in the history of
+finance legislation in the United States. This was
+a tragic waste, for so many and so minute are the
+courses offered that the years at the student's disposal
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_287" id="Page_287">287</a></span>
+are all too few to cover even a comparatively
+narrow field. The specialist may well ruminate
+on the philosophy of Alice and her Wonderland
+jam. Yesterday he could elect anything, and to-morrow
+anything; but how empty is to-day!</p>
+
+<p>Highly as the modern university regards the
+serious specialist, a more general sympathy will
+probably be given to the man who is seeking a liberal
+education. Such a man knows that in four
+years at his disposal he cannot gain any real scientific
+knowledge even of the studies of the old-fashioned
+college curriculum. As taught now, at
+Harvard, they would occupy, according to President
+Eliot's report for 1894-95, twice four years.
+But by choosing a single group of closely related
+subjects, and taking honors in it, he hopes to master
+a considerable plot of the field of knowledge.
+I will not say that he chooses the ancient classics,
+for&mdash;though they are admirably taught in a general
+way in the great Oxford Honor School of
+Literæ Humaniores&mdash;the American student may
+be held to require, even in studying the classics,
+a larger element of scientific culture, which would
+take more time than is to be had. For the same
+reason I will not say that he chooses the modern
+languages and literatures, though such a choice
+might be defended. Let us say that he chooses a
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_288" id="Page_288">288</a></span>
+single modern language and literature&mdash;his own.<a name="FNanchor_4" id="FNanchor_4" href="#Footnote_4" class="fnanchor">[4]</a>
+Surely this is not too large a field for four years'
+study. Of classics, mathematics, science, and history
+he has supposedly been given a working
+knowledge in the preparatory school. For the rest
+he relies on the elective system.</p>
+
+<p>Even in the beginning, like the specialist, he is
+unable to choose the courses he most wants, because
+of the conflict of the hours of instruction and
+examination; and this difficulty pursues him year
+by year, increasing as the subjects to be taken
+grow fewer and fewer. But let us dismiss this as
+an incidental annoyance. His fate is foreshadowed
+when he finds that the multitude of courses by
+which alone he could cover the entire field of English
+literature would fill twice the time at his disposal.
+Already he has discovered that the elective
+system is not so very elective. He sadly omits
+Icelandic and Gothic, and all but one half course
+is Anglo-Saxon. Some day he means to cover the
+ground by means of a history of literature and
+translations; but in point of fact, as the subjects
+are not at all necessary for his degree, and as he
+is overburdened with other work, he never does.
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_289" id="Page_289">289</a></span>
+He sticks to his last, and is the more willing to do
+so because, being wise beyond the wont of undergraduates,
+he knows that it will be well to fortify
+his knowledge of the English language and literature
+with a complementary knowledge of the history
+of the English people, and of the history and
+literature of the neighboring Germans and French.</p>
+
+<p>Having barely time for a rapid survey of these
+complementary subjects, he elects only the introductory
+courses. In the aggregate they require
+many precious hours, and to take them he is
+obliged to omit outright English literature of the
+eighteenth and nineteenth centuries; but he knows
+that it is better to neglect a finial or two than
+the buttresses of the edifice he is building. Again
+he has miscalculated. After his complementary
+courses are begun, and it is too late to withdraw
+from them, he discovers even more clearly than the
+specialist how very unelective the elective system
+can be. It is the same old question of the thimble
+and the pea. These introductory courses are intended
+to introduce him to the study of history
+and of literature, not to complement his studies of
+English. What he wanted to know in English history
+was the social and the political movements, the
+vital and picturesque aspect; what he is taught
+is the sources and constitutions&mdash;the dry bones.
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_290" id="Page_290">290</a></span>
+In German and French he wanted to know the
+epochs of literature; he is taught the language,
+considered scientifically, or, at most, certain haphazard
+authors in whom he has only a casual interest.
+If he is studying for honors, he is obliged to
+waste enough time on these disappointing courses
+to reach a high grade in each. The system of
+free election is mighty, for he is a slave to it.</p>
+
+<p>This difficulty is typical. Thus a student of
+history or of German who wants to study Elizabethan
+literature for its bearing on his subject is
+obliged to spend one full course&mdash;a quarter of a
+year's work&mdash;on the language of four or five
+plays of Shakespeare before he is permitted to take
+a half course on Shakespeare as a dramatist; and
+even then all the rest of the Elizabethan period is
+untouched.</p>
+
+<p>Let us suppose that our student of English is
+wary as well as wise, preternaturally wary, and
+leaves all complementary subjects to private reading&mdash;for
+which he has no time. He is then able
+to devote himself to the three or four most important
+epochs in English literature. He has to leave
+out much that is of importance, so that he cannot
+hope to gain a synoptic view of the field as a
+whole; but of his few subjects he will at least be
+master. Here at last is the thimble that covers
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_291" id="Page_291">291</a></span>
+the pea. Not yet! In four courses out of five of
+those devoted to the greatest writers, the teacher's
+attention is directed primarily to a very special
+and scientific study of the language; the examination
+consists in explaining linguistic cruxes. Literary
+criticism, even of the most sober kind, is
+quite neglected. If the student learns only what
+is taught, he may attain the highest grades and the
+highest honors without being able in the end to
+distinguish accurately the spirit of Chaucer from
+that of Elizabethan literature.</p>
+
+<p>Furthermore, not every student is sufficiently
+well advised to know precisely what courses he
+requires to attain his end. For example, to gain
+an understanding of the verse forms and even the
+spirit of Middle English and Elizabethan English,
+it is necessary to know the older French and Italian;
+but, as it happened, our student was not aware of
+the fact until he broke his shins against it, and it
+was nobody's business to tell him of it. And even
+if he had been aware of it, he could not have taken
+those subjects without leaving great gaps in his
+English studies. He has graduated <i>summa cum
+laude</i> and with highest honors in English; but he
+has not even a correct outline knowledge of his
+subject. His education is a thing of shreds and
+patches.
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_292" id="Page_292">292</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Whatever may be the aim of the serious student,
+the elective system is similarly fatal to it. I must
+be content with a single instance more. The signal
+merit of the old-fashioned curriculum was that
+its insistence on the classics and mathematics insured
+a mental culture and discipline of a very
+high order, and of a kind that is impossible where
+the student elects only purely scientific courses, or
+courses in which he happens to be especially interested.
+Let us suppose that the serious student
+wishes to elect his courses so as to receive this discipline.
+His plight is indicated in "Some Old-fashioned
+Doubts about New-fashioned Education"
+which have lately been divulged<a name="FNanchor_5" id="FNanchor_5" href="#Footnote_5" class="fnanchor">[5]</a> by the Dean of
+Harvard College, Professor Le B. R. Briggs.
+The undergraduate "may choose the old studies
+but not the old instruction. Instruction under an
+elective system is aimed at the specialist. In elective
+mathematics, for example, the non-mathematical
+student who takes the study for self-discipline
+finds the instruction too high for him; indeed, he
+finds no encouragement for electing mathematics
+at all." The same is true of the classics.</p>
+
+<p>One kind of student, to be quite candid, profits
+vastly by the elective system, namely, the student
+whose artistic instinct makes him ambitious of
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_293" id="Page_293">293</a></span>
+gaining the maximum effect, an A.B., with the
+minimum expenditure of means. History D is a
+good course: the lectures do not come until eleven
+o'clock, and no thought of them blunts the edge
+of the evening before. Semitic C is another good
+course&mdash;only two lectures a week, and you can
+pass it with a few evenings of cramming. If such
+a man is fortunate enough to have learned foreign
+languages in the nursery or in traveling abroad,
+he elects all the general courses in French and
+German. This sort of man is regarded by Dean
+Briggs with unwonted impatience; but he has one
+great claim to our admiration. Of all possible
+kinds of students, he alone has found the pea.
+For him the elective system is elective.</p>
+
+<p>The men who developed the elective system, it is
+quite unnecessary to say, had no sinister intention.
+They were pioneers of educational progress who
+revolted against the narrowness of the old curriculum.
+The nearest means of reform was suggested
+to them by the German plan, and they sought to naturalize
+this <i>in toto</i> without regard to native needs
+and conditions. But the pioneer work of the elective
+system has been done, and the men who now
+uphold it in its entirety are clogging the wheels of
+progress no less than those who fought it at the outset.
+The logic of circumstances early forced them
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_294" id="Page_294">294</a></span>
+to the theory that all knowledge is of equal importance,
+provided only that it is scientifically pursued,
+and this position in effect they still maintain.
+You may elect to study Shakespeare and end by
+studying American finance legislation; but so long
+as you are compelled to study scientifically, bless
+you, you are free.</p>
+
+<p>The serenity of these men must of late have been
+somewhat clouded. Professor Hugo Münsterberg,
+as an editorial writer in "Scribner's Magazine"
+lately remarked, "has been explaining, gently but
+firmly, ostensibly to the teachers in secondary
+schools, but really to his colleagues in the Harvard
+faculty, that they are not imitating the German
+method successfully." In no way is the American
+college man in the same case as the German undergraduate.
+His preparatory schooling is likely to
+be three years in arrears, and, in any case, what he
+seeks is usually culture, not science. "The new
+notion of scholarship," this writer continues, "by
+which the degree means so much Latin and Greek,
+or the equivalent of them in botany or blacksmithing,
+finds no favor at all in what is supposed to
+be the native soil of the 'elective system.'" Dr.
+Münsterberg's own words, guarded as they are, are
+not without point: "Even in the college two thirds
+of the elections are haphazard, controlled by accidental
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_295" id="Page_295">295</a></span>
+motives; election, of course, demands a
+wide view and broad knowledge of the whole field....
+A helter-skelter chase of the unknown is no
+election." The writer in "Scribner's" concludes:
+"It is not desirable that a man should sell his
+birthright for a mess of pottage, even if he gets the
+pottage. If he does not get it, as Dr. Münsterberg
+intimates, of course his state is even worse."</p>
+
+<p>Rough as the elective system is upon the student
+who aspires to be merely a scholar, it is rougher on
+the undergraduate who only wants to train his mind
+and to equip it for business and professional life.
+To him a purely scientific training is usually a positive
+detriment. Scrupulous exactitude and a sense
+of the elusiveness of all knowledge are an excellent
+and indispensable part of the bringing up of a
+scholar; but few things are more fitted, if pursued
+exclusively, to check the self-confidence of a normal
+man and to blight his will. Poor Richard had a
+formula for the case: "A handsaw is a very good
+thing, but not to shave with." Before taking a
+vigorous hold on the affairs of Wall Street or of
+Washington, our recent graduate has first to get
+away from most of the standards that obtain in the
+university, or at least to supplement them by a
+host of others which he should have learned there.
+In another passage in the article already quoted,
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_296" id="Page_296">296</a></span>
+Dean Briggs has touched the vital spot. He is
+speaking of the value, to teachers especially, of the
+peculiar fetich of Teutonized university instruction,
+the thesis, and of its liability to be of fictitious value.
+"Such theses, I suspect, have more than once been
+accepted for higher degrees; yet higher degrees
+won through them leave the winner farther from
+the best qualities of a teacher, remote from men
+and still more remote from boys. It was a relief
+the other day to hear a head-master say, 'I am
+looking for an under-teacher. I want first a man,
+and next a man to teach.'" What is true of teaching
+is even more obviously true of the great world
+of business and of politics. What it wants is men.</p>
+
+<p>The cause of the break-down of the elective system,
+as at present constituted, is to be found in the
+machinery of instruction. The office of the teacher
+has become inextricably mixed up with a totally
+alien office&mdash;university discipline. Attendance
+at lectures is the only means of recording a student's
+presence in the university, and success in the examination
+in lecture courses is the only basis for
+judging of his diligence. At the tolling of a bell
+the student leaves all other affairs to report at a certain
+place. In the Middle Ages, as we have seen,
+lectures were of necessity the main means of instruction.
+Books were rare and their prices prohibitive.
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_297" id="Page_297">297</a></span>
+The master read and the student copied. To-day,
+there are tens of thousands of books in every college
+library. Only in the higher courses are lectures
+necessary or profitable. But still instruction is
+carried on, even in the most general courses, by
+means of professorial lectures. Where great periods
+are covered by leaps and bounds, freshness or individuality
+of treatment is quite impossible. The tolling
+of the college bell dooms hundreds of students
+to hear a necessarily hurried and inarticulate statement
+of knowledge which has been carefully handled
+in printed form by the most brilliant writers, and
+to which a tutor might refer the student in a few
+minutes' conference. Modify the lecture system?
+It is the foundation of the police regulation. The
+boasted freedom in elective studies simmers down
+to this, that it enables the student to choose in
+what courses he shall be made the unwilling ally
+of the administrative officer. The lectures waste
+the time of the student and exhaust the energy
+of the teacher; but unless the lecturers give them
+and the studious attend, how can the university
+know that the shiftless stay away?</p>
+
+<p>It is necessary, moreover, for the administrator
+to judge of the student's success as well as of his
+diligence. Twice every year the professors hold
+an examination lasting for three hours in each of
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_298" id="Page_298">298</a></span>
+their several courses. Of late years an ingenious
+means has been devised for making the examination
+system an even more perfect ally of the police.
+In the middle of each term an examination of one
+hour is held to insure that the student has not
+only attended lectures but studied outside; and, in
+order to expose the procrastinator, it has become
+the custom for the examination to be given without
+warning. Like the lecture system, the examination
+system throws the onus of discipline on the studious
+and the teachers. Two thousand students write
+yearly 32,000 examination books. Quite obviously
+the most advanced of the professors cannot spare
+time for the herculean task of reading and duly
+grading their share of these books. They give over
+most of them to underpaid assistants. The logical
+result of such a system is that the examinations
+tend to be regarded merely as statements of fact,
+and the reading of the books merely as clerical
+labor. If academic distinctions are disprized in
+America, both in college and out of it, this is amply
+explained by the fact that they attest a student's
+diligence rather than his ability. They are awarded,
+like a Sunday-school prize, in return for a certain
+number of good-conduct checks.</p>
+
+<p>It is not enough that the machinery of instruction
+wastes the time of the student and debases the office
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_299" id="Page_299">299</a></span>
+of the examiner; it is, as I have said, the cause of
+the break-down of the elective system. As long as
+each student is required to pursue every study
+under the eye of the disciplinarian, the decision as
+to what he shall study rests not with his desires or
+his needs, but with an elaborate schedule of lectures
+and examinations. So excessive are the evils of
+the present system that no less a man than Professor
+William James has advocated the abolition of the
+examinations.</p>
+
+<p>This remedy is perhaps extreme; but the only
+alternative is almost as radical. It is to enable the
+student, at least the more serious student, to slip
+the trammels of the elective system, and to study
+rationally, and to be rationally examined in, the
+subject or group of subjects which he prefers. In
+a word, the remedy is to divide and organize our
+courses of instruction for the more serious students
+into groups corresponding in some measure to what
+the English call honor schools.</p>
+
+<p>It may be objected that already it is possible to
+read for honors. The objection will scarcely convince
+any one who has taken the examination. It
+is oral, and occupies an hour or two. The men
+who conduct it are leading men in the department,
+and are often of world-wide reputation. They are so
+great that they understand the nature of the farce
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_300" id="Page_300">300</a></span>
+they are playing. No candidate is expected to have
+covered the field of his honor subject even in the
+broadest outlines. When the astute student is not
+sure of an answer, he candidly admits the fact and
+receives credit for knowing that he does not know&mdash;a
+cardinal virtue to the scientific mind. If I
+may be allowed a personal instance, I went up for
+the examination in English literature in complete
+ignorance as to all but a single brief movement.
+When my ignorances were laid bare, the examiners
+most considerately confined their questions to
+my period. We had much pleasant conversation.
+Each of the examiners had imparted in his courses
+his latest rays of new light, and each in turn gave
+me the privilege of reflecting these rays to the
+others. For a brief but happy hour my importance
+was no less than that of the most eminent publication
+of the learned world. It need scarcely be said
+that such examinations are not supposed to have
+much weight in judging of the candidate's fitness.
+A more important test is a thesis studied from
+original sources, and the most important is good-conduct
+marks in a certain arbitrary number of set
+lecture courses. The policeman's examination is
+supreme.
+</p>
+
+<p class="center p6">IV</p>
+
+<p class="center">THE AMERICAN HALL<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_301" id="Page_301">301</a></span></p>
+
+<p class="p2"><span class="dropcap">T</span><span class="smcap">he</span> college has shown a tendency, as I have
+indicated, to divide in its social life into separate
+organizations for the purposes of residence,
+dining, and athletics. In the administrative life,
+at least the proctors and the freshman advisers are
+each in charge of separate bodies of undergraduates.
+In the educational life, a similar tendency
+is noticeable. Year by year there has been an
+increasing disposition to supplement lectures or
+to substitute them by what is in effect tutorial
+instruction. In the history courses, for example,
+the lectures and examinations have for some time
+been supplemented by private personal conferences.
+If the student is proceeding properly, he
+is encouraged; if not, he is given the necessary
+guidance and assistance. I do not know what the
+result has been in the teaching of history; but in
+the teaching of English composition, where the
+conferences have largely supplanted lectures, it
+has been an almost unmixed benefit. The instructor's
+comments are given a directness and a
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_302" id="Page_302">302</a></span>
+personal interest impossible either in the lecture-room
+or by means of written correction and criticism;
+and the students are usually eager to discuss
+their work and the means for bettering it.
+As the lecture system proves more and more inadequate,
+the tutorial instruction must necessarily
+continue to increase, and is not unlikely to afford
+the basis for a more sensibly devised scheme of
+honor schools.</p>
+
+<p>If the American college were organized into
+separate halls, it would be necessary and proper,
+as Mr. Bolles suggested, to place in each a Dean
+and administrative board; and the most economical
+plan of administration, as he pointed out,
+would be to give each administrator as many
+duties as possible toward a single set of pupils.
+Thus the proctor on each staircase of the hall
+would be the adviser of the men who roomed on it.
+It would be only a logical extension of the principle
+to give the proctor-adviser a tutorial office.
+All this indicates a reversion toward the golden
+age of the mediæval hall.</p>
+
+<p>Here is where the gain would lie: The administration
+of the hall would make it no longer
+necessary to rely on the lecture courses for police
+duty, and the wise guidance of a tutor would in
+some measure remove the necessity of the recurrent
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_303" id="Page_303">303</a></span>
+police examinations. Thus the student would
+be able to elect such courses only as the competent
+adviser might judge best for him; and if the
+faculty were relieved of the labor of unnecessary
+instruction and examination it would be possible,
+with less expense than the present system involves,
+to offer a well-considered honor examination, and
+to provide that the examination books should be
+graded not with mere clerical intelligence, but with
+the highest available critical appreciation. Thus
+and only thus can the American honor degree be
+given that value as an asset which the English
+honor degree has possessed for almost a century.</p>
+
+<p>It would by no means be necessary as at Oxford
+to make the honor examination the only basis for
+granting the degree. The fewer lecture courses
+which the student found available would be those
+in which the instruction is more advanced&mdash;the
+"university" courses properly speaking; and his
+examinations in these would be a criterion, such as
+Oxford is very much in need of, for correcting the
+evidence of the honor examination. Furthermore,
+in connection with one or more of these courses it
+would be easy for the student to prepare an honor
+thesis studied from the original sources under the
+constant advice of a university professor. Such
+an arrangement might be made to combine in any
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_304" id="Page_304">304</a></span>
+desired proportion the merits of the English
+honor schools with the merits of advanced instruction
+in America. With the introduction of the
+tutor, the American hall would be the complete
+counterpart of the mediæval hall of the golden age,
+and would solve the educational as well as the
+social and administrative problem.</p>
+
+<p>As to the details of the new system, experience
+would be the final teacher; but for a first experiment,
+the English arrangement is in its main outline
+suggestive. An American pass degree might
+be taken by electing, as all students now elect, a
+certain number of courses at random. For the
+increasing number of those who can afford only
+three years' study, a pass degree would probably
+prove of the greatest advantage. It was by making
+this sharp distinction between the pass degree
+and the honor degree that the English universities
+long ago solved the question, much agitated still
+in America, of the three years' course. For the
+honor men<a name="FNanchor_6" id="FNanchor_6" href="#Footnote_6" class="fnanchor">[6]</a> two general examinations would probably
+suffice. For his second year honor examination
+(the English "Moderations") a student
+might select from three or four general groups.
+This examination would necessarily offer precisely
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_305" id="Page_305">305</a></span>
+that opportunity for mental culture the lack of
+which Dean Briggs laments as the worst feature
+of the elective system as at present conducted.
+Furthermore, it would be easy to arrange the second
+year honor groups so as to include only such
+subjects as are serviceable both for the purposes
+of a general education and to lead up to the subjects
+the student is likely to elect for final honors.
+For the final honor examination the student might
+choose from a dozen or more honor groups, in any
+one of which he would receive scientific culture
+of the most advanced type, while at the same time,
+by means of private reading under his tutor, he
+might fill in very pleasantly the outlines of his
+subject. It is probable that such a system would
+even facilitate the efforts of those who are endeavoring
+to transplant German standards. According
+to Professor Münsterberg, the student who
+specializes in the German university is a good
+two years or more in advance of the American
+freshman. The spirit of German instruction would
+thus require that the period of general culture be
+extended at least to the middle of the undergraduate
+course.</p>
+
+<p>Some such reorganization of our methods of
+teaching and examining, and I fear only this, would
+enable an undergraduate to choose what he wants
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_306" id="Page_306">306</a></span>
+and to pursue it with a fair chance of success. It
+would make the elective system elective.</p>
+
+<p>A concrete plan for an American hall will perhaps
+make the project clearer. The poorer students
+at Harvard have for some years had a separate
+dining-hall, Foxcroft, where the fare and the
+system of paying for it are adapted to the slenderest
+of purses. They have also lived mainly in
+certain primitive dormitories in which the rooms
+are cheapest. More than any other set of men
+except the clubmen they are a united body, or are
+capable of being made so. When next a bequest
+is received, might not the University erect a building
+in which a hundred or two of these men could
+live in common? The quadrangle would insure
+privacy, the first requisite of community life; the
+kitchen and dining-hall would insure the maximum
+comfort and convenience with the minimum
+expense. Nothing could contribute more to the
+self-respect and the general standing of the poorer
+students than a comfortable and well-ordered place
+and way of living, if only because nothing could
+more surely correct the idiosyncrasies in manners
+and appearance which are fostered by their present
+discomfort and isolation.</p>
+
+<p>The life of the hall would not of course be as
+strictly regulated as the life in an English college&mdash;perhaps
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_307" id="Page_307">307</a></span>
+no more strictly than in any other
+American college building. If in the hope of creating
+a closer community feeling stricter rules were
+adopted, they should be adopted, as in a mediæval
+hall, only by consent of the undergraduates.</p>
+
+<p>Such a hall would develop athletic teams of its
+own, and would produce university athletes. Under
+the present arrangement, when the poorer students
+are members of university teams, they may, and
+often do, become honorary members of the university
+clubs; but their lack of means and sometimes
+of the manner of the world make it difficult for
+them to be at home in the clubs; their social life
+is usually limited to a small circle of friends. If
+they had first been trained in the life of a hall,
+they would more easily fall in with the broader life
+outside; and instead of being isolated as at present,
+they would exert no small influence both in
+their hall and in the university. Few things could
+be better for the general life of the undergraduate
+than the coöperation of such men, and few things
+could be better for the members of a hall than to
+be brought by means of its leading members into
+close connection with the life of the university.</p>
+
+<p>If such a hall were successful, it could not fail
+to attract serious students of all sorts and conditions.
+At Oxford, Balliol has for generations been
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_308" id="Page_308">308</a></span>
+known as in the main unfashionable and scholarly;
+but it is seldom without a blue or two, and its eight
+has often been at the head of the river. As a result
+of all this, it never ceases to attract the more
+serious men from the aristocracy and even the nobility.
+In America, the success of one residential
+hall would probably lead to the establishment of
+others, so that in the end the life of the university
+might be given all the advantages of a dual organization.</p>
+
+<p>No change could be more far reaching and beneficial.
+The American institutions of the present
+are usually divided into two classes, the university,
+or "large college," and the "small college." The
+merit of the large colleges is that those fortunately
+placed in them gain greater familiarity with
+the ways of the world and of men, while for those
+who wish it, they offer more advanced instruction&mdash;the
+instruction characteristic of German universities.
+But to the increasing number of undergraduates
+who are not fortunately placed, their very size
+is the source of unhappiness; and for those undergraduates
+who wish anything else than scientific instruction,
+their virtues become merely a detriment.
+It is for this reason that many wise parents still
+prefer to intrust the education of their sons to the
+small colleges. These small colleges possess many
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_309" id="Page_309">309</a></span>
+of the virtues of the English universities; they
+train the mind and cultivate it, and at the same
+time develop the social man. If now the American
+university were to divide its undergraduate department
+into organized residential halls, it would combine
+the advantages of the two types of American
+institution, which are the two types of instruction
+the world over. Already our college life at its
+best is as happy as the college life in England;
+and the educational advantages of the four or five
+of our leading universities are rapidly becoming
+equal to those of the four or five leading universities
+in Germany. A combination of the residential
+hall and the teaching university would reproduce
+the highest type of the university of the Middle
+Ages; and in proportion as life and knowledge
+have been bettered in six hundred years, it would
+better that type. England has lost the educational
+virtues of the mediæval university, while Germany,
+in losing the residential halls, has lost its peculiar
+social virtues. When the American university
+combines the old social life with the new instruction,
+it will be the most perfect educational instruction
+in the history of civilization.</p>
+
+<p class="center p6 b1">APPENDIX</p>
+
+<p class="center p6">APPENDIX<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_313" id="Page_313">313</a></span></p>
+
+<p class="center p2">I. ATHLETIC TRAINING IN ENGLAND<a name="APPI" id="APPI"></a></p>
+
+<p><span class="dropcap">I</span><span class="smcap">n</span> one or two particulars it seemed to me that we might
+learn from the English methods of training. On the
+Oxford team we took long walks every other day instead
+of track work. Our instructions were to climb all the
+hills in our way. This was in order to bring into play
+new muscles as far as possible, so as to rest those used
+in running. Though similar walks are sometimes given
+in America as a preliminary "seasoning," our training,
+for months before a meeting, is confined to the track.
+This is not unwise as long as a runner's stride needs
+developing; and in the heat of our summers such walks
+as the English take might sometimes prove exhausting.
+Yet my personal observations convinced me that for distance
+runners&mdash;and for sprinters, too, perhaps&mdash;the
+English method is far better. Under our training the
+muscles often seem overpowered by nervous lassitude; at
+the start of a race I have often felt it an effort to stand.
+In England there was little or none of this; we felt, as
+the bottle-holders are fond of putting it, "like a magnum
+of champagne."</p>
+
+<p>This idea of long walks, which the English have arrived
+at empirically, has been curiously approved in
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_314" id="Page_314">314</a></span>
+America by scientific discovery. It has been shown
+that after muscles appear too stiff from exhaustion to
+move, they can be excited to action by electric currents;
+while the motor nerves on being examined after
+such fatigue are found to be shrunken and empty, as in
+extreme old age. The limit of muscular exertion is thus
+clearly determined by the limit of the energy of the motor
+nerve. Now in a perfectly trained runner, the heart and
+lung must obviously reach their prime simultaneously
+with the motor nerves used in running; but since these
+organs are ordained to supply the entire system with fuel,
+they will usually require a longer time to reach prime
+condition than any single set of nerves. Thus continual
+track work is likely to develop the running nerves to the
+utmost before the heart and lungs are at prime. Conversely
+stated, if the development of the running nerves
+is retarded so as to keep pace with the development of
+the heart and lungs, the total result is likely to be higher.
+All this amounts to what any good English trainer will
+tell you&mdash;that you must take long walks on up and down
+grades in order to rest your running muscles and at the
+same time give your heart and lungs plenty of work&mdash;that
+is, in order to keep from getting "track stale."</p>
+
+<p>The amount of work we did from day to day will best
+be understood, perhaps, by quoting one or two of the
+training-cards. For the hundred yards the training
+during the final ten days was as follows: <i>Monday</i> and
+<i>Tuesday</i>, sprints (three or four dashes of sixty yards at
+top speed); <i>Wednesday</i>, a fast 120 yards at the Queen's
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_315" id="Page_315">315</a></span>
+Club grounds; <i>Thursday</i>, walk; <i>Friday</i>, sprints; <i>Saturday</i>,
+100 yards trial at Queen's Club; <i>Sunday</i>, walk;
+<i>Monday</i>, light work at Queen's Club; <i>Tuesday</i>, easy
+walk; <i>Wednesday</i>, inter-varsity sports. The man for
+whom this card was written happened to be over weight
+and short of training, or he would have had less track
+work. If he had been training for the quarter in addition
+to the hundred, he would have had fewer sprints,
+and, instead of the fast 120, a trial quarter a week
+before the sports, with perhaps a fast 200 on the following
+Friday. For the mile, the following is a characteristic
+week's work, ending with a trial: <i>Sunday</i>, walk;
+<i>Monday</i>, one lap (<sup>1</sup>&frasl;<sub>3</sub> mile); <i>Tuesday</i>, two laps, fast-ish;
+<i>Wednesday</i>, walk; <i>Thursday</i>, easy mile; <i>Friday</i>,
+walk; <i>Saturday</i>, a two lap trial (at the rate of 4.30
+for the mile). For the three miles, the following is a
+schedule of the first ten days (the walks are unusually
+frequent because the "first string" had a bruise on the
+ball of his foot): <i>Monday</i>, walk; <i>Tuesday</i>, walk;
+<i>Wednesday</i>, two slow laps at the Queen's Club; <i>Thursday</i>,
+walk; <i>Friday</i>, walk; <i>Saturday</i>, a long run at the
+Queen's Club; <i>Sunday</i>, walk; <i>Monday</i>, four laps, fast-ish,
+at the Queen's Club; <i>Tuesday</i>, walk; <i>Wednesday</i>,
+inter-varsity sports. The chief difference between this
+work and what we should give in America is in the
+matter of walking.
+</p>
+
+<p class="center p6">II. CLIMATE AND INTERNATIONAL ATHLETICS<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_316" id="Page_316">316</a></span><a name="AppII" id="AppII"></a></p>
+
+<p class="p2"><span class="dropcap">T</span><span class="smcap">he</span> value of international contests as a basis for comparing
+English and American training is impaired by
+the fact that the visiting team is pretty sure to be under
+the weather, as may be indicated by summarizing the
+history of international contests. The first representatives
+we sent abroad, the Harvard four-oared crew of
+1869, became so overtrained on the Thames on work
+which would have been only sufficient at home, that two
+of the four men had to be substituted. The substitutes
+were taken from the "second" crew, which had just
+come over from the race at Worcester. The men in this
+crew had been so inferior as oarsmen that they had been
+allowed to compete against Yale only after vigorous protest;
+but in the race against Oxford, owing probably to
+the brevity of their training in England, the substitutes
+pulled the strongest oars in the boat. The crew got off
+very well, but when the time came for the final effort,
+the two original members had not the nervous stamina
+to respond.</p>
+
+<p>The experience of the Yale athletes who competed
+against Oxford in 1894 was much the same. Their performances
+in the games were so far below their American
+form that they won only the events in which they
+literally outclassed their opponents&mdash;the hammer, shot,
+and broad jump. They were sportsmen enough not to
+explain their poor showing, and perhaps they never quite
+realized how the soft and genial English summer had
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_317" id="Page_317">317</a></span>
+unnerved them; but several competent observers who had
+watched their practice told me that they lost form from
+day to day. Their downfall was doubtless aided by the
+fact that instead of training at Brighton or elsewhere on
+the coast, they trained in the Thames valley and at
+Oxford.</p>
+
+<p>The experience of the Cornell crew, of which I got
+full and frank information while crossing the Atlantic
+with them after the race, was along the same lines. Before
+leaving Ithaca, they rowed over the equivalent of
+the Henley course in time that was well under seven
+minutes, and not far from the Henley record of six
+minutes, fifty-one seconds. At Henley they rowed their
+first trial in seven minutes and three seconds, if my memory
+serves, and in consequence were generally expected
+to win. From that day they grew worse and worse. Certain
+of the eight went stale and had to be substituted. In
+the race the crew, like the earlier Harvard crew, went to
+pieces when they were called on for a spurt&mdash;the test of
+nerve force in reserve&mdash;and were beaten in wretchedly
+slow time. They had gone hopelessly stale on work
+which would have been none too much in America.</p>
+
+<p>The experience of the Yale crew in the year after was
+similar to that of Harvard and Cornell. The crew
+went to pieces and lost the race for the lack of precisely
+that burst of energy for which American athletes, and
+Yale in particular, are remarkable.</p>
+
+<p>Meantime one or two American athletes training at
+Oxford had been gathering experience, which, humble
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_318" id="Page_318">318</a></span>
+though it was, had the merit of being thorough. Mr. J.
+L. Bremer, who will be remembered in America as making
+a new world's record over the low hurdles, steadily
+lost suppleness and energy at Oxford, so that he was
+beaten in the quarter mile in time distinctly inferior to
+his best in America. Clearly, the effect of the English
+climate is to relax the nervous system and thereby to
+reduce the athlete's power both of sprinting <i>per se</i> and
+of spurting at the finish of the race. My own experience
+in English training confirmed the conclusion, and
+pointed to an interesting extension of it. I was forced
+to conclude that the first few weeks in England are
+more than likely to undo an athlete, and especially for
+sprinting; and even if he stays long enough to find himself
+again, his ability to sprint is likely to be lessened.
+In the long run, on the other hand, the English climate
+produces staying power in almost the same proportion
+as it destroys speed.</p>
+
+<p>When the joint team of track athletes from Yale
+and Harvard went to England in 1899, the powers that
+were took advantage of past experiences, and instead
+of going to the Thames valley to train, they went to
+Brighton; and instead of doing most of their training in
+England, they gave themselves only the few days necessary
+to get their shore legs and become acquainted
+with the Queen's Club track. As a result, the team was
+in general up to its normal form, or above it, and, except
+for the fact that one of the men was ill, would have won.</p>
+
+<p>The experience of the English athletes who came to
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_319" id="Page_319">319</a></span>
+America in 1895 points to a similar conclusion. Though
+the heat was intense and oppressive and most of the
+visitors were positively sick, one of the sprinters, in spite
+of severe illness, was far above his previous best, while
+all of the distance men went quite to pieces. Thus our
+climate would seem to reduce the staying power of the
+English athletes, and perhaps to increase the speed of
+sprinters.</p>
+
+<p>It appears on the whole probable that in these international
+contests the visiting athlete had best do as much
+as possible of his training at home, and it follows that
+the visiting team is at a distinct and inevitable disadvantage.</p>
+
+<p class="center p6">III. AN OXFORD FINAL HONOR SCHOOL<a name="AppIII" id="AppIII"></a></p>
+
+<p class="p2"><span class="dropcap">T</span><span class="smcap">he</span> scope and content of an English honor school is
+well illustrated in the following passage from the Oxford
+examination statutes, which treats of the final school in
+English literature. The system will be seen to be very
+different from a system under which a student may
+receive honors in ignorance of all but a single movement
+in English literature.</p>
+
+<p class="center">§ 10. <i>Of the Honour School of English Language<br />
+and Literature.</i></p>
+
+<p>1. The Examination in the School of English Language
+and Literature shall always include authors or
+portions of authors belonging to the different periods of
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_320" id="Page_320">320</a></span>
+English literature, together with the history of the English
+language and the history of English literature.</p>
+
+<p>The Examination shall also include Special Subjects
+falling within or usually studied in connexion with the
+English language and literature.</p>
+
+<p>2. Every Candidate shall be expected to have studied
+the authors or portions of authors which he offers (1)
+with reference to the forms of the language, (2) as
+examples of literature, and (3) in their relation to the
+history and thought of the period to which they belong.</p>
+
+<p>He shall also be expected to show a competent knowledge
+(1) of the chief periods of the English language,
+including Old English (Anglo-Saxon), and (2) of the
+relation of English to the languages with which it is
+etymologically connected, and (3) of the history of English
+literature, and (4) of the history, especially the
+social history, of England during the period of English
+literature which he offers.</p>
+
+<p>3. The Examination in Special Subjects may be
+omitted by Candidates who do not aim at a place in the
+First or Second Class.</p>
+
+<p>4. No Candidate shall be admitted to examination
+in the Final Honour School of English Language and
+Literature, unless he has either obtained Honours in
+some Final Honour School or has passed the First Public
+Examination [<i>i. e.</i> Moderation].</p>
+
+<p>5. The Examination shall be under the supervision of
+a Board of Studies.
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_321" id="Page_321">321</a></span></p>
+
+<p>6. It shall be the duty of the Board of Studies in
+framing regulations, and also of the Examiners in the
+conduct of the Examination, to see that as far as possible
+equal weight is given to language and literature: provided
+always that Candidates who offer Special
+Subjects shall be at liberty to choose subjects connected
+either with language or with literature or with
+both.</p>
+
+<p>7. The Board of Studies shall by notice from time to
+time make regulations respecting the Examination; and
+shall have power&mdash;</p>
+<div class="i1">
+<p>(1)&nbsp;&nbsp;To prescribe authors or portions of authors.</p>
+
+<p>(2)&nbsp;&nbsp;To specify one or more related languages or
+dialects to be offered either as a necessary or as an
+optional part of the Examination.</p>
+
+<p>(3)&nbsp;&nbsp;To name periods of the history of English literature,
+and to fix their limits.</p>
+
+<p>(4)&nbsp;&nbsp;To issue lists of Special Subjects in connexion
+either with language or with literature or with both, prescribing
+books or authorities where they think it desirable.</p>
+
+<p>(5)&nbsp;&nbsp;To prescribe or recommend authors or portions
+of authors in languages other than English, to be studied
+in connexion with Special Subjects to which they are
+intimately related.</p>
+
+<p>(6)&nbsp;&nbsp;To determine whether Candidates who aim at a
+place in the First or Second Class shall be required to
+offer more than one Special Subject.
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_322" id="Page_322">322</a></span></p>
+</div>
+
+<p class="center">(<i>ii</i>) <i>Regulations of the Board of Studies for the<br />
+Examinations in 1901 and 1902.</i></p>
+
+<p>The subjects of examination in this School are&mdash;</p>
+
+<table border="0" cellpadding="5" cellspacing="2" summary="english">
+<tr>
+<td class="tdr">I.</td>
+<td>Portions of English Authors.</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdr">II.</td>
+<td>The History of the English Language.</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdr">III.</td>
+<td>The History of English Literature.</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdr">IV.</td>
+<td>(In the case of those Candidates who aim at a
+place in the First or Second Class) a Special Subject of
+Language or Literature.</td>
+</tr>
+</table>
+
+<p>I. <span class="smcap">English Authors.</span></p>
+
+<p>Candidates will be examined in the following texts:&mdash;</p>
+
+<p class="i1"><i>Beowulf.</i></p>
+
+<p class="i1">The texts printed in Sweet's <i>Anglo-Saxon Reader</i>.</p>
+
+<p class="i1"><i>King Horn.</i></p>
+
+<p class="i1"><i>Havelok.</i></p>
+
+<p class="i1">Laurence Minot.</p>
+
+<p class="i1"><i>Sir Gawain and the Green Knight.</i></p>
+
+<p class="i1">Chaucer's <i>Canterbury Tales</i>, the <i>Prologue</i> and the
+following Tales:&mdash;</p>
+
+<p class="i2">
+<i>The Knight's</i>, <i>The Man of Law's</i>, <i>The Prioress's</i>,
+<i>Sir Thopas</i>, <i>The Monk's</i>, <i>The Nun's
+Priest's</i>, <i>The Pardoner's</i>, <i>The Clerk's</i>, <i>The
+Squire's</i>, <i>The Second Nun's</i>, <i>The Canon's Yeoman's</i>
+</p>
+
+<p class="i1">
+<i>Piers Plowman</i>, the <i>Prologue</i> and first seven
+<i>passus</i> (text B).</p>
+
+<p class="i1">Shakespeare, with a special study of the following
+Plays: <i>Midsummer Night's Dream</i>, <i>King John,</i>
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_323" id="Page_323">323</a></span>
+<i>Much Ado about Nothing</i>, <i>Macbeth</i>, <i>Cymbeline</i>.</p>
+
+<p class="i1">Milton, with a special study of <i>Paradise Lost</i>.
+</p>
+
+<p>These texts are to be studied (1) with reference to the
+forms of the language; (2) as examples of literature;
+and (3) in their relation to the history and thought of
+the period to which they belong.</p>
+
+<p>After Milton no special texts are prescribed, but Candidates
+are expected to show an adequate knowledge of
+the chief authors.</p>
+
+<p>II. <span class="smcap">History of the English Language.</span></p>
+
+<p>Candidates will be examined in the Philology and
+History of the Language, in Gothic (the Gospel of St.
+Mark), and in Translation from Old English and Middle
+English authors not specially offered.</p>
+
+<p>III. <span class="smcap">History of English Literature.</span></p>
+
+<p>The Examination in the History of English Literature
+will not be limited to the prescribed texts. It will
+include the history of criticism and of style in prose and
+verse; for these subjects, Candidates are recommended
+to consult the following works:&mdash;</p>
+
+<p class="i1">
+Sidney, <i>Apology for Poetry</i>.</p>
+
+<p class="i1">Daniel, <i>Defence of Rhyme</i>.</p>
+
+<p class="i1">Dryden, <i>Essay of Dramatic Poesy</i>, and <i>Preface
+to Fables</i>.</p>
+
+<p class="i1">Addison, Papers on Milton in the <i>Spectator</i>.</p>
+
+<p class="i1">Pope, <i>Essay on Criticism</i>.
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_324" id="Page_324">324</a></span></p>
+
+<p class="i1">Johnson, <i>Preface to Shakespeare</i> and <i>Lives of the
+Poets</i>.</p>
+
+<p class="i1">Wordsworth, <i>Prefaces, etc., to Lyrical Ballads</i>.</p>
+
+<p class="i1">Coleridge, <i>Biographia Literaria</i>.</p>
+
+<p>IV. <span class="smcap">Special Subjects.</span></p>
+
+<p>Candidates who aim at a place in the First or Second
+Class will be expected to offer a Special Subject, which
+may be chosen from the following list:&mdash;</p>
+<div class="i1">
+<p>1. Old English Language and Literature to 1150
+<span class="smcap">a. d.</span></p>
+
+<p>2. Middle English Language and Literature, 1150-1400
+<span class="smcap">a. d.</span></p>
+
+<p>3. Old French Philology, with special reference to
+Anglo-Norman French, together with a special study of
+the following texts:&mdash;</p>
+
+<p class="i2">
+Computus of Philippe de Thaun, Voyage of St.
+Brandan, The Song of Dermot and the Earl,
+Les contes moralisés de Nicole Bozon.</p>
+
+<p>4. Scandinavian Philology, with special reference
+to Icelandic, together with a special study of the following
+texts:&mdash;</p>
+
+<p class="i2">
+Gylfaginning, Laxdæla Saga, Gunnlaugssaga
+Ormstungu.</p>
+
+<p>5. Elizabethan literature, 1558-1637 <span class="smcap">a. d.</span></p>
+
+<p>6. English literature, 1637-1700 <span class="smcap">a. d.</span></p>
+
+<p>7. English literature, 1700-1745 <span class="smcap">a. d.</span></p>
+
+<p>8. Wordsworth and his contemporaries, 1797-1850
+<span class="smcap">a. d.</span></p>
+
+<p>9. History of Scottish poetry to 1600 <span class="smcap">a. d.</span>
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_325" id="Page_325">325</a></span></p>
+</div>
+
+<p>Candidates who desire to offer any other subject or
+period as a Special Subject must obtain the leave of the
+Board of Studies a year before the Examination.</p>
+
+<p>Candidates who offer a period of English Literature
+will be expected to show a competent knowledge of the
+History, especially the Social History, of England during
+such period.</p>
+
+<p>The following scheme of papers is contemplated:&mdash;</p>
+<div class="i1">
+<p>1. Beowulf and other Old English texts.</p>
+
+<p>2. King Horn, Havelok, Minot, Sir Gawain.</p>
+
+<p>3. Chaucer and Piers Plowman.</p>
+
+<p>4. Shakespeare.</p>
+
+<p>5. Milton.</p>
+
+<p>6. History of the language.</p>
+
+<p>7. Gothic&mdash;O. E. and M. E. translations.</p>
+
+<p>
+8. &amp; 9. History of the Literature, including questions
+on the history of criticism. Two papers, (1)
+to 1700, (2) after 1700.</p>
+
+<p>10. Special Subjects.</p>
+</div>
+
+<p class="center p6">The Riverside Press<br />
+<i>Electrotyped and printed by H. O. Houghton &amp;Co.</i><br />
+<i>Cambridge, Mass., U. S. A.</i></p>
+
+<div class="footnotes p6"><p class="center">FOOTNOTES:</p>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_1" id="Footnote_1" href="#FNanchor_1"><span class="label">[1]</span></a> <i>Educational Review</i>, vol. v. p. 113.</p>
+</div>
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_2" id="Footnote_2" href="#FNanchor_2"><span class="label">[2]</span></a> For a note on the value of walking as a part of athletic training,
+see <a href="#APPI">Appendix I</a>.</p>
+</div>
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_3" id="Footnote_3" href="#FNanchor_3"><span class="label">[3]</span></a> William G. Brown in <i>The Nation</i>, vol. 61, No. 1585, p. 346.</p>
+</div>
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_4" id="Footnote_4" href="#FNanchor_4"><span class="label">[4]</span></a> For a detailed statement as to the course such a student would
+be able to pursue under the English system of honor schools, see
+<a href="#AppIII">Appendix III</a>.</p>
+</div>
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_5" id="Footnote_5" href="#FNanchor_5"><span class="label">[5]</span></a> <i>The Atlantic Monthly</i>, October, 1900.</p>
+</div>
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_6" id="Footnote_6" href="#FNanchor_6"><span class="label">[6]</span></a> For full details as to the scheme of an English honor school,
+see <a href="#AppIII">Appendix III</a>.</p>
+</div>
+</div>
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+<pre>
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of An American at Oxford, by John Corbin
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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of An American at Oxford, by John Corbin
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: An American at Oxford
+
+Author: John Corbin
+
+Release Date: December 1, 2011 [EBook #38180]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ASCII
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK AN AMERICAN AT OXFORD ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Melissa McDaniel and the Online Distributed
+Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net (This file was
+produced from images generously made available by The
+Internet Archive)
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+Transcriber's Note:
+
+  Inconsistent hyphenation and spelling in the original document have
+  been preserved.  Obvious typographical errors have been corrected.
+
+  Italic text is denoted by _underscores_ and bold text by =equal
+  signs=.
+
+
+
+
+  [Illustration: TEA ON THE LAWN AT THE OXFORD UNION (page 63)]
+
+
+
+
+     AN AMERICAN AT
+     OXFORD
+
+     BY
+
+     JOHN CORBIN
+
+     AUTHOR OF "SCHOOLBOY LIFE IN ENGLAND"
+
+     _WITH ILLUSTRATIONS_
+
+
+     BOSTON AND NEW YORK
+     HOUGHTON, MIFFLIN AND COMPANY
+     The Riverside Press, Cambridge
+     1903
+
+
+
+
+COPYRIGHT, 1902, BY JOHN CORBIN
+
+ALL RIGHTS RESERVED
+
+_Published May, 1902_
+
+
+
+
+TO
+
+A. F. C.
+
+
+
+
+PREFACE
+
+
+By a curious coincidence, the day on which the last proof of this book
+was sent to the printer saw the publication of the will of the late
+Cecil Rhodes, providing that each of the United States is forever to
+be represented at Oxford by two carefully selected undergraduate
+students. That the plan will result in any speedy realization of the
+ideals of the great exponent of English power in the new worlds is
+perhaps not to be expected. For the future of American education, on
+the other hand, few things could be more fortunate. Native and
+independent as our national genius has always been, and seems likely
+to remain, it has always been highly assimilative. In the past, we
+have received much needed aliment from the German universities. For
+the present, the elements of which we have most need may best, as I
+think, be assimilated from England.
+
+Whether or not Americans at Oxford become imbued with Mr. Rhodes's
+conceptions as to the destiny of the English peoples, they can
+scarcely fail to observe that Oxford affords to its undergraduates a
+very sensibly ordered and invigorating life, a very sensibly ordered
+and invigorating education. This, as I have endeavored to point out in
+the following pages, our American universities do not now afford, nor
+are they likely to afford it until the social and the educational
+systems are more perfectly organized than they have ever been, or seem
+likely to be, under the dominance of German ideals. If, however, the
+new Oxford-trained Americans should ever become an important factor in
+our university life, the future is bright with hope. We have
+assimilated, or are assimilating, the best spirit of German education;
+and if we were to make a similar draft on the best educational spirit
+in England, our universities would become far superior as regards
+their organization and ideals, and probably also as regards what they
+accomplish, to any in Europe. The purpose and result of an
+introduction of English methods would of course not be to imitate
+foreign custom, but to give fuller scope to our native character, so
+that if the American educational ideals in the end approximate the
+English more closely than they do at present, such a result would be
+merely incidental to the fact that the two countries have at bottom
+much the same social character and instincts. If Mr. Rhodes's dream is
+to be realized, it will probably be in some such tardy and roundabout
+but admirably vital manner as this.
+
+At a superficial glance the testator's intention seems to have been to
+send the students to Oxford directly from American schools. Such a
+course, it seems to me, could only work harm. Even if the educational
+and residential facilities afforded at Oxford were on the whole
+superior to those of American universities, which they are not, the
+difference could not compensate the student for the loss of his
+American university course with all it means in forming lifelong
+friendships among his countrymen and in assimilating the national
+spirit. If, however, the Oxford scholarships were awarded to recent
+graduates of American universities, the greatest advantage might
+result. The student might then modify his native training so as to
+complete it and make it more effective. Now the wording of the
+testament requires only that the American scholars shall "commence
+residence as undergraduates." This they will be able to do whatever
+their previous training, and in fact this is what Americans at Oxford
+have always done in the past. The most valuable A.B. leaves the
+field of human knowledge far from exhausted; and the methods of
+instruction and of examining at Oxford are so different from anything
+we know that it has even proved worth while for the American to repeat
+at Oxford the same studies he took in America. The executors of the
+will should be most vigorously urged to select the scholars from the
+graduates of American universities.
+
+The parts of this book that treat most intimately of Oxford life were
+written while in residence in Balliol College some six years ago. Most
+of the rest was written quite recently in London. Much of the matter
+in the following pages has appeared in "Harper's Weekly," "The
+Bachelor of Arts," "The Forum," and "The Atlantic Monthly." It has all
+been carefully revised and rearranged, and much new matter added. Each
+chapter has gained, as I hope, by being brought into its natural
+relation with the other chapters; and the ideas that have informed the
+whole are for the first time adequately stated.
+
+
+
+
+CONTENTS
+
+
+     CHAP.                                                        PAGE
+
+     INTRODUCTORY                                                    1
+
+     I. THE UNIVERSITY AND THE COLLEGE
+
+     I. THE UNIVERSITY OF COLLEGES                                   7
+
+     II. THE OXFORD FRESHMAN                                        10
+
+     III. A DAY IN AN OXFORD COLLEGE                                17
+
+     IV. DINNER IN HALL                                             21
+
+     V. EVENING                                                     28
+
+     VI. THE MIND OF THE COLLEGE                                    37
+
+     VII. CLUB LIFE IN THE COLLEGE                                  52
+
+     VIII. SOCIAL LIFE IN THE UNIVERSITY                            62
+
+     IX. THE COLLEGE AND THE UNIVERSITY                             74
+
+     II. OXFORD OUT OF DOORS
+
+     I. SLACKING ON THE ISIS AND THE CHERWELL                       81
+
+     II. AS SEEN FROM AN OXFORD TUB                                 96
+
+     III. A LITTLE SCRIMMAGE WITH ENGLISH RUGBY                    116
+
+     IV. TRACK AND FIELD ATHLETICS                                 132
+
+     V. ENGLISH AND AMERICAN SPORTSMANSHIP                         145
+
+     III. THE COLLEGE AS AN EDUCATIONAL FORCE
+
+     I. THE PASSMAN                                                159
+
+     II. THE HONOR SCHOOLS                                         171
+
+     III. THE TUTOR                                                178
+
+     IV. READING FOR EXAMINATIONS                                  184
+
+     V. THE EXAMINATION                                            190
+
+     VI. OXFORD QUALITIES AND THEIR DEFECTS                        193
+
+     VII. THE UNIVERSITY AND REFORM                                200
+
+     VIII. THE UNIVERSITY AND THE PEOPLE                           206
+
+     IV. THE HISTORY OF THE UNIVERSITY AND THE
+     COLLEGE
+
+     I. THE UNIVERSITY BEFORE THE COLLEGE                          215
+
+     II. THE MEDIAEVAL HALL                                         221
+
+     III. THE COLLEGE SYSTEM                                       223
+
+     IV. THE GOLDEN AGE OF THE MEDIAEVAL HALL                       231
+
+     V. THE ORIGIN OF THE MODERN UNDERGRADUATE                     236
+
+     VI. THE INSIGNIFICANCE OF THE MODERN UNIVERSITY               239
+
+     VII. THE COLLEGE IN AMERICA                                   245
+
+     V. THE PROBLEMS OF THE AMERICAN UNIVERSITY
+
+     I. THE SOCIAL AND ATHLETIC PROBLEM                            255
+
+     II. THE ADMINISTRATIVE PROBLEM                                272
+
+     III. THE EDUCATIONAL PROBLEM                                  281
+
+     IV. THE AMERICAN HALL                                         301
+
+     APPENDIX
+
+     I. ATHLETIC TRAINING IN ENGLAND                               313
+
+     II. CLIMATE AND INTERNATIONAL ATHLETICS                       316
+
+     III. AN OXFORD FINAL HONOR SCHOOL                             319
+
+
+
+
+LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
+
+
+                                                                  PAGE
+     _Tea on the Lawn at the Oxford Union (page 63)_    _Frontispiece_
+
+     _The Hall Staircase, Christ Church_                            22
+
+     _Magdalen Tower from the Bridge_                               30
+
+     _A Racing Punt and Punter_                                     84
+
+     _Iffley Lock and Mill_                                         90
+
+     _The Full Costume of an Eightsman_                            100
+
+     _The College Barges: Tubbing in November Floods_              106
+
+     _The Last Day of the Bumping Races of the Summer
+       Eights (1895)_                                              112
+
+     _An English Rugby Line-up_                                    120
+
+     _Throwing in the Ball_                                        124
+
+     _New College Cloisters, Bell Tower, and Chapel_               224
+
+     _New College Gardens--showing the Mediaeval Wall of
+       Oxford_                                                     228
+
+
+
+
+AN AMERICAN AT OXFORD
+
+
+The great German historian of the United States, H. E. Von Holst,
+declares[1] that, "in the sense attached to the word by Europeans, ...
+there is in the United States as yet not a single university;"
+institutions like Johns Hopkins and Harvard he characterizes as
+"hybrids of college and university." In his survey of European usage,
+one suspects that Professor Von Holst failed to look beyond Germany.
+The so-called universities of England, for example, are mere
+aggregations of colleges; they have not even enough of the modern
+scientific spirit to qualify as hybrids, having consciously and
+persistently refused to adopt continental standards. The higher
+institutions of America belong historically to the English type; they
+have only recently imported the scientific spirit. To the great world
+of graduates and undergraduates they are colleges, and should as far
+as possible be kept so.
+
+Yet there is reason enough for calling them hybrids. In the teaching
+bodies of all of them the German, or so-called university, spirit is
+very strong, and is slowly possessing the more advanced of our recent
+graduates and undergraduates. Let us be duly grateful. The first
+result of this spirit is an extraordinary quickening and diffusion of
+the modern ideal of scholarship, a devotion to pure science amounting
+almost to a passion. As to the second result, we may or may not have
+cause to be grateful. Our most prominent educational leaders have
+striven consciously to make over our universities on the German plan.
+We are in the midst of a struggle between old and new forces, and at
+present the alien element has apparently the upper hand. The social
+ideal, which only a few years ago was virtually the same in England
+and America, has already been powerfully modified; and the concrete
+embodiment of the new scientific spirit, the so-called elective
+system, has transformed the peculiar educational institution of our
+Anglo-Saxon people.
+
+We have gone so far forward that it is possible to gain an excellent
+perspective on what we are leaving behind. In the ensuing pages I
+propose to present as plainly as I may the English university of
+colleges. I shall not hesitate to give its social life all the
+prominence it has in fact, devoting much space even to athletic
+sports. The peculiarity of the English ideal of education is that it
+aims to develop the moral and social virtues, no less than the
+mental--to train up boys to be men among men. Only by understanding
+this is it possible to sympathize with the system of instruction, its
+peculiar excellences, and its almost incredible defects. In the end I
+hope we shall see more clearly what our colleges have inherited from
+the parent institutions, and shall be able to judge how far the system
+of collegiate education expresses the genius of English and American
+people.
+
+At the present juncture of political forces in America this
+consideration has a special importance. The success with which we
+exert our influence upon distant peoples will depend upon what manner
+of young men we train up to carry it among them. If the graduates of
+German institutions are prepared to establish their civilization in
+the imperial colonies, the fact has not yet been shown. The colleges
+of England have manned the British Empire.
+
+FOOTNOTE:
+
+[1] _Educational Review_, vol. v. p. 113.
+
+
+
+
+I
+
+THE UNIVERSITY AND THE COLLEGE
+
+
+I
+
+THE UNIVERSITY OF COLLEGES
+
+One of the familiar sights at Oxford is the American traveler who
+stops over on his way from Liverpool to London, and, wandering up
+among the walls of the twenty colleges from the Great Western Station,
+asks the first undergraduate he meets which building is the
+university. When an Oxford man is first asked this, he is pretty sure
+to answer that there isn't any university; but as the answer is taken
+as a rudeness, he soon finds it more agreeable to direct inquirers to
+one of the three or four single buildings, scattered hither and yon
+among the ubiquitous colleges, in which the few functions of the
+university are performed. A traveler from our middle West, where
+"universities" often consist of a single building, might easily set
+forth for London with the firm idea that the Ashmolean Museum or the
+Bodleian Library is Oxford University.
+
+To the undergraduate the university is an abstract institution that at
+most examines him two or three times, "ploughs" him, or graduates
+him. He becomes a member of it by being admitted into one of the
+colleges. To be sure, he matriculates also as a student of the
+university; but the ceremony is important mainly as a survival from
+the historic past, and is memorable to him perhaps because it takes
+place beneath the beautiful mediaeval roof of the Divinity School;
+perhaps because he receives from the Vice-Chancellor a copy of the
+university statutes, written in mediaeval Latin, which it is to be his
+chief delight to break. Except when he is in for "schools," as the
+examinations are called, the university fades beyond his horizon. If
+he says he is "reading" at Oxford, he has the city in mind. He is more
+likely to describe himself as "up at" Magdalen, Balliol, or elsewhere.
+This English idea that a university is a mere multiplication of
+colleges is so firmly fixed that the very word is defined as "a
+collection of institutions of learning at a common centre." In the
+daily life of the undergraduate, in his religious observances, and in
+regulating his studies, the college is supreme.
+
+To an American the English college is not at first sight a wholly
+pleasing object. It has walls that one would take to be insurmountable
+if they were not crowned with shards of bottles mortared into the
+coping; and it has gates that seem capable of resisting a siege until
+one notices that they are reinforced by a _cheval-de-frise_, or a row
+of bent spikes like those that keep the bears in their dens at the
+Zoo. Professor Von Holst would certainly regard it as a hybrid between
+a mediaeval cloister and a nursery; and one easily imagines him
+producing no end of evidence from its history and traditions to show
+that it is so. Like so many English institutions, its outward and
+visible signs belong to the manners of forgotten ages, even while it
+is charged with a vigorous and very modern life. A closer view of it,
+I hope, will show that in spite of the barnacles of the past that
+cling to it--and in some measure, too, because of them--it is the
+expression of a very high ideal of undergraduate convenience and
+freedom.
+
+
+II
+
+THE OXFORD FRESHMAN
+
+When a freshman comes up to his college, he is received at the
+mediaeval gate by a very modern porter, who lifts boxes and bags from
+the hansom in a most obliging manner, and is presently shown to his
+cloistral chambers by a friendly and urbane butler or steward. To
+accommodate the newcomers in the more populous colleges, a measure is
+resorted to so revolutionary that it shocks all American ideas of
+academic propriety. Enough seniors--fourth and third year men--are
+turned out of college to make room for the freshmen. The assumption is
+that the upper classmen have had every opportunity to profit by the
+life of the college, and are prepared to flock by themselves in the
+town. Little communities of four or five fellows who have proved
+congenial live together in "diggings"--that is, in some townsman's
+house--hard by the college gate. This arrangement makes possible
+closer and more intimate relationship among them than would otherwise
+be likely; and after three years of the very free life within those
+sharded walls, a cloistered year outside is usually more than
+advisable, in view of the final examination. It cannot be said that
+they leave college without regret; but I never heard a word of
+complaint, and it is tacitly admitted that on the whole they profit by
+the arrangement.
+
+The more substantial furnishings in the rooms are usually permanent,
+belonging to the college: each successive occupant is charged for
+interest on the investment and for depreciation by wear. Thus the
+furniture is far more comfortable than in an American college room and
+costs the occupant less. Bed and table linen, cutlery, and a few of
+the more personal furnishings the student brings himself. If one
+neglects to bring them, as I confess I did through ignorance, the
+deficiency is supplied by the scout, a dignitary in the employ of the
+college, who stands in somewhat more than the place of a servant and
+less than that of a parent to half a dozen fellows whose rooms are
+adjacent. The scout levies on the man above for sheets, on the man
+below for knives and forks, and on the man across the staircase for
+table linen. There is no call for shame on the one part or resentment
+on the other, for is not the scout the representative of the
+hospitality of the college? "When you have time, sir," he says kindly,
+"you will order your own linen and cutlery." How high a state of
+civilization is implied in this manner of receiving a freshman can be
+appreciated only by those who have arrived friendless at an American
+university.
+
+The scout is in effect a porter, "goody," and eating-club waiter
+rolled into one. He has frequently a liberal dash of the don, which he
+has acquired by extended residence at the university; for among all
+the shifting generations of undergraduates, only he and the don are
+permanent. When he reaches middle age he wears a beard if he chooses,
+and then he is usually taken for a don by the casual visitor. There is
+no harm in this; the scout plays the part _con amore_, and his long
+breeding enables him to sustain it to a marvel. Yet for the most part
+the scout belongs with the world of undergraduates. He has his social
+clubs and his musical societies; he runs, plays cricket, and rows,
+and, finally, he meets the Cambridge scout in the inter-varsity
+matches. His pay the scout receives in part from the college, but
+mostly from the students, who give him two to four pounds a term each,
+according to his deserts. All broken bread, meat, and wine are his
+perquisites, and tradition allows him to "bag" a fair amount of tea,
+coffee, and sugar. Out of all this he makes a sumptuous living. I knew
+only one exception, and that was when four out of six men on a
+certain scout's staircase happened to be vegetarians, and five
+teetotalers. The poor fellow was in extremities for meat and in
+desperation for drink. There was only one more pitiable sight in
+college, and that was the sole student on the staircase who ate meat
+and drank wine; the scout bagged food and drink from him ceaselessly.
+At the end of one term the student left a half dozen bottles of
+sherry, which he had merely tasted, in his sideboard; and when he came
+back it was gone. "Where's my sherry, Betts?" he asked. "Sherry, sir?
+you ain't got no sherry." "But I left six bottles; you had no right to
+more than the one that was broken." "Yes, sir; but when I had taken
+that, sir, the 'arf dozen was broke." According to Oxford traditions
+the student had no recourse; and be it set down to his praise, he
+never blamed the scout. He bemoaned the fate that bound them together
+in suffering, and vented his spleen on total abstinence and
+vegetarianism. It may be supposed that the scout's antiquity and
+importance makes him a bad servant; in the land of the free I fear
+that it would; but at Oxford nothing could be more unlikely. The only
+mark that distinguishes the scout from any other class of waiters is
+that his attentions to your comfort are carried off with greater ease
+and dignity. It may be true that he is president of the Oxford
+Society of College Servants--the Bones or the Hasty Pudding of the
+scouts; that he stroked the scouts' eight in the townie's bumping
+races, during the long vac, and afterward rowed against the scouts'
+eight from Cambridge; that he captained the scouts' cricket eleven;
+that in consequence he is a "double blue" and wears the Oxford
+'varsity color on his hat with no less pride than any other "blue."
+Yet he is all the more bound, out of consideration for his own
+dignity, to show you every respect and attention.
+
+After the scout, the hosts of the college are the dons. As soon as the
+freshman is settled in his rooms, or sometimes even before, his tutor
+meets him and arranges for a formal presentation to the dean and
+master. All three are apt to show their interest in a freshman by
+advising him as to trying for the athletic teams, joining the college
+clubs and societies, and in a word as to all the concerns of
+undergraduate life except his studies--these come later. If a man has
+any particular gift, athletic or otherwise, the tutor introduces him
+to the men he should know, or, when this is not feasible, gives a word
+to the upper classmen, who take the matter into their own hands. If a
+freshman has no especial gift, the tutor is quite as sure to say the
+proper word to the fellows who have most talent for drawing out
+newcomers.
+
+In the first weeks of a freshman's residence he finds sundry
+pasteboards tucked beneath his door: the upper classman's call is
+never more than the formal dropping of a card. The freshman is
+expected to return these calls at once, and is debarred by a happy
+custom from leaving his card if he does not find his man. He goes
+again and again until he does find him. By direct introduction from
+the tutor or by this formality of calling, the freshman soon meets
+half a dozen upper classmen, generally second-year men, and in due
+time he receives little notes like this:--
+
+    DEAR SMITH,--Come to my rooms if you can to breakfast with Brown
+    and me on Wednesday at 8.30.
+
+     Yours sincerely,
+     A. ROBINSON.
+
+At table the freshman finds other freshmen whose interests are
+presumably similar to his own.
+
+No one supposes for a moment that all this is done out of simple human
+kindness. The freshman breakfast is a conventional institution for
+gathering together the unlicked cubs, so that the local influences may
+take hold of them. The reputation of the college in general demands
+that it keep up a name for hospitality; and in particular the clubs
+and athletic teams find it of advantage to get the run of all
+available new material. The freshman breakfast is nothing in the world
+but a variation of the "running" that is given newcomers in those
+American colleges where fraternity life is strong, and might even be
+regarded as a more civilized form of the rushes and cane sprees and
+even hazings that used to serve with us to introduce newcomers to
+their seniors. Many second-year breakfasts are perfunctory enough; the
+host has a truly British air of saying that since for better or for
+worse he is destined to look upon your face and abide by your deeds,
+he is willing to make the best of it. If you prove a "bounder," you
+are soon enough dropped. "_I_ shall soon be a second-year man," I once
+heard a freshman remark, "and then _I_ can ask freshmen to breakfast,
+too, and cut them afterward." The point is that every fellow is thrown
+in the way of meeting the men of his year. If one is neglected in the
+end, he has no reason to feel that it is the fault of the college. As
+a result of this machinery for initiating newcomers, a man usually
+ceases to be a freshman after a single term (two months) of residence;
+and it is always assumed that he does.
+
+
+III
+
+A DAY IN AN OXFORD COLLEGE
+
+When a freshman is once established in college, his life falls into a
+pleasantly varied routine. The day is ushered in by the scout, who
+bustles into the bedroom, throws aside the curtain, pours out the
+bath, and shouts, "Half past seven, sir," in a tone that makes it
+impossible to forget that chapel--or if one chooses, roll-call--comes
+at eight. Unless one keeps his six chapels or "rollers" a week, he is
+promptly "hauled" before the dean, who perhaps "gates" him. To be
+gated is to be forbidden to pass the college gate after dark, and
+fined a shilling for each night of confinement. To an American all
+this brings recollections of the paternal roof, where tardiness at
+breakfast meant, perhaps, the loss of dessert, and bedtime an hour
+earlier. I remember once, when out of training, deliberately cutting
+chapel to see with what mien the good dean performed his nursery
+duties. His calm was unruffled, his dignity unsullied. I soon came to
+find that the rules about rising were bowed to and indeed respected
+by all concerned, even while they were broken. They are distinctly
+more lax than those the fellows have been accustomed to in the public
+schools, and they are conceded to be for the best welfare of the
+college.
+
+Breakfast comes soon after chapel, or roll-call. If a man has "kept a
+dirty roller," that is, has reported in pyjamas, ulster, and boots,
+and has turned in again, the scout puts the breakfast before the fire
+on a trestle built of shovel, poker, and tongs, where it remains
+edible until noon. If a man has a breakfast party on, the scout makes
+sure that he is stirring in season, and, hurrying through the other
+rooms on the staircase, is presently on hand for as long as he may be
+wanted. The usual Oxford breakfast is a single course, which not
+infrequently consists of some one of the excellent English pork
+products, with an egg or kidneys. There may be two courses, in which
+case the first is of the no less excellent fresh fish. There are no
+vegetables. The breakfast is ended with toast and jam or marmalade.
+When one has fellows in to breakfast,--and the Oxford custom of
+rooming alone instead of chumming makes such hospitality
+frequent,--his usual meal is increased by a course, say, of chicken.
+In any case it leads to a morning cigarette, for tobacco aids
+digestion, and helps fill the hour or so after meals which an
+Englishman gives to relaxation.
+
+At ten o'clock the breakfast may be interrupted for a moment by the
+exit of some one bent on attending a lecture, though one apologizes
+for such an act as if it were scarcely good form. An appointment with
+one's tutor is a more legitimate excuse for leaving; but even this is
+always an occasion for an apology, in behalf of the tutor of course,
+for one is certainly not himself responsible. If a quorum is left,
+they manage to sit comfortably by the fire, smoking and chatting in
+spite of lectures and tutors, until by mutual consent they scatter to
+glance at the "Times" and the "Sportsman" in the common-room, or even
+to get in a bit of reading.
+
+Luncheon often consists of bread and cheese and jam from the buttery,
+with perhaps a half pint of bitter beer; but it may, like the
+breakfast, come from the college kitchen. In any case it is very
+light, for almost immediately after it everybody scatters to field and
+track and river for the exercise that the English climate makes
+necessary and the sport that the English temperament demands.
+
+By four o'clock every one is back in college tubbed and dressed for
+tea, which a man serves himself in his rooms to as many fellows as he
+has been able to gather in on field or river. If he is eager to hear
+of the games he has not been able to witness, he goes to the junior
+common-room or to his club, where he is sure to find a dozen or so of
+kindred spirits representing every sport of importance. In this way he
+hears the minutest details of the games of the day from the players
+themselves; and before nightfall--such is the influence of tea--those
+bits of gossip which in America are known chiefly among members of a
+team have ramified the college. Thus the function of the "bleachers"
+on an American field is performed with a vengeance by the easy-chairs
+before a common-room fire; and a man had better be kicked off the team
+by an American captain than have his shortcomings served up with
+common-room tea.
+
+The two hours between tea and dinner may be, and usually are, spent in
+reading.
+
+
+IV
+
+DINNER IN HALL
+
+At seven o'clock the college bell rings, and in two minutes the
+fellows have thrown on their gowns and are seated at table, where the
+scouts are in readiness to serve them. As a rule a man may sit
+wherever he chooses; this is one of the admirable arrangements for
+breaking up such cliques as inevitably form in a college. But in point
+of fact a man usually ends by sitting in some certain quarter of the
+hall, where from day to day he finds much the same set of fellows.
+Thus all the advantages of friendly intercourse are attained without
+any real exclusiveness. This may seem a small point; but an hour a day
+becomes an item in four years, especially if it is the hour when men
+are most disposed to be companionable.
+
+The English College hall is a miniature of Memorial Hall at Harvard,
+of which it is the prototype. It has the same sombrely beautiful roof,
+the same richness of stained glass. It has also the same memorable and
+impressive canvases, though the worthies they portray are likely to be
+the princes and prelates of Holbein instead of the soldiers,
+merchants, and divines of Copley and Gilbert Stuart. The tables are of
+antique oak, with the shadow of centuries in its grain, and the
+college plate bears the names and date of the Restoration. To an
+American the mugs he drinks his beer from seem old enough, but the
+Englishman finds them aggressively new. They are not, however, without
+endearing associations, for the mugs that preceded them were last used
+to drink a health to King Charles, and were then stamped into coin to
+buy food and drink for his soldiers. The one or two colleges that, for
+Puritan principles or thrift, or both, refused to give up their old
+plate, are not overproud of showing it.
+
+Across the end of the hall is a platform for high table, at which the
+dons assemble as soon as the undergraduates are well seated. On Sunday
+night they come out in full force, and from the time the first one
+enters until the last is seated, the undergraduates rattle and bang
+the tables, until it seems as if the glass must splinter. When, as
+often happens, a distinguished graduate comes up,--the Speaker of the
+Commons to Balliol, or the Prime Minister to Christ Church,--the
+enthusiasm has usually to be stopped by a gesture from the master or
+the dean.
+
+  [Illustration: THE HALL STAIRCASE, CHRIST CHURCH]
+
+The dons at high table, like the British peers, mingle judicial with
+legislative functions. All disputes about sconces are referred to
+them, and their decrees are absolute. A sconce is a penalty for a
+breach of good manners at table, and is an institution that can be
+traced far back into the Middle Ages. The offenses that are sconcible
+may be summarized as punning, swearing, talking shop, and coming to
+hall after high table is in session. Take, for instance, the case of a
+certain oarsman who found the dinner forms rather too rigid after his
+first day on sliding seats. By way of comforting himself, he remarked
+that the Lord giveth and the Lord taketh away. Who is to decide
+whether he is guilty of profanity? The master, of course, and his
+assembled court of dons. The remark and the attendant circumstances
+are written on the back of an order-slip by the senior scholar
+present, and a scout is dispatched with it. Imagine, then, the master
+presenting this question to the dons: Is it profanity to refer by
+means of a quotation from Scripture to the cuticle one loses in a
+college boat? Suppose the dons decree that it is. The culprit has the
+alternative of paying a shilling to the college library, or ordering a
+tun of bitter beer. If he decides for beer, a second alternative
+confronts him: he may drink it down in one uninterrupted draft, or he
+may kiss the cup and send it circling the table. If he tries to floor
+the sconce and fails, he has to order more beer for the table; but if
+he succeeds, the man who sconced him has to pay the shot and order a
+second tun for the table. I never knew but one man to down a sconce.
+He did it between soup and fish, and for the rest of the evening was
+as drunk as ever was the Restoration lord who presented the silver
+tankard to the college.
+
+After hall the dons go to the senior common-room for the sweet and
+port. At Trinity they have one room for the sweet and another for
+port. The students, meanwhile, in certain of the colleges, may go for
+dessert to the college store; that is to say, to a room beneath the
+hall, where the fancy groceries of the college stock are displayed for
+sale. There are oranges from Florida and Tangiers, dainty maiden blush
+apples from New England, figs and dates from the Levant, prunes and
+prunelles from Italy, candied apricots from France, and the superb
+English hothouse grapes, more luscious than Silenus ever crushed
+against his palate. There are sweets, cigarettes, and cigars. All are
+spread upon the tables like a Venetian painting of abundance; but at
+either end of the room stand two Oxford scouts, with account-books in
+their hands. A fellow takes a Tangerine and, with a tap-room gesture,
+tilts to the scout as if to say, "Here's looking toward you,
+landlord;" or, "I drink to your bonny blue eyes." But he is not
+confronted by a publican or barmaid; only a grave underling of the
+college bursar, who silently records "Brown, orange, 2d.," and looks
+up to catch the next item. Two other fellows are flipping for cigars,
+and the second scout is gravely watching their faces to see which way
+the coin has fallen, recording the outcome without a sign. Some one
+asks, "How much are chocolate creams, Higgins?" "Three ha'pence for
+four, sir," is the answer, and the student urges three neighbors to
+share his penny'orth. The scout records, "Jones, c. c. 1-1/2d."
+
+The minuteness of this bookkeeping is characteristic. The weekly
+battels (bills) always bear a charge of twopence for "salt, etc.;" and
+once, when I had not ordered anything during an entire day, there was
+an unspecified charge of a penny in the breakfast column. I asked the
+butler what it meant. He looked at me horrified. "Why, sir, that is to
+keep your name on the books." No penny, I suppose, ever filled an
+office of greater responsibility, and I still can shudder at so narrow
+an escape. I asked if such elaborate bookkeeping was not very
+expensive. In America, I said, we should lump the charges and devote
+the saving to hiring a better chef. He explained that it had always
+been so managed; that the chef was thought very good, sir; and that by
+itemizing charges the young gentlemen who wished were enabled to live
+more cheaply. Obviously, when it costs a penny merely to keep your
+name on the books, there is need to economize.
+
+After a quarter of an hour in the store the fellows drop off by twos
+and threes to read, or to take coffee in some one's room. With the
+coffee a glass of port is usually taken. Almost all the fellows have
+spirits and wines, which are sold by the college as freely as any
+other commodity. If a man wishes a cup served in his room, he has only
+to say so to his scout. If one waits long enough in the store, he is
+almost certain to be asked to coffee and wine. The would-be host
+circulates the room tapping the elect on the shoulder and speaking a
+quiet word, as they select Bones men at Yale. If half a dozen men are
+left in the store uninvited, one of them is apt to rise to the
+occasion and invite the lot. It scarcely matters how unpopular a
+fellow may be. The willingness to loaf is the touch of nature that
+makes all men kin.
+
+After coffee more men fall off to their books; but the faithful are
+likely to spend the evening talking or playing cards--bridge, loo,
+napp, and whist, with the German importation of skat and the American
+importation of poker. In one college I knew, there was a nomadic
+roulette wheel that wandered from room to room pursued by the shadow
+of the dean, but seldom failed of an evening to gather its flock about
+it.
+
+
+V
+
+EVENING
+
+In the evening, when the season permits, the fellows sit out of doors
+after dinner, smoking and playing bowls. There is no place in which
+the spring comes more sweetly than in an Oxford garden. The high walls
+are at once a trap for the first warm rays of the sun and a barrier
+against the winds of March. The daffodils and crocuses spring up with
+joy as the gardener bids; and the apple and cherry trees coddle
+against the warm north walls, spreading out their early buds
+gratefully to the mild English sun. For long, quiet hours after dinner
+they flaunt their beauty to the fellows smoking, and breathe their
+sweetness to the fellows playing bowls. "No man," exclaims the
+American visitor, "could live four years in these gardens of delight
+and not be made gentler and nobler!" Perhaps! though not altogether in
+the way the visitor imagines. When the flush of summer is on, the
+loiterers loll on the lawn full length; and as they watch the insects
+crawl among the grass they make bets on them, just as the gravest and
+most reverend seniors have been known to do in America.
+
+In the windows overlooking the quadrangle are boxes of brilliant
+flowers, above which the smoke of a pipe comes curling out. At Harvard
+some fellows have geraniums in their windows, but only the very rich;
+and when they began the custom an ancient graduate wrote one of those
+communications to the "Crimson," saying that if men put unmanly boxes
+of flowers in the window, how can they expect to beat Yale? Flower
+boxes, no sand. At Oxford they manage things so that anybody may have
+flower boxes; and their associations are by no means unmanly. This is
+the way they do it. In the early summer a gardener's wagon from the
+country draws up by the college gate, and the driver cries, "Flowers!
+Flowers for a pair of old bags, sir." _Bags_ is of course the fitting
+term for English trousers--which don't fit; and I should like to
+inform that ancient graduate that the window boxes of Oxford suggest
+the very badge of manhood.
+
+As long as the English twilight lingers, the men will sit and talk and
+sing to the mandolin; and I have heard of fellows sitting and talking
+all night, not turning in until the porter appeared to take their
+names at roll-call. On the eve of May day it is quite the custom to
+sit out, for at dawn one may go to see the pretty ceremony of heralding
+the May on Magdalen Tower. The Magdalen choir boys--the sweetest
+songsters in all Oxford--mount to the top of that most beautiful of
+Gothic towers, and, standing among the pinnacles,--pinnacles afire
+with the spirituality of the Middle Ages, that warms all the senses
+with purity and beauty,--those boys, I say, on that tower and among
+those pinnacles, open their mouths and sing a Latin song to greet the
+May. Meantime, the fellows who have come out to listen in the street
+below make catcalls and blow fish horns. The song above is the
+survival of a Romish, perhaps a Druidical, custom; the racket below is
+the survival of a Puritan protest. That is Oxford in symbol! Its
+dignity and mellowness are not so much a matter of flowering gardens
+and crumbling walls as of the traditions of the centuries in which the
+whole life of the place has deep sources; and the noblest of its
+institutions are fringed with survivals that run riot in the
+grotesque.
+
+  [Illustration: MAGDALEN TOWER FROM THE BRIDGE]
+
+If a man intends to spend the evening out of college, he has to make a
+dash before nine o'clock; for love or for money the porter may not let
+an inmate out after nine. One man I knew was able to escape by guile.
+He had a brother in Trinity whom he very much resembled, and
+whenever he wanted to go out, he would tilt his mortarboard forward,
+wrap his gown high about his neck, as it is usually worn of an
+evening, and bidding the porter a polite good-night, say, "Charge me
+to my brother, Hancock, if you please." The charge is the
+inconsiderable sum of one penny, and is the penalty of having a late
+guest. Having profited by my experience with the similar charge for
+keeping my name on the college books, I never asked its why and
+wherefore. Both are no doubt survivals of some mediaeval custom, the
+authority of which no college employee--or don, for the matter of
+that--would question. Such matters interest the Oxford man quite as
+little as the question how he comes by a tonsil or a vermiform
+appendix. They are there, and he makes the best of them.
+
+If a fellow leaves college for an evening, it is for a foregathering
+at some other college, or to go to the theatre. As a rule he wears a
+cloth cap. A "billycock" or "bowler," as the pot hat is called, is as
+thoroughly frowned on now in English colleges as it was with us a
+dozen years ago. As for the mortarboard and gown, undergraduate
+opinion rather requires that they be left behind. This is largely, no
+doubt, because they are required by law to be worn. So far as the
+undergraduates are concerned, every operative statute of the
+university, with the exception of those relating to matriculation and
+graduation, refers to conduct in the streets after nightfall, and
+almost without exception they are honored in the breach. This is out
+of disregard for the Vice-Chancellor of the university, who is
+familiarly called the Vice, because he serves as a warning to others
+for the practice of virtue. The Vice makes his power felt in
+characteristically dark and tortuous ways. His factors are two
+proctors, college dons in daytime, but skulkers after nightfall, each
+of whom has his bulldogs, that is, scouts employed literally to spy
+upon the students. If these catch you without cap or gown, they cause
+you to be proctorized or "progged," as it is called, which involves a
+matter of five shillings or so. As a rule there is little danger of
+progging, but my first term fell in evil days. For some reason or
+other the chest of the university showed a deficit of sundry pounds,
+shillings, and pence; and as it had long ceased to need or receive
+regular bequests,--the finance of the institution being in the hands
+of the colleges,--a crisis was at hand. A more serious problem had
+doubtless never arisen since the great question was solved of keeping
+undergraduates' names on the books. The expedient of the
+Vice-Chancellor was to summon the proctors, and bid them charge their
+bulldogs to prog all freshmen caught at night without cap and gown.
+The deficit in the university chest was made up at five shillings a
+head.
+
+One of the Vice-Chancellor's rules is that no undergraduate shall
+enter an Oxford "pub." Now the only restaurant in town, Queen's, is
+run in conjunction with a pub, and was once the favorite resort of all
+who were bent on breaking the monotony of an English Sunday. The
+Vice-Chancellor resolved to destroy this den of Sabbath-breaking, and
+the undergraduates resolved no less firmly to defend their stronghold.
+The result was a hand-to-hand fight with the bulldogs, which ended so
+triumphantly for the undergraduates that a dozen or more of them were
+sent down. In the articles of the peace that followed, it was
+stipulated, I was told, that so long as the restaurant was closed
+Sunday afternoons and nights, it should never suffer from the visit of
+proctor or bulldog. As a result, Queen's is a great scene of
+undergraduate foregatherings. The dinners are good enough and
+reasonably cheap; and as most excellent champagne is to be had at
+twelve shillings the bottle, the diners are not unlikely to get back
+to college a trifle buffy, in the Oxford phrase.
+
+By an interesting survival of mediaeval custom, the Vice-Chancellor
+has supreme power over the morals of the town, and any citizen who
+transgresses his laws is visited with summary punishment. For a
+tradesman or publican to assist in breaking university rules means
+outlawry and ruin, and for certain offenses a citizen may be punished
+by imprisonment. Over the Oxford theatre the Vice-Chancellor's power
+is absolute. In my time he was much more solicitous that the
+undergraduate be kept from knowledge of the omnipresent woman with a
+past than that dramatic art should flourish, and forbade the town to
+more than one excellent play of the modern school of comedy that had
+been seen and discussed in London by the younger sisters of the
+undergraduates. The woman with a present is virtually absent.
+
+Time was when no Oxford play was quite successful unless the
+undergraduates assisted at its first night, though in a way very
+different from that which the term denotes in France. The assistance
+was of the kind so generously rendered in New York and Boston on the
+evening of an athletic contest. Even to-day, just for tradition's
+sake, the undergraduates sometimes make a row. A lot of B. N. C. men,
+as the clanny sons of Brazenose College call themselves, may insist
+that an opera stop while the troupe listen to one of their own
+excellent vocal performances; and I once saw a great sprinter, not
+unknown to Yale men, rise from his seat, face the audience, and,
+pointing with his thumb over his shoulder at the soubrette, announce
+impressively, "Do you know, I rather _like_ that girl!" The show is
+usually over just before eleven, and then occurs an amusing, if
+unseemly, scramble to get back to college before the hour strikes. A
+man who stays out after ten is fined threepence; after eleven the fine
+is sixpence. When all is said, why shouldn't one sprint for
+threepence?
+
+If you stay out of college after midnight, the dean makes a star
+chamber offense of it, fines you a "quid" or two, and like as not
+sends you down. This sounds a trifle worse than it is; for if you must
+be away, your absence can usually be arranged for. If you find
+yourself in the streets after twelve, you may rap on some friend's
+bedroom window and tell him of your plight through the iron grating.
+He will then spend the first half of the night in your bed and wash
+his hands in your bowl. With such evidence as this to support him, the
+scout is not apt, if sufficiently retained, to report a suspected
+absence. I have even known fellows to make their arrangements in
+advance and spend the night in town; but the ruse has its dangers,
+and the penalty is to be sent down for good and all.
+
+It is owing to such regulations as these that life in the English
+college has the name of being cloistral. Just how cloistral it is in
+spirit no one can know who has not taken part in a rag in the quad;
+and this is impossible to an outsider, for at midnight all visitors
+are required to leave, under a heavy penalty to their host.
+
+
+VI
+
+THE MIND OF THE COLLEGE
+
+Any jubilation is a rag; but the most interesting kind, though perhaps
+the least frequent, takes the direction of what we call hazing. It is
+seldom, however, as hazing has come to be with us, a wanton outbreak.
+It is a deliberate expression of public opinion, and is carried on
+sedately by the leading men of the college. The more I saw of it, the
+more deeply I came to respect it as an institution.
+
+In its simplest if rarest form it merely consists in smashing up a
+man's room. The only affair of this kind which I saw took place in the
+owner's absence; and when I animadverted on the fact, I was assured
+that it would have turned out much worse for the man's feelings if he
+had been present. He was a strapping big Rugbeian, who had come up
+with a "reputter," or reputation, as a football player, and had
+insisted on trying first off for the 'varsity fifteen. He had promptly
+been given the hoof for being slow and lazy, and when he condescended
+to try for the college fifteen, his services were speedily dispensed
+with for the same reason. As he still carried his head high, it was
+necessary to bring his shortcomings home to him in an unmistakable
+manner. Brutal as I thought the proceeding, and shameful to grown men,
+it did him good. He became a hard-working and lowly minded athlete,
+and prospered. I am not prepared to say that the effect in this
+particular instance did not justify the means.
+
+A series of judicial raggings was much more edifying. Having pulled
+their culprit out of bed after midnight, the upper classmen set him
+upon his window-seat in pyjamas, and with great solemnity appointed a
+judge, a counsel for the prosecution, and a counsel for the defense.
+Of the charges against him only one or two struck home, and even these
+were so mingled with the nonsense of the proceedings that their sting
+was more or less blunted. The man had been given over to his books to
+the neglect of his personal appearance. It was charged that in
+pretending to know his subjunctives he was ministering to the vanity
+of the dean, who had written a Latin grammar, and that by displaying
+familiarity with Hegel he was boot-licking the master, who was a
+recently imported Scotch philosopher. Then the vital question was
+raised as to the culprit's personal habits. Heaven defend him now
+from his legal defender! It was urged that as he was a student of
+Literae Humaniores, he might be excused from an acquaintance with the
+scientific commodity known as H2O: one might ignore anything, in
+fact, if only one were interested in Literae Humaniores. By such means
+as this the face of the college is kept bright and shining.
+
+Here is a round robin, addressed to the best of fellows, a member of
+the 'varsity shooting team and golf team. He was a Scotchman by birth
+and by profession, and even his schoolboy days at Eton had not
+divested him of a Highland gait.
+
+"Whereas, Thomas Rankeillor, Gent, of the University of Oxford, has,
+by means of his large feet, uncouth gait, and his unwieldy brogues,
+wantonly and with malice destroyed, mutilated, and otherwise injured
+the putting greens, tees, and golf course generally, the property of
+the Oxford University Golf Club, whereof he is a member, and
+
+"Whereas, 2, The said Thomas Rankeillor, etc., has by these large
+feet, uncouth gait, and unwieldy brogues aforesaid, raised
+embankments, groins, and other bunkers, hazards, and impediments,
+formed unnecessary roads, farm roads, bridle paths, and other roads,
+on the putting greens, tees, and golf course generally, aforesaid;
+excavated sundry and diverse reservoirs, tanks, ponds, conduits,
+sewers, channels, and other runnels, needlessly irrigating the putting
+greens, tees, and golf course generally aforesaid, and
+
+"Whereas, 3, The said Thomas Rankeillor, etc., has by those large
+feet, uncouth gait, and unwieldy brogues aforesaid, caused landslips,
+thus demolishing all natural hills, bunkers, and other excrescences,
+and all artificial hillocks, mounds, hedges, and other hazards,
+
+"Hereby we, the circumsigned, do request, petition, and otherwise
+entreat the aforesaid
+
+"THOMAS RANKEILLOR, GENT, OF THE UNIVERSITY OF OXFORD, to alter,
+transform, and otherwise modify his uncouth gait, carriage, and
+general mode of progression; to buy, purchase, or otherwise acquire
+boots, shoes, and all other understandings of reasonable size, weight,
+and material; and finally that he do cease from this time forward to
+wear, use, or in any way carry the aforesaid brogues.
+
+"Given forth this the 17th day of March, 1896."
+
+At times rougher means are employed. At Brazenose there happened to be
+two men by the same name, let us say, of Gaylor, one of whom had made
+himself agreeable to the college, while the other had decidedly not.
+One midnight a party of roisterers hauled the unpopular Gaylor out of
+his study, pulled off his bags, and dragged him by the heels a lap or
+two about the quad. This form of discipline has since been practiced
+in other colleges, and is called debagging. The popular Gaylor was
+ever afterward distinguished by the name of Asher, because, according
+to the Book of Judges, Asher abode in his breaches.
+
+Not dissimilar correctives may be employed, in extreme need, against
+those mightiest in authority. A favorite device is to screw the oak of
+an objectionable don. Mr. Andrew Lang, himself formerly a don at
+Merton, reports a conversation--can it have been a personal
+experience?--between a don standing inside a newly screwed oak and his
+scout, who was tendering sympathy from the staircase. "What _am_ I to
+do?" cried the don. "Mr. Muff, sir," suggested the scout, "when 'e's
+screwed up, sir, _'e_ sends for the blacksmith." At Christ Church,
+"The House," as it is familiarly called, much more direct and personal
+methods have been employed. Not many years ago a censor (whose office
+is that of the dean at other colleges) stirred up unusual ill-will
+among his wards. They pulled him from his bed, dragged him into Tom
+Quad,--Wolsey's Quad,--and threw him bodily among the venerable carp
+of the Mercury Pond. Then they gathered about in a circle, and, when
+he raised his head above the surface, thrust him under with their
+walking-sticks. Something like forty of them were sent down for this,
+and the censor went traveling for his health.
+
+The memory of this episode was still green when the Duke of
+Marlborough gave a coming of age ball at Blenheim Palace, and invited
+over literally hundreds of his Oxford friends. In other colleges the
+undergraduates were permitted to leave Oxford for the night, but at
+the House the censor stipulated that they be within the gates, as
+usual, by midnight. This would have meant a break-neck drive of eight
+miles after about fifteen minutes at the ball, and was far more
+exasperating to the young Britons than a straightforward refusal. That
+evening the dons sported their oaks, and carefully bolted themselves
+within. The night passed in so deep a silence that, for all they knew,
+the ghost of Wolsey might have been stalking in his cherished
+quadrangle, the glory of building which the Eighth Henry so
+unfeelingly appropriated. As morning dawned, the common-room gossips
+will tell you, the dons crawled furtively out of bed, and shot their
+bolts to find whether they had need of the blacksmith. Not a screw had
+been driven. The morning showed why. On the stately walls of Tom Quad
+was painted "Damn the Dons!" and again in capital letters, "Damn the
+Dons!" and a third time, in larger capitals, "Damn the Dons!" There
+were other inscriptions, less fit to relate; and stretching along one
+whole side of the quad, in huge characters, the finely antithetical
+sentence: "God bless the Duke of Marlborough." The doors of the dean's
+residence were smeared with red paint; and against a marble statue of
+the late Dean Liddell, the Greek lexicographer, a bottle of green ink
+had been smashed. Two hundred workmen, summoned from a neighboring
+building, labored two days with rice-root brushes and fuller's earth,
+but with so little effect that certain of the stones had to be
+replaced in the walls, and endless scrubbings failed to overcome the
+affinity between the ink and the literary Liddell. The marble statue
+has been replaced by one of plaster.
+
+Compared with the usual Oxford rag, the upsetting of Professor
+Silliman's statue in the Yale campus by means of a lasso dwindles into
+insignificance, and the painting of 'varsity stockings on John
+Harvard, which so scandalized the undergraduates that they repaired
+the damage by voluntary subscriptions, might be regarded as an act of
+filial piety.
+
+The more I learned of Oxford motives, the less anxious I was to
+censure the system of ragging. In an article I wrote after only a few
+months' stay, I spoke of it as boyish and undignified; and most
+Americans, I feel sure, would likewise hold up the hand of public
+horror. Yet I cannot be wholly thankful that we are not as they. To
+the undergraduates, ragging is a survival of the excellently efficient
+system of discipline in the public schools, where the older boys have
+charge of the manners and morals of the younger; and historically,
+like public school discipline, it is an inheritance from the
+prehistoric past. In the Middle Ages it was apparently the custom to
+hold the victim's nose literally to the grindstone. In the schools, to
+be sure, the Sixth Form take their duties with great sobriety of
+conscience--which is not altogether the case in college; but the
+difference of spirit is perhaps justifiable. For a properly authorized
+committee of big schoolboys to chastise a youngster who has
+transgressed is not unnatural, and the system that provides for it has
+proved successful for five centuries; but for men to adopt the same
+attitude towards a fellow only a year or two their junior would be
+preposterous. Horseplay is a necessary part of the game. The end in
+both is the same: it is to bring each individual under the influence
+of the traditions and standards of the institution of which he has
+elected to be a part. Just as the system of breakfasting freshmen is
+by no means as altruistic as it at first appears, the practice of
+ragging is by no means as brutal. It is as if the college said: We
+have admitted you and welcomed you, opening up the way to every avenue
+of enjoyment and profit, and it is for our common good, sir, that you
+be told of your shortcomings. The most diligent and distinguished
+scholar is not unlikely to be most in need of a pointed lesson in
+personal decorum; and the man who was not Asher may be thankful all
+his life for the bad quarter of an hour that taught him the difference
+between those who do and those who do not abide in their breaches.
+
+With regard to the dons, a similar case might be made. Any one who
+assumes an authority over grown men that is so nearly absolute should
+be held to strict honesty and justice of dealing. So far as I could
+learn, the Christ Church dons who were so severely dealt with were
+both unjust and insincere, and I came to sympathize in some measure
+with the undergraduates at the House, who were half humorously
+inclined to regard the forty outcasts as martyrs.
+
+This is not to argue that all American hazing is justifiable. In many
+cases, especially of late years, it has been as silly and brutal as
+the most puritanical moralists have declared. To steal the Louisburg
+Cross from above the door of the Harvard Library was vandalism if you
+wish--it was certainly a very stupid proceeding; and to celebrate a
+really notable athletic victory by mutilating the pedestal of the
+statue of John Harvard was not only stupid, but unworthy of a true
+sportsman. How much better to make an end with painting 'varsity
+stockings on the dear old boy's bronze legs, and leave the goody to
+wash them off next day. What I wish to point out is that where there
+is vigorous public spirit, it may be more efficiently expressed by
+hazing than by a very nor'easter of Puritan morality.
+
+A tradition of the late master of Balliol, Jowett, the great humanist,
+would seem to show that he held some such opinion. It was his custom
+in his declining years to walk after breakfast in the garden quad, and
+whenever there were evidences of a rag, even to the extent of broken
+windows, he would say cheerily to his _fidus Achates_, "Ah, Hardie,
+the mind of the college is still vigorous; it has been expressing
+itself." The best possible justification of the cloistral restrictions
+of English college life is the facility with which the mind of the
+college expresses itself. It is by no means fantastic to hint that the
+decline of well-considered hazing in American colleges has come step
+by step with the breaking up of the bonds of hospitality and
+comradeship that used to make them well-organized social communities.
+
+I have not come to this philosophy without deep experience. On one
+occasion after Hall, I was flown with such insolence against college
+restrictions that the _cheval-de-frise_ above the back gate seemed an
+affront to a freeborn American. Though the porter's gate was still
+open, it was imperatively necessary to scale that roller of iron
+spikes. I was no sooner astride of it than a mob of townspeople
+gathered without, and among them a palsied beggar, who bellowed out
+that he would hextricate me for 'arf a crown, sir. I have seldom been
+in a less gratifying position; and when I had clambered back into
+college, I ruefully recalled the explanation my tutor had given me of
+the iron spikes and bottle shards,--an explanation that at the time
+had shaken my sides with laughter at British absurdity. My tutor had
+said that if the fellows were allowed to rag each other in the open
+streets and smash the townspeople's windows, the matter would be sure
+to get into the papers and set the uninitiated parent against the
+universities. In effect, the iron spikes and the stumps of bottles
+are admirable, not so much because they keep the undergraduate in, as
+because they keep the public out; and since the public includes all
+people who wish to hextricate you for 'arf a crown, sir, my mind was
+in a way to be reduced to that British state of illogic in which I
+regarded only the effect.
+
+As a last resort I carefully sounded the undergraduates as to whether
+they would find use for greater liberty. They were not only content
+with their lot, but would, I found, resent any loosening of the
+restrictions. To give them the liberty of London at night or even of
+Oxford, they argued, would tend to break up the college as a social
+organization and thus to weaken it athletically; for at Oxford they
+understand what we sometimes do not, that a successful cultivation of
+sports goes hand in hand with good comradeship and mutual loyalty.
+
+The only question remaining was of the actual moral results of the
+semi-cloistral life. Such outbreaks of public opinion as I have
+described are at the worst exceptional; they are the last resort of
+outraged patience. The affair at Christ Church is unexampled in modern
+times. Many a man of the better sort goes through his four years at
+the university without either experiencing or witnessing undergraduate
+violence. As for drinking, in spite of the fact that wine and spirits
+are sold to undergraduates by the college at any and all times and in
+any and all quantities, there seemed to be less excessive indulgence
+than, for instance, at Harvard or at Yale. And the fact that what
+there was took place for the most part within the college walls was in
+many respects most fortunate. When fellows are turned loose for their
+jubilations amid the vices of a city, as is usually the case with us,
+the consequences to their general morality are sometimes the most
+hideous. In an English college the men to whom immorality seems
+inevitable--and such are to be found in all communities--have recourse
+to London. But as their expeditions take place in daylight and cold
+blood, and are, except at great risk, cut short when the last evening
+train leaves Paddington shortly after dinner, it is not possible to
+carry them off with that dazzling air of the man of the world that in
+America lures so many silly freshmen into dissipations for which they
+have no natural inclination. This little liberty is apparently of
+great value. The cloistral vice, which seems inevitable in the English
+public schools, is robbed of any shadow of palliation. A fellow who
+continues it is thought puerile, if nothing worse. When it exists, it
+is more likely to be the result of the intimate study of the ancient
+classics, and is then even more looked down upon by the robust Briton
+as effeminate or decadent. The subject, usually difficult or
+impossible to investigate, happened to be on the surface at the time
+of my residence because of the sensational trial of an Oxford graduate
+in London. I was satisfied that the general body of undergraduates was
+quite free of contamination. On the whole, I should say that the
+restrictions of college life in England are far less dangerous than
+the absolute freedom of life in an American college. Under our system
+a few men profit greatly; they leave college experienced in the ways
+of the world and at the same time thoroughly masters of themselves.
+But it is a strong man--perhaps a blasphemous one--that would ask to
+be led into temptation. The best system of college residence, I take
+it, is that which develops thoroughly and spontaneously the normal
+social instincts, and at the same time leaves men free moral agents.
+In a rightly constituted fellow, in fact, the normal social life
+constitutes the only real freedom. Those frowning college walls,
+which we are disposed to regard as instruments of pedagogical tyranny,
+are the means of nourishing the normal social life, and are thus in
+effect the bulwarks of a freer system than is known to American
+universities.
+
+
+VII
+
+CLUB LIFE IN THE COLLEGE
+
+As a place for the general purposes of residence--eating and sleeping,
+work and play--the English college is clearly quite as well organized
+and equipped as any of the societies, clubs, or fraternities of an
+American university. And whereas these are in their very nature small
+and exclusive, the college is ample in size and is consciously and
+effectively inclusive; the very fact of living in it insures a
+well-ordered life and abundant opportunity for making friends. Yet
+within this democratic college one finds all sorts of clubs and
+societies, except those whose main purpose is residential, and these
+are obviously not necessary.
+
+By far the larger proportion of the clubs are formed to promote the
+recognized undergraduate activities. No college is without athletic
+and debating clubs, and there are musical and literary clubs almost
+everywhere. Membership in all of them is little more than a formal
+expression of the fact that a man desires to row, play cricket or
+football, to debate, read Shakespeare, or play the fiddle. Yet they
+are all conducted with a degree of social amenity that to an American
+is as surprising as it is delightful.
+
+The only distinctively social feature of the athletic clubs is the
+wine, which is given to celebrate the close of a successful season. A
+boating wine I remember was held in a severe and sombre old hall,
+built before Columbus sailed the ocean blue. It was presided over by a
+knot of the dons, ancient oarsmen, whose hearts were still in the
+sport. They sat on the dais, like the family of a baron of the Middle
+Ages, while the undergraduates sat about the tables like faithful
+retainers. All the sportsmen of the college were invited, and everybody
+made as much noise as he could, especially one of the boating men, who
+went to the piano and banged out a song of triumph he had written,
+while we all tumbled into the chorus. One of the fellows--I have
+always taken it as a compliment to my presence--improvised a cheer
+after the manner not unknown in America, which was given with much
+friendly laughter. "Quite jolly, isn't it!" he remarked, with the
+pride of authorship, "and almost as striking as your cry of 'Quack,
+quack, quack!'" He had heard the Yale men give their adaptation of the
+frog chorus at the athletic games between Oxford and Yale. About
+midnight the college butler passed a loving cup of mulled wine of a
+spicy smoothness to fill your veins with liquid joy. The recipe, I was
+told, had been handed down by the butlers of the college since the
+fourteenth century, being older than the hall in which we were
+drinking. I have no doubt it was the cordial Chaucer calls Ypocras,
+which seems to have brought joy to his warm old heart. After the
+loving cup had gone about, the fellows cleared away the tables and
+danced a stag. At this stage of the game the dons discreetly faded
+away, and the wine resolved itself into a good-natured rag in the quad
+that was ended only by daylight and the dean. I have seen many feasts
+to celebrate athletic victory and the breaking of training, but none
+as homelike and pleasant all through as the wine of an Oxford college.
+
+The debating clubs have of necessity a distinct social element, for
+where there is much talk, food and drink will always be found; and
+with the social element there is apt to be some little exclusiveness.
+In Balliol there are three debating clubs, and they are of course in
+some sense rivals. Like the fraternities in an American college, they
+look over the freshmen each year pretty closely; and the freshmen in
+turn weigh the clubs. One freshman gave his verdict as follows: "The
+fellows in A are dull, and bathe; the fellows in B are clever, and
+sometimes bathe; the fellows in C are supposed to be clever." The
+saying is not altogether a pleasant one, but will serve to indicate
+the range of selection of members. In spite of social distinctions,
+few fellows need be excluded who care to debate or are clubable in
+spirit. As a system, the clubs are inclusive rather than exclusive.
+
+Each club convenes at regular intervals, usually in the rooms of such
+members as volunteer to be hosts. The hour of meeting is directly
+after dinner, and while the men gather and settle down to the business
+of the evening, coffee, port, and tobacco are provided out of the club
+treasury. The debates are supposed to be carried on according to the
+strictest parliamentary law, and the man who transgresses is subject
+to a sharp rebuff. On one occasion, when the question of paying
+members of Parliament was up, one speaker gravely argued that the
+United States Senate was filled with politicians who were attracted by
+the salary. Though I had already spoken, I got up to protest. The
+chairman sat me down with the greatest severity--amid a broad and
+general smile. I had neglected, I suppose, the parliamentary remark
+that I arose to a point of fact. A member's redress in such instances
+is to rag the president at the time when, according to custom,
+interpellations are in order; and as a rule he avails himself of this
+opportunity without mercy. On one occasion, a fellow got up in the
+strictest parliamentary manner and asked the president--a famous shot
+on the moors--whether it was true, as reported, that on the occasion
+when he lately fell over a fence three wrens and a chipping sparrow
+fell out of his game-bag. Such ragging as the chair administers and
+receives may not aid greatly in rational debate, but it certainly has
+its value as a preparation for the shifts and formalities of
+parliamentary life. It is the first duty of a chairman, even the
+president of the Oxford Union, to meet his ragging with cheerfulness
+and a ready reply, and the first duty of all debaters is to be
+interesting as well as convincing. In American college debating there
+is little of such humor and none of such levity. The speakers are
+drafted to sustain or to oppose a position, often without much
+reference to their convictions, and are supposed to do so to the
+uttermost. The training is no doubt a good one, for life is largely
+partisan; but a man's success in the world depends almost as much on
+his tact and good sense as on his strenuosity.
+
+The Englishman's advantage in address is sometimes offset by
+deficiencies of information. In a debate on Home Rule, one argument
+ran somewhat as follows: It is asserted that the Irish are
+irresponsible and lacking in the sense of administrative justice. To
+refute this statement, I have only to point to America, to the great
+metropolis of New York. There, as is well known, politics are
+exclusively in the hands of Irish citizens, who, denied the right of
+self-government--as the American colonies were denied similar freedom,
+I need scarcely point out with what disastrous results to the
+empire--the Irish immigrants in America, I say, are evincing their
+true genius for statesmanship in their splendid organization known as
+Tammany Hall.
+
+In the better clubs, the debates are often well prepared and cogent. I
+remember with particular gratitude a discussion as to whether the
+English love of comfort was not an evidence of softening morals. The
+discussion was opened with a paper by a young Scotchman of family and
+fortune. More than any other man I met he had realized the sweetness
+and pleasantness of Oxford, and all the delights of the senses and of
+the mind that surround the fellows there; and the result of it was, as
+it has so often been with such men, a craving for the extreme opposite
+of all he had known, for moral earnestness and austerity. What right,
+he questioned, had one to buy a book which, with ever so little more
+effort, he might read in the Bodleian, while all the poor of England
+are uneducated? And was it manly or in any way proper to spend so much
+time and interest on things that are merely agreeable? The sense of
+the meeting seemed to be that comfort in daily life is an evil only
+when it becomes an end in itself, a self-indulgence; and that a
+certain amount of it is necessary to fortify one for the most
+strenuous and earnest work in the world. I think that debate made us
+realize, as we never could have realized without it, to what serious
+end England makes the ways of her young men so pleasant; yet the more
+deeply I lived into the life of the university, the more deeply I
+questioned, as the young Scotchman did, whether the line between the
+amenities and the austerities was not somewhat laxly drawn.
+
+The only purely social club, and therefore the only really exclusive
+one, is the wine club. In Balliol there is a college rule against wine
+clubs, which seems to be due partly to a feeling against social
+exclusiveness, and partly perhaps to a distrust of purely convivial
+gatherings. The purpose of a wine club was served quite as well,
+however, by an organization that was ostensibly for debating. The
+notices of meetings were usually a parody of the notices of the
+meetings of genuine debating clubs, and the chief business of the
+secretary was to concoct them in pleasing variety. For instance, it
+would be _Resolved_, that this House looks with disfavor upon the
+gradual introduction of a continental sabbath into England; or
+_Resolved_, that this House looks with marked disfavor upon the
+assumption that total abstinence is a form of intemperance. On the
+evening when the House was defending total abstinence, our host's
+furniture and tea-things suffered some damage, and as I was in
+training, I found it advisable to leave early. As I slipped out, the
+president of the club, a young nobleman, who was himself at the time
+in training for the 'varsity trial eights, called me back and said
+with marked sobriety that he had just thought of something. "You are
+in for the mile run, aren't you? And in America you have always run
+the half. Well, then, if you find the distance too long for you, just
+don't mind at all about the first part of the race, but when you get
+to the last part, run as you run a half mile. Do it in two minutes,
+and you can't help beating 'em." He bade me good-night with a grave
+and authoritative shake of the hand. If he recalled his happy thought
+next morning, he was unable to avail himself of it, for I grieve to
+say that in the 'varsity trial race, which came only a few days
+later, he missed his blue by going badly to pieces on the finish.
+
+The meeting at which this occurred was exceptional. For the most part
+the fellows were moderate enough, and at times I suspected the wine
+club of being dull. Certainly, we had no such fun as at the more
+general jubilations--a rag in the quad or a boating wine. I doubt if
+any one would have cared so very much to belong to the club if it had
+not afforded the only badge of social distinction in college, and if
+this had not happened to be an unusually pretty hatband. However
+successful a wine club may be, moreover, it is of far less consequence
+than similar clubs in America. In the first place, since there are one
+or more of them in each of the twenty colleges, the number of men who
+belong to them is far greater relatively, which of course means far
+less exclusion. In the second place, and this is more important, the
+fellows who do not belong are still able to enjoy the life which is
+common to all members of the college. In general, the social walls of
+Oxford are like the material ones. Far from being the means of undue
+exclusion and of the suppression of public feeling, they are the live
+tissues in which the vital functions of the place are performed.
+
+Until well along in the nineteenth century, this life in the college
+was about the only life; but of late years the university has begun to
+feel its unity more strongly, and in social and intellectual life, as
+in athletics, it has become for the first time since the Middle Ages
+an organic whole.
+
+
+VIII
+
+SOCIAL LIFE IN THE UNIVERSITY
+
+The first formal organization of the life of the university was, as
+its name records, the Oxford Union, an institution of peculiar
+interest to Americans because our universities, though starting from a
+point diametrically opposite, have arrived at a state of social
+disorganization no less pronounced than that which the Union was
+intended to remedy. Harvard, which has progressed farthest along the
+path of social expansion and disintegration, has already made a
+conscious effort to imitate the Union. The adamantine spirit of Yale
+is shaken by the problems of the Sophomore societies; and it will not
+be many decades before other universities will be in a similar
+predicament. It will not be amiss, therefore, to consider what the
+Oxford Union has been and is. If Americans have not clearly understood
+it even when attempting to imitate it, one should at least remember
+that it would not be easy for an Oxford man to explain it thoroughly.
+
+The Union was founded in 1823, and was primarily for debating. In
+fact, it was the only university debating society. Its members were
+carefully selected for their ability in discoursing on the questions
+of the day. In its debates Gladstone, Lord Rosebery, the Marquis of
+Salisbury, and countless other English statesmen of recent times got
+their first parliamentary training. Its present fame in England is
+largely based upon this fact; but its character has been
+metamorphosed. Early in its history it developed social features; and
+though it was still exclusive in membership, little by little men of
+all kinds were taken in. At this stage of its development, the Union
+was not unlike those vast political clubs in London in which any and
+all principles are subordinated to the kitchen and the wine cellar.
+The debates, though still of first-rate quality, became more and more
+an incident; the club was chiefly remarkable as the epitome of all the
+best elements of Oxford life. The library was filled with men reading
+or working at special hobbies; the reading and smoking rooms were
+crowded; the lawn was daily thronged with undergraduates gossiping
+over a cup of tea; the telegram board, the shrine of embryo
+politicians watching for the results from a general election, was apt
+to be profaned by sporting men scanning it for the winners of the
+Derby or the Ascot. In a word, the Union held the elect of Oxford,
+intellectual, social, and sporting. This is the Union remembered by
+the older graduates, and except for a single feature, namely, that it
+was still exclusive, this is the Union that has inspired the
+projectors of the Harvard Union.
+
+The Oxford man of the later day knows all too well that this Union is
+no more. Some years ago, responding to a democratic impulse that has
+been very strong of late at Oxford, the Union threw down all barriers;
+virtually any man nowadays may join it, and its members number well
+beyond a thousand. The result is not a social millennium. The very
+feature of inclusiveness that is to be most prominent in the Union at
+Harvard destroyed the character of the Oxford Union as a
+representative body. To the casual observer it still looks much as it
+did a dozen years ago; but its glory has departed. In any real sense
+of the word it is a Union no more. The men who used to give it
+character are to be found in smaller clubs, very much like the clubs
+of an American university.
+
+The small university debating clubs are the Russell, the Palmerston,
+the Canning, and the Chatham, each of which stands for some special
+stripe of political thought, and each of which has a special color
+which--sure sign of the pride of exclusiveness--it wears in hatbands.
+The clubs meet periodically--often weekly--in the rooms of members.
+Sometimes a paper is read which is followed by an informal discussion;
+but the usual exercise is a formal debate. Time was when the best
+debates came off at the Union, and writers of leading articles in
+London papers even now look to it as a political weather-vane. The
+debates there are still earnest and sometimes brilliant, and to have
+presided over them is a distinction of value in after life; but as far
+as I could gather, their prestige is falling before the smaller
+debating clubs. The main interest at the Union appeared to centre in
+the interpellation of the president, which is carried on much as in
+the House of Commons, though with this difference, that, following the
+immemorial custom, it is turned into ragging. When this is over, the
+major part of the audience clears out to the smoking and reading
+rooms. In the smaller clubs the exercises are not only serious,
+but--in spite of the preliminary ragging, which no function at Oxford
+may flourish without--they are taken seriously. The clubs really
+include the best forensic ability of Oxford. At the end of each year
+they give dinners, at which new and old members gather, while some
+prominent politician from Westminster holds forth on the question of
+the hour. In a word, these clubs, collectively, are what the Union
+once was--the training school of British statesmen.
+
+The university social clubs are of a newness that shocks even an
+American; but it would not be quite just to account for the fact by
+regarding them as mere offshoots, like the debating clubs, of a parent
+Union. Until the nineteenth century, there really was no university at
+Oxford, at least in modern times. The colleges were quite independent
+of one another socially and in athletics, and each of them provided
+all the necessary instruction for its members. The social clubs which
+now admit members from the university at large began life as wine
+clubs of separate colleges, and even to-day the influence of the
+parent college is apt to predominate. The noteworthy fact is that in
+proportion as the social prestige of the Union has declined, these
+college wine clubs, like the small debating clubs, have gained
+character and prestige.
+
+The oldest of these is the Bullingdon, which is not quite as old, I
+gathered, as the Institute of 1770 at Harvard, and, considered as a
+university organization, it is of course much younger. It was
+originally the Christ Church wine club, and to-day it is dominated by
+the sporting element of Christ Church, which is the most aristocratic
+of Oxford colleges. In former years, it is said, the club had kennels
+at Bullingdon, and held periodic hunts there; and it is still largely
+composed of hunting men. To-day it justifies its name mainly by having
+an annual dinner beneath the heavy rafters of a mediaeval barn at
+Bullingdon. On these, as on other state occasions, the members wear a
+distinctive costume--no doubt a tradition from the time when men
+generally wore colors--which consists of a blue evening coat with
+white facings and brass buttons, a canary waistcoat, and a blue tie.
+This uniform is no doubt found in more aristocratic wardrobes than any
+other Oxford trophy. The influence of the Bullingdon is indirectly to
+discourage athletics, which it regards as unaristocratic and
+incompatible with conviviality; so that Christ Church, though the
+largest of Oxford colleges and one of the wealthiest, is of secondary
+importance in sports. For this reason the Bullingdon has suffered a
+partial eclipse, for the middle-class spirit which is invading Oxford
+has given athletic sports the precedence over hunting, while expensive
+living and mere social exclusiveness are less the vogue. By a curious
+analogy, one of the oldest and most exclusive of the clubs at Harvard
+is similarly out of sympathy with the athletic spirit.
+
+Another old and prominent college wine club that has come to elect
+members from without is the Phoenix of Brazenose, the uniform of
+which is perhaps more beautiful than the Bullingdon uniform,
+consisting of a peculiar dark wine-colored coat, brass buttons, and a
+light buff waistcoat. In general, the college wine clubs are more or
+less taking on a university character. The Annandale Club of Balliol,
+for instance, has frequent guests from outside, and often elects them
+to membership out of compliment. At the formal wines the members have
+the privilege of inviting outside guests.
+
+The most popular and representative Oxford club is Vincent's, which
+owes its prominence to the fact that it expresses the enthusiasm of
+modern Oxford for athletics. It was founded only a third of a century
+ago, but it must be remembered that inter-varsity boat races did not
+become usual until 1839, nor a fixture until 1856; that the first
+inter-varsity athletic meeting came in 1864, and the first
+inter-varsity football game as late as 1873. Vincent's was originally
+composed largely of men from University College, which was at that
+time a leader in sports; but later it elected many men from Brazenose,
+then in the ascendant. When Brazenose became more prominent in
+athletics, it gained a controlling influence in Vincent's; and when
+it declined, as it lately did, the leadership passed on. The name
+Vincent's came from a printer's shop, above which the club had its
+rooms. Any second year man is eligible; in fact, until a few years
+ago, freshmen were often taken in. The limit of members is ninety, but
+as the club is always a dozen or so short of this, no good fellow is
+excluded for lack of a place. When a man is proposed, his name is
+written in a book, in which space is left for friends in the club to
+write their names in approval. After this, elections are in the hands
+of a committee. Like all Oxford clubs, Vincent's will always, I
+suppose, lean towards men of some special college or group of
+colleges; yet it is careful to elect all clubable blues, and, in point
+of fact, is representative of the university at large, as, for
+instance, the Hasty Pudding Club at Harvard, or the senior societies
+at Yale, to which, on the whole, it most nearly corresponds.
+
+The most democratic, as well as one of the most recent of the more
+purely social clubs, is the Gridiron. It is a dining rather than a
+social club, and one may invite to his board as many guests who are
+not members as he chooses. Any good fellow is eligible, though here,
+again, a man in one of the less known colleges might fail to get in
+from lack of acquaintances on the election committee.
+
+The Union has long lost prestige before this development of small
+exclusive clubs. Politically, socially, and even in that most
+essential department, the kitchen, it holds a second place. If you ask
+men of the kind that used to give it its character why they never go
+there, they will tell you, in the most considerate phrase, how the
+pressure of other undergraduate affairs is so great that they have not
+yet found time; and this is quite true. They may add that next year
+they intend to make the time, for they believe that one should know
+all kinds of men at Oxford; and they are quite sincere. But next year
+they are more preoccupied than ever. If Oxford is united socially, it
+is not because of the Oxford Union.
+
+In addition to the clubs which are mainly social, there is the usual
+variety of special organizations. These, as a rule, are of recent
+growth. The Musical Union has frequent meetings for practice, and
+gives at least one concert a year. The Dramatic Society, the O.U.D.S.,
+as it is popularly called, will be seen to be a very portentous
+organization. In America, college men give comic operas and
+burlesques, usually writing both the book and the music themselves;
+and when they do, there is apt to be a Donnybrook Fair for vulnerable
+heads in the faculty. So well is musical nonsense adapted to the
+calibre of the undergraduate mind that college plays sometimes find
+their way to the professional stage, and to no small general favor. At
+Oxford the Vice-Chancellor, who is a law to himself and to the
+university, has decreed that there shall be no fun and nonsense. If
+the absurdities of donnishness are all too fair a mark for the
+undergraduate wit, the Vice-Chancellor has found a very serviceable
+scapegoat. He permits the undergraduates to present the plays of
+Shakespeare. Surely Shakespeare can stand the racket. The aim of the
+O.U.D.S. seems to be to get as many blues as possible into the cast
+of a Shakespearean production, with the idea, perhaps, of giving
+Oxford its full money's worth. I remember well the sensation made by
+the most famous of all university athletes,--a "quadruple blue," who
+played on four university teams, was captain of three of them, and
+held one world's record. The play was "The Merchant of Venice," and
+the athlete in question was the swarthy Prince of Morocco. Upon
+opening the golden casket his powers of elocution rose to unexpected
+heights. Fellows went again and again to hear him cry, "O hell! what
+have we here?" In one way, however, the performances of the O.U.D.S.
+are really noteworthy. Not even the crudest acting can entirely
+disguise the influences of birth and environment; and few
+Shakespearean actors have as fine a natural carriage as those
+companies of trained athletes. For the first time, perhaps, on any
+stage, the ancient Roman honor more or less appeared in Antonio, and
+there were really two gentlemen in Verona. For this reason--or, what
+is more likely, merely because the plays are given by Oxford men--the
+leading dramatic critics of London run up every year for the O.U.D.S.
+performance, and talk learnedly about it in their dignified
+periodicals. Both the musical and the dramatic societies have an
+increasing social element, and the dramatic society has a house of its
+own.
+
+Of at least one association I happened upon, I know of no American
+parallel. One Sunday afternoon, a lot of fellows who had been lunching
+each other in academic peace were routed from college by a Salvation
+Army gathering that was sending up the discordant notes of puritanical
+piety just outside the walls. In the street near by we came upon a
+quiet party of undergraduates in cap and gown. They were standing in a
+circle, at the foot of the Martyr's Memorial, and were alternately
+singing hymns and exhorting the townspeople who gathered about. Their
+faces were earnest and simple, their attitude erect. If they were
+conscious of doing an unusual thing, they did not show it. I don't
+remember that they moved any of us to repent the pleasantness of our
+ways, but I know that they filled the most careless of us with a very
+definite admiration. One of the fellows said that he thought them
+mighty plucky, and that they had the stuff at least out of which
+sportsmen are made. The phrase is peculiarly British, but in the
+undergraduate vernacular there is no higher epithet of praise. In
+America there are slumming societies and total abstinence leagues; but
+I never knew any body of men who had the courage to stand up in the
+highway and preach their gospel to passers-by.
+
+
+IX
+
+THE COLLEGE AND THE UNIVERSITY
+
+The distinctive feature of the social organization of Oxford life is
+said to be the colleges. Fifty years ago the remark held good, but
+to-day it requires an extension. The distinctive feature is the
+duality of the social organization: a man who enters fully into
+undergraduate affairs takes part both in the life of the college and
+in the life of the university. The life of the college, in so far as
+it is wholesome, is open to all newcomers; it is so organized as to
+exert powerfully upon them the force of its best influences and
+traditions, and is thus in the highest degree inclusive. The life of
+the university, in so far as it is vigorous, is in the main open only
+to those who bring to it special gifts and abilities, and is therefore
+necessarily exclusive. In college, one freely enjoys all that is
+fundamental in the life of a young man--a pleasant place to sleep in
+and to dine in, pleasant fellows with whom to work and to play. In the
+university, one finds scope for his special capacities in conviviality
+or in things of the mind. More than any other institution, the
+English university thus mirrors the conditions of social life in the
+world at large, in which one is primarily a member of his family, and
+takes part in the life of the outside community in proportion as his
+abilities lead him.
+
+The happiest thing about all this is that it affords the freest
+possible interplay of social forces. As soon as a newcomer gains
+distinction, as he does at once if he has the capacity, he is noticed
+by the leading men of the college, and is thus in a way to be taken
+into the life of the university. From the college breakfast it is only
+a step to the Gridiron, from the college eight to Vincent's, and from
+the debating society to the Chatham or the Canning. These, like all
+undergraduate clubs, are in yearly need of new members, and the older
+men in college are only too glad to urge the just claims of the
+younger for good-fellowship sake, and for the general credit of their
+institution.
+
+Even when a fellow has received all the university has to offer, he is
+still amenable to the duality of Oxford life. In American
+institutions, in proportion as a man is happily clubbed, he is by the
+very nature of the social organization withdrawn from his college
+mates; but at Oxford he still dines in Hall, holds forth at the
+college debating society, plays on the college teams, and, until his
+final year, he lives within the college walls. First, last, and always
+his general life is bound up with that of the college.
+
+The prominent men thus become a medium by which every undergraduate is
+brought in touch with the life of the university. The news of the
+athletic world is reported at Vincent's over afternoon tea; and at
+dinner time the men who have discussed it there relate it to their
+mates in the halls of a dozen colleges. A celebrated debater brings
+the news of the Union or of the smaller clubs; and whatever a man's
+affiliations in the university, he can scarcely help bringing the
+report of them back with him. In an incredibly short time all
+undergraduate news, and the judgments upon it of those best qualified
+to judge, ramify the college; and men who seldom stir beyond its walls
+are brought closely in touch with the innermost spirit of the
+university life. Here, again, those forbidding walls make possible a
+freedom of social interplay which is unknown in America. The real
+union of Oxford, social, athletic, and intellectual, is quite apart
+from the so-called Oxford Union; it results from the nice adjustment
+between the general residential life of the colleges and the
+specialized activities of the university.
+
+The immediate effect of this union is the humble one of making the
+present life of the undergraduate convenient and enjoyable; but its
+ultimate effect is a matter of no little importance. Every
+undergraduate, in proportion to his susceptibilities and capacities,
+comes under the influence of the social and intellectual traditions of
+Oxford, which are the traditions of centuries of the best English life.
+In Canada and Australia, South Africa and India, you will find the old
+Oxonian wearing the hatband, perhaps faded and weather-stained, that
+at Oxford denoted the thing he was most proud to stand for; and
+wherever you find him, you will find also the manners and standards of
+the university, which are quite as definite a part of him, though
+perhaps less conspicuous. Without a large body of men animated by such
+traditions, it is no exaggeration to say that it would not have been
+possible to build up the British empire. If the people of the United
+States are to bear creditably the responsibilities to civilization
+that have lately fallen to them, or have been assumed, there is urgent
+need for institutions that shall similarly impose upon our young men
+the best traditions and influences of American life.
+
+
+
+
+II
+
+OXFORD OUT OF DOORS
+
+
+I
+
+SLACKING ON THE ISIS AND THE CHERWELL
+
+The dual development of college and university, with all its organic
+coordinations, exists also in the sports of Oxford. The root and trunk
+of the athletic spirit lies in the colleges, though its highest
+development is found in university teams. To an American, this
+athletic life of the college will be found of especial interest, for
+it is the basis of the peculiar wholesomeness and moderation of Oxford
+sports. If the English take their pleasures sadly, as they have been
+charged with doing ever since Froissart hit upon the happy phrase,
+they are not so black a pot but that they are able to call us blacker;
+in the light of international contests, they have marveled at the
+intensity with which our sportsmen pursue the main chance. The
+difference here has a far deeper interest than the critic of boating
+or track athletics often realizes. Like the songs of a nation, its
+sports have a definite relation to its welfare: one is tempted to say,
+let me rule the games of my countrymen and who will may frame their
+laws. At least, I hope to be pardoned if I speak with some
+particularity of the out-of-door life, and neglect the lofty theme of
+inter-varsity contests for the humbler pursuits of the common or
+garden undergraduate.
+
+The origin of the boating spirit is no doubt what the Oxonian calls
+slacking, for one has to learn to paddle in a boat before he can row
+to advantage; and in point of fact the bumping races are supposed to
+have originated among parties of slackers returning at evening from up
+the river. If I were to try to define what a slacker is, I suppose you
+could answer that all Oxford men are slackers; but there are depths
+beneath depths of _far niente_. The true slacker avoids the worry and
+excitement of breakfast parties and three-day cricket matches, and
+conserves his energies by floating and smoking for hours at a time in
+his favorite craft on the Isis and the Cherwell--or "Char," as the
+university insists on calling it. He is a day-dreamer of day-dreamers;
+and despised as he is by the more strenuous Oxford men, who yet stand
+in fear of the fascination of his vices, he is as restful a figure to
+an American as a negro basking on a cotton-wharf, and as appealing as
+a beggar steeped in Italian sunlight. Merely to think of his
+uninterrupted calm and his insatiable appetite for doing nothing is a
+rest to occidental nerves; and though one may never be a roustabout
+and loaf on a cotton-wharf, one may at any time go to Oxford and play
+through a summer's day at slacking.
+
+Before you come out, you must make the acquaintance of the O.U.H.S.--that
+is, the University Humane Society. In the winter, when there is
+skating, the Humane Society man stands by the danger spot with a
+life-buoy and a rope; and in the summer, when the streams swarm with
+pleasure-craft, he wanders everywhere, pulling slackers out of the
+Isis and the Char. In view of the fact that, metaphorically speaking
+at least, you can shake hands with your neighbors across either of
+these streams, the Humane Society man is not without his humors.
+
+You may get yourself a tub or a working-boat or a wherry, a rob-roy or
+a dinghy, for every craft that floats is known on the Thames; but the
+favorite craft are the Canadian canoe and the punt. The canoe you will
+be familiar with, but your ideas of a punt are probably derived from a
+farm-built craft you have poled about American duck-marshes--which
+bears about the same relationship to this slender, half-decked cedar
+beauty that a canal-boat bears to a racing-shell.
+
+During your first perilous lessons in punting, you will probably be
+in apprehension of ducking your mentor, who is lounging among the
+cushions in the bow. But you cannot upset the punt any more than you
+can discompose the Englishman; the punt simply upsets you without
+seeming to be aware of it. And when you crawl dripping up the bank,
+consoled only by the fact that the Humane Society man was not at hand
+with his boat-hook to pull you out by the seat of the trousers, your
+mentor will gravely explain how you made your mistake. Instead of
+bracing your feet firmly on the bottom and pushing with the pole, you
+were leaning on the pole and pushing with your feet. When the pole
+stuck in the clay bottom, of course it pulled you out of the boat.
+
+Steering is a matter of long practice. When you want to throw the bow
+to the left, you have only to pry the stern over to the right as you
+are pulling the pole out of the water. To throw the bow to the right,
+ground the pole a foot or so wide of the boat, and then lean over and
+pull the boat up to it. That is not so easy, but you will learn the
+wrist motion in time. When all this comes like second nature, you will
+feel that you have become a part of the punt, or rather that the punt
+has taken life and become a part of you.
+
+  [Illustration: A RACING PUNT AND PUNTER]
+
+A particular beauty of punting is that, more than any other sport,
+it brings you into personal contact, so to speak, with the landscape.
+In a few days you will know every inch of the bottom of the Char, some
+of it perhaps by more intimate experience than you desire. Over there,
+on the outer curve of the bend, the longest pole will not touch
+bottom. Fight shy of that place. Just beyond here, in the narrows, the
+water is so shallow that you can get the whole length of your body
+into every sweep. As for the shrubbery on the bank, you will soon
+learn these hawthorns, if only to avoid barging into them. And the
+Magdalen chestnut, which spreads its shade so beautifully above the
+water just beyond, becomes quite familiar when its low-reaching
+branches have once caught the top of your pole and torn it from your
+hands.
+
+The slackers you see tied up to the bank on both sides of the Char are
+always here after luncheon. An hour later their craft will be as thick
+as money-bugs on the water, and the joys of the slackers will be at
+height. You won't, as a rule, detect happiness in their faces, but it
+is always obvious in the name of the craft. One man calls his canoe
+"Vix Satis," which is the mark the university examining board uses to
+signify that a man's examination paper is a failure. Another has
+"P.T.O." on his bows--the "Please Turn Over" which an Englishman places
+at the bottom of a card where we say "Over." Still another calls his
+canoe the "Non-conformist Conscience"--which, as you are expected to
+remark, is very easily upset. All this makes the slacker even happier
+than if he were so un-English as to smile his pleasure, for he has a
+joke ready-made on his bow, where there is no risk of any one's not
+seeing it.
+
+These pollard willows that line the bank are not expected to delight
+your eye at first sight, but as you see them day after day, they grow
+on you like the beauty of the bull-terrier pup that looks at you over
+the gunwale of the boat tied beneath them. They have been topped to
+make their roots strike deeper and wider into the soil, so that when
+the freshets come in the spring the banks will stand firm. The idea
+came some centuries ago from Holland, but has been so thoroughly
+Englished that the university, and, indeed, all England, would
+scarcely be itself without its pollard willows. And though the trees
+are not in themselves graceful, they make a large part of the beauty
+of the river scenery. The sun is never so golden as up there among
+their quivering leaves, and no shadow is so deep as that in the water
+at their feet.
+
+The bar of foam ahead of us is the overflow from the lasher--that is
+to say, from the still water above the weir. The word "lasher" is
+obsolete almost everywhere else in England, and even to the Oxford
+mind it describes the lashing overflow rather than the _lache_ or
+_slack_ water above. When we "shoot the lasher," as the phrase goes,
+you will get a hint as to why the obsolete term still clings to this
+weir. Those fellows beyond who have tied up three deep to the bank are
+waiting to see us get ducked; but it is just as easy to shoot the
+lasher as to upset in it; and with that swarm of slackers watching, it
+makes a difference which you do. We have only to get up a fair pace
+and run into it on a diagonal. The lashing torrent will catch our
+bows, but we shall be half over before it sweeps them quite around;
+and then it will catch the stern in turn, and whirl the bow back into
+the proper direction. A sudden lurching of the bow, the roaring of a
+torrent beneath, a dash of spray--and we are in still water again.
+
+In order to reach the inn at Marston by four we must pole on. If we
+were true slackers, to be sure, we should have brought a spirit lamp
+and a basket of tea, and tied up in the first convenient nook on the
+bank; but these are heights of slacking to which the novice cannot
+aspire. Just beyond here we shall have to give the Thames Conservancy
+man threepence to roll the punt around a weir. If there were ladies
+with us, we should have to let them walk a quarter of a mile on shore,
+for just above is Parson's Pleasure, the university bathing-hole; and
+these men, who would not let the Yale and the Cornell athletes appear
+in sleeveless "zephyrs," plunge into a frequented waterway without any
+zephyrs at all.
+
+Above Parson's Pleasure we emerge from Mesopotamia--as the pretty
+river bottom is called in which the Char divides into several
+channels--and come in sight of the 'varsity cricket-ground. There is a
+game on against a picked eleven from the Marylebone Club; and every
+few minutes, if we waited, we might see the statuesque figures in
+white flannel suddenly dash after a ball or trot back and forth
+between the wickets. Few slackers have had energy to get beyond this
+point; and as we pole among the meadows, the cuckoo's homely voice
+emphasizes the solitude, singing the same two notes it sang to
+Shakespeare--and to Chaucer before him, for the matter of that.
+
+At Marston, having ordered tea of the red-cheeked housewife, it is
+well to ask the innkeeper for credit. He is a Parisian, whose
+sociological principles, it is said, were the cause of his venturing
+across the Channel--in Paris, a man will even go as far as that for
+his opinions; and while his cheery English spouse, attended by troops
+of his red-cheeked boys, brings out the thin buttered bread, he will
+revile you. What business have you to ask an honest yeoman to lend you
+money? If he were to go down to Oxford and ask the first gentleman he
+met to lend him half a crown to feed his starving family, should he
+get it? Should he? And what right have you to come to his house--his
+_home_!--and demand food at his board? You are a gentleman; but what
+is a gentleman? A gentleman is the dregs of the idleness of centuries!
+Then he will declaim about his plans for the renovation of the world.
+All this time his well-fed wife has been pouring out the tea and
+slicing the Genoa cake; and now, with a smile of reassurance, she
+takes our names and college. But the innkeeper's eloquence does not
+flag, and it will not until you tell him with decision that you have
+had enough. This you are loath to do, for he has furnished you with a
+new ideal of happiness. The cotton-wharf negro sometimes wants
+leisure, the repose of the cricketer is at times rudely broken in
+upon, and even the slacker is liable to his ducking; but to stand up
+boldly against the evils of the world and to picture the new Utopia
+while your wife averts all practical consequences, this is _otium cum
+dignitate_.
+
+This journey up the Char, though all-popular with the undergraduate,
+is not the only one worth taking. We might have gone down the Isis to
+the Iffley Mill and the sleepy little Norman church near by. This
+would have taken us through the thick of the college crews training
+for the summer eights. But the rules of the river are so complicated
+that no man on earth who has not given them long hours of study can
+understand them; and if an eight ran into us, we should be fined a
+quid or two--one quid for a college eight, and two for the 'varsity.
+Below Iffley, indeed, there is as much clear punting as you could
+desire, and here you are in the full current of Thames pleasure-boats.
+The towing-path skirts the water, so that when you are tired of
+punting you can get out and tow your craft. The stretch of river here
+I hold memorable as the scene of the only bit of dalliance I ever
+witnessed in this most sentimental of environments. A young man and a
+young woman had tied the painter of their punt to the middle of a
+paddle, and shoulder by shoulder were loitering along the river-side.
+Twenty yards behind, three other men and a baffled chaperon were
+steering the punt clear of the bank, and boring one another.
+
+  [Illustration: IFFLEY LOCK AND MILL]
+
+The best trip on the Isis is into the backwaters. These are a mesh of
+tiny streams that break free from the main current above Oxford and
+lose themselves in the broad bottom-lands. The islands they form were
+chosen in the Dark Ages as the sites of religious houses; for not only
+was the land fertile, but the network of deep, if tiny, streams
+afforded defense from the heathen, while the main channel of the
+Thames afforded communication with the Christian world. The ruins of
+these, or of subsequent monasteries, remain to-day brooding over a few
+Tudor cottages and hamlets, with a mill and a bakery and an inn or two
+to sustain life in the occasional undergraduate who lazes by in his
+canoe.
+
+The most interesting of these ruins is Wytham. The phrase is exact,
+for the entire hamlet was built from a venerable religious house
+shortly after the dissolution of the monasteries. You can imagine the
+size of Wytham. If you don't watch very closely as you paddle up the
+sedgy backwater, you will miss it entirely, and that would be a pity,
+for its rude masonry, thatched roofs, and rustic garden fronts seem
+instinct with the atmosphere of Tudor England. The very tea roses,
+nodding languidly over the garden wall, smell, or seem to smell, as
+subtly sweet as if they had been pressed for ages between the leaves
+of a mediaeval romance.
+
+I am not quite sure that they do, though, for these ancient hamlets
+have strange ways of pulling the wool--a true golden fleece, to be
+sure--over American eyes. Once at twilight I heard a knot of strolling
+country men and women crooning a tune which was so strangely familiar
+that I immediately set it down as a village version of one of the
+noble melodies of that golden age when English feeling found its
+natural vent in song. As it drew nearer, I suddenly recognized it. It
+was a far-away version of "Mammy's Little Alabama Coon."
+
+I have still faith, though, in a certain mediaeval barmaid I chanced
+upon in the backwaters. The circumstances of our meeting were
+peculiar. As I drifted along one Sunday, perched on an after-thwart of
+the canoe, the current swept me toward a willow that leaned over the
+water, and I put up my hand to fend off. I chanced to be laughing to
+myself at the time at the thought of a fellow who, only the day before
+at the lasher, had tried to do the same thing. The lasher was forcing
+his punt against the willow on the opposite bank, whereupon, to my
+heart's delight, he lazily tried to fend it off with his arms. The
+punt refused to be fended off, and he stooped with an amusing effect
+of deliberation plump into the water. He was hauled out by the O.U.H.S.
+man hard by.
+
+I was interrupted in these pleasant reminiscences by the roaring of
+waters about my ears, mingled with a boorish guffaw from one of the
+fellows behind me.... But I started to tell about the mediaeval
+barmaid. Making my way to a bakehouse up the stream, I hung my coat
+and trousers before the fire on a long baker's pole, and put my shoes
+inside the oven on a dough tray. My companion of the horse-laugh hung
+my shirt on a blossoming almond-tree, and then left for the lunch
+hamper. He had scarcely gone when I heard the rustle of skirts at the
+door. "What do you want?" I cried. "I want my dinner," was the
+friendly reply. It was the barmaid of a neighboring public house, in
+her Sunday frock.
+
+When she saw me she smiled, but maintained a dignity of port that--I
+insist upon it--was instinct with the simple and primitive modesty of
+the Middle Ages. It was the modesty of the people before whom Adam in
+the Chester mystery play was required by the stage directions to
+"stand nakyd and not be ashamyd." My barmaid advised me to take off my
+stockings and hang them up before the fire. The advice I admit came as
+a shock, but on reflection I saw that it was capital. For one happy
+moment I lived in the broad, wholesome atmosphere of the Middle Ages.
+It was like a breath from Chaucer's England.
+
+Then the baker rushed into the room, in a cutaway Sunday coat of the
+latest style. He had baked for an Oxford college so long that he had
+become infected with the squeamish leaven of the nineteenth century.
+He called the girl a huzzy, and, taking her by the shoulder, hustled
+her into the garden, and then passed her plum pudding out to her
+gingerly through a crack in the door. He covered me with apologies and
+a bath-robe; but I did not mind either, for as the barmaid ran back to
+the inn she was laughing what I still insist upon believing to have
+been the simple joyous laughter of the Middle Ages.
+
+But we must hurry to get back to college in time for dinner. And even
+at that we shall have to stop here at Magdalen bridge and give a
+street boy sixpence to take the punt the rest of the way. We land at
+the foot of the tower just as the late afternoon sun is gilding its
+exquisite pinnacles, and the chimes in its belfry are playing the
+prelude to the hour of seven. It is a melody worth all the Char and
+the Isis, with all their weirs and their willows. Other mediaeval
+chimes fill you with a delicious sorrow for the past; but when they
+cease, and the great bell tolls out the hour, you think only of the
+death of time. It leaves you sadly beneath the tower, in the musty
+cellarage. But the melody that the Magdalen chimes utter is full of
+the fervid faith, the aspirations, of our fathers. It lifts you among
+the gilded pinnacles, or perhaps ever so little above them.
+
+
+II
+
+AS SEEN FROM AN OXFORD TUB
+
+To the true slacker, the college barges that line the Isis are an
+object of aversion, for into them sooner or later every fellow who
+loves the water finds his way, and then there is an end of slacking.
+Each of the barges is a grammar school of oarsmanship, where all
+available men are taught everything, from what thickness of leather to
+wear on the heels of their boating-shoes to the rhythm in rowing by
+which alone an eight can realize its full speed; and from the barges
+issues a navy of boats and boating-men more than ten times as large as
+that of an American university. When Mr. R. C. Lehmann arrived at
+Cambridge to coach the Harvard crew, he was lost in admiration of the
+Charles River and the Back Bay, and in amazement at the absence of
+boats on them. At either Yale or Harvard it would be easy to give
+space to both of the fleets that now swarm on the slender Isis and
+threadlike Cam. We have water enough--as a Congressman once remarked
+of our fighting navy--it is only the boats that are lacking. The
+lesson we have to learn of our English cousins is not so much a matter
+of reach and swing, outrigger and blades, as a generous and wholesome
+interest in boating for the sake of the boat and of the water; and it
+is less apparent in an Oxford 'varsity eight than in the humblest tub
+of the humblest college.
+
+The first suggestion that I should go out to be tubbed came from the
+gray-bearded dean of the college, who happened at the time to be
+taking me to the master for formal presentation. I told him that I had
+tried for my class crew, and that three days on the water had
+convinced the coach that I was useless. He fell a pace behind, looked
+me over, and said that I might at least try. As this was his only
+advice, I did not forget it; and when my tutor, before advising me as
+to my studies, also urged me to row, I gave the matter some serious
+thought.
+
+I found subsequently that every afternoon, between luncheon and tea,
+the college was virtually deserted for field, track, and river; and it
+dawned upon me that unless I joined the general exodus I should
+temporarily become a hermit. Still, my earlier unhappy experience in
+rowing was full in mind, and I set out for the barge humble in spirit,
+and prepared to be cursed roundly for three days, and "kicked out,"
+or, as they say in Oxford, "given the hoof," on the fourth.
+
+Few memories could be so unhappy, however, as to resist the beauty of
+the banks of the Isis. At New Haven, the first impression an oarsman
+gets is said to be an odor so unwelcome that it is not to be endeared
+even by four years of the good-fellowship and companionship of a Yale
+crew. At Harvard, the Charles--"Our Charles," as Longfellow spoke of
+it in a poem to Lowell--too often presents aspects which it would be
+sacrilege to dwell on. What the "royal-towered Thame" and "Camus,
+reverend sire," may have been in the classic days of English poetry it
+is perhaps safest not to inquire; suffice it that to-day they are--and
+especially the Thames--all that the uninitiated imagine "our Charles."
+Nowhere does the sun stream more cheerfully through the moist gray
+English clouds; nowhere is the grass more green, the ivy more
+luxuriant, and the pollard willows and slender elms and poplars more
+dense in foliage. And every building, from the thatched farm-cottage
+in Christ Church meadow to the Norman church at Iffley, is, as it
+were, more native and more a part of creation than the grass and
+trees. The English oarsman, it is true, cannot be as conscious of all
+this as an American visitor. Yet the love of outdoors, which has been
+at work for centuries in beautifying the English landscape, is not the
+least part of the British sporting instinct. Where an American might
+loiter in contemplation of these woods, fields, and streams, an
+Englishman shoots, hunts, crickets, and rows in them.
+
+When you enter the barge on the river, you feel keenly the contrast
+with the bare, chill boathouses of the American universities. On the
+centre tables are volumes of photographs of the crews and races of
+former years; the latest sporting papers are scattered on chairs and
+seats; and in one corner is a writing-table, with note-paper stamped
+"Balliol Barge, Oxford." There is a shelf or two of bound "Punches,"
+and several shelves of books--"Innocents Abroad" and "Indian Summer,"
+beside "Three Men in a Boat" and "The Dolly Dialogues." On the walls
+are strange and occult charts of the bumping races from the year
+one--which, if I remember rightly, is 1837. At the far end of the room
+is a sea-coal fire, above which shines the prow of a shell in which
+the college twice won the Ladies' Plate at Henley.
+
+The dressing-room of the barge is sacred to the members of the eight,
+who at the present season are engaged in tubbing the freshmen in the
+hope of finding a new oar or two. At the appointed hour they appear,
+in eightsman blazers if it is fair, or in sou'westers if it is
+not--sad to relate, it usually is not--and each chooses a couple of
+men and leads them out to the float. Meanwhile, with the rest of the
+candidates--freshmen, and others who in past years have failed of a
+place in the torpids--you lounge on easy-chairs and seats, reading or
+chatting, until your own turn comes to be tubbed. It is all quiet like
+a club, except that the men are in full athletic dress.
+
+  [Illustration: THE FULL COSTUME OF AN EIGHTSMAN]
+
+The athletic costume is elaborate, and has been worn for a
+generation--since top-hats and trousers were abandoned, in fact--in
+more or less its present form. It consists of a cotton zephyr, flannel
+shorts flapping about the knees, and socks, or in winter Scotch hose
+gartered above the calves. The sweater, which, in cold weather, is
+worn on the river, has a deep V neck, supplemented when the oarsman is
+not in action by a soft woolen scarf or cloud. Over all are worn a
+flannel blazer and cap embroidered with the arms of the college. This
+uniform, with trifling variations, is used in all sports on field and
+river, and it is infinitely more necessary, in undergraduate opinion,
+than the academic cap and gown which the rules of the university
+require to be worn after dark. This seemingly elaborate dress is in
+effect the most sensible in the world, and is the best expression I
+know of the cheerful and familiar way in which an Englishman goes
+about his sports. Reduced to its lowest terms, it is no more than is
+required by comfort and decency. With the addition of sweater, scarf,
+blazer, and cap, it is presentable in social conversation--indeed, in
+the streets of the city. It is in consequence of this that an
+afternoon in the barge is--except for the two tubbings on the
+river--so much like one spent in a club.
+
+In America an oarsman wears socks and trunks which are apt to be the
+briefest possible. If he wears a shirt at all, it is often a mere
+ribbon bounding the three enormous apertures through which he thrusts
+his neck and shoulders. Before going on the river he is likely to
+shiver, in spite of the collar of his sweater; and after he comes in,
+his first thought is necessarily of donning street clothes. There is,
+in consequence, practically no sociability in rowing until the crews
+are selected and sent to the training-table. A disciple of Sartor
+Resartus would be very likely to conclude that, until American rowing
+adapts itself to the English costume, it must continue to be--except
+for the fortunate few--the bare, unkindly sport it has always been.
+
+All this time I have had you seated in an armchair beside the
+sea-coal fire. Now an eightsman comes into the barge with two
+deep-breathing freshmen, and nods us to follow him to the boat the
+three have just quitted. On a chair by the door as we go out are
+several pads, consisting of a rubber cloth faced with wool. These are
+_spongeo pilenes_, or so I was told, which in English are known as
+Pontius Pilates--or Pontiuses for short. The eightsman will advise you
+to take a Pontius to protect your white flannel shorts from the water
+on the seat; for there is always a shower threatening, unless indeed
+it is raining. Every one knows, however, including the eightsman, that
+the wool is a no less important part of the Pontius than the rubber:
+it will save you many painful impressions of the dinner form in hall.
+
+We are already on the river, and pair-oars, fours, and eights are
+swarming about us. "Come forward," cries our coach, "ready--paddle!"
+and we take our place in the procession of craft that move in one
+another's wake down the narrow river. The coach talks pleasantly to us
+from time to time, and in the course of an afternoon we get a pretty
+good idea of what the English stroke consists in.
+
+The sun bursts through the pearl-gray clouds, and glows in golden
+ponds on the dense verdure of grass and trees. "Eyes in the boat,"
+shouts the stern voice of conscience; but the coach says, "See,
+fellows. Here's a 'varsity trial eight. Watch them row, and you will
+see what the stroke looks like. Those fellows in red caps belong to
+the Leander."
+
+Their backs are certainly not all flat, and to an American eye the
+crew presents a ragged appearance as a whole; but a second glance
+shows that every back swings in one piece from the hips, and that the
+apparent raggedness is due to the fact that the men on the bow side
+swing in one line, while those on the stroke side swing in another
+parallel line. They sway together with absolute rhythm and ease, and
+the boat is set on a rigidly even keel. Our coach looks them over
+critically, especially his three college-mates, one of whom at least
+he hopes will be chosen for the 'varsity eight. No doubt he aimed at a
+blue himself two years ago, when he came up; but blues are not for
+every man, even of those who row well and strongly. He watches them
+until they are indistinguishable amid the myriad craft in the
+distance. "It's jolly fine weather," he concludes pleasantly, with a
+familiar glance at the sky, which you are at liberty to follow. "Come
+forward. Ready--paddle!" We are presently in the barge again with the
+other fellows. A repetition of this experience after half an hour
+ends the day's work.
+
+When I tried for the freshman crew in America, I was put with seven
+other unfortunates into a huge clinker barge, in charge of the
+sophomore coxswain. On the first day I was told to mind the angle on
+my oar. On the second day I was told to keep my eyes in the boat, damn
+me! On the third day, the sophomore coxswain wrought himself into a
+fury, and swore at me for not keeping the proper angle. When I glanced
+out at my blade he yelled, "Damn you, eyes in the boat!" This upset me
+so that I forgot thereafter to keep a flat back at the finish of the
+stroke. When we touched the float he jumped out, looked at my back,
+brought his boot against it sharply, and told me that there was no use
+in trying to row unless I could hold a flat back and swing my body
+between my knees. That night I sat on a dictionary with my feet
+against the footboard and tried to follow these injunctions, until my
+back seemed torn into fillets, but it would not come flat. I never
+went down to the river again, and it was two years before I summoned
+courage to try another sport. The bullyragging sophomore coxswain I
+came to know very well in later years, and found him as courteous and
+good-hearted as any man. To this day, if I mention our first meeting,
+he looks shy, and says he doesn't remember it. He says that the flat
+back is a discarded fetish in Harvard boating circles, that even
+before the advent of Mr. Lehmann cursing and kicking were largely
+abandoned; and moreover (_fortissimo_) that the freshman crew he
+helped to curse and kick into shape was the only one in ten years that
+won.
+
+After a fortnight's tubbing in pair-oars, the better candidates are
+tubbed daily in fours, and the autumn races are on the horizon. At the
+end of another week the boats are finally made up, and the crews
+settle down to the task of "getting together." Each of the fours has
+at least one seasoned oarsman to steady it, and is coached from the
+coxswain's seat by a member of the college eight. Sometimes, if the
+November floods are not too high, the coach runs or bicycles along the
+towing-path, where he can see the stroke in profile. If a coach swears
+at his men, there is sure to have been provocation. His favorite
+figure of speech is sarcasm. At the end of a heart-breaking burst he
+will say, "Now, men, get ready to _row_," or, "I say, fellows, wake
+up; _can't you make a difference?_" The remark of one coach is now a
+tradition--"All but four of you men are rowing badly, and they're
+rowing damned badly!" This convention of sarcasm is by no means old.
+One of the notable personages in Eights' Week is a little man who is
+pointed out to you as the Last of the Swearing Coaches. _Tempora
+mutantur._ Perhaps my friend the ex-coxswain is in line for a similar
+distinction.
+
+When the fours are once settled in their tubs, the stroke begins to go
+much better, and the daily paddle is extended so as to be a real test
+of strength and endurance for the new men, and for the man from the
+torpid a brisk practice spin. Even at this stage very few of the new
+men are "given the hoof;" the patience of the coachers is monumental.
+
+  [Illustration: THE COLLEGE BARGES: TUBBING IN NOVEMBER FLOODS]
+
+The tubbing season is brought to an end with a race between the fours.
+Where there are half a dozen fours in training, two heats of three
+boats each are rowed the first day, and the finals between the best
+two crews on the following day. The method of conducting these races
+is characteristic of boating on the Isis and the Cam. As the river is
+too narrow to row abreast, the crews start a definite distance apart,
+and row to three flags a mile or so up the river, which are exactly as
+far apart as the boats were at starting. At each of these flags an
+eightsman is stationed. In the races I saw they flourished huge
+dueling pistols, and when the appropriate crew passed the flag, the
+appropriate man let off his pistol. The crew that is first welcomed
+with a pistol-shot wins. These races are less exciting than the
+bumping races; yet they have a picturesque quality of their own, and
+they settle the question of superiority with much less rowing. The
+members of the winning four get each a pretty enough prize to remember
+the race by, and the torpidsman at stroke holds the "Junior fours cup"
+for the year.
+
+The crowning event of the season of tubbing is a wine, to which are
+invited all boating-men in college, and the representative athletes in
+other sports. In Balliol it is called the "Morrison wine," as the
+races are called "Morrison fours," in honor of an old Balliol man, a
+'varsity oar and coach, who established the fund for the prizes. The
+most curious thing about this affair is that it is not given, as it
+would be in America, at the expense of the college, or even of the men
+who have been tubbed, but at the expense of those who are finally
+chosen to row in the races.
+
+To my untutored mind the hospitality of English boating seemed a pure
+generosity. It made me uncomfortable at first, with the sense that I
+could never repay it; but I soon got over this, and basked in it as
+in the sun. The eightsmen devote their afternoons to coaching you
+because there are seats to be filled in the torpid and in the eight;
+they speak decently because they find that in the long run decency is
+more effective; and they hold the wine because they wish to honor the
+sport in which they have chosen to stake their reputations as
+athletes. In a word, where in America we row by all that is
+self-sacrificing and loyal, in England the welfare of boating is made
+to depend upon its attractiveness as a recreation and a sport; if it
+were not enjoyable to the normal man, nothing could force fellows into
+it.
+
+The relationship of the autumn tubbing and its incidental sociability
+to the welfare of the sport in the college and in the university seems
+remote enough to the American mind, for out of the score of fellows
+who are tubbed only three or four, on an average, go farther in the
+sport. Yet it is typical of the whole; and it will help us in
+following the English boating season. Throughout the year there are
+two converging currents of activity in boating. On the one hand, the
+tubs in the autumn term develop men for the torpids, which come on
+during the winter term; and the torpids develop men for the summer
+eights. On the other hand, the 'varsity trials in the autumn term
+develop men for the 'varsity eight, which trains and races in the
+winter term; and the 'varsity oarsmen, like the men who have prospered
+in tubs and torpids, end the season in the eights of their respective
+colleges. The goal of both the novice and the veteran is thus the
+college eight.
+
+The torpid is, so to speak, the understudy to the college eight. In
+order to give full swing to the new men, no member of the eight of the
+year before is allowed to row in it; and the leading colleges man two
+torpids--sometimes even three. The training here is much more serious
+than in the tubs; wine, spirits, and tobacco are out of order. The
+races, which are conducted like the celebrated May Eights, are rowed
+in midwinter--in the second of the three Oxford terms--under leaden
+skies, and sometimes with snow piled up along the towing-path. On the
+barges, instead of the crowds of ladies, gayly dressed and bent on a
+week of social enjoyment, one finds knots of loyal partisans who are
+keen on the afternoon's sport. The towing-path, too, is not so crowded
+as in May Week; but nothing could surpass the din of pistols and
+rattles and shouting that accompanies the races. If the men in the
+torpid do not learn how to row the stroke to the finish under the
+excitement of a race, it is not for the lack of coaching and
+experience. When the torpids break training, there are many ceremonies
+to signalize the return to the flesh-pots: one hardly realizes that
+the weeks of sport and comradeship have all gone to the filling of a
+place or two in the college eight.
+
+All this time, while the tubs and torpids have been training up new
+men, the 'Varsity Boat Club, whose home is on the shore of the Isis
+opposite the row of college barges, has also, so to speak, been doing
+its tubbing. The new men for the 'varsity are chiefly those who have
+come to the front in the May Eights of the previous year--oars of two
+or three seasons' standing; though occasionally men are taken directly
+from the Eton eight, which enters yearly for the Ladies' Plate at
+Henley. The new men will number ten or a dozen; and early in the
+autumn they are taken out in tubs. They are soon joined by as many of
+last year's blues as are left in Oxford. The lot is divided into two
+eights, as evenly matched as possible, which are coached separately.
+These are called the Trial Eights, or 'Varsity Trials. To "get one's
+trials" is no mean honor. It is the _sine qua non_ of membership to
+the Leander--admittedly the foremost boating club of the world. Toward
+the end of the first term there is a race of two and a half miles
+between the two trial eights at Moulsford, where the Thames is wide
+enough to permit the two boats to race abreast. Of the men who row in
+the trials the best ten or a dozen are selected to train for the
+'varsity during the winter term.
+
+Of the training of the 'varsity eight it is not necessary to speak
+here at length. The signal fact is that the men are so well schooled
+in the stroke, and so accustomed to racing, that a season of eight
+weeks at Oxford and at Putney is enough to fit them to go over the
+four miles and a quarter between Putney and Mortlake with the best
+possible results. The race takes place in March, just after the close
+of the winter term.
+
+The series of races I have mentioned gives some idea of the scheme and
+scope of English boating, but it is by no means exhaustive. The
+strength of the boating spirit gives rise to no end of casual and
+incidental races. Chief among these are the coxswainless fours, which
+take place about the middle of the autumn term, while the trials are
+on the river. The crews are from the four or five chief boating
+colleges, and are made up largely from the men in the 'varsity trials.
+The races have no relation that I could discover to the 'varsity race;
+the only point is to find which college has the best four, and it is
+characteristic that merely for the sport of it the training of the
+'varsity trials is interrupted.
+
+After the 'varsity race the members of the crew rest during what
+remains of the Easter vacation, and then take their places in the
+boats of their respective colleges. Here they are joined by the other
+trials men, the remaining members of last year's college eight, and
+the two or three men who have come up from the torpids. Now begins the
+liveliest season in boating. Every afternoon the river is clogged with
+eights rowing to Iffley or to Sandford, and the towing-path swarms
+with enthusiasts. The course in the May bumping races is a mile and a
+quarter long--the same as the course of the torpids--and the crews
+race over it every day for a week, with the exception of an
+intervening Sunday, each going up a place or down a place in the
+procession daily according as it bumps or is bumped. These races, from
+the point of view of the expert oarsman, are far less important than
+the 'varsity race; yet socially they are far more prominent, and the
+enthusiasm they arouse among the undergraduates is incomparable. The
+vitality of Oxford is in the colleges: the university organizations
+are the flowers of a very sturdy root and branch.
+
+  [Illustration: THE LAST DAY OF THE BUMPING RACES OF THE SUMMER
+    EIGHTS (1895)]
+
+The difference between American and English boating is that we lack
+the root and branches of the college system. In a university of from
+three to four thousand men there are, in addition to the 'varsity
+crew, four class crews and perhaps a few scratch crews. In England,
+each of the score of colleges, numbering on an average something like
+one hundred and fifty men apiece, mans innumerable fours, one or more
+eight-oared torpids, and the college eight. A simple calculation will
+show that with us one man in fifty to seventy goes in for the sport,
+while in England the proportion is one man in five to seven.
+
+The difference in spirit is as great as the difference in numbers. In
+America, the sole idea in athletics, as is proclaimed again and again,
+is to beat the rival team. No concession is made to the comfort or
+wholesomeness of the sport; men are induced to train by the excellent
+if somewhat grandiose sentiment that they owe it to the university to
+make every possible sacrifice of personal pleasure. Our class crews,
+which have long ceased to represent any real class rivalry, are
+maintained mainly in the hope of producing 'varsity material. The
+result of these two systems is curiously at variance with the
+intention. At Oxford, where rowing is very pleasant indeed, and where
+for the greater part of the year the main interest centres in college
+crews, the 'varsity reaches a high degree of perfection, and the
+oarsmen, without quite being aware of the fact, represent their
+university very creditably; while at Yale, and until recently at
+Harvard, the subsidiary crews have been comparative failures in
+producing material, and the 'varsity is in consequence somewhat in the
+position of an exotic, being kept alive merely by the stimulus of
+inter-varsity rivalry.
+
+The recent improvement at Harvard is due to Mr. Rudolph C. Lehmann,
+the celebrated Cambridge and Leander oar who coached the Harvard crews
+of 1897 and 1898, in the sportsmanlike endeavor to stimulate a broader
+and more expert interest in boating. His failure to bring either of
+the crews to victory, which to so many of us signified the utter
+failure of his mission, has had more than a sufficient compensation in
+the fact that he established at Harvard something like the English
+boating system. Anything strictly similar to the torpids and eights is
+of course out of the question, because we have no social basis such as
+the colleges afford for rivalry in boating; but the lack of colleges
+has in a measure been remedied by creating a factitious rivalry
+between improvised boating clubs, and the system of torpids and
+eights has been crudely imitated in the so-called graded crews. A
+season of preliminary racing has thus been established, on the basis
+of which the candidates for the 'varsity crew are now selected, so
+that instead of the nine months of slogging in the tank and on the
+river, in which the more nervous and highly organized candidates were
+likely to succumb and the stolid men to find a place in the boat, the
+eight is made up as at Oxford of those who have shown to best
+advantage in a series of spirited races. Crude as the new Harvard
+system is as compared with the English system, it has already created
+a true boating spirit, and has trained a large body of men in the
+established stroke, placing the sport at Harvard on a sounder basis
+than at any other American university. It has thus been of infinitely
+more advantage, by the potentiality of an example, than any number of
+victories at New London. To realize the full benefit of the system of
+graded crews and preliminary races, it is only necessary to supersede
+the arbitrary and meaningless division into clubs by organizations
+after the manner of English colleges which shall represent something
+definite in the general life of the university.
+
+
+III
+
+A LITTLE SCRIMMAGE WITH ENGLISH RUGBY
+
+The relationship between the colleges and the university exists in a
+greater or less degree in all sports. There is a series of matches
+among the leading colleges in cricket, and a "cup tie" in Association
+football. These sports are almost as popular as rowing, and have many
+excellences which it would be pleasant to point out and profitable
+perhaps to emulate; but it seems best to concentrate attention on the
+sports which are best understood in America, such as Rugby football
+and athletics. The workings of the college system may be most clearly
+seen in them, and the spirit of English sportsmanship most
+sympathetically appreciated.
+
+The rivalry between the Association and the Rugby games has made
+English football players quite unexpectedly sensitive to comparisons.
+I had scarcely set foot upon a Rugby field when I was confronted with
+the inevitable question as to English Rugby and American. I replied
+that from a hasty judgment the English game seemed haphazard and
+inconsequent. "We don't kill one another, if that's what you mean by
+'inconsequent,'" my companion replied; and I soon found that a report
+that two players had been killed in the Thanksgiving Day match of the
+year before had never been contradicted in England. "That is the
+sport," my friend continued, "which Caspar Whitney says, in his
+'Sporting Pilgrimage,' has improved English Rugby off the face of the
+earth!"
+
+The many striking differences between English and American Rugby arise
+out of the features of our game known as "possession of the ball" and
+"interference." In the early days of the American game, many of the
+most sacred English traditions were unknown, and the wording of the
+English rules proved in practice so far from explicit that it was not
+possible to discover what it meant, much less to enforce the rules.
+
+One of the traditions favored a certain comparative mildness of
+demeanor. The American players, on the contrary, favored a campaign of
+personal assault for which the general rules of the English scrummage
+lent marked facilities. It soon became necessary in America to line
+the men up in loose order facing each other, and to forbid violent
+personal contact until the actual running with the ball should begin.
+This clearly made it necessary that the sides should in turn put the
+ball in play, and consequently should alternately have possession of
+it. Under this arrangement, each side is in turn organized on the
+offensive and the defensive.
+
+The upshot of this was that the forwards, who in the parent English
+game have only an incidental connection with the running of the backs,
+become a part of each successive play, opening up the way for the
+progress of the ball. According to the English code, this made our
+forwards off-side, so that the rule had to be changed to fit the new
+practice. It then appeared that if the forwards could play ahead of
+the ball, the backs could do so too; and here you have the second
+great American feature. The result of "possession" of the ball and
+"interference" is an elaborate and almost military code of tactics
+unknown in the English game.
+
+In the course of time I had unusual facilities for observing English
+Rugby. During the Morrison wine which ended the season of tubbing on
+the river, the captain of the Balliol fifteen threw his arms about me,
+and besought me to play on the team. He had not a single
+three-quarters, he said, who could get out of his own way running. I
+pleaded an attack of rheumatism and ignorance of the game. He said it
+did not matter. "And I'm half blind," I added. "So am I," he
+interrupted, "but we'll both be all right in the morning." I said I
+referred to the fact that I was very near-sighted; but he took all
+excuses as a sign of resentment because he had failed to invite me to
+breakfast in my freshman term; he appeared to think it his duty to
+breakfast all possible candidates. Such are the courtesies of an
+English captain, and such are the informalities of English training.
+
+The next morning the captain wrote me that there was a match on
+against Merton, and asked me to come out a quarter of an hour before
+the rest for a little coaching. A quarter of an hour to learn to play
+football! In spite of the captain's predictions of the night before, I
+was not so sure that he was yet "all right;" so I went out to the
+porter's lodge and scanned the bulletin board. My name stared me in
+the face. I had scarcely time to take luncheon and don a pair of
+football shorts.
+
+The practice my coach gave me consisted in running the length of the
+field three or four times, passing the ball back and forth as we went.
+His instructions with regard to the game were equally simple. To keep
+in proper position I had only to watch my Merton _vis-a-vis_ and take
+a place symmetrical with his. When the enemy heeled the ball out of
+the "scrummage" to their quarter-back, putting us for the moment on
+the defensive, I was to watch my man, and, if the ball was passed to
+him, to tackle him. If he passed it before I could tackle him I was
+still to follow him, leaving the man who took the ball to be watched
+by my neighbor, in order that I might be on hand if my man received it
+again. An American back, when his side is on the defensive, is
+expected to keep his eye on his _vis-a-vis_ while the ball is being
+snapped back; but his main duty is to follow the ball. An English back
+under similar circumstances is expected only to follow his man. If our
+side happened to heel out the ball from the scrum and one of our
+three-quarters began to run with it, we were on the offensive, and the
+other three-quarters and I were to follow at his heels, so that when
+he was about to be tackled--"collared," the English say--he could pass
+it on to us. There is, as I have said, no such thing as combined
+"interference" among the backs. A player who gets between the man with
+the ball and the enemy's goal is rankly off-side. It is not to be
+understood that the captain coached all this information into me. I
+had to buttonhole him and pump it out word by word. Coaching of any
+sort is all but unknown on English football fields. What there is
+of the game is learned at school--or in the nursery!
+
+  [Illustration: AN ENGLISH RUGBY LINE-UP To the left of the scrum,
+    two half backs and six three-quarter backs face each other in
+    pairs]
+
+When the opposing teams scattered over the field for the kick-off, I
+noticed with satisfaction that there was not a spectator on the
+grounds to embarrass me. It is so in almost all English college
+games--the fellows are more than likely to have sports of their own
+on, and anyway, what is the use in hanging round the fields where
+other fellows are having all the fun?
+
+On the kick-off, luckily, the ball did not come to my corner of the
+field, for I could scarcely have seen it, much less caught it. Our
+side returned the kick and the "scrum" formed. The nine forwards
+gathered compactly in a semi-ellipse, bent their bodies together in a
+horizontal plane, with their heads carefully tucked beneath the mass,
+and leaned against the opposing mass of forwards, who were similarly
+placed. When the two scrums were thoroughly compacted, the umpire
+tossed the ball on the ground beneath the opposing sets of legs,
+whereupon both sides began to struggle. The scrum in action looks like
+a huge tortoise with a score of legs at each end, which by some
+unaccountable freak of nature are struggling to walk in opposite
+directions. The sight is certainly awe-inspiring, and it was several
+days before I realized that it masked no abstrusely working tactics;
+there is little, if anything, in it beyond the obvious grunting and
+shoving.
+
+The backs faced each other in pairs ranged out on the side of the
+scrum that afforded the broader field for running. The legs in the
+Balliol scrum pushed harder and the bodies squirmed to more advantage,
+for our men had presently got the ball among their feet. They failed
+to hold it there, however, and it popped out into a half-back's hands.
+He passed it quickly to one of my companions at three-quarters, who
+dodged his man and ran toward the corner of the field. I followed, and
+just as the full-back collared him he passed the ball to me. Before I
+had taken three rheumatic strides I had two men hanging at my back;
+but when they brought me down, the ball was just beyond the line. The
+audience arose as one man--to wit, the referee, who had been squatting
+on the side lines--and shouted, "Played. Well played!" I had achieved
+universal fame. During the rest of the game the Balliol scrum, which
+was a very respectable affair of its kind, kept the ball to itself,
+while we backs cooled our heels.
+
+A few days later, in a game against Jesus, the scrums were more evenly
+matched, and the ball was heeled out oftener. I soon found that my
+eyes were not sharp enough to follow quick passing; and when, just
+before half-time, a punt came in my direction, I was horrified to see
+the ball multiply until it looked like a flock of balloons. As luck
+had it, I singled out the wrong balloon to catch. Jesus fell on the
+ball just as it bounced over the goal-line. In the second half the
+captain put one of the forwards in my place, and put me in the scrum.
+
+The play here was more lively, though scarcely more complex or
+difficult. Each forward stuck his head beneath the shoulders of the
+two men in front of him, grasped their waists, and then heaved, until,
+when the ball popped out of the scrum, the word came to dissolve.
+There were absolutely no regular positions; the man who was in the
+front centre of one scrummage might be in the outskirts of the next.
+On some teams, I found, by inquiry, a definite order is agreed on, but
+this is regarded as of doubtful advantage.
+
+When the umpire or a half-back tosses the ball into the scrummage,
+there are, at an ultimate analysis, four things that can happen.
+First, the two sides may struggle back and forth, carrying the ball on
+the ground at their feet; this play is called a "pack." Second, the
+stronger side may cleave the weaker, and run down the field, dribbling
+the ball yard by yard as they go, until either side picks it up for a
+run, or else drops on it and cries "down." Third, one side may be able
+to "screw the scrum," a manoeuvre which almost rises to the altitude
+of a "play." The captain shouts "Right!" or perhaps "Left!" and then
+his forwards push diagonally, instead of directly, against their
+opponents. The result is very like what we used to call a revolving
+wedge, except that, since the ball is carried on the ground, the play
+eventuates, when successful, in a scattering rush of forwards down the
+field, dribbling the ball at their feet, just as when the scrum has
+been cloven. The fourth possibility is that the side that gets the
+ball amongst its eighteen legs allows it to ooze out behind, or, if
+its backs are worthy of confidence, purposely heels it out. Thereupon
+results the play I have already described: one of the half-backs
+pounces upon it and passes it deftly to the three-quarters, who run
+with it down the field, if necessary passing it back and forth. In
+plays which involve passing or dribbling, English teams sometimes
+reach a very high degree of skill: few sights on the football field
+are more inspiring than to see a "combination" of players rush in open
+formation among their opponents, shifting the ball from one to another
+with such rapidity and accuracy as to elude all attempts to arrest
+it. As a whole, the game of the forwards is much more fun than that of
+the backs, though decidedly less attractive in the eyes of the
+spectators--a consideration of slight importance on an English field!
+
+  [Illustration: THROWING IN THE BALL]
+
+Just as I began to get warmed to my new work I smashed my nose against
+the head of a Balliol man who was dodging back into the push. The
+captain told me that I need not finish the game; but as it is against
+the English rules to substitute players and we were still far from
+sure of winning, I kept to my grunting and shoving. At the end of the
+game the captain very politely gave me the hoof. This was just what I
+expected and deserved; but I was surprised to find that the fellows
+had objected to my playing the game through with a bloody nose. They
+would have preferred not to be bled upon.
+
+This regard for pleasantness and convenience, which to an American is
+odd enough, is characteristic even of 'varsity football. The
+slenderness of the preliminary training of a 'varsity fifteen is
+incredible to any American who has not witnessed it. To sift the
+candidates there is a freshman match and a senior match, with perhaps
+one or two "squashes"--that is to say, informal games--besides. And
+even these tests are largely a matter of form. Men are selected
+chiefly on their public school reputations or in consequence of good
+work on a college fifteen. The process of developing players, so
+familiar to us, is unknown. There is no coaching of any kind, as we
+understand the word. When a man has learned the game at his public
+school or in his college, he has learned it for all time, though he
+will, of course, improve by playing for the university. The need of
+concentrated practice is greatly lessened by the fact that the soft
+English winter allows as long a season of play as is desired. The team
+plays a game or two a week against the great club teams of
+England--Blackheath, Richmond, London Scottish, Cardiff, Newport, and
+Huddersfield--with perhaps a bit of informal kicking and punting
+between times. When the weather is too bad, it lays off entirely.
+
+All this does not conduce to the strenuousness of spirit Americans
+throw into their sports. In an inter-varsity match I saw the Oxford
+team which was fifty per cent. better allow itself to be shoved all
+over the field: it kept the game a tie only by the rarest good
+fortune. It transpired later that the gayeties of Brighton, whither
+the team had gone to put the finishing touches on its training, had
+been too much for it. In an American university such laxity would be
+thought the lowest depth of unmanliness, but I could not see that any
+one at Oxford really resented it; at most it was a subject for mild
+sarcasm. You can't expect a team to be in the push everywhere!
+
+This lack of thorough preparation is even more characteristic of the
+international teams--England, Ireland, Scotland, and Wales--that
+yearly play for the championship of Great Britain. They are chosen
+from the most brilliant players in the leading clubs, and local
+jealousy makes the task of choosing most delicate. The temptation is
+to take a man or two impartially from each of the great fifteens. As
+the international teams take little or no practice as a whole, the
+tendency in the great games is to neglect the finer arts of dribbling
+and passing in combination--the arts for which each player was
+severally chosen--and revert to the primitive grunting and shoving. In
+the great games, accordingly, the team which is man for man inferior
+as regards the fine points may prevail by sheer strength, so that the
+result is liable to be most unsatisfactory. Some years ago, owing to
+local jealousy, the Welsh international had to be chosen mainly from a
+single club--with the result that it won the championship; and in 1901
+the canny Scotch team won by intentionally selecting its members, in
+spite of local jealousy, on the score of their familiarity with one
+another's play.
+
+The very rules under which the game is played are calculated to
+moderate the struggle. As a result of the rule against substituting,
+to which I have referred, any extreme of hard play in the practice
+games, such as lays off dozens of good American players yearly, is not
+likely to be encouraged. Of course good men "crock," as they call it;
+but where an injury is practically certain to disqualify a man from
+the inter-varsity match, the football limp and the football patch can
+scarcely be regarded as the final grace of athletic manhood. Willful
+brutality is all but unknown; the seriousness of being disqualified
+abets the normal English inclination to play the game like a person of
+sense and good feeling. The physical effect of the sport is to make
+men erect, lithe, and sound. And the effect on the nervous system is
+similar. The worried, drawn features of the American player on the eve
+of a great contest are unknown. An Englishman could not understand how
+it has happened that American players have been given sulphonal during
+the last nights of training. English Rugby is first of all a sport, an
+exercise that brings manly powers into play; as Hamlet would say, the
+play's the thing. It is eminently an enjoyable pastime, pleasant to
+watch, and more pleasant to take part in.
+
+That our American game is past hoping for on the score of playability
+is by no means certain. As the historical critics of literature are
+fond of saying, a period of rapid development is always marked by
+flagrant excesses, and the development of modern American football has
+been of astonishing rapidity. Quite often the game of one season has
+been radically different from the games of all preceding seasons. This
+cannot continue always, for the number of possible variations is
+obviously limited, and when the limit is reached American Rugby will
+be, like English Rugby, the same old game year in and year out.
+Everybody, from the youngest prep. to the oldest grad., will know it
+and love it.
+
+The two vital points in which our game differs from the
+English--"possession of the ball" and "interference"--are both the
+occasion of vigorous handling of one's opponents. When an American
+player is tackled, he seldom dares to pass the ball for fear of losing
+possession of it, so that our rule is to tackle low and hard, in order
+to stop the ball sharply, and if possible to jar it out of the
+runner's grasp. In England, it is still fair play to grab a man by the
+ankle. This is partly because of the softness of the moist thick
+English turf; but more largely because, as passing is the rule, the
+tackler in nine cases out of ten aims at the ball. The result is that
+a man is seldom slammed to the earth as he would be in our game. It is
+this fact that enables the English player to go bare-kneed.
+
+The danger from interference in the American game is also
+considerable. When a man is blocked off, he is liable to be thrown
+violently upon the far from tender bosom of our November mother-earth.
+Any one familiar with the practice of an American eleven will remember
+the constant cry of the coaches: "Knock your man on the ground! Put
+him out of the play!" It has been truly enough said that the American
+game has exaggerated the most dangerous features of the two English
+games--the tackling of English Rugby and the "charging" or
+body-checking of the Association game.
+
+Yet this is only a partial statement of the case. These elements of
+possession of the ball and interference have raised our game
+incalculably above the English game as a martial contest. Whereas
+English Rugby has as yet advanced very little beyond its first
+principles of grunting and shoving, the American game has always been
+supreme as a school and a test of courage; and it has always tended,
+albeit with some excesses, toward an incomparably high degree of
+skill and strategy. Since American football is still in a state of
+transition, it is only fair to judge the two games by the norm to
+which they are severally tending. The Englishman has on the whole
+subordinated the elements of skill in combination to the pleasantness
+of the sport, while the American has somewhat sacrificed the
+playability of the game to his insatiate struggle for success and his
+inexhaustible ingenuity in achieving it. More than any other sport,
+Rugby football indicates the divergent lines along which the two
+nations are developing. By preferring either game a man expresses his
+preference for one side of the Atlantic over the other.
+
+
+IV
+
+TRACK AND FIELD ATHLETICS
+
+In track and field athletics, the pleasantness and informality of
+English methods of training reach a climax. In America we place the
+welfare of our teams in the hands of a professional trainer, who,
+through his aide-de-camp, the undergraduate captain, is apt to make
+the pursuit of victory pretty much a business. Every autumn newcomers
+are publicly informed that it is their duty to the university to train
+for the freshman scratch games. At Oxford, I was surprised to find,
+there was not only no call for candidates, but no trainer to whom to
+apply for aid. The nearest approach to it was the groundsman at the
+Iffley Running Grounds, a retired professional who stoked the boilers
+for the baths, rolled the cinder-path, and occasionally acted as
+"starter." As his "professional" reputation as a trainer was not at
+stake in the fortunes of the Oxford team, his attitude was humbly
+advisory. The president of the Athletic Club never came near the
+grounds, being busy with rowing on a 'varsity trial eight, and later
+with playing Association football for the university. To one
+accustomed to train not only for the glory of his alma mater but for
+the reputation of his trainer, the situation was uninspiring.
+
+As I might have expected, the impetus to train came from the college.
+I was rescued from a fit of depression by a college-mate, a German,
+who wanted some one to train with. At school he had run three miles in
+remarkable time; but later, when an officer in the German army, his
+horse had rolled over him at the finish of a steeple-chase, and the
+accident had knocked out his heart; so he was going to try to sprint.
+I advised him against all training, and the groundsman shook his head.
+Yet he was set upon showing the Englishmen in Balliol that a German
+could be a sportsman. This was no idle talk, as I found later, when he
+fainted in the bath after a fast hundred, and failed by no one knows
+how little of coming to. We were soon joined by a third Balliol man, a
+young Greek poet, whose name is familiar to all who are abreast of the
+latest literary movement at Athens. He was taking up with athletics
+because of his interest in the revival of the ancient glories of
+Greece. When I asked him what distance suited him best--whether he was
+a sprinter or a runner--he answered with the sweet reasonableness of
+the Hellenic nature that any distance would suit him that suited me.
+A motlier trio than we, I suppose, never scratched a cinder-path. Yet
+the fellows in our college seemed almost as interested as they were
+amused; and we soon found that even so learned a place as Balliol
+would have been glad to bolster its self-esteem by furnishing its
+quota of "running blues." What was lacking in the way of stimulus from
+the university was more than made up for by the spontaneous interest
+of the fellows in college.
+
+The rudimentary form of athletics is in meetings held by the separate
+colleges. These occur throughout the athletic season, namely, the
+autumn term and the winter term; and as hard on to a score of colleges
+give them, they come off pretty often. The prizes are sums of money
+placed with the Oxford jeweler, to be spent in his shop as the winners
+see fit. In America, the four classes, which are the only sources of
+athletic life independent of the university, are so moribund socially
+that it never occurs to them to get out on the track for a day's
+sport. It is true that we sometimes hold inter-class games, but the
+management of these is in the hands of the university; they are
+inspired solely by a very conscious attempt to develop new men, and to
+furnish the old ones with practice in racing. The vitality of the
+athletic spirits in the English colleges is witnessed by the fact that
+an Oxford college frequently meets a fit rival at Cambridge in a set
+of dual games just for the fun of it.
+
+The only bond between the numerous college meetings and the university
+sports is a single event in each, called a strangers' race, which is
+open to all comers. The purpose of these races is precisely that of
+our inter-class meetings--to give all promising athletes practice in
+competition. As the two prizes in each strangers' race average five
+pounds and thirty shillings respectively, the races are pretty
+efficient. Though the "blues" sometimes compete--Cross made his record
+of 1m. 54-2/5s. for the half mile in one of them--they generally
+abandon them to the new men of promise. While the president and the
+"blues" generally are rowing and playing football, the colleges thus
+automatically develop new material for the team.
+
+The climax of the athletic meetings of the autumn term is the freshman
+sports, held on two days, with a day's interval. The friends of the
+various contestants make up a far larger audience than one finds at
+similar sports in America; and a brass band plays while the races are
+on. The whole thing is decidedly inspiring; and for the first time
+one is brought face to face with the fact that there are inter-varsity
+games in store.
+
+When the winter term opens, bleak and rainy, the strangers' races
+bring out more upper classmen. By and by the "blues" themselves appear
+in sweater, muffler, and blazer, and "paddle" about the track to
+supple their muscles and regain disused racing strides. At the end of
+a fortnight I noticed a middle-aged gentleman with whom the prominent
+athletes conferred before and after each day's work. I soon found that
+he was Mr. C. N. Jackson, a don of Hertford College, who should always
+be remembered as the first hurdler to finish in even time. It is he
+who--save the mark--takes the place of our American trainers. At one
+of our large American universities about this time, as I afterwards
+learned, a very different scene was enacting. The trainer and the
+captain called a mass-meeting and collected a band of Mott Haven
+champions of the past to exhort the University to struggle free from
+athletic disgrace. Though the inter-varsity games were nearly four
+months in the future--instead of six or seven weeks as at
+Oxford--those ancient athletes aroused such enthusiasm that 268 men
+undertook the three months of indoor training. To one used to such
+exhortations, the Oxford indifference was as chilling as the weather
+we were all training in. Mr. Jackson seemed never to notice me; and
+how could I address him when he had not even asked me to save the
+university from disgrace? I was forced to the unheroic expedient of
+presenting a card of introduction. To my surprise, I found that he had
+been carefully watching my work from day to day, but had not felt
+justified in giving advice until I asked for it.
+
+Even during the final period of training, everything happened so
+pleasantly and naturally that I had none of the nervous qualms common
+among American athletes. At first I thought I missed the early morning
+walks our teams take daily, the companionship and jollity of the
+training-table, and the sense that the team was making a common
+sacrifice for an important end. Yet here, too, the college made up in
+a large measure for what I failed to find in the university. One of
+our eightsmen was training with a scrub four that was to row a crew of
+schoolboys at Winchester; and we had a little course of training of
+our own. Every morning we walked out for our dip to Parson's Pleasure,
+and breakfasted afterward beneath an ancient ivied window in the
+common room. In the pleasantness and quiet of those sunlit mornings, I
+began to realize that our training-table mirth, which is sometimes so
+boisterous, is in part at least due to intense excitement and
+overwrought nerves. And the notion of self-sacrifice, which appeals to
+us so deeply, seemed absurd where we were all training for the
+pleasure and wholesomeness of sport, and for the sake of a ribbon of
+blue.
+
+The interest the university took in our welfare became made manifest
+when the "first strings" were sent off to Brighton for the change in
+climate which all English teams require before great games. Some of
+the rest of us, who had nowhere else to go, went with them, but most
+of the men went home to train. The second string in the three miles
+stayed up at Oxford for commemoration, and joined us after three
+consecutive nights of dancing. He said that he found he needed staying
+up work.
+
+Every morning at Brighton the president made the round of our quarter
+of the hotel shortly before eight o'clock, and spoiled our waking naps
+to rout us out for our morning's walk, which included a plunge into
+the Channel. For breakfast, as indeed for all our meals, we had
+ordinary English fare, with the difference only that it was more
+abundant.
+
+On alternate days our training consisted in cross-country walks of ten
+or a dozen miles. Our favorite paths led along the chalk cliffs, and
+commanded a lordly view of the Channel. Sometimes, for the sake of
+variety, we went by train to the Devil's Dyke and tramped back over
+the downs, now crossing golf-links and now skirting cornfields ablaze
+with poppies. All this walking filled our lungs with the Brighton air,
+and by keeping our minds off our races, prevented worry. Sprinters and
+distance men walked together, though the sprinters usually turned back
+a mile or two before the rest. The rate prescribed was three and a
+half miles an hour; but our spirits rose so high that we had trouble
+in keeping it below five.[2]
+
+The training dinners furnished the really memorable hours of the day.
+A half-pint of "Burton bitter" was a necessity, and a pint merely
+rations. If one preferred, he might drink Burgundy _ad lib._, or
+Scotch and soda. After trials there was champagne. When I told the
+fellows that in America our relaxation consists in ice-cream for
+Sunday dinner, they set me down as a humorist. After dinner, instead
+of coffee and tobacco, we used to go out to the West Pier, which was a
+miniature Coney Island, and amuse ourselves with the various
+attractions. The favorite diversion was seeing the Beautiful Living
+Lady Cremated. The attraction was the showman, who used to give an
+elaborate oration in Lancashire brogue. Every word of it was funny,
+but especially the closing sentence: "The Greeks 'ad a ancient custom
+of porun' a liebation on the cinders of the departud, which custom,
+gentlemen, we omits." We used to laugh so heartily at this that the
+showman would join in, and even the beautiful living lady would
+snicker companionably, as she crawled away beneath the stage. If the
+reader is unable to see the fun of it, there is no help for
+him--except, perhaps, an English training dinner.
+
+The rest of the evenings we used to spend in strolling about among the
+crowd, breathing the salt air, and listening to the music. We did not
+lack companionship, for the Oxford and Cambridge cricket elevens were
+at Brighton, and the entire Cambridge athletic team. Many of the
+cricketers, and not a few of the Cambridge athletes--whom the Oxford
+men called "Cantabs," and sometimes even "Tabs"--paraded the place
+puffing bulldog pipes. The outward relationship between the rival
+teams was simply that of man to man. If one knew a Cambridge man he
+joined him, and introduced the fellows he happened to be walking with.
+One day the Cambridge president talked frankly about training, urging
+us to take long walks, and inviting us to go with his men. The only
+reason we did not go was that our day for walking happened to be
+different from theirs.
+
+The days on which we did our track work we spent largely in London, at
+the Queen's Club grounds, in order to get a general sense of the track
+and of the conditions under which the sports were to take place.
+Sometimes, however, we ran at Preston Park, on the outskirts of
+Brighton.
+
+On the day of the inter-varsity meeting, our team came together as a
+whole for the first time in the dressing-rooms of the Queen's Club.
+The fellows dropped in one by one, in frock coats, top hats, and with
+a general holiday air. The Oxford broad-jumper, who was the best man
+at the event in England, had been so busy playing cricket all season,
+and smoking his pipe with the other cricketers on the pier at
+Brighton, that he had not had time even to send to Oxford for his
+jumping-shoes. In borrowing a pair he explained that unless a fellow
+undertook the fag of thorough training, he could jump better without
+any practice. Our weight-thrower, a freshman, had surprised himself
+two days previously by making better puts than either of the Cambridge
+men had ever done; but as nobody had ever thought it worth while to
+coach him, he did not know how he had done it, and was naturally
+afraid he couldn't do it again. He showed that he was a freshman by
+appearing to care whether or not he did his best; but even his
+imagination failed to grasp the fact that the team which won was to
+have the privilege of meeting Yale in America. As it turned out, if
+either of these men had taken his event, Oxford, instead of Cambridge,
+would have met Yale.
+
+As I went out to start in my race, the question of half-sleeves which
+Englishmen require in all athletic contests was settled in my mind.
+The numberless seasonable gowns in the stands and the innumerable top
+hats ranged on all sides about the course made me feel as if I were at
+a lawn party rather than at an athletic meeting. I suffered as a girl
+suffers at her first evening party, or rather as one suffers in those
+terrible dreams where one faces the problem of maintaining his dignity
+in company while clad in a smile or so. Waiving the question of
+half-sleeves, I should have consented to run in pyjamas.
+
+In the race I had an experience which raised a question or two that
+still offer food for reflection. As my best distance--a half mile--was
+not included in the inter-varsity program, I ran in the mile as second
+string. There was a strong wind and the pace was pretty hot, even for
+the best of us, namely, the Cambridge first string, who had won the
+race the year before in 4 min. 19-4/5 sec.,--the fastest mile ever run
+in university games. As the English score in athletic games, only
+first places count, and on the second of the three laps I found myself
+debating whether it is not unnecessarily strenuous to force a
+desperate finish where the only question is how far a man can keep in
+front of the tail end. Several of the fellows had already dropped out
+in the quietest and most matter of fact manner; and as we were
+finishing the lap against the wind, I became a convert to the English
+code of sportsmanship.
+
+As the bunch drew away from me and turned into the easy going of the
+sheltered stretch, I was filled with envy of them, and with
+uncontrollable disgust at myself, the like of which I had never felt
+when beaten, however badly, after making a fair struggle. And when I
+saw them finishing against the hurricane, striding as if they were
+running upstairs, I felt the heroism of a desperate finish as I had
+never done before. It did not help matters when I realized that it was
+the last race I was ever to run.
+
+At the Sports' dinner that night at the Holborn Restaurant, I pocketed
+some of my disgust. The occasion was so happy that I remember wishing
+we might have something like it after our meetings at home, for
+good-fellowship chastens the pride of winning and gives dignity to
+honest defeat. There was homage for the victors and humorous sympathy
+for the vanquished. Light blue and dark blue applauded and poked fun
+at each other impartially. Sir Richard Webster, Q. C., now Lord Chief
+Justice, himself an old blue, presided at the dinner, and explained
+how it was that the performances of his day were really not to be
+sneezed at; and the young blues, receiving their prizes, looked happy
+and said nothing. After dinner, we divided into squads and went to the
+Empire Theatre of Varieties, Cantab locking arms with Oxonian. By
+supper time, at St. James', I was almost cheerful again.
+
+Yet the disgust of having quitted that race has never left me. The
+spirit of English sportsmanship will always seem to me very gracious
+and charming. As a nation, I think we can never be too thankful for
+the lesson our kinspeople have to teach us in sportsmanly moderation
+and in chivalry toward an opponent. But every man must draw his own
+line between the amenities of life and the austerities; and I know one
+American who hopes never again to quit a contest, even a contest in
+sport, until he has had the humble satisfaction of doing his best.
+
+
+V
+
+ENGLISH AND AMERICAN SPORTSMANSHIP
+
+The prevalence of out-of-door sports in England, and the amenity of
+the English sporting spirit, may be laid, I think, primarily, to the
+influence of climate. Through the long, temperate summer, all nature
+conspires to entice a man out of doors, while in America sunstroke is
+imminent. All day long the village greens in England are thronged with
+boys playing cricket in many-colored blazers, while every stream is
+dotted with boats of all sorts and descriptions; and in the evenings,
+long after the quick American twilight has shut down on the heated
+earth, the English horizon gives light for the recreations of those
+who have labored all day. In the winter the result is the same, though
+the cause is very different. Stupefying exhalations rise from the damp
+earth, and the livelong twilight that does for day forces a man back
+for good cheer upon mere animal spirits. In the English summer no
+normal man could resist the beckoning of the fields and the river. In
+the winter it is sweat, man, or die.
+
+It is perhaps because of the incessant call to be out of doors that
+Englishmen care so little to have their houses properly tempered. At
+my first dinner with the dons of my college, the company assembled
+about a huge sea-coal fire. On a rough calculation the coal it
+consumed, if used in one of our steam-heaters, would have heated the
+entire college to incandescence. As it was, its only effect seemed to
+be to draw an icy blast across our ankles from mediaeval doors and
+windows that swept the fire bodily up the chimney, and left us
+shivering. One of the dons explained that an open fire has two supreme
+advantages: it is the most cheerful thing in life, and it insures
+thorough ventilation. I agreed with him heartily, warming one ankle in
+my palms, but demurred that in an American winter heat was as
+necessary as cheerfulness and ventilation. "But if one wears thick
+woolens," he replied, "the cold and draught are quite endurable. When
+you get too cold reading, put on your great-coat." I asked him what he
+did when he went out of doors. "I take off my great-coat. It is much
+warmer there, especially if one walks briskly." Some days later, when
+I went to dine with my tutor, my hostess apologized for the chill of
+the drawing-room. "It will presently be much warmer," she added; "I
+have always noticed that when you have sat in a room awhile, it gets
+warm from the heat of your bodies." She proved to be right. But when
+we went into the dining-room, we found it like a barn. She smiled with
+repeated reassurances. Again she proved right; but we had hardly
+tempered the frost when we had to shift again to the drawing-room,
+which by this time again required, so to speak, to be acclimated.
+Meanwhile my tutor, who was of a jocular turn of mind, diverted our
+thoughts from our suffering by ragging me about American steam heat,
+and forced me, to his infinite delight, to admit that we aim to keep
+our rooms warmed to sixty-eight degrees Fahrenheit. Needless to say,
+this don was an athlete. As the winter wore away, I repeatedly saw him
+in Balliol hockey squashes, chasing the ball about with the agility of
+a terrier pup. At nightfall, no doubt, he returned to his wife and
+family prepared to heat any room in the house to the required
+temperature. Heaven forbid that I should resent the opprobrium
+Englishmen heap upon our steam heat! I merely wish to point out that
+the English have failed as signally as we, though for the opposite
+reason, in making their houses habitable in the winter, and that an
+Englishman is forced into athletics to resist the deadly stupefaction
+of a Boeotian climate, and to keep his house warm.
+
+In a sportsman it would be most ungracious to inveigh against English
+weather. The very qualities one instinctively curses make possible the
+full and varied development of outdoor games, which Americans admire
+without stint. Our football teams do day labor to get fit, and then,
+after a game or so, the sport is nipped in the bud. To teach our
+oarsmen the rudiments of the stroke we resort to months of the
+galley-slavery of tank-rowing. Our track athletes begin their season
+in the dead of winter with the dreary monotony of wooden dumb-bells
+and pulley-weights, while the baseball men are learning to slide for
+bases in the cage. In England the gymnasium is happily unknown. Winter
+and summer alike the sportsman lives beneath the skies, and the sports
+are so diverse and so widely cultivated that any man, whatever his
+mental or physical capacity, finds suitable exercise that is also
+recreation.
+
+It is because of this universality of athletic sports that English
+training is briefer and less severe. The American makes, and is forced
+to make, a long and tedious business of getting fit, whereas an
+Englishman has merely to exercise and sleep a trifle more than usual,
+and this only for a brief period. Our oarsmen work daily from January
+to July, about six months, or did so before Mr. Lehmann brought
+English ideas among us; the English 'varsity crews row together nine
+or ten weeks. Our football players slog daily for six or seven weeks;
+English teams seldom or never "practice," and play at most two matches
+a week. Our track athletes are in training at frequent intervals
+throughout the college year, and are often at the training-table six
+weeks; in England six weeks is the maximum period of training, and the
+men as a rule are given only three days a week of exercise on the
+cinder-track. To an American training is an abnormal condition; to an
+Englishman it is the consummation of the normal.
+
+The moderation of English training is powerfully abetted by a
+peculiarity of the climate. The very dullness and depression that make
+exercise imperative also make it impossible to sustain much of it. The
+clear, bright American sky--the sky that renders it difficult for us
+to take the same delight in Italy as an Englishman takes, and leads us
+to prefer Ruskin's descriptions to the reality--cheers the American
+athlete; and the crispness of the atmosphere and its extreme
+variability keeps his nerves alert. An English athlete would go
+hopelessly stale on work that would scarcely key an American up to his
+highest pitch.
+
+The effect of these differences on the temperament of the athlete is
+marked. The crispness and variety of our climate foster nervous
+vitality at the expense of physical vitality, while the equability of
+the English climate has the opposite effect. In all contests that
+require sustained effort--distance running and cross-country running,
+for example--we are in general far behind; while during the
+comparatively few years in which we have practiced athletic sports we
+have shown, on the whole, vastly superior form in all contests
+depending upon nervous energy--sprinting, hurdling, jumping, and
+weight-throwing.
+
+Because of these differences of climate and of temperament, no rigid
+comparisons can be made between English and American training; but it
+is probably true that English athletes tend to train too little. Mr.
+Horan, the president of the Cambridge team that ran against Yale at
+New Haven, said as much after a very careful study of American
+methods; but he was not convinced that our thoroughness is quite worth
+while. The law of diminishing returns, he said, applies to training as
+to other things, so that, after a certain point, very little is gained
+even for a great sacrifice of convenience and pleasantness. Our
+American athletes are twice as rigid in denying the spirit for an
+advantage, Mr. Horan admitted, of enough to win by.
+
+The remark is worth recording: it strikes the note of difference
+between English and American sportsmanship. After making all
+allowances for the conditions here and abroad that are merely
+accidental, one vital difference remains. For better or for worse, a
+sport is a sport to an Englishman, and whatever tends to make it
+anything else is not encouraged; as far as possible it is made
+pleasant, socially and physically. Contests are arranged without what
+American undergraduates call diplomacy; and they come off without
+jockeying. It is very seldom that an Englishman forgets that he is a
+man first and an athlete afterwards. Yet admirable as this quality is,
+it has its defects, at least to the transatlantic mind. Even more,
+perhaps, than others, Englishmen relish the joy of eating their hearts
+at the end of a contest, but they have no taste for the careful
+preparation that alone enables a man to fight out a finish to the best
+advantage. It is no doubt true, as the Duke of Wellington said, that
+the battle of Waterloo was won on the playing-fields of England; but
+for any inconsiderable sum I would agree to furnish a similar saying
+as to why the generals in South Africa ran into ambush after ambush.
+
+In America, sportsmanship is almost a religion. Fellows mortify the
+flesh for months and leave no means untried that may help to bring
+honor to their college; or if they don't, public opinion brings swift
+and sure retribution. It is true that this leads to excesses.
+Rivalries are so strong that undergraduates have been known to be more
+than politic in arranging matches with each other. So the graduate
+steps in to moderate the ardor of emulation, and often ends by keeping
+alive ancient animosities long after they would have been forgotten in
+the vanishing generations of undergraduates. The Harvard eleven wants
+to play the usual football game; but it is not allowed to, because a
+committee of graduates sees fit to snub Yale; the athletic team wants
+to accept a challenge from Oxford and Cambridge, but it is not allowed
+to because Pennsylvania, which is not challenged, has a better team,
+and it is the policy of the university (which has an eye to its
+graduate schools) to ingratiate sister institutions. In a word, the
+undergraduates are left to manage their studies while the faculty
+manages their pastimes.
+
+When a contest is finally on, excesses are rampant. Of occasional
+brutalities too much has perhaps been said; but more serious errors
+are unreproved. There is a tradition that it is the duty of all
+non-athletes to inspire the 'varsity teams by cheering the play from
+the side lines; and from time to time one reads leading articles in
+the college papers exhorting men to back the teams. The spectator is
+thus given an important part in every contest, and after a 'varsity
+match he is praised or blamed, together with the members of the team,
+according to his deserts. Yale may outplay Harvard, but if Harvard
+sufficiently out-cheers Yale she wins, and to the rooters belong the
+praise. In baseball games especially, a season's championship is not
+infrequently decided by the fact that the partisans of one side are
+more numerous, or for other reasons make more noise. These are serious
+excesses, and are worthy of the pen of the robustest reformer; but
+after all has been said they are incidents, and in the slow course of
+time are probably disappearing.
+
+The signal fact is that our young men do what they do with the
+diligence of enthusiasm, and with the devotion that inspires the
+highest courage. It is not unknown that, in the bitterness of failure,
+American athletes have burst into tears. When our English cousins hear
+of this they are apt to smile, and doubtless the practice is not
+altogether to be commended; but in the length and breadth of a man's
+experience there are only two or three things one would wish so
+humbly as the devotion that makes it possible. Such earnestness is the
+quintessence of Americanism, and is probably to be traced to the
+signal fact that in the struggle of life we all start with a fighting
+chance of coming out on top. Whatever the game, so long as it is
+treated as a game, nothing could be as wholesome as the spirit that
+tends to make our young men play it for all it is worth, to do
+everything that can be done to secure victory with personal honor. In
+later years, when these men stand for the honor of the larger alma
+mater, on the field of battle or in the routine of administration, it
+is not likely that they will altogether forget the virtues of their
+youth.
+
+The superiority of English sportsmanship arises, not from the spirit
+of the men, but from the breadth of the development of the sports, and
+this, climate aside, is the result of the division of the university
+into colleges. The average college of only a hundred and fifty men
+maintains two football teams--a Rugby fifteen and an Association
+eleven--an eight and two torpids, a cricket eleven, and a hockey
+eleven. Each college has also a set of athletic games yearly. If we
+add the men who play golf, lawn and court tennis, rackets and fives,
+who swim, box, wrestle, and who shoot on the ranges of the gun club,
+the total of men schooled in competition reaches eighty to one
+hundred. A simple calculation will show that when so many are
+exercising daily, few are left for spectators. Not a bench is
+prepared, nor even a plank laid on the spongy English turf, to stand
+between the hanger-on and pneumonia. A man's place is in the field of
+strife; to take part in athletic contests is almost as much a matter
+of course as to bathe. Of late years there has been a tendency in
+England to believe that the vigor of undergraduates--and of all
+Englishmen, for the matter of that--is in decadence. As regards their
+cultivation of sports at least, the reverse is true. Contests are more
+numerous now than ever, and are probably more earnestly waged. What is
+called English decadence is in reality the increasing superiority of
+England's rivals.
+
+Quite aside from the physical and moral benefit to the men engaged,
+this multiplication of contests has a striking effect in lessening the
+importance of winning or losing any particular one of them. It is more
+powerful than any other factor in keeping English sports free from the
+excesses that have so often characterized our sports. From time to
+time a voice is raised in America as of a prophet of despair demanding
+the abolition of inter-university contests. As yet the contests have
+not been abolished, and do not seem likely to be. Might it not be
+argued without impertinence that the best means of doing away with the
+excesses in question is not to have fewer contests, but more of them?
+If our universities were divided into residential units, corresponding
+roughly to the English colleges, the excesses in particular contests
+could scarcely fail to be mitigated; and what is perhaps of still
+higher importance, the great body of non-athletes would be brought
+directly under the influence of all those strong and fine traditions
+of undergraduate life which centre in the spirit of sportsmanship.
+
+    NOTE. For a discussion of the influences of climate in
+    international athletics, see Appendix II.
+
+FOOTNOTE:
+
+[2] For a note on the value of walking as a part of athletic training,
+see Appendix I.
+
+
+
+
+III
+
+THE COLLEGE AS AN EDUCATIONAL FORCE
+
+
+I
+
+THE PASSMAN
+
+In the educational life of Oxford, as in the social and athletic life,
+the distinctive feature, at least to the American mind, is the duality
+of organization in consequence of which an undergraduate is amenable
+first to his college and then to the university: the college teaches
+and the university examines. In America, so far as the undergraduate
+is concerned, the college and the university are identical: the
+instructor in each course of lectures is also the examiner. It follows
+from this that whereas in America the degree is awarded on the basis
+of many separate examinations--one in each of the sixteen or more
+"courses" which are necessary for the degree--in England it is awarded
+on the basis of a single examination. For three or four years the
+college tutor labors with his pupil, and the result of his labors is
+gauged by an examination, set and judged by the university. This
+system is characteristic of both Cambridge and Oxford, and for that
+matter, of all English education; and the details of its organization
+present many striking contrasts to American educational methods.
+
+Sir Isaac Newton's happy thought of having a big hole in his door for
+the cat and a little hole for the kitten must have first been held up
+to ridicule by an American. In England, the land of classes, it could
+hardly fail of full sympathy. In America there is but one hole of
+exit, though men differ in their proportions as they go out through
+it. In England there are passmen and classmen.
+
+To say that the passman is the kitten would not be altogether precise.
+He is rather a distinct species of undergraduate. More than that, he
+is the historic species, tracing his origin quite without break to the
+primal undergraduate of the Middle Ages. He is a tradition from the
+time when the fund of liberal knowledge was so small that the
+university undertook to serve it all up in a pint-pot to whoever might
+apply. The pint-pot still exists at Oxford; and though the increasing
+knowledge of nine centuries long ago overflowed its brim, the passman
+still holds it forth trustfully to his tutor. The tutor patiently
+mingles in it an elixir compounded of as many educational simples as
+possible, and then the passman presents it to the examiners, who smile
+and dub him Bachelor of Arts. After three years, if he is alive and
+pays the sum of twelve pounds, they dub him Master.
+
+The system for granting the pass degree is, in its broader outlines,
+the same as for all degrees. In the first examination--that for
+matriculation--it is identical for passmen and classmen. This
+examination is called "responsions," and is, like its name, of
+mediaeval origin. It is the equivalent of the American entrance
+examination; but by one of the many paradoxes of Oxford life it was
+for centuries required to be taken after the pupil had been admitted
+into residence in one of the colleges. In the early Middle Ages the
+lack of preparatory schools made it necessary first to catch your
+undergraduate. It was not until the nineteenth century that a man
+could take an equivalent test before coming up, for example at a
+public school; but it is now fast becoming the rule to do so; and it
+is probable that all colleges will soon require an entrance
+examination. In this way two or three terms more of a student's
+residence are devoted to preparation for the two later and severer
+university tests.
+
+The subjects required for matriculation are easy enough, according to
+our standards. Candidates offer: (1) The whole of arithmetic, and
+either (_a_) elementary algebra as far as simple equations involving
+two unknown quantities, or (_b_) the first two books of Euclid; (2)
+Greek and Latin grammar, Latin prose composition, and prepared
+translation from one Greek and one Latin book. The passages for
+prepared translation are selected from six possible Greek authors and
+five possible Latin authors. The influence of English colonial
+expansion is evident in the fact that candidates who are not "European
+British subjects" may by special permission offer classical Sanskrit,
+Arabic, or Pali as a substitute for either Greek or Latin: the
+dark-skinned Orientals, who are so familiar a part of Oxford life, are
+not denied the right to study the classics of their native tongues.
+Thus the election of subjects is a well-recognized part of
+responsions, though the scope of the election does not extend to
+science and the modern languages.
+
+Once installed in the college and matriculated in the university, both
+passman and honor man are examined twice and twice only. The first
+public examination, more familiarly called "moderations," or "mods,"
+takes place in the middle of an undergraduate's course. Here the
+passmen have only a single subject in common with the men seeking
+honors, namely, the examination in Holy Scripture, or the Rudiments of
+Faith and Religion, more familiarly called "Divinners," which is to
+say Divinities. The subject of the examination is the gospels of St.
+Luke and St. John in the Greek text; and either the Acts of the
+Apostles or the two books of Kings in the Revised Version. As in all
+Oxford examinations, cram-books abound containing a reprint of the
+questions put in recent examinations; and, as many of these questions
+recur from year to year, the student of Holy Scripture is advised to
+master them. A cram-book which came to my notice is entitled "The
+Undergraduate's Guide to the Rudiments of Faith and Religion," and
+contains, among other items of useful information: tables of the ten
+plagues; of the halting-places during the journey in the wilderness;
+of the twelve apostles; and of the seven deacons. The book recommends
+that the kings of Judah and Israel, the journeys of St. Paul, and the
+Thirty-nine Articles shall be committed to memory. The obviously pious
+author of this guide to the rudiments of these important
+accomplishments speaks thus cheerfully in his preface: "The compiler
+feels assured that if candidates will but follow the plan he has
+suggested, no candidate of even ordinary ability need have the least
+fear of failure." According to report, it is perhaps not so easy to
+acquire the rudiments of faith and religion. In a paper set some years
+ago, as one of the examiners informed me, a new and unexpected
+question was put: "Name the prophets and discriminate between the
+major and the minor." One astute passman wrote: "Far be it from me to
+make discriminations between these wise and holy men. The kings of
+Judah and Israel are as follows." Unless a man passes the examination,
+he has to take it again, and the fee to the examiner is one guinea.
+"This time I go through," exclaimed an often ploughed passman. "I need
+these guineas for cigars." Those who are not "European British
+subjects" may substitute certain sacred works in Sanskrit, Arabic, or
+Pali; and those who object for conscientious scruples to a study of
+the Bible may substitute the Phaedo of Plato; but the sagacious
+undergraduate knows that if he does this he must have no conscientious
+scruples against harder work.
+
+In America there is no such examination, so far as I know. At Harvard
+an elective course in the history and literature of the Jews is given
+by the Semitic department; and if this does not insure success in
+acquiring the rudiments of faith and religion, it was, on one occasion
+at least, the means of redoubling the attendance at chapel. Just
+before the final examination, it transpired that the professor in
+charge of the course was conducting morning service, and was giving
+five minute summaries of Jewish history. For ten days the front pews
+were crowded with waistcoats of unwonted brilliance; the so-called
+sports who had taken the course as a snap were glad to grind it up
+under the very best auspices.
+
+Let me not be misunderstood. In the long run, the English
+undergraduates no doubt add greatly to their chances of spiritual
+edification. At the very least they gain a considerable knowledge of
+one of the great monuments of the world's literature. In America the
+Bible is much less read in families than in England, so that it would
+seem much more important to prescribe a course in Biblical history and
+literature. At one time Professor Child gave a course in Spenser and
+the English Bible, and is said to have been moved at times when
+reading before his classes to a truly Elizabethan access of tears.
+Some years before the great master died, he gave up the course in
+despair at the Biblical ignorance of his pupils. The usual Harvard
+undergraduate cannot name five of the prophets, with or without
+discrimination, or be certain of five of the kings of Judah. As I
+write this, I am painfully uncertain as to whether there were as many
+as five.
+
+But to return to our muttons. The remaining subjects for pass
+moderations are: (1) Portions of three classic authors, two Greek and
+one Latin, or two Latin and one Greek. The passages of each author to
+be studied are prescribed, but the candidate may elect, with certain
+slight limitations, from eight Greek and eight Latin authors "of the
+best age." As in the case of responsions and Holy Scripture, Sanskrit,
+Arabic, or Pali may be substituted for either Greek or Latin. The
+examination covers not only grammar and literature, but any question
+arising out of the text. Besides these are required: (2) Latin prose
+composition; (3) sight translation of Greek and Latin; and (4) either
+logic or the elements of geometry and algebra.
+
+The final pass examination allows a considerable range of election.
+Three general subjects must be offered. At least one of these must be
+chosen from the following: Greek, Latin, Sanskrit, Persian, German,
+and French. If a candidate wishes, he may choose two of his three
+subjects in ancient language, literature, and history, or in modern
+language, literature, history, and economics. The remaining one or two
+subjects may be chosen from a dozen courses ranging through the
+elements of mathematics, natural science, law, and theology. This
+range of choice is very different from that in America, in that a
+student is not permitted freely to elect subjects without reference
+to one another. For the pass degree, no considerable originality or
+grasp of the subject is necessary, any more than for an
+undistinguished degree in an American college; but the body of
+necessary facts is pretty sure to be well ordered, if not digested.
+The idea of grouping electives is the fundamental difference between
+English and American education. In the case of the honor man it will
+be seen to be of chief importance.
+
+In order to take the Oxford degree, it is further necessary to be in
+residence three years, and a man may reside four years before going up
+for his final examination. The period of study--or loafing--may be
+broken in various ways; and it is characteristic that though a man may
+anticipate his time and take his last examination before the last term
+of his third year, he is required to reside at the university, studies
+or no studies, until the minimum residence is completed. Nothing could
+indicate more clearly the importance which is attached to the merely
+social side of university life.
+
+It is, in fact, as a social being that the passman usually shines. You
+may know him most often from the fact that you sight him in the High
+by a waistcoat of many colors. At night he is apt to evade the
+statutes as to academicals; but if he wears his gown, he wraps it
+about his neck as if it were a muffler, and tilts his mortar-board at
+all angles. He is the genius of the fox terrier and the bulldog pipe;
+he rides to the hounds, and is apt in evading the vice-chancellor's
+regulations as to tandems and four-in-hands. Or perhaps he sits
+comfortably in his rooms discoursing lightly of the impious
+philosophies that are the studies of the classman, and writes Horatian
+verse for the "Isis" and the "Oxford Magazine." He does anything, in
+fact, that is well-bred, amusing, and not too strenuous. Curiously
+enough, it sometimes happens that he does sufficient reading on his
+own account to give him no little real culture. Of late there has been
+a reaction in favor of the pass school as affording a far better
+general education.
+
+If the passman loiters through the three or four years, it is mainly
+the fault--or the virtue--of the public school he comes from. Of late
+the best public schools have had so strong and admirable an influence
+that boys have often been kept in them by their parents until they
+reach the age limit, generally nineteen. By this time they have
+anticipated most of the studies required for a pass degree in the
+university, and find little or nothing to do when they go up but to
+evade their tutors and to "reside." It is by this means, as the
+satirist long ago explained, that Oxford has become an institution of
+such great learning. Every freshman brings to it a little knowledge
+and no graduate takes any away.
+
+There is reason in all this. In the first place, as I have said, the
+passman is the historical undergraduate, and little short of a
+convulsion could disestablish him--that is the best of British
+reasons. Moreover, to be scrupulously just, the passman knows quite as
+much as the American student who barely takes a degree by cramming a
+few hours with a venal tutor before each of his many examinations, and
+perhaps more than the larger proportion of German students who confine
+their serious interests to the duel and the Kneipe, and never
+graduate. And then, the Oxonian argues amiably, if it were not for the
+pass schools, the majority of the passmen would not come to Oxford at
+all, and would spend their impressionable period in some place of much
+less amenity. Clearly, they learn all that is necessary for a
+gentleman to know, and are perhaps kept from a great deal that is
+dangerous to young fellows with money and leisure. It means much to
+the aristocracy and nobility of England that, whatever their ambitions
+and capacities, they are encouraged by the pursuit of a not too
+elusive A.B. to stay four years in the university. Even the
+ambitious student profits by the arrangement. Wherever his future may
+lie, in the public service, in law, medicine, or even the church, it
+is of advantage to know men of birth and position--of far greater
+advantage, from the common sensible English point of view, than to
+have been educated in an atmosphere of studious enthusiasm and exact
+scholarship.
+
+
+II
+
+THE HONOR SCHOOLS
+
+The modern extension of the world's knowledge, with the corresponding
+advance in educational requirements, which are perhaps the most signal
+results of the nineteenth century, could not fail to exert a powerful
+influence on all university teaching. In the United States, the
+monument to its influence is the elective system. In England, it is
+the honor schools. Both countries felt the inadequacy of the antique
+pint-pot of learning. The democratic New World has not dreamed of
+making a sharp distinction between the indifferent and the ambitious.
+Under the lead of the scientific spirit of the German universities, it
+has placed the noblest branches of human knowledge on a par with the
+least twig of science. With characteristic conservatism England kept
+the old pint-pot for the unscholarly, to whom its contents are still
+of value, though extending its scope to suit the changing spirit of
+the age; and for those who felt the new ambitions it made new
+pint-pots, each one of which should contain the essence gathered from
+a separate field of learning. The new pint-pots are the honor schools,
+and the children of the new ambition are the honor men.
+
+The honor schools of Oxford are eight in number. Here again the
+English conservatism is evident. The oldest of them, literae
+humaniores, which was at first the only honor school, has for its
+subject-matter a thorough view of classical language, literature, and
+thought. It is an _edition de luxe_ of the old pass school. Because of
+the nobility of its proportions, it is familiarly called "greats," and
+it justifies its name by enrolling almost half of all Oxford
+candidates for the honor degree. An overwhelming majority of famous
+Oxford graduates have taken their degree in "greats." The other
+schools are sometimes known as the minor schools. Mathematics was
+originally a part of the school in literae humaniores, but was soon
+made into a separate school. Since then schools have been established
+in six new subjects--natural science, jurisprudence, modern history,
+theology, Oriental studies, and English. Under our elective system, a
+student continues through his four years, choosing each year at
+random, or as the fates decree, this, that, or the other brief
+"course." Under the honor system a man decides sooner or later which
+one of the several branches he most desires, and sets out to master
+it.
+
+An Oxford man's decision may be made at the outset; but far the larger
+number of men defer the choice. They do this by reading for
+moderations, for pass moderations as well as honor mods may be
+followed by an honor school at finals. The subject-matter for honor
+mods is, roughly speaking, the same as for pass mods--the classics and
+kindred studies; but the field covered is considerably more extended,
+and to take a high class the student is required to exhibit in his
+examination papers no little grasp of the subjects as a whole, and if
+possible to develop his own individuality in the process. Having done
+with moderations, an honor man is forced to choose a final school. The
+logical sequence of honor mods is literae humaniores; but one may
+choose instead modern history, theology, Oriental studies, or English.
+
+The men who commit themselves to a choice at the outset are those who
+go in for science or jurisprudence. These men begin by reading for a
+form of moderations known as science preliminaries or jurisprudence
+preliminaries.
+
+The exact sequence of examinations is fixed only by common sense. The
+school of history is open to those who have taken pass mods, and even
+to those who have taken the jurisprudence preliminary, though mods is
+usually preferred in order to give a man the use of the necessary
+languages. If a science man's chief work is to be in astronomy or
+physics, which require some mathematics, he may take the mathematical
+mods, and devote only the second half of his course to science.
+
+Even after a man has chosen his subject and begun to work on it with
+his tutor, there is considerable range of election. As classical mods
+are supposed to cover all the subjects essential to polite education,
+election is mainly a question as to the ancient authors read. If a man
+knows what final school he is to enter, he may choose his authors
+accordingly. Thus, a history man chooses the ancient historians; a man
+who intends to enter the school in English literature, the ancient
+poets and dramatists. In addition to such authors, all candidates for
+classical mods choose, according to their future needs, one of four
+subjects: the history of classical literature, comparative classical
+philology, classical archaeology, and logic. The preliminary
+examinations in natural science and in jurisprudence are concerned
+with a general view of the field, and thus do not admit of much
+variation, whatever the branch to be pursued later; and the same is
+true of mathematical moderations. A man who chooses any one of these
+three honor schools has made the great choice of bidding good-by to
+the classics.
+
+In the final schools the range of choice is greater than at
+moderations, and is greater in some schools than in others. Literae
+humaniores offers the least scope for election. The reason is that the
+subject-matter is a synthetic view of the classic world entire. Still,
+in so vast a field, a student perforce selects, laying emphasis on
+those aspects of the ancient world which he considers (or which he
+expects the examining board to consider) of most interest and
+importance. It has been objected even at Oxford that such a course of
+study gives a student little or no training in exact scholarship. The
+examination statutes accordingly give a choice of one among no less
+than forty special subjects, the original sources of which a man may
+thresh out anew in the hope of adding his iota to the field of
+science; and, on six months' notice, a student may, under approval,
+select a subject of his own. The unimportance of this part of the
+"greats" curriculum is evident in the fact that it is recommended, not
+required.
+
+The history school requires the student to cover the constitutional
+and political history of England entire, political science and
+economy, with economic history, constitutional law, and political and
+descriptive geography. It also requires a special subject "carefully
+studied with reference to the original authorities," and a period of
+general history. If a student does not aim at a first or second class
+at graduation, he may omit certain parts of all this. In any case, he
+has to choose from the general history of the modern world one special
+period for a more detailed examination. In the school of natural
+science, the student, after filling in the broad outlines of the
+subject for his preliminary, must choose for his final examination one
+of the following seven subjects: physics, chemistry, animal
+physiology, zoology, botany, geology, and astronomy. Besides the
+written examination, a "practical" examination of three hours is
+required to show the student's ability at laboratory work. These three
+honor schools are the most important, and may be regarded as
+representative. After a man has taken one honor degree, for example,
+in literae humaniores, he may take another, for example, in modern
+history. He then becomes a double honor man, and if he has got a first
+class in both schools, he is a "double first."
+
+In America, the election of studies goes by fragmentary subjects, and
+the degree is awarded for passing some four such subjects a year, the
+whole number being as disconnected, even chaotic, as the student
+pleases or as chance decrees. In England, the degree is granted for
+final proficiency in a coherent and well-balanced course of study; but
+within this not unreasonable limit there is the utmost freedom of
+election. The student first chooses what honor school he shall pursue,
+and then chooses the general lines along which he shall pursue it.
+
+
+III
+
+THE TUTOR
+
+In preparing for his two "public examinations," the pupil is solely in
+the hands of a college tutor. Any familiar account of the Oxford don
+is apt to make him appear to the American, and especially to the
+German mind, a sufficiently humble person. His first duty is the very
+unprofessional one of making newcomers welcome. He invites his pupils
+to breakfast and to dinner, and introduces them to their fellows so
+that they shall enter easily into the life of the college; he tells
+them to go in for one or another of the various undergraduate
+activities. As a teacher, moreover, his position is strikingly similar
+to that of the venal tutors in our universities, who amiably keep lame
+ducks from halting, and temper the frost of the examination period to
+gilded grasshoppers. It is all this that makes the American scholar so
+apt to smile at the tutor, and the German, perhaps, to sniff. The
+tutor is not easily put down. If he replies with anything more than a
+British silence, it is to say that after all education cannot be
+quite dissociated from a man's life among his fellows. And then there
+is the best of all English reasons why the tutor should think well of
+his vocation: it is approved by custom and tradition. Newman, Pusey,
+Jowett, Pater, Stubbs, Lang, and many such were tutors, and they
+thought it well worth while to spend the better part of each day with
+their pupils.
+
+Homely as are the primary duties of the tutor, it is none the less
+necessary that certain information should be imparted. The shadow of
+the examiners looms across the path twice in the three or four years
+of an undergraduate's life. There is no dodging it: in order to get a
+degree, certain papers must be written and well written. Here is where
+the real dignity of the tutor resides, the attribute that
+distinguishes him from all German and American teachers. He is
+responsible to the college that his pupils shall acquit themselves
+well before the examiners,--that the reputation of the college shall
+be maintained. By the same token, the examiners are responsible to the
+university that its degrees shall be justly awarded, so that the
+course of education in England is a struggle of tutor against
+examiner. In Germany and in America, an instructor is expected to be a
+master of his subject; he may be or may not be--and usually is not--a
+teacher. In England, a tutor may be a scholar, and often is not. His
+success is measured first and foremost by the excellence of the papers
+his pupils write. Is Donkin of Balliol a good tutor? Well, rather, he
+has got more firsts than any don in Oxford; by which is meant of
+course that his pupils have got the firsts. A college is rated partly
+by its number of blues and partly by its number of firsts. For a tutor
+to lead his pupils to success is as sacred a duty as for an athletic
+undergraduate to play for the university. The leisurely, not to say
+loafing, tutor of eighteenth-century tradition has been reformed out
+of existence. If the modern tutor fails of any high attainment as a
+scholar, it is mainly because he is required to be a very lively,
+strenuous, and efficient leader of youth.
+
+The means by which the tutor conducts his charges in the narrow path
+to success in the schools are characteristic. The secret lies in
+gaining the good-will of the pupil. Thus any breakfasts, luncheons,
+and dinners that the hospitable tutor gives to his pupils while they
+are learning the ways of the place are bread cast upon the waters in a
+very literal sense. For a decent fellow to neglect the just wishes of
+a teacher to whom he is indebted is easy enough on occasions; but
+systematically to shirk a genuine debt of gratitude without losing
+caste with one's self requires supreme ingenuity. If you don't want to
+get into the clutches of your tutor, don't take the least chance of
+getting to like him. This is the soundest advice ever given by the
+wary upper classman. It has not been ordained by nature that the soul
+of the teacher is sib to the soul of the taught, but clearly, by
+exercising the humanities, the irrepressible conflict may be kept
+within bounds.
+
+Sometimes harsher measures are necessary. Then a man is sent up to the
+Head of the college, which is not at all a promotion. One fellow used
+to tell a story of how Jowett, the quondam master of Balliol,
+chastised him. When he reported, the Master was writing, and merely
+paused to say: "Sit down, Mr. Barnes, you are working with Mr. Donkin,
+are you not?" The culprit said he was, and sat down. Jowett wrote on,
+page after page, while the undergraduate fidgeted. Finally Jowett
+looked up and remarked: "Mr. Donkin says you are not. Good-morning."
+After that the undergraduate was more inclined to work with Mr.
+Donkin.
+
+For graver offenses a man is imprisoned within the paradise behind the
+college walls--"gated," the term is. One fellow I knew--a third year
+man who roomed out of college--was obliged to lodge in the rooms of
+the dean, Mr. J. L. Strachan Davidson. The two turned out excellent
+friends. No one could be altogether objectionable, the undergraduate
+explained, whose whiskey and tobacco were as good as the dean's. In
+extreme cases a man may be sent down, but if this happens, he must
+either have the most unfortunate of dispositions, or the skin of a
+rhinoceros against tact and kindness.
+
+It is by similar means that the don maintains his intellectual
+ascendency. Nothing is more foreign to Oxford than an assumption of
+pedagogic authority. Mr. Hilaire Belloc, who is now not unknown in
+London as a man of letters, used to tell of a memorable encounter with
+Jowett. Mr. Belloc was holding forth in his vein of excellent
+enthusiasm with regard to his countrymen. For a long time Jowett
+listened with courteously qualified assent, but finally said: "Mr.
+Belloc, do you know the inscription which is said to stand above the
+gate to Hell?" Mr. Belloc was ready with the familiar line from Dante.
+"No, Mr. Belloc, _Ici on parle francais_." The oratory of even a
+president of the Oxford Union broke down in laughter. Under such a
+system a mutual confidence increases day by day between teacher and
+taught, which may end in a comradeship more intimate than that between
+father and son.
+
+Our universities are fast adopting the German or pseudo-German idea
+that an advanced education consists merely in mastering the subject
+one may choose to pursue. The point of departure is the "course." If
+we gain the acquaintance of Lowell or Longfellow, Agassiz, Child, or
+Norton, we have to thank our lucky stars. In England, the social
+relationship is the basis of the system of instruction.
+
+
+IV
+
+READING FOR EXAMINATIONS
+
+How easy is the course of Oxford discipline on the whole is evident in
+the regulations as to the times for taking the examinations. The
+earliest date when a man may go up for moderations is his fifth term
+after matriculation. As there are four terms a year, this earliest
+date falls at the outset of his second year. For a passman there is
+apparently no time beyond which it is forbidden to take mods, or
+finals either. An honor man may repeat his attempts at mods until
+eight terms are gone--two full and pleasant years; that is, he may
+take mods in any of three terms--almost an entire year. For finals he
+may go up as early as his eleventh term, and as late as his
+sixteenth--giving a latitude of more than a year. If he wishes to take
+a final examination in a second subject, he may do so up to his
+twentieth term. Clearly, the pupil's work is done without pressure
+other than the personal influence of the tutor. When an American
+student fails to pass his examinations on the hour, he is disclassed
+and put on probation, the penalty of which is that he cannot play on
+any of the athletic teams. On this point, at least, the Oxford system
+of discipline is not the less childish of the two.
+
+As to the nature of the work done, it is aptly expressed in the Oxford
+term, "reading." The aim is not merely to acquire facts. From week to
+week the tutor is apt to meet his pupils, and especially the less
+forward ones, in familiar conversation, often over a cup of tea and a
+cigarette. He listens to the report of what the pupil has lately been
+reading, asks questions to see how thoroughly he has comprehended it,
+and advises him as to what to read next. When there are several pupils
+present, the conference becomes general, and thus of greater advantage
+to all. In the discussions that arise, opposing views are balanced,
+phrases are struck out and fixed in mind, and the sum of the pupil's
+knowledge is given order and consistency. The best tutors consciously
+aim at such a result, for it makes all the difference between a
+brilliant and a dull examination paper, and the examiners highly value
+this difference.
+
+The staple of tutorial instruction is lectures. In the old days the
+colleges were mutually exclusive units, each doing the entire work of
+instruction for its pupils. This arrangement was obviously wasteful,
+in that it presupposed a complete and adequate teaching force in each
+of the twenty colleges. Latterly, a system of "intercollegiate
+lectures" has been devised, under which a tutor lectures only on his
+best subjects and welcomes pupils from other colleges. These
+intercollegiate tutorial lectures are quite like lecture courses at an
+American college, except that they are not used as a means of police
+regulation. Attendance is not compulsory, and there are no
+examinations. A man issues from the walls of his college for booty,
+and comes back with what he thinks he can profit by.
+
+The importance of the university examinations is thus proportionate to
+their rarity. The examiners are chosen from the best available members
+of the teaching force of the university; they are paid a very
+considerable salary, and the term of service is of considerable
+length. The preparation for the examination, at least as regards honor
+men, has a significance impossible under our system. Matters of fact
+are regarded mainly as determining whether a man shall or shall not
+get his degree; the class he receives--there are four classes--depends
+on his grasp of facts and upon the aptitude of his way of writing. No
+man can get either a first or a second class whose knowledge has not
+been assimilated into his vitals, and who has not attained in some
+considerable degree the art of expression in language.
+
+One of the incidents of reading is a set of examinations set by the
+colleges severally. They take place three times a year, at the end of
+each term, and are called collections--apparently from the fact that
+at this time certain college fees used to be collected from the
+students. The papers are set by the dons, and as is the case with all
+tutorial exercises, the results have nothing at all to do with the
+class a man receives in the public examinations--mods and finals. I
+was surprised to find that it was rather the rule to crib; and my
+inquiries disclosed a very characteristic state of affairs. One man,
+who was as honorable in all respects as most fellows, related how he
+had been caught cribbing. His tutor took the crib and examined it
+carefully. "Quite right," he said. "In fact, excellent. Don't be at
+any pains to conceal it. By the finals, of course, you will have to
+carry all these things in your head; at present, all we want to know
+is how well you can write an examination paper." The emphasis as to
+the necessity of knowing how to write was quite as genuine as the
+sarcasm. These examinations have a further interest to Americans. They
+are probably a debased survival of examinations which in centuries
+past were a police regulation to test a student's diligence, and thus
+had some such relation to a degree as our hour examinations, midyears,
+and finals. In other words, they suggest a future utility for our
+present midyears and finals, if ever a genuine honor examination is
+made requisite for an American honor degree.
+
+For the greater part of his course, an undergraduate's reading is by
+no means portentous. It was Dr. Johnson, if I am not mistaken, whose
+aim was "five good hours a day." At Oxford, this is the maximum which
+even a solid reading man requires of himself. During term time most
+men do much less, for here is another of the endlessly diverting
+Oxford paradoxes: passman and classman alike aim to do most of their
+reading in vacations. As usual, a kernel of common sense may be found.
+If the climate of England is as little favorable to a strenuous
+intellectual life as it is to strenuous athleticisms, the climate of
+Oxford is the climate of England to the _n_th power. A man's
+intellectual machinery works better at home in the country. And even
+as the necessity of relaxation is greater at Oxford, so is the chance
+of having fun and of making good friends--of growing used to the ways
+of the world of men. The months at the university are the heyday of
+life. The home friends and the home sports are the same yesterday and
+forever. The university clearly recognizes all this. It rigidly
+requires a man to reside at Oxford a certain definite time before
+graduation; but how and when he studies and is examined, it leaves to
+his own free choice. A man reads enough at Oxford to keep in the
+current of tutorial instruction, and to get on the trail of the books
+to be wrestled with in vacation.
+
+
+V
+
+THE EXAMINATION
+
+When mods and finals approach, the tune is altered. Weeks and months
+together the fellows dig and dig, morning, noon, and night. All sport
+and recreation is now regarded only as sustaining the vital forces for
+the ordeal. Sometimes, in despair at the distractions of Oxford life,
+knots of fellow sufferers form reading parties, gain permission to
+take a house together in the country, and draw up a code of terrible
+penalties against the man who suggests a turn at whist, the forbidden
+cup, or a trip to town. From the simplest tutorial cram-book to the
+profoundest available monograph, no page is left unturned. And this is
+only half. The motto of Squeers is altered. When a man knows a thing,
+he goes and writes it. Passages apt for quotation are learned by rote;
+phrases are polished until they are luminous; periods are
+premeditated; paragraphs and sections prevised. An apt epigram turns
+up in talk or in reading--the wary student jots it down, polishes it
+to a point, and keeps it in ambush to dart it at this or that
+possible question. One man I knew was electrified with Chaucer's
+description of the Sergeant of the Law,--
+
+     No wher so bisy a man as he ther nas,
+     And yet he semed bisier than he was;--
+
+and fell into despair because he could not think of any historical
+personage in his subject-matter to whom it might aptly apply. On the
+other hand, there was Alfred the Great, whose character was sure to be
+asked for. Did I know any line of Chaucer that would hit off Alfred
+the Great? So unusual to quote Chaucer.
+
+All this sort of thing has, of course, its limits. In the last days of
+preparation, the brains are few that do not reel under their weight of
+sudden knowledge; the minds are rare that are not dazzled by their own
+unaccustomed brilliance. The superlatively trained athlete knocks off
+for a day or two before an important contest--and perhaps has a dash
+at the flesh-pots by way of relaxing tension from the snapping point.
+So does the over-read examinee. He goes home to his sisters and his
+aunts, and to all the soothing wholesomeness of English country life.
+
+And then that terrible week of incessant examinations! All the facts
+and any degree of style will fail to save a man unless he has every
+resource ready at command. No athletic contest, perhaps no battle,
+could be a severer test of courage. Life does not depend upon the
+examination, but a living may. In America, degrees are more and more
+despised; but in England, it still pays to disarrange the alphabet at
+the end of one's name, or to let it be known to a prospective employer
+that one is a first-class honor man. The nature of the young
+graduate's employment and his salary too have a pretty close
+correspondence with his class at graduation. If he can add a blue to a
+first, the world is his oyster. The magnitude of the issue makes the
+examinee--or breaks him. Brilliant and laborious students too often
+come off with a bare third, and happy audacity has as often brought
+the careless a first. It may seem that the ordeal is unnecessarily
+severe; but even here the reason may be found, if it be only granted
+that the aim of a university is to turn out capable men. The honor
+examination requires some knowledge, more address, and most of all
+pluck--pluck or be plucked, as the Cambridge phrase is; and these
+things in this order are what count in the life of the British Empire.
+
+
+VI
+
+OXFORD QUALITIES AND THEIR DEFECTS
+
+Under the German-American system, the main end is scholarly training.
+Our graduates are apt to have the Socratic virtue of knowing how
+little they know--and perhaps not much besides. Even for the scholar
+this knowledge is not all. Though the English undergraduate is not
+taught to read manuscripts and decipher inscriptions--to trace out
+knowledge in its sources--the examination system gives him the breadth
+of view and mental grasp which are the only safe foundations of
+scholarship. If he contributes to science, he usually does so after he
+has left the university. The qualities which then distinguish him are
+rare among scholars--sound common sense and catholicity of judgment.
+Such qualities, for instance, enabled an Oxford classical first to
+recognize Schliemann's greatness while yet the German universities
+could only see that he was not an orthodox researcher according to
+their standards. If a man were bent on obtaining the best possible
+scholarly training, he probably could not do better than to take an
+English B. A. and then a German or an American Ph.D. As for the world
+of deeds and of men, the knowledge which is power is that which is
+combined with address and pluck; and the English system seems based on
+practical sense, in that it lays chief stress on producing this rare
+combination.
+
+To attribute to the honor schools the success with which Englishmen
+have solved the problems of civic government and colonial
+administration would be to ignore a multitude of contributory causes;
+but the honor schools are highly characteristic of the English system,
+and are responsible for no small part of its success. A striking
+illustration of this may be seen in the part which the periodical
+press plays in public affairs. In America, nothing is rarer than a
+writer who combines broad information with the power of clear and
+convincing expression. The editor of any serious American publication
+will bear me out in the observation that, notwithstanding the
+multitude of topics of the deepest and most vital interest, it is
+difficult to find any one to treat them adequately; and any reader can
+satisfy himself on this point by comparing the best of our periodicals
+with the leading English reviews. Now the writing of a review article
+requires nothing more nor less than the writing of a first-class
+examination paper, even to the element of pluck; for to marshal the
+full forces of the mind in the pressure of public life or of
+journalism requires self-command in a very high degree. The same thing
+is as obvious in the daily papers. The world is filled with English
+newspaper men who combine with reportorial training the power of
+treating a subject briefly and tellingly in its broadest relations.
+
+The public advantage of this was not long ago very aptly exemplified.
+When our late war suddenly brought us face to face with the fact that
+our national destiny had encountered the destinies of the great
+nations of the world, the most thoughtful people were those who felt
+most doubt and uncertainty; the more one considered, the less could
+one say just what he thought. At that crisis a very clear note was
+sounded. The London correspondents of our papers--Englishmen, and for
+the most part honor men--presented the issue to us from British and
+imperialistic point of view with a vigor and conviction that had
+immediate effect, as we all remember, and gave the larger part of the
+nation a new view of the crisis, and a new name for it. It was not
+until weeks later that our own most thoughtful writers as a body
+perceived the essential difference between our position and that of
+Great Britain, and we have scarcely yet discarded the word
+"imperialism." The knowledge, address, and pluck--or shall we call it
+audacity?--of the English correspondents enabled them to make a stroke
+of state policy. This is only one of many citable instances.
+
+To the robustious intelligence of the honor man, it must be admitted,
+the finer enthusiasm of scientific culture is likely to be a sealed
+book. The whole system of education is against it. Even if a student
+is possessed by the zeal for research, few tutors, in their pursuit of
+firsts, scruple to discourage it. "That is an extremely interesting
+point, but it will not count for schools." One student in a discussion
+with his tutor quoted a novel opinion of Schwegler's, and was confuted
+with the remark, "Yes, but that is the German view." It is this tutor
+who is reported to have remarked: "What I like about my subject is
+that when you know it you know it, and there's an end of it." His
+subject was that tangle of falsehood and misconception called history.
+It must, of course, be remembered in extenuation that with all his
+social and tutorial duties, the don is very hard worked. And
+considering the pressure of the necessary preparation for schools, the
+temptation to shun the byways is very great.
+
+The examining board for each school is elected by the entire faculty
+of that school from its own members; and though it is scarcely
+possible for an unscrupulous examiner to frame the questions to suit
+his own pupils, there is nothing to prevent the tutor from framing his
+pupils' knowledge to meet the presumptive demands of the examiners.
+"We shall have to pay particular attention to Scottish history, for
+Scotus is on the board, and that is his hobby." In the school of
+literae humaniores, no one expects either pupil or tutor to go far into
+textual criticism, philology, or archaeology. These branches are
+considered only as regards their results. In history, a special
+subject has to be studied with reference to its original sources, but
+its relative importance is small, and a student is discouraged from
+spending much time on it. Stubbs's "Select Charters" are the only
+original documents required, and even with regard to these all
+conclusions are cut and dried.
+
+To be sure there is a science school, but few men elect it, and it is
+in distinctly bad odor. In the slang of the university it is known as
+"stinks," and its laboratories as "stink shops." One must admit that
+its unpopularity is deserved. As it is impossible that each of the
+twenty colleges should have complete apparatus, the laboratories are
+maintained by the university, and not well maintained, for the wealth
+of Oxford is mainly in the coffers of the colleges. The whole end of
+laboratory work at Oxford is to prepare the student for a "practical
+examination" of some three hours. The Linacre professor has made many
+strenuous efforts, and has delivered much pointed criticism, but he
+has not yet been able to place the school on a modern or a rational
+basis. In his nostrils, perhaps, more than those of the university,
+the school of science is unsavory.
+
+Many subjects of the highest practical importance are entirely
+ignored. No advanced instruction is offered in modern languages and
+literatures except English, and the school in English is only six
+years old and very small. No one of the technical branches that are
+coming to be so prominent a part of American university life is as yet
+recognized.
+
+The Oxford honor first knows what he knows and sometimes he knows
+more. Few things are as distressing as the sciolism of a second-rate
+English editor of a classic. The mint sauce quite forgets that it is
+not Lamb. The English minor reviewer exhibits the pride of intellect
+in its purest form. The don perhaps intensifies these amiable foibles.
+There is an epigram current in Oxford which the summer guide will
+tell you Jowett wrote to celebrate his own attainments:--
+
+     Here I am, my name is Jowett;
+       I am the master of Balliol College.
+     All there is to know, I know it.
+       What I know not is not knowledge.
+
+This is clearly a satire written against Jowett, and it would be more
+clearly a legitimate satire if aimed at the generality of dons.
+
+
+VII
+
+THE UNIVERSITY AND REFORM
+
+This tale of Oxford shortcomings is no news to the English radical.
+The regeneration of the university has long been advocated. On the one
+hand, the reformers have tried to make it possible, as it was in the
+Middle Ages, to live and study at Oxford without being attached to any
+of the colleges; on the other, they have tried to bring into the
+educational system such modern subjects and methods of study as are
+cultivated in Germany, where the new branches have been so admirably
+grafted on the mediaeval trunk. In general it must be said that Oxford
+is becoming more democratic and even more studious; but the advance
+has come in spite of the constitution of the university. All studied
+attempts at reform have proved almost ludicrously futile.
+
+In order to combat the monopoly of the colleges, and to build up a
+body of more serious students without their walls, a new order of
+"unattached" students was created. The experiment has no doubt been
+interesting, but it cannot be said that it has revived the glorious
+democracy and the intellectual enthusiasm of the mediaeval university.
+Few things could be lonelier, or more profitless intellectually, than
+the lot of the unattached students. Excluded by the force of
+circumstances from the life of the colleges, they have no more real
+life of their own than the socially unaffiliated in American
+universities. They have been forced to imitate the organization of the
+colleges. They lunch and dine one another as best they can, hold
+yearly a set of athletic games, and place a boat in the college
+bumping races. They have thus come to be precisely like any of the
+colleges, except that they have none of the felicities, social or
+intellectual, that come from life within walls.
+
+From time to time the introduction of new honor schools is proposed to
+keep pace with modern learning. A long-standing agitation in favor of
+a school in modern languages was compromised by the founding of the
+school in English; but it is not yet downed, and before the century is
+over may yet rise to smite conservatism. Coupled with this there is an
+ever-increasing desire to cultivate research. As yet these agitations
+have had about as much effect as the kindred agitation that led to the
+rehabilitation of the unattached student.
+
+The Bodleian Library is a treasure chest of the rarest of old books
+and of unexplored documents; but nothing in the Bod counts for
+schools, and so the shadow of an undergraduate darkens the door only
+when he is showing off the university to his sisters--and to other
+fellows'. When I applied for permission to read, the fact that I wore
+a commoner's gown, as I was required to by statute while reading
+there, almost excluded me. If I had been after knowledge useful in the
+schools, no doubt I should have been obliged to consult a choice
+collection of well-approved books across the way in the camera of the
+Radcliffe. In America, a serious student is welcome to range in the
+stack, and to take such books as he needs to his own rooms. Some few
+researchers come to the Bodleian from the world without to spend
+halcyon days beneath the brave old timber roof of Duke Humphrey's
+Library; but any one used to the freedom of books in America would
+find very little encouragement to do so. The librarian is probably an
+eminently serviceable man according to the traditions of the Bodleian;
+but there are times when he appears to be a grudging autocrat
+intrenched behind antique rules and regulations. In the Middle Ages it
+was the custom to chain the books to the shelves, as one may still
+observe in the quaint old library of Merton College. The modern
+method at the Bodleian would seem to be a refinement on the custom.
+And what is not known about the Bodleian in the Bodleian would fill a
+library almost as large. In the picture gallery hangs a Van Dyck
+portrait of William Herbert, Earl of Pembroke, a former chancellor of
+the university, a nephew of Sir Philip Sydney, son of Mary, Countess
+of Pembroke, and the once reputed patron to whom Shakespeare addressed
+the first series of his sonnets. The librarian did not know how or
+when the portrait came into the possession of the University, or
+whether it was an original; and not being required to know by statute,
+he did not care to find out, and did not find out.
+
+The crowning absurdity of the educational system is the professors,
+and here is an Oxford paradox as yet unredeemed by a glimmering of
+reason. When I wanted assistance as to a thesis on which I was
+working, my tutor referred me to the Regius Professor of Modern
+History, who he thought would be more likely than any one else to know
+about the sources of Elizabethan literature.
+
+Few as are the professors, they are all too many for the needs of
+Oxford. They are learned and ardent scholars, many of them with a full
+measure of German training in addition to Oxford culture. But in
+proportion as they are wise and able they are lifted out of the life
+of the university. They lecture, to be sure, in the schools; and now
+and then an undergraduate evades his tutor long enough to hear them.
+Several young women may be found at their feet--students from
+Somerville and Lady Margaret. When the subject and the lecturer are
+popular, residents of the town drop in. But as regards the great mass
+of undergraduates, wisdom crieth in the streets. The professors are as
+effectually shelved as ever their learned books will be when the
+twentieth century is dust. "The university, it is true," Mr. Brodrick
+admits in his "History of Oxford," "has yet to harmonize many
+conflicting elements which mar the symmetry of its institutions."
+
+This torpor in which the university lies is no mere matter of
+accident. I quote from Mr. Gladstone's Romanes Lecture, delivered in
+1892:--
+
+    "The chief dangers before the English universities are probably
+    two: one that in [cultivating?] research, considered as apart from
+    their teaching office, they should relax and consequently dwindle
+    [as teachers?]; the other that, under pressure from without, they
+    should lean, if ever so little, to that theory of education, which
+    would have it to construct machines of so many horse power rather
+    than to form character, and to rear into true excellence the
+    marvelous creature we call man; which gloats upon success in life,
+    instead of studying to secure that the man shall ever be greater
+    than his work, and never bounded by it, but that his eye shall
+    boldly run--
+
+     Along the line of limitless desire."
+
+Few will question the necessity of rising above the sphere of mere
+science and commercialism; but many will question whether the way to
+rise is not rather by mastering the genius of the century than by
+ignoring it. It is scarcely too much to say that the greatest
+intellectual movement of the nineteenth century, though largely the
+work of English scientists, has left no mark on Oxford education. If,
+as Professor Von Holst asserts, the American universities are hybrids,
+Oxford and Cambridge cannot be called universities at all.
+
+
+VIII
+
+THE UNIVERSITY AND THE PEOPLE
+
+As a result of the narrowness of the scope of Oxford teaching, the
+university has no relation to the industrial life of the people--a
+grave shortcoming in a nation which is not unwilling to be known as a
+nation of shopkeepers. The wail of the British tradesman is not
+unfamiliar. Wares "made in Germany" undersell English wares that used
+to command the market; and being often made of a cheaper grade to suit
+the demands of purchasers, the phrase "made in Germany" is clearly
+indicative of fraudulent intention.
+
+Certain instances are exceptionally galling. Aniline dyes were first
+manufactured from the residuum of coal tar in Great Britain. But
+enterprising Germany, which has coal-fields of its own, sent
+apprentices to England who learned the manufacture, and then by means
+of the chemistry taught in the German universities, revolutionized the
+process, and discovered how to extract new colors from the coal tar,
+so that now the bulk of aniline dyes are made in Germany. Obviously,
+the German chemist is a perfidious person. The Yankee is shrewd and
+well taught in the technical professions. He makes new and quite
+unexampled tools, and machinery of all sorts. It takes the Briton some
+years to be sure that these are not iniquitous--a Yankee trick; but in
+the end he adopts them. Even then, to the Briton's surprise, the
+Yankee competes successfully. A commission (no German spy) is sent to
+America to find out why, and on its return gleefully reports that the
+Yankee works his tools at a ruinous rate, driving them so hard that in
+a decade it will be necessary to reequip his plant entire. At the end
+of the decade, the conservative Englishman's tools are as good as if
+they had been kept in cotton batting; but by this time the Yankee has
+invented newer and more economical devices, and when he reequips his
+plant with them he is able to undersell the English producer even more
+signally. The honest British manufacturer sells his old tools to an
+unsuspecting brother in trade and adopts the new ones. The Yankee
+machinist is obviously as perfidious as the German chemist. The upper
+middle classes in England realize that the destinies of Great Britain
+and America run together, and they are very hospitable to Americans,
+but the industrial population hate us scarcely less than they hate
+the Germans.
+
+All this is, of course, not directly chargeable to the English
+universities: but the fact remains that in Germany and in America the
+educational system is the most powerful ally of industry. Here again
+the English radical is on his guard. From time to time, in letters to
+the daily papers or political speeches before industrial audiences,
+the case is very clearly stated. In a recent epistolary agitation in
+"The Times" it was shown that whereas American and German business men
+learn foreign languages, Englishmen attempt to sell their wares by
+means of interpreters, and do not even have their pamphlets and
+prospectuses translated. Admitting the facts, one gentleman gravely
+urged that if only the English would stick out the fight, their
+language would soon be the business language of the world. If it is
+the conscious purpose of the nation to make it so, it might be of
+advantage to spell the language as it has been pronounced in the
+centuries since Chaucer; already with some such purpose the Germans
+are adopting Roman characters. But at least it will be many decades
+before English is the Volapuek of business, and meantime England is
+losing ground. From the point of view of the mere outsider, it would
+seem of little moment to England what language is used, if the
+profits of the business transacted accrue to Russian, German, and
+American corporations.
+
+It has even been strongly urged that commercial and technical subjects
+be taught in the universities. Cambridge and the University of Glasgow
+have already a fund with this in view; and the new Midland University
+at Birmingham, of which Mr. Joseph Chamberlain is chancellor, is to be
+mainly devoted to commercial science and engineering. It cannot be
+foretold that the ancient universities will hold their own against the
+modern. In a speech at Birmingham (January 17, 1901), Mr. Chamberlain
+said: "Finance is the crux of the situation. Upon our finance depends
+entirely the extent to which we shall be able to develop this new
+experiment. With us, in fact, money is the root of all good. I am very
+glad to say that the promises of donations which, when I last
+addressed you, amounted to L330,000, have risen since then to an
+estimated amount of about L410,000.... Now L410,000 is a large sum. I
+heard the other day that the University of Cambridge, which has for
+some time past been appealing for further assistance, has only up to
+the present time received L60,000. I most deeply regret that their
+fund is not larger, and I regret also that ours is so small." Oxford
+has apparently not entered the new competition even in a half-hearted
+manner. For centuries it has been the resort of the nobility and
+aristocracy, the "governing classes," and though the spirit of the age
+has so far invaded it as to have been in Mr. Gladstone's eyes its
+chief danger, the university has as yet only the slenderest connection
+with the industrial life of the nation.
+
+The virtues of the Oxford educational system, like those of the social
+and athletic life, are pretty clearly traceable in the main to the
+division of the university into colleges; at least, it is hard to see
+how anything other than this could have suggested the idea of having
+one body to teach the student and another to examine him. And they
+have a strong family likeness one to another, the concrete result
+being a highly sturdy and effective character. But the educational
+system differs from the social and athletic system in that the defects
+of its qualities are the more vigorous. As far as these defects result
+from the educational system, they are chargeable not so much to the
+preponderance of the colleges as to the torpor of the university; and
+they are powerfully abetted by the Oxford tradition as to the nature
+and function of a liberal education. This has not always been the case
+at Oxford. To understand the situation more clearly, it is necessary
+to review in brief the origin and the growth of the colleges, and the
+extinction of the mediaeval university. This will throw further light
+on Oxford's social history. We shall thus be better able to judge how
+and to what extent the college system offers a solution for the
+correction of our American instruction.
+
+
+
+
+IV
+
+THE HISTORY OF THE UNIVERSITY AND THE COLLEGE
+
+
+I
+
+THE UNIVERSITY BEFORE THE COLLEGE
+
+In the beginning was the university. The colleges were as unimportant
+as the university is now. If it be admitted that the university exists
+to-day, they were less important; for there were no colleges. The
+origin of the university was probably due to a migration of students
+in 1167 from the then world-famous University of Paris. The first
+definite mention of a _studium generale_ at Oxford, or assembly of
+masters of the different faculties, dates from 1185, when Giraldus
+Cambrensis, as he himself relates, read his new work, "Topographia
+Hibernia," before the citizens and scholars of the town, and
+entertained in his hostel "all the doctors of the different
+faculties."
+
+At this time, and for many centuries afterward, Oxford, like other
+mediaeval universities, was a guild, and was not unlike the trade
+guilds of the time. Its object was to train and give titles to those
+who dealt in the arts and professions. The master tanner was trained
+by his guild to make leather, and he made it; the master of arts was
+trained by the university to teach, and he taught. He was required to
+rent rooms in the university schools, for a year and even two, and to
+show that he deserved his title of master by lecturing in them, and
+conducting "disputations." The masters lived directly from the
+contributions of their hearers, their means varying with the
+popularity of their lectures; and the students were mainly poor
+clerks, who sought degrees for their money value.
+
+The lectures were mere dictations from manuscript, necessitated by the
+lack of accessible texts. The students copied the lectures verbatim
+for future study. The instruction in arts covered the entire field of
+secular knowledge, the "seven arts," the trivium (grammar, rhetoric,
+and logic or dialectic), and the quadrivium (music, arithmetic,
+geometry, and astronomy). The lectures were the main and often the
+only means of imparting knowledge. The disputations were scholastic
+arguments--debates--on some set question, and were conducted by the
+masters. They were the practical application of what the student had
+learned from the lectures, and were the chief means of intellectual
+training. Besides attending lectures and disputing, the candidate for
+the degree had to pass an examination; but the great test of his
+acquirement seems to have been the skill with which he used his
+knowledge in debate. Thus the formal disputations occupied very much
+the same place as the modern written examinations, and they must have
+required very much the same rare combination of knowledge, address,
+and pluck. All learning was in a pint-pot; but it was a very
+serviceable pint-pot.
+
+The university education did not make a man above the work of the
+world: it made him an engine of so many horse power to perform it. It
+brought him benefices in that great sphere of activity, the mediaeval
+Church, and important posts in that other sphere of mediaeval
+statecraft, which was so often identified with the Church. If the
+clerk was above the carpenter, it was not because he came from a
+different station in life, for he often did not: it was because his
+work was more important. And he was far above the carpenter. It was a
+strenuous, glorious life, and the man of intelligence and training
+found his level, which is the highest. The kings and the nobility were
+warriors, and may have affected to despise education; but they were
+far from despising educated men. The machinery of state was organized
+and controlled by clerks from the university. If the scientific and
+mechanical professions had existed then, there is no doubt that they
+would not have been despised as to-day, but would have had full
+recognition.
+
+Socially, the university was chaos. In the absence of colleges, all
+the students lived with the townsmen in "chamberdekyns," which appear
+to be etymologically and historically the forbears of the "diggings"
+to which the fourth year man now retreats when he has been routed from
+college by incoming freshmen and by the necessity of reading for his
+final examination. But such discipline as is now exerted over
+out-of-college students was undreamed of. In his interesting and
+profoundly scholarly history of the universities of the Middle Ages,
+the Rev. Hastings Rashdall gives a vivid picture of mediaeval student
+life, which was pretty much the same in all the universities of
+Europe. Boys went up to the university at as early an age as thirteen,
+and the average freshman could not have been older than fifteen; yet
+they were allowed almost absolute liberty. Drunkenness was rarely
+treated as a university offense; and for introducing suspicious women
+into his rooms, it was only on being repeatedly caught that an
+undergraduate was disciplined. At the University of Ingolstadt, a
+student who had killed another in a drunken quarrel had his scholastic
+effects and garments confiscated by the university. He may have been
+warned to be good in future, but he was not expelled. "It is
+satisfactory to add," Rashdall continues, "that at Prague, a Master of
+Arts, believed to have assisted in cutting the throat of a Friar
+Bishop, was actually expelled." The body of undergraduates was "an
+undisciplined student-horde." Hende Nicholas, in Chaucer's "Miller's
+Tale," is, it must be admitted, a lively and adventuring youth; but he
+might have been much livelier without being untrue to student life in
+chamberdekyns.
+
+The townspeople seem to have been the not unnatural fathers of the
+tradesmen and landlords of modern Oxford; and the likeness is well
+borne out in the matter of charges. But where to-day a man sometimes
+tries amiably to beat down the landlord's prices, the way of the
+Middle Ages was to beat down the landlord. As the student was in many
+cases of the same station in life as the townsman, he naturally failed
+to command the servility with which the modern undergraduate is
+regarded. Both sides used to gird on their armor, and meet in battles
+that began in bloodshed and often ended in death. Pages of Rashdall's
+history are filled with accounts of savage encounters between town and
+gown, which are of importance historically as showing the steps by
+which the university achieved the anomalous legal dominance over the
+city which it still in some measure retains. For our present purpose,
+it is enough to note that mediaeval Oxford was unruly, very.
+"Fighting," says Rashdall, "was perpetually going on in the streets of
+Oxford.... There is probably not a single yard of ground in any part
+of the classic High Street that lies between St. Martin's and St.
+Mary's [almost a quarter of a mile] which has not at one time or other
+been stained with human blood. There are historic battlefields on
+which less has been spilt."
+
+As if this were not enough, there were civil feuds. In the Middle
+Ages, sectional differences were more obvious and more important than
+now; and the first subdivision of the universities, both in England
+and on the Continent, was by "nations." At Oxford there were two
+nations; and if, when the north countryman rubbed elbows with the
+south countryman, he was offended by his silken gown and soft vowels,
+he rapped him across the pate. Hence more strife and bloodshed. Amid
+all this disorder there was a full measure of mediaeval want and
+misery. At best, the student of moderate means led a precarious life;
+and poor students, shivering, homeless, and starved, lived by the
+still reputable art of the beggar. Something had to be done.
+
+
+II
+
+THE MEDIAEVAL HALL
+
+The mediaeval spirit of organization, which resulted in so many noble
+and deathless institutions, was not slow in exerting itself against
+the social chaos of the university. Out of chaos grew the halls, and
+out of the halls the colleges. The first permanent organizations of
+student life were small, and had their origin in the immediate wants
+of the individual. To gain the economy of cooperation and the safety
+of numbers, the students at Oxford, as at Paris and elsewhere, began
+to live in separate small colonies under one roof. These were called
+aulae or halls. They were no less interesting in themselves than for
+the fact that they were the germ out of which the Oxford college
+system grew.
+
+At first the halls appear to have been mere chance associations. Each
+had a principal who managed its affairs; but the principal had no
+official status, and might even be an undergraduate. The halls
+correspond roughly to the fraternities of American college life. Their
+internal rule was absolutely democratic. The students lived together
+by mutual consent under laws of their own framing, and under a
+principal of their own electing. They were quite without fear or favor
+of the university. The principal's duties were to lease the hall, to
+be a sort of over-steward of it, and to lead in enforcing the
+self-imposed rules of the community. His term of office, like his
+election, depended on the good-will of his fellows; if he made himself
+disliked, they were quite at liberty to take up residence elsewhere.
+In the thirteenth century there was really no such thing as university
+discipline. The men who lived in the halls came and went as they
+pleased, and were as free as their contemporary in chamberdekyns to
+loiter, quarrel, and carouse. Chaucer's "Reeve's Tale" gives us a
+glimpse into "Soler Halle at Cantebregge," from which it would appear
+that the members were quite as loose and free as Hende Nicholas, their
+Oxford contemporary. But the liberty was an organized liberty. In
+contrast with the chaos of the life of the students in chamberdekyns,
+the early halls must have been brave places to work and to play in,
+and one might wish that a fuller record had been left of the life in
+them. It was their fate to be obscured by the greater splendor and
+permanence of the colleges to which they paved the way.
+
+
+III
+
+THE COLLEGE SYSTEM
+
+The English college, roughly speaking, is a mediaeval hall supported by
+a permanent fund which the socii or fellows administer. The first fund
+for the support of scholars was bequeathed in 1243, but it can
+scarcely be regarded as marking the first college, for it provided for
+two scholars only, and these lived where they pleased. In 1249 William
+of Durham bequeathed a fund for the support of ten or more masters of
+arts. At first these also lived apart; it was only in 1280, after the
+type of the English college had been fixed, that they were formed into
+the body now known as University College. The first organized
+community at Oxford was founded by Sir John de Balliol some little
+time before 1266; but the allowances to the scholars, as was the case
+in colleges of the University of Paris, after which it was doubtless
+modeled, were not from a permanent fund, being paid annually by the
+founder. Balliol cannot therefore be regarded as the first
+characteristic English college. It was not until 1282 that Sir John's
+widow, Dervorguilla, adopted the new English idea by making the
+endowment of the "House of Balliol" permanent, and placing it under
+the management of the fellows.
+
+The real founder of the English college was Walter de Merton. In 1264
+Walter provided by endowment for the permanent maintenance of twenty
+scholars, who were to live together in a hall as a community; and in
+1274 he drew up the statutes which fix the type of the earliest
+English college. The principal of Merton was not, like the principal
+of a mediaeval hall, the temporary head of a chance community, but a
+permanent head with established power; and he had to manage, not the
+periodic contributions of free associates, but a landed estate held in
+permanent trust. He was called "warden," a title which the head of
+Merton retains to this day. This idea of a body supported in a
+permanent residence by a permanent fund is perhaps of monastic origin,
+and was accompanied by certain features of brotherhood rule. The
+scholars lived a life of order and seclusion which was in striking
+contrast to the life of the students in chamberdekyns, and even of
+those in the halls. But with the monastic order they had also the
+monastic democracy, so that in one way the government of the college
+was strikingly similar to that of the halls. Vacancies in the
+community were filled by cooptation, and the warden was elected by the
+thirteen senior fellows from their own number. Though partly monastic
+in constitution, the Hall of Merton was not properly a religious body.
+The fellows took no vows, and seem rather to have been expected to
+enter lay callings. This College of Merton was the result of a gradual
+development of the hall along monastic lines--a lay brotherhood of
+students. It was destined to work a revolution in English university
+life and in English university teaching. The constitutions of
+University and Balliol were, as I have indicated, remodeled on the
+lines of Merton; and other colleges were founded as follows: Exeter,
+1314; Oriel, 1324; Queens, 1341; and Canterbury, now extinct, 1362,
+most of which were profoundly influenced by the constitution of
+Merton.
+
+  [Illustration: NEW COLLEGE CLOISTERS, BELL TOWER, AND CHAPEL]
+
+It was at first no part of the duty of the elders (socii, or, as
+Chaucer calls them, felawes) to teach the younger. The scholars of the
+college received the regular mediaeval education in the university. But
+even in Merton the germ of tutorial instruction was present. Twelve
+"parvuli" who were not old enough, or sufficiently used to the Latin
+tongue, to profit by the lectures and disputations of the university,
+lived in or near the colleges and were taught by a grammar master;
+and it appears that even the older scholars might, "without blushing,"
+consult this grammar master on matters that "pertained to his
+faculty." In his relation to these older students the grammar master
+may be regarded as the precursor of the system of tutorial
+instruction.
+
+The first college to develop regular undergraduate instruction within
+its walls was "S. Marie College of Winchester in Oxford," founded in
+1379, by William of Wykeham. "S. Marie's" brought in so many
+innovations that it came to be called "New College," a title which,
+incongruously enough, it has retained for more than five hundred
+years. Wykeham's first innovation was to place the grammar master, for
+the greater good of his pupils, at the head of a "college" of seventy
+boys at Winchester, thus outlining the English system of public
+schools. New College was accordingly able to exclude all who had not
+attained the ripe age of fifteen. The effect of this innovation on the
+college was peculiar. When the boys came up from Winchester, they
+appear to have been farther advanced than most of the undergraduates
+attending lectures and disputes in the university schools; in any
+case, Wykeham arranged that the older fellows should supplement the
+university teaching by private tuition within the college. Little by
+little the New College type succeeded that of Merton. Magdalen
+College, founded in 1448, carried the tutorial system to its logical
+end by endowing lectureships in theology, metaphysics, and natural
+philosophy. The older colleges--those of the Merton type--little by
+little followed this new example, so that by the end of the Middle
+Ages it was possible for a student to receive his entire instruction
+within the walls of his college. In Wolsey's splendid foundation,
+Cardinal College (1522), now styled Christ Church, there was a still
+more ample endowment for professorships. At first the college
+instruction was regarded as supplementary to the university teaching,
+though it soon became far more important. The masters of the
+university continued to read lectures on the recognized subjects,
+living as of old on fees from those who chose to listen; but they were
+clearly unable to compete with the endowed tutors and professors of
+the colleges. By the beginning of the fifteenth century, the mediaeval
+teaching master was disappearing. The only real teaching in arts--by
+all odds the most popular branch of study at Oxford--was given within
+the colleges and halls.
+
+The discipline of the earlier colleges was much severer than that of
+to-day, but the difference is one of degree rather than of kind. The
+lectures in schools began at six, instead of nine; and at any hour it
+was forbidden to leave the college except on a studious errand. When
+attending out-of-college lectures, all scholars were required to go
+and come in a body; and in one set of statutes even a chaplain was
+forbidden to leave the gates, except to go to lectures or to the
+library, without taking at least one companion, who, in the antique
+phrase of the statute, was to be a "witness of his honest
+conversation." There were only two meals a day, dinner at ten and
+supper at five. Breakfast, now the great rallying-point of Oxford
+hospitality, was the invention of a more luxurious age. Of athletics
+there was none, or next to none. The only licensed hilarities were
+certain so-called "honest jokes," with which the tutors were in at
+least one case required to regale their pupils after dinner, and a
+"potation" which was permitted after supper, perhaps as an offset to
+the "honest jokes."
+
+  [Illustration: NEW COLLEGE GARDENS Showing the mediaeval wall of
+    Oxford]
+
+The severity of these regulations is mainly explainable in the fact
+that the inmates of the colleges were fed, clothed, and housed out of
+the endowment, and might thus be reasonably expected to give a good
+account of themselves. Furthermore, they were most of them mere boys.
+A statute dating as late as 1527 requires that "scholars" shall be
+at least twelve years old. At fourteen or fifteen a scholar might
+become a fellow. The average age of "determining" as bachelor of arts
+was little if at all over seventeen. At nineteen, the age at which the
+modern Oxonian comes up from the public schools, the mediaeval student
+might, if he were clever, be a master of arts, lecturing and disputing
+in schools for the benefit of the bachelors and scholars of the
+university.
+
+The modern Oxonian delights to tell visiting friends that he is
+forbidden by statute to play marbles on the steps of the Bodleian, and
+to roll hoop in the High; but if a mediaeval master of arts were to
+"come up" to-day, he would be amused, not that so many rules framed
+for his boyish pupils of old should be applied to grown men, but that
+the men so obviously require a check to juvenile exuberance. Yet this
+much has been gained, that the outgrown restrictions of college life
+have kept Oxford wholesomely young. The survivals of the monastic
+system meanwhile have kept it wholesomely democratic.
+
+After the colleges reached their full development, the extinction of
+the mediaeval university as an institution for teaching was largely a
+matter of form. The quietus was given in 1569. The Earl of Leicester,
+then chancellor, ordered that the government should be in the hands
+of the chancellor, doctors, proctors, and the heads of the colleges
+and halls. In 1636 (the year of the founding of the first American
+college) the statutes of the university were revised and codified by
+Archbishop Laud; the sole authority was placed in the hands of an
+oligarchy composed of the leading dons of the colleges. The government
+was limited to the vice-chancellor, the proctors, and the heads of
+houses, and the vice-chancellor and the proctors were elected in
+sequence by each of the colleges from its own members. The teaching of
+the university was now legally as well as actually in the hands of the
+college tutors, and the examination was in the hands of a board chosen
+by the colleges. University lectures were still delivered in the
+schools by the regent masters, but they had ceased to play any
+important part in Oxford education.
+
+
+IV
+
+THE GOLDEN AGE OF THE MEDIAEVAL HALL
+
+Like the colleges, the halls meanwhile tended gradually towards an
+organized community life. The starting-point was a regulation that the
+principal should give the university security for the rent of the
+house. The logical result of this was that the principal became the
+representative of the university, and the hall one of its recognized
+institutions. The advantage of living in separate communities meantime
+had become so clearly evident that by the middle of the fifteenth
+century chamberdekyns were abolished. All students not living in a
+college were required to live in a hall. It was thus that the halls
+lost some of their democratic independence. At this period in their
+development they may be roughly compared to such modern American halls
+as Claverly at Harvard, where the residents govern their own affairs
+in the main, admitting newcomers only by vote, but are all alike
+subject to the authority of a resident university proctor. The analogy
+is by no means close, for the principal of the mediaeval hall was not
+so much a resident policeman as the actual head of the community.
+
+As the colleges developed tutorial instruction, the halls followed
+suit; the local administrator became responsible not only for the
+social regime, but for the tuition of the undergraduates. The halls
+thus differed from the college mainly in that they had no corporate
+existence such as is necessary to an endowed institution. The mediaeval
+hall was now in its golden age; it was a well-conceived instrument for
+all the purposes of residence and of education. It is especially to be
+noted that the regime of the community was still in the main
+democratic. Though the head was appointed by the university, he had to
+be accepted by vote of the undergraduates, a provision that was still
+observed, at least in one instance, until the close of the nineteenth
+century.
+
+The discipline of the halls of the fifteenth century, severe though it
+was by comparison with that of the earliest halls, was far less severe
+than the discipline in the colleges. It was quite as much as the
+university could accomplish, according to Rashdall, "to prevent
+students expelled from one hall being welcomed at another, to prevent
+the masters themselves condoning or sharing the worst excesses of
+their pupils, to compel fairly regular attendance at lectures and
+other university or college exercises, to require all students to
+return home by curfew at 8 or 9 P.M., to get the outer doors of the
+pedagogy locked till morning, and to insist on the presence of a
+regent throughout the night." When the early habits of the community
+generally are remembered, it will be evident that these regulations
+still allowed a vast deal of liberty, or rather of license. Boys of
+fifteen or sixteen living in the very centre of large and densely
+populated towns were in general perfectly free to roam about the
+streets up to the hour at which all respectable citizens were
+accustomed, if not actually compelled by town statutes, to retire to
+bed.
+
+The halls were reduced in number by the wars of the Roses and by a
+period of intellectual stagnation that followed, but they still
+numbered seventy-one, as against eighteen colleges (including those
+maintained by monasteries, which disappeared with the Reformation);
+and the number of their students is estimated at seven hundred, as
+against three hundred in the colleges. In the light of subsequent
+development it seems probable that it would have been far better for
+the university if the halls had remained the characteristic
+subdivision. Their fate was decided not by any inherent superiority
+on the part of the colleges, but by the force of corporate wealth.
+
+Even in the fifteenth century, the halls were tending to pass into the
+possession of the colleges, and later events made the tendency a fact.
+"As stars lose their light when the sun ariseth," says an ancient
+Cambridge worthy, "so all these hostels decayed by degrees when
+endowed colleges began to appear." The Reformation, and a recurrent
+pestilence, "the sweating sickness," a kind of inflammatory rheumatism
+due apparently to the unwholesome situation of the university,
+resulted in a sharp falling off in the number of students. The
+colleges lived on, however thinned their ranks, by virtue of the
+endowments; but the halls disappeared with the students who had
+frequented them. In 1526 it was recorded that sixteen had lately been
+abandoned. When the numbers of the university swelled again under
+Elizabeth, the increase found place partly in the few halls that were
+left, but mainly in the colleges. In 1602 there were only eight halls,
+and these were all mere dependencies of separate colleges. "_Singulae
+singulis a colegiis pendent_," as a contemporary expresses it. Only
+one of these, St. Edmund Hall, now retains even a show of the old
+democratic independence, and this has lately been brought into closer
+subjection to Queen's College. Socially as well as educationally, the
+mediaeval university faded before the organization and endowment of the
+colleges. The life of Oxford was concentrated in a dozen or more
+separate institutions, and so thoroughly concentrated that there was
+little association, intellectual or social, between any two of them.
+
+
+V
+
+THE ORIGIN OF THE MODERN UNDERGRADUATE
+
+If the tutors of New College were epoch-making, the amplitude and
+splendor of its social life were no less so. Its original buildings
+are in such perfect preservation that it is hard to believe that they
+are almost the oldest in Oxford, and that the New College quadrangle
+is the father of all quads. The establishment of the "head" was of
+similar dignity. The master of Balliol received forty shillings
+yearly; the warden of New College, forty pounds. In the statutes of an
+old Cambridge college we find it required that since it would be
+"indecent" for the master to go afoot, and "scandalous" to the college
+for him to "conducere hackeneye," he might be allowed one horse. The
+warden of New College had a coach and six. As century followed century
+the value of the endowments increased, and the scale of living was
+proportionately raised. The colleges in general became the home of
+comfort, and sometimes of a very positive luxury.
+
+In the colleges of the Middle Ages the students were the _socii_, and
+were maintained by the endowment. These are the dons and
+foundationers, or scholarship men, of to-day. But the comfort and
+order of the life in the colleges were very attractive, and the sons
+of the rich were early welcomed as "gentlemen commoners," precursors
+of the modern "commoners." The statutes of Magdalen make the first
+clear provision for receiving and teaching such "non-foundation"
+students. They permit the admission of twenty _filii nobilium_ as
+_commensales_, or commoners, in the vernacular. At first these were
+few and unimportant; in the centuries during which the numbers of the
+university were at an ebb, they could easily be accommodated within
+the depleted colleges. When the university increased under Elizabeth,
+the idea of living in halls in the mediaeval fashion, as we have seen,
+was obsolescent, so that the result of the increase was to enlarge the
+colleges. Thus, largely as a matter of chance, the commoners of
+to-day, the characteristic and by far the larger part of the
+undergraduate body, live under a regime invented for the endowed
+scholars of the Middle Ages, and the democratic license of the
+mediaeval undergraduate at large has given way to a democratic rule of
+commoners in colleges. Though the commoner is no longer called a
+gentleman commoner, he is more than likely to come from a family of
+position and means, for the comfort of life in the colleges is
+expensive. All this has transformed Oxford from a mediaeval guild of
+masters and apprenticed students, a free mart of available knowledge,
+into a closely organized anteroom to social and professional life.
+
+
+VI
+
+THE INSIGNIFICANCE OF THE MODERN UNIVERSITY
+
+Though the university as a teaching body pined before the rising
+colleges, and for centuries lay in a swoon, it was not dead. It was
+kept alive by certain endowments for lecturers. But so thoroughly did
+the college tutors supply all undergraduate needs that, unless walls
+indeed have ears, the lectures were never heard. The professors
+gradually abandoned the university schools and gave the unattended
+lectures in their own houses. Such lectures were known as "study
+lectures." Even these gave way to silence. An odd situation was caused
+by the fact that there were also salaries paid to university proctors,
+a part of whose duty it was to see that the professorial lectures were
+properly given. When a proctor appeared, the learned professor would
+snatch up his manuscript and read until his auditor got tired and
+left. This was one case in which a thief was not the person to catch a
+thief; such energy on the part of the proctor was unusual, and was
+regarded as in extremely bad form. The abuse proceeded so far that in
+some cases, when hearers appeared at the appointed hour, the
+professors refused point blank to read their lectures. The climax of
+the farce was that at graduation students were fined for having cut
+these lectures that had never been given. When Samuel Johnson was
+fined for neglecting a college lecture to go "sliding on Christ Church
+Meadow," he exclaimed, "Sir, you have fined me twopence for missing a
+lecture that was not worth a penny!" His untimely departure from
+Oxford has lamentably left us to conjecture what he would have said
+upon paying the university fines at graduation for cutting lectures
+that had never been given.
+
+Even the university examinations became farcical. Under the Laudian
+statutes the very examiners became corrupt. Instead of a feast of
+reason and a flow of soul, the wary student provided his examiner with
+good meat and wine; and the two, with what company they bade in, got
+gloriously drunk together. B. A. meant Bacchanal of Arts. Even when
+the forms of examination were held to, the farce was only less
+obvious. A writer in _Terrae Filius_, March 24, 1721, tells us that the
+examination consisted in "a formal repetition of a set of syllogisms
+upon some ridiculous question in logick, which the candidates get by
+rote, or perhaps read out of their caps, which lie before them." These
+commodious sets of syllogisms were called strings, and descended from
+undergraduate to undergraduate in a regular succession like themes and
+mechanical drawings in an American club or fraternity. "I have in my
+custody a book of strings upon most or all of the questions discussed
+in a certain college noted for its ratiocinative faculty; on the first
+leaf of which are these words: _Ex dono Richardi P----e primae classi
+benefactoris munificentissimi_." Lord Eldon took his degree at
+University College by an examination that consisted of two questions:
+"What is the meaning of Golgotha?" and "Who founded University
+College?" It was, no doubt, the bearers of degrees thus achieved who
+owned those marvelous libraries of the eighteenth century, which
+consisted of pasteboard boxes exquisitely backed in tooled calf, and
+labeled with the names of the standard Greek and Latin classics.
+
+The decline of the university teaching and examination did not result
+in a corresponding rise in the colleges. Each of the dozen and more
+institutions was supposed, as I have said, to keep a separate faculty
+in arts, and often in law and theology as well. If there had been any
+incentive to ambition, the colleges might have vied with one another
+in their impossible task, or at least have gone far enough to bring
+about a reform. But they were rich and did not care. The wealth of
+collegiate endowments, that had begun by ruining the university, ended
+by ruining the colleges. There were still earnest teachers and
+students at Oxford, but they were not the rule. The chief energies of
+the tutors were spent in increasing their salaries by a careful
+management of the estates, and in evading their pupils. In "the
+splendid foppery of a well-turned period" Gibbon thus pictures the
+dons of Magdalen in 1752: "Their deep and dull potations excused the
+brisk intemperance of youth." Only one result was possible. In 1821 T.
+J. Hogg, Shelley's college-mate at University College, referred to
+Oxford as a seat of learning. "Why do you call it so?" Shelley cried
+indignantly. "Because," Hogg replied, "it is a place in which learning
+sits very comfortably, well thrown back as in an easy chair, and
+sleeps so soundly that neither you nor I nor anybody else can wake
+her." Permanent endowments had transferred the seat of learning from a
+nobly indigent university to the colleges, and the deep and dull
+potations of endowed tutors had put it asleep on the common-room
+chairs.
+
+The nineteenth century did not altogether arouse it. "The studies of
+the university," according to the testimony of the Oxford Commission
+of 1850, "were first raised from their abject state by a statute
+passed in 1800." Heretofore all students had pursued the same studies,
+and there was no distinction to be gained at graduation except the
+mere fact of becoming a Bachelor of Arts. The statute of 1800 provided
+that such students as chose might distinguish themselves from the rest
+by taking honors; and for both passman and honor man it provided a
+dignified and quite undebauchable university examining board. At first
+the subjects studied were, roughly speaking, the same for passman and
+honor man; the difference was made by raising the standard of the
+honor examination. The examination followed the mediaeval custom in
+being mainly oral; and though it soon came to be written, it still
+preserves the tradition of the mediaeval disputation by including a
+_viva voce_ which is open to the attendance of the public. Throughout
+the nineteenth century the development consisted mainly in adding a
+few minor schools.
+
+The good and bad features of the English college system as a whole
+should not be hard to distinguish. In all social aspects the colleges
+are as nearly perfect as human institutions are capable of becoming,
+and they are the foundation of an unequaled athletic life.
+Educationally, their qualities are mixed. For the purpose of common or
+garden English gentlemen, nothing could be better than a happy
+combination of tutorial instruction and university examining. For the
+purposes of scholarly instruction in general, and of instruction in
+the modern sciences and mechanic arts in particular, few things could
+be worse than the system as at present construed.
+
+To exult over the superiority of American institutions in so many of
+the things that make up a modern university would not be a very
+profitable proceeding. Let us neglect the imperfections of Oxford. It
+is of much greater profit to consider the extraordinary social
+advantages that arise from the division of the university into
+colleges, and the educational advantages of the honor schools. These
+are points with regard to which we are as poor as Oxford is poor in
+the scope of university instruction.
+
+The point will perhaps be clearer for a brief review of the manner in
+which our college system grew out of the English. The development is
+the reverse of what we have just been considering. In England, the
+colleges overshadowed the university and sapped its life. With us, the
+university has overshadowed the college and is bidding fair to
+annihilate it.
+
+
+VII
+
+THE COLLEGE IN AMERICA
+
+In 1636 the Commonwealth of Massachusetts passed an act to establish a
+"schoole or colledge," and set apart a tract of land in "New Towne" as
+its seat, which they called Cambridge. Our Puritan forefathers had
+carried from the English university the conviction that "sound
+learning" is the "root of true religion," and were resolved, in their
+own vigorous phrase, that it should not be "buried in the graves of
+the fathers." In 1638 a master of arts of Emmanuel College, Cambridge,
+John Harvard, bequeathed to the new institution his library and half
+his fortune, some L780. A timber building was erected and a
+corporation formed which bore the donor's name. From the regulations
+in force in 1655 it is evident that in its manner of life, its laws of
+government, the studies taught, and the manner of granting the degree,
+Harvard College was a close counterpart of the English college of the
+early seventeenth century, its very phraseology including such terms
+as "disputing," "proceeding," "determining." It was the first
+institution of higher education in British America. Until the founding
+of the first state university, the University of Virginia, in 1819,
+the constitution afforded the principal model for subsequent
+foundations, and to-day colleges of the Harvard type are perhaps the
+strongest factor in American education. Harvard thus transplanted to
+American soil the full measure of the traditions of the Middle Ages,
+many of which exist in a modified form to-day.
+
+In "Harvard College by an Oxonian" Dr. George Birkbeck Hill suggests
+that John Harvard expected others to found similar institutions which
+collectively were to reproduce the University of Cambridge in New
+England. The supposition is by no means impossible, and the manuscript
+records in the Harvard Library would perhaps reward research. But
+whatever the intention, it is abundantly clear that in the full
+English sense of the word no second college was established at
+Cambridge. The first constitution was in all essentials the same as
+that of to-day. Hutchinson's "History of Massachusetts" records
+(1676): "There are but four fellowships, the two seniors have each
+30_l._ per ann. and the two juniors 15_l._, but no diet is allowed:
+There are tutors to all such as are admitted students.... The
+government of these colledges is in the governor and magistrates of
+Massachusetts and the president of the colledge, together with the
+teaching elders of the six adjacent towns." The fellows are the
+forbears of the modern corporation, the tutors of the faculty; and
+though the institution has been separated from the state, the
+"teaching elders" are the earliest overseers. Furthermore, the
+endowment of Harvard has remained undivided; and generations elapsed
+before the present very un-English division was made by which the
+teaching force is separated into independent faculties for arts and
+the various professions. From the first the "college" was a
+"university" in that it granted degrees; and less than twenty years
+after its founding the two terms are used as synonymous; an appendix
+to what is called the charter of Harvard "College" calls the
+institution a "University." This confusion of terms still persists,
+and is found at most other American institutions, the constitutions of
+which were largely modeled after that of Harvard. For generations the
+endowments and the teaching force of the American college and
+university were identical. Thus as regards its constitution the
+typical American university is a single English college writ large.
+
+Almost from the outset, however, there were, in one sense of the word,
+several colleges. In "An Inventory of the whole Estate of Harvd
+Colledge taken by the President & Fellows as they find the same to be
+Decemb. 10, 1654," the first two items are as follows:--
+
+"Imprs. The building called the old colledge, conteyning a Hall,
+Kitchen, Buttery, Cellar, Turrett & 5 Studeys & therin 7 chambers for
+students in them. A Pantry & small corne Chamber. A library & Books
+therin, vallued at 400lb.
+
+"It. Another house called Goffes colledge, & was purchased of Edw:
+Goffe. conteyning five chambers. 18 studyes. a kitchen cellar & 3
+garretts."[3]
+
+It is to be noted that "Old Colledge," which was Harvard's building,
+had a kitchen, buttery, and cellar, a pantry and a small corn chamber,
+and was thus primitively modeled after an English hall or college.
+Presumably the inmates, like their cousins across the water, dined in
+the hall. As for "Goffe's colledge," granting that the punctuation of
+the inventory is intentional, it had a kitchen cellar, which would
+seem to imply a kitchen; and it is not impossible that there should be
+a comma after "kitchen." No hall is mentioned, and it is hardly likely
+that there could have been so imposing a room in what was built for a
+private house; but it would have been possible and natural to serve
+meals in the largest of the five "chambers." A third building
+Hutchinson's history describes as "a small brick building called the
+Indian Colledge, where some few Indians did study, but now it is a
+printing house," the first printing house in British America. The two
+earliest buildings at Harvard would thus be the abodes of separate
+communities, and though I can find no intimation as to the Indian
+College, it can scarcely be doubted that since it was established for
+the separate use of the redskins, it contained a separate
+living-plant. A later record shows that there was a separate kitchen
+in the first Stoughton Hall.
+
+These early "colledges" at Harvard are more properly termed halls, and
+such as survived are now so called. They had probably little in common
+with the democratic English halls of the Middle Ages. Both at Oxford
+and at Cambridge the halls of the seventeenth century were, as I have
+said, mere pendants of the colleges; they must have had a separate
+character as a social community and a certain independence; but if
+they had separate endowments, they did not manage them, and each of
+them depended for its instruction mainly on the college to which it
+was affiliated. The printed records of the early American halls are
+too meagre to warrant definite conclusions; but they seem to show that
+the halls were conceived in the spirit of the English hall of the
+seventeenth century, in that they provided for separate social and
+residential communities without separate endowment or teaching force.
+If the increase of students at Harvard had been rapid, it is not
+unlikely that many new halls would have been established, each the
+home of a complete community; but for half a century the number
+fluctuated between fifteen and thirty. If we take the English estimate
+of two hundred and fifty as the largest feasible size for a single
+community, the limit was not reached until as late as 1840. By 1676
+the timber "colledge" built at the charge of Mr. Harvard, which bore
+his name, had been superseded by the first Harvard Hall, which
+Hutchinson describes as "a fair pile of brick building covered with
+tiles by reason of the late Indian warre not yet finished.... It
+contains twenty chambers for students, two in a chamber, a large hall
+which serves for a chapel; over that a convenient library." In these
+ample accommodations it was found that the student body could be most
+conveniently and cheaply fed as a single community. Thus, like the
+idea of a group of colleges with separate finances and teaching
+bodies, the idea of separate residential halls must have passed away
+with the generation of divines educated in England. The American
+college and the American university remained identical, not only
+educationally and in their finances, but as a social organization.
+This fact has caused a curious reversion in America toward the
+mediaeval type of university, both socially and educationally.
+
+As the university has expanded, it has declined socially: to-day the
+residential life is only a degree better than that in the ancient
+chamberdekyns. Educationally, the reversion has been fortunate: the
+university is alive to the needs of the life about it. If it here
+resembles the modern German universities, this is largely due to the
+fact that both have more faithfully preserved the system and the
+spirit of the Middle Ages: the resemblance is quite as much a matter
+of native growth in America as of foreign imitation. In England, the
+mediaeval idea of a multiplicity of residential bodies has survived,
+and the educational idea of the mediaeval university has perished. In
+Germany, the educational idea has survived, and the old community life
+has perished. In America, the two ideas have survived by virtue of
+their identity. But for the same reason both are in a rudimentary and
+very imperfect state of development.
+
+FOOTNOTE:
+
+[3] William G. Brown in _The Nation_, vol. 61, No. 1585, p. 346.
+
+
+
+
+V
+
+THE PROBLEMS OF THE AMERICAN UNIVERSITY
+
+
+I
+
+THE SOCIAL AND ATHLETIC PROBLEM
+
+The imperfection of the modern American university in its social
+organization has been stated with the utmost clearness and authority,
+at least as regards Harvard. The "Harvard Graduates' Magazine" for
+September, 1894, published posthumously an article by Frank Bolles,
+late secretary of the college, entitled "The Administrative Problem."
+"In the present state of affairs," says Mr. Bolles, "student social
+life is stunted and distorted.... There is something very ugly in the
+possibility of a young man's coming to Cambridge, and while here
+sleeping and studying alone in a cheerless lodging, eating alone in a
+dismal restaurant, feeling himself unknown, and so alone in his
+lectures, his chapel, and his recreations, and not even having the
+privilege of seeing his administrative officers, who know most of his
+record, without having to explain to them at each visit who he is and
+what he is, before they can be made to remember that he is a living,
+hoping, or despairing part of Harvard College."
+
+Some of these men who fail to find a place in the social community
+meet their isolation grimly and are embittered against life. Others,
+after a few months or a year of lonesomeness and neglect, give up
+their university career broken-hearted, and by so doing perhaps take
+the first step in a life of failures. One man of whom I happened to
+know confided to his daily themes a depth of misery of which it can
+only be hoped that it was hysterical. At night when he heard a step on
+his staircase he prayed that it might be some one coming to see him.
+The tide of undergraduate life and of joy in living flowed all about
+him and left him thirsting. If a man finds sweetness in the uses of
+such adversity, it can only be by virtue of the firmest and calmest of
+tempers. Sometimes fellows starve physically without a friend with
+whom to share their hardship, living perhaps on bread, milk, and
+oatmeal, which they cook over the study lamp. Occasionally one hears
+disquieting rumors that such short rations have resulted in disease
+and even death before the authorities were aware. If this be so, the
+hardships of life in the earliest mediaeval university, though far
+enough removed from us to be picturesque, could hardly have been more
+real.
+
+The sickness of the body politic has been portrayed with artistic
+sympathy and veracity by Mr. C. M. Flandrau, in his "Harvard
+Episodes," the wittiest and most searching of studies of undergraduate
+life. It is no doubt for this reason that the book is both read and
+resented by the healthy and unthinking college man.
+
+To dwell on such individual instances would be unpleasant. The point
+of importance is to show how the social chaos affects the health of
+the community as a whole. As it happens, we have a barometer. For
+better or for worse, the moving passion of the undergraduate body,
+aside from studies, is athletic success. If athletics prosper, it is
+because the life of the college finds an easy and natural expression;
+if athletics languish, there is pretty sure to be some check on
+wholesome functioning.
+
+The causes of Harvard's abundant failures and the remedies have been a
+fertile theme of discussion. One cause is obvious. The rivals with
+distressing frequency have produced better teams. Every one knows that
+what Cambridge chooses to call Yale luck is nine parts Yale pluck; and
+the quality is well developed at Princeton, Pennsylvania, and
+elsewhere. But why is it developed at these places more than at
+Harvard? The explanations are legion. The first cry was bad coaching.
+This was repeated until the fault was corrected, at least in part,
+and until every one was wholly tired of hearing the explanation. Then
+came the cry of bad physical training. This in turn was repeated until
+it brought partial remedy and total weariness of the agitation. By and
+by, all other complaints having been worn threadbare, Harvard's defeat
+was attributed to the fog on Soldier's Field. It is not unlikely that
+the fog will be dissipated and the athletes duly benefited. Yet it is
+far from certain that this will make the athletic body sound.
+
+The fault lies deeper than Yale pluck--or even the fog on Soldier's
+Field. It is to be found in the conditions, social, administrative,
+and even educational, which are at the basis of the life of the
+university. If these conditions were peculiar to Harvard, it would
+decidedly not be worth while to discuss them publicly. But they are
+inherent in the type of university of which Harvard is the earliest
+and most developed example, and are destined to crop out in every
+American institution of learning in proportion as it grows, as Harvard
+has grown, from the English college of a few decades ago into the
+Teutonized university of the present and of the future. In considering
+the causes, it is necessary to speak concretely of our one eminent
+example; but the main fact brought out will be applicable in greater
+or less degree to the present or future of any American college.
+
+The sources of Harvard's weakness are mainly social. When the college
+was small, it had its share of victory; but almost from the year when
+it began to outgrow its rivals, its prowess declined. Forty years ago,
+and even less, the undergraduate constitution of American institutions
+was, roughly speaking, that of the colleges of Oxford and Cambridge: a
+freshman was measurably sure of falling into easy relationship with
+the fellows of his class and of other classes, and thus of finding his
+level or his pinnacle in athletic teams and in clubs. Considered as a
+machine for developing good fellows and good sportsmen, it was well
+adjusted and well oiled; it worked. But it was not capable of
+expansion. Two or three hundred fellows can live and even dine
+together with comfort and an increase of mutual understanding; they
+soon become an organized community. When a thousand or two live as a
+single community and dine at one board (let us call it dining), the
+social bond relaxes. Next door neighbors are unknown to one another,
+having no common ground of meeting, and even the college commons fail
+to bring them together. The relaxing influence of the hour spent at
+table and in the subsequent conversation, during which social
+intercourse should most freely flourish, is quite lost. The
+undergraduate body is a mob, or at best an aggregation of shifting
+cliques. If men live in crowds or in cliques, their life is that of
+crowds or of cliques, and is unprofitable both to themselves and to
+the community that should prosper by their loyal activity.
+
+It is true that there are societies and clubs, but these also to a
+certain degree have been swamped in the rising tide of undergraduates.
+With freshman classes as large as those of to-day, the old social
+machinery becomes incapable of sifting the clubable from the less
+clubable, those who deserve recognition in the body of undergraduates
+from those who do not. The evil is increased by the fact that as a
+rule in America the social life is organized early in the
+undergraduate course, so that the men who fail of election in the
+first year or two have failed for good. There are, to be sure, cases
+in which men who have later developed signal merit have been taken
+into the all-important societies and clubs of the upper classmen, and
+sometimes these societies make a special and most creditable effort
+thus to remedy the failures of the system; but the men who are thus
+elected are an exception, and an exception of the kind that proves
+the rule. Unless a man has been prominent in one of the large
+preparatory schools, or becomes prominent in athletics in the first
+year or so, there is only one way to make sure of meeting such fellows
+as he wishes to know, and that is both to choose friends and to avoid
+them with an eye to social chances, a method which is scarcely to be
+commended. As the incoming classes grow larger, there is an
+increasingly large proportion of undergraduates who fail to qualify in
+the first year or two in any of these ways. Throughout their course
+they neither receive benefit from the general life of the university
+nor contribute to it. They are often of loyal and disinterested
+character, and they not infrequently develop into men of exceptional
+ability in all of the paths of undergraduate life; not a few of them
+have been 'varsity captains. But instead of exerting the influence on
+the welfare of the university which such men might and should exert,
+they find it impossible to get into the main currents, and revolve
+impotently on the outside, each in the particular eddy where fate has
+thrust him.
+
+At Harvard, where the evil has long been recognized, a remedy has been
+sought in increasing the membership of the great sophomore and senior
+societies, the Institute of 1770 and the Hasty Pudding Club. The
+result has been the reverse of what was intended. The larger the club
+the less compact its life and its influence,--what a few men have
+gained the club has lost. The tendency toward disintegration is
+confirmed by a peculiarity of the organization of the societies. The
+first half of the members of the Institute form a separate club, the
+D. K. E., or Dickey. From this the second half are excluded, becoming
+a sort of social fringe; they often form a part of the mob that dines
+at Memorial or of the cliques that dine in boarding-houses, and are
+only a shade less excluded than the rest from the centres of the
+college life. If this inner club, the Dickey, were the instrument of a
+united and efficient public spirit, the case would not be so bad, but
+its members in turn are split into a number of small clubs; as a
+social organization the Dickey is mainly a name. If now these small
+clubs took a strong part in the general life of the college, the case
+would still not be so bad; but each spends its main strength in
+struggling with the others to secure as many members as possible from
+the first ten of the Dickey. They are scarcely to be regarded as
+engines of public spirit.
+
+The same is true of the great senior society, the Hasty Pudding. Its
+most prominent members belong to the few small clubs of upper
+classmen; the rest are as much a social fringe as the later tens of
+the Institute. And the senior clubs, like the clubs of the under
+classmen, are more interested in their private politics than in the
+policy of the college as a whole. At Yale the senior societies still
+exert a strong and generally wholesome influence, but at Harvard they
+have long ceased to do so, if they ever did. In proportion as a man is
+successful in the social world the system lifts him out of the body of
+undergraduate life. The reward of athletic distinction or of
+good-fellowship is a sort of pool pocket, upon getting into which a
+man is definitely out of the game. The leaders in the college life,
+social and athletic, are chosen on the superficial tests of the
+freshman year, and are not truly representative; and the organization
+of which they become a part is calculated only to suppress general and
+efficient public spirit. The outer layers are dead wood and the
+kernels sterile. This is at least one reason why Harvard does not
+oftener win.
+
+In all this there is no place for a philosophy of despair. The spirit
+of the undergraduate, clubbed and unclubbed, is normal and sound. The
+efforts which the clubs themselves make from time to time to become
+representative are admirably public spirited; and there is no less
+desire on the part of the outsiders to live for the best interests of
+the college. On the day of an athletic contest the university is
+behind the team, heart and lungs; and when defeat comes it is felt
+alike by all conditions of men. From time to time ancient athletes
+journey to Cambridge to exhort the undergraduate body to pull
+together; and it is a poor orator indeed who cannot set in motion
+strong currents of enthusiasm. Half an hour of earnest talk on the
+strenuous life from Theodore Roosevelt has often been known to raise a
+passion of aspiration that has positively lasted for weeks. But the
+social system cannot be galvanized into life and functioning. The
+undergraduates aspire and strive, but every effort is throttled by a
+Little Old Man of the Sea. When all is said and done, the mob and the
+cliques remain mob and cliques; with discord within and exclusive
+without, there is small hope of organized efficiency.
+
+At Yale the oligarchic spirit of the senior societies is compact and
+operative where that of the Harvard clubs is not; but Yale also is
+being swamped. The vast and increasing mob of the unaffiliated has
+several times within the last decade shown a shocking disrespect for
+the sacred authority of the captains; and the non-representative
+character of the sophomore societies, from which the senior societies
+are recruited, has been a public scandal. One result of this disorder
+is that the ancient athletic prestige is slipping away, or is so far
+in abeyance that it is again a question whether Harvard or Yale
+has--shall we say the worse team? The case of the older universities
+is typical. Other institutions are expanding as fast or faster, and it
+is only a question of time when the increase of numbers will swamp the
+social system.
+
+That there is something rotten in the state of Denmark has of late
+been officially recognized, at least at Harvard. In order to create a
+general social and athletic life in the community a Union has been
+established, modeled on the Oxford Union. It would be pleasant to
+picture the College House of the future shaking hands with Claverly,
+the Phi Beta Kappa linking elbows with the Porcellian, and the fellows
+who now, in spite of a desire to be sociable, have lived through four
+years of solitary confinement each in his petty circle, enjoying the
+bosom friendship of all the men they may desire to know. It would be
+pleasant but perhaps not altogether warrantable, when one considers
+the essential nature of the Union.
+
+The Oxford Union of celebrity, as has been pointed out in an earlier
+chapter, is a thing of the past. It was an exclusive institution, in
+which no attempt was made to foster universal brotherhood. When it was
+thrown open to the entire undergraduate world, it lost caste and
+authority. The elect flocked by themselves each in his own exclusive
+club. If the Harvard Union had been modeled on the old exclusive
+Oxford Union, it might perhaps have been equally efficient in bringing
+together a broadly representative body of men. But it was modeled on
+the modern democratic Union. Here is a plain case: When the Oxford
+Union ceased to be exclusive, its best elements flocked by themselves,
+and the result is a growth of small exclusive clubs. At Harvard the
+exclusive clubs and societies are both ancient and honorable, and,
+moreover, very comfortable, and it hardly seems likely that their
+members will rout themselves out of their cosy corners to join the
+merry rout at the Harvard Union.
+
+This is not to cast a gloomy eye upon the new university club; it is
+rather by way of emphasizing the importance of the work it has to do,
+and will succeed in doing. Hitherto the lounging grounds of the
+unaffiliated (alas! that in such an alma mater so many are forever
+unaffiliated!) have been public billiard-rooms and tobacco shops. For
+the solace of a midnight supper one had to go to the locally familiar
+straw-hatted genius of the sandwich, and for the luxury of a late
+breakfast to John of the Holly Tree. And John the Orange Man! Great
+worthies these, ancient and most honorable. But even in the
+enchantment of retrospect they somehow or other explain why so many
+fellows choose to live, for the most part, in small cliques in one
+another's rooms and cultivate the deadly chafing-dish. For the
+unaffiliated--by far the larger part of each class--the new club-house
+will be a Godsend. It is much more fun to cut a nine-o'clock lecture
+if you are sure of a comfortable chair at breakfast and a real napkin;
+and even in the brutal gladness of youth, it is pleasant at a midnight
+supper to be seated. And then, after that athletic dinner at Memorial,
+a place to loaf quietly over a pipe with whatever congenial spirit one
+finds, and listen to the clicking of billiard-balls! It is also
+proposed that the 'varsity athletes have their training tables at the
+new Union, so that any fellow may come to know them clothed and in
+their right minds. I fancy that the new club will leave those old
+worthies a trifle lonesome, and will banish the chafing-dish forever.
+
+The spirit of an old graduate somehow takes kindly to the idea of a
+place like that. How the spirit of Bishop Brooks, for instance, would
+enjoy slipping in of an evening for the cigar they have denied him in
+the house erected in his memory! And for the graduate in the flesh the
+club-house will be no less welcome, especially if he is unlucky enough
+not to have a club of his own to go back to. To love one's alma mater
+it is, of course, not necessary to have a club; but it somehow
+interferes with the sentiment of a home-coming to be obliged to go
+back to Boston by trolley for luncheon and dinner, and to eat it among
+aliens. In the new Union it will even be possible to put up for the
+night. A long step has been made in advance of the old unhappy order.
+Yet the new Union leaves the vital evil in the community life as far
+as ever from solution.
+
+What the authorities have failed to do consciously may, according to
+present indications, be accomplished, in some manner at least, by an
+unconscious growth. When Memorial became inadequate to the mere demand
+for seating-room, new dining-halls were established. In the future it
+is possible that these new halls may be kept within the line where
+community life becomes impossible and mob life begins. If they could
+be, the problem would be at least one step nearer solution. But to
+gain the highest effect of community organization, it is necessary
+that the men who dine in the same hall shall live near one another.
+Under the present system this rarely happens, and when it does, it
+does not even follow that they know one another by sight. Until the
+halls represent some real division in undergraduate life--separate and
+organized communities--they must remain the resort of a student mob.
+
+Fortunately, another movement is discernible in the direction of
+separate residential organization. Already certain of the dormitories
+in American universities are governed democratically by the inmates:
+no student is admitted except by order of a committee of the members.
+The fraternity houses so widely diffused in America offer a still
+better example, almost a counterpart, of the halls of the golden age
+of the mediaeval university. Any considerable development of hall or
+fraternity life in the great universities would result in a dual
+organization of the kind that has proved of such advantage in England,
+so that a man would have his residence in a small democratic
+community, and satisfy his more special interests in the exclusive
+clubs of the university. In such an arrangement the hall would profit
+by the clubman as the clubman would gain influence through the hall.
+All undergraduates would thus be united in the general university
+life in a way which is now undreamed of, and which is unlikely, as I
+think, even in the new Harvard Union.
+
+The tendency toward division in the dining-halls and the dormitories
+is evident also in athletics; but here it is very far from
+unconscious. The division by classes long ago ceased to be an adequate
+means of developing material for the 'varsity teams, and when the
+English rowing coach, Mr. R. C. Lehmann, was in charge of the Harvard
+oarsmen, he outlined a plan for developing separate crews not unlike
+the college crews of England. This system has since been effected with
+excellent results. Separate boating clubs have been established, each
+of which has races among its own crews and races with the crews of its
+rivals. Only one thing has prevented the complete success of the
+system. The division into clubs is factitious, representing no real
+rivalry such as exists among English colleges. To supply this rivalry,
+it is only necessary that each boat club shall represent a hall. The
+same division would of course be equally of benefit in all branches of
+sport. The various teams within the university would then represent a
+real social rivalry, such as has long ceased to exist. This could
+scarcely fail to produce the effect that has been so remarkable at
+the English universities. As in England, a multiplication of contests
+would on the one hand develop far better university material, and on
+the other hand it would lessen rather than exaggerate the excessive
+importance of intercollegiate contests.
+
+
+II
+
+THE ADMINISTRATIVE PROBLEM
+
+The administrative evil of the American university, as typified in
+Harvard, Mr. Bolles described even more vividly than the social evil.
+The bare fact of the problem he stated as follows: "In 1840 the
+college contained 250 students; in 1850, 300; in 1860, 450; in 1870,
+600; in 1880, 800; in 1890, 1300; in 1894, 1600." He then pointed out
+that the only means the authorities have found for meeting this
+increasing demand on the administrative office is, not to divide the
+students into separate small bodies each under a single administrator,
+but to divide the duties of administration among several officers.
+Thus each of the added officers is required to perform his duty toward
+the entire student body. It is apparently assumed that he can
+discharge one duty toward two or three thousand students as
+intelligently as in former years he could discharge two or three
+duties toward two or three hundred. By this arrangement the most
+valuable factor in administration is eliminated--personal knowledge
+and personal contact between the administrator and his charges. It is
+said that the members of the administrative board of the
+college--professors whose time is of extreme value to the university
+and to the world, and who receive no pay as administrators--sit three
+hours a night three nights in the week deciding the cases that come
+before them, not from personal knowledge of the undergraduates
+concerned, but from oral and documentary reports. "It is only by a
+fiction that the Recorder [or the Dean, or the member of the
+administrative board] can be assumed to have any personal knowledge of
+even a half of the men whose absences he counts, whose petitions he
+acts upon, and against whose delinquencies he remonstrates; yet the
+fiction is maintained while its absurdity keeps on growing.... If the
+rate of growth and our present administrative system are maintained,
+the Dean and Recorder of Harvard College will [in 1950] be personally
+caring for 6500 individuals, with all of whom they will be presumed to
+have an intelligent acquaintance."
+
+Mr. Bolles lived through the period in which a brilliant band of
+German-trained American professors, having made over our educational
+system as far as possible on German lines, were endeavoring to
+substitute German discipline, or lack of it, for the traditional
+system of collegiate residence which aims to make the college a
+well-regulated social community. At one time these reformers rejoiced
+in the fact that Harvard students attended the ice carnival at
+Montreal or basked in the Bermudan sun while the faculty had no means
+of knowing where they were and no responsibility for the success of
+their college work. The Overseers, however, were not in sympathy with
+the Teutonized faculty, and soon put an end to this; but the reformers
+were, and perhaps still are, only waiting the opportunity to establish
+again the Teutonic license. "It is sometimes said," Mr. Bolles
+continues, "that Harvard may eventually free itself from all its
+remaining parental responsibility and leave students' habits, health,
+and morals to their individual care, confining itself to teaching,
+research, and the granting of degrees. Before it can do this, it must
+be freed from dormitories. As long as fifteen hundred of its students
+live in monastic quarters provided or approved by the university, so
+long must the university be held responsible by the city, by parents,
+and by society at large, for the sanitary and moral condition of such
+quarters. The dormitory system implies and necessitates oversight of
+health and morals. The trouble to-day is that the administrative
+machinery in use is not capable of doing all that is and ought to be
+expected of it.... If it be determined openly that the health and
+morals of Harvard undergraduates are not to occupy the attention of
+the Dean and Board of the college, then the present system may be
+perpetuated, but if this determination is not reached, then either the
+system must be changed or the present attempt to accomplish the
+impossible will go on until something snaps."
+
+Since Mr. Bolles's day there has been much earnest effort to solve the
+administrative problem; but the difficulties have increased rather
+than diminished. The duties of the Dean are still much the same as
+when the freshman class numbered one hundred instead of five. Only the
+Dean has been improved. He is at least five times as human and five
+times as earnest as any other Dean; but the freshman class keeps on
+growing, and when he has satisfied his very exacting conscience and
+retires (or, not having satisfied his conscience, perishes), no man
+knows where his better is to be found. Of the Secretary and the
+Recorder and his assistants Mr. Bolles has spoken. A Regent has among
+other duties a general charge of the rooms the fellows live in, and
+usually makes each room and its occupant a yearly visit--which the
+occupant, in the perversity of undergraduate nature, regards as a
+visitation. Then there is the physician. So large a proportion of the
+undergraduates were found to be isolated and unhappy in their
+circumstances, and remote from the knowledge of the authorities, that
+it became necessary to appoint some one to whom they might appeal in
+need. Thus the details as to each undergraduate's residence are in the
+hands of seven different officials, each of whom, in order to attain
+the best results, requires a personal acquaintance with the thousands
+of undergraduates. Furthermore the entire body of undergraduates
+changes every four years. If every administrator had the commodity of
+lives commonly attributed to the cat, the duties of their offices
+would still be infinitely beyond them.
+
+Mr. Bolles suggested a solution of the administrative problem: "If the
+college is too large for its dean and administrative board to manage
+in the way most certain to benefit its students, it should be divided,
+using as a divisor the number ... which experts may agree in thinking
+is the number of young men whom one dean and board should be expected
+to know and govern effectively."
+
+When Mr. Bolles wrote, one class of administrative officer and one
+only was limited in his duties to a single small community: in each
+building in which students lived, a proctor resided who was supposed
+to see that the Regent's orders were enforced. Since then another
+step has been taken in the same direction; a board of advisers has
+been established, each member of which is supposed to have a helpful
+care of twenty-five freshmen. These two officials, it will be seen,
+divide the administrative duties of an English tutor. That they
+represent a step toward Mr. Bolles's solution of the administrative
+difficulty has probably never occurred to the authorities; and as yet
+it must be admitted the step is mainly theoretical. The position of
+both, as I know from sad personal experience, is such that their
+duties, like those of all other administrators, resolve into a mere
+matter of police regulation. The men are apt to resist all friendly
+advances. In the end, a proctor's activities usually consist in
+preventing them of a Sunday from shouting too loud over games of
+indoor football, and at other times from blowing holes through the
+cornice with shotguns. The case of the freshman adviser is much the
+same. His first duty is to expound to his charges the mysteries of the
+elective system, and to help each student choose his courses.
+According to the original intention, he was to exert as far as
+possible a beneficial personal influence on newcomers; but the result
+seldom follows the intention. Beyond the visit which each freshman is
+obliged to make to his adviser in order to have his list of electives
+duly signed, there is nothing except misdemeanor to bring the two
+within the same horizon. When the adviser takes pains to proffer
+hospitality, the freshman's first thought is that he is to be
+disciplined. When, as often happens, a proctor is also a freshman
+adviser, he unites the two administrative duties of an English tutor;
+but his position is much less favorable in that his duties are
+performed toward two distinct bodies of men. With time, tact, and
+labor, he might conceivably force himself into personal relationship
+with his fifty-odd charges; but the inevitable ground of meeting, such
+as the English tutor finds in his teaching, is lacking. An attempt to
+become acquainted is very apt to appear gratuitous. In point of fact,
+such acquaintance is scarcely expected by the university, and is
+certainly not paid for. What little an administrator earns is apt to
+be so much an hour (and not so very much) for teaching. A gratuitous
+office is so difficult that one hesitates to perform it gratuitously.
+If the young instructor is bent on making himself unnecessary trouble,
+there is plenty of opportunity in connection with his teaching; and
+here, of course, owing to the characteristic lack of organic
+coordination, he has to deal with a body of men who, except by rare
+accident, are quite distinct both from those whom he advises and
+those whom he proctorizes. The system at Harvard may be different in
+detail from that at other American universities; but wherever a large
+body of undergraduates are living under a single administrative
+system, it can scarcely be different in kind.
+
+Enough has been said to show that the only office which an
+administrator can perform is a police office. Where the college and
+the university are identical, the element of personal influence is
+necessarily eliminated. But if the college were divided into separate
+administrative units, the situation would be very different. The seven
+general and two special offices I have indicated might be discharged,
+as regards each undergraduate, by a dean and a few proctor-advisers;
+and as the students and their officers would be living in the same
+building, personal knowledge and influence might become the
+controlling force. The solution of the administrative problem is
+identical with the solution of the social and athletic problem, and in
+both cases a movement toward it is begun. If the student body is
+eventually divided into residential halls of the early mediaeval type,
+much good will result, and probably nothing but good, even if the
+tutorial function proper is absent. As to the addition of the
+tutorial function, that is a question of extreme complexity and
+uncertainty, in order to grasp which it is necessary to review the
+peculiar educational institutions of American universities.
+
+
+III
+
+THE EDUCATIONAL PROBLEM
+
+As regards the American teaching system, the fact that the college so
+long remained identical with the university has caused little else
+than good. At Oxford and Cambridge, when a demand arose for
+instruction in new fields, the university could not meet it because it
+had little or no wealth and had surrendered its teaching function; and
+the score of richly endowed colleges, by force of their inertia,
+collectively resisted the demand. The enlargement in the scope of
+instruction has been of the slowest. In America, each new demand
+instantly created its supply. The moment the students in theology
+required more than a single professor, their tuition fees as well as
+other funds could be applied to the creation of a divinity school; and
+the professorships in law, medicine, and the technical professions
+were likewise organized into schools, each fully equipped under a
+separate faculty for the pursuit of its special aim. Thus the ancient
+college was developed by segregation into a fully organized modern
+university. American institutions are composed of a reduplication,
+not of similar colleges, but of distinct schools, each with its special
+subject to teach. This fact makes possible a far higher standard of
+instruction. The virtue of the administrative and social organization
+in the English university, as has been pointed out, results from
+division of the university into separate communities,--distinct
+organs, each with its separate activity. The virtue of the American
+university in its teaching functions results from a precisely similar
+cause.
+
+In the case of the college, one or two details have lately been the
+occasion of criticism. In the educational as in the social and
+administrative functions, the machinery is apparently overgrown. Until
+well into the nineteenth century, the body of instruction offered was
+much the same as in the English colleges of the seventeenth century,
+or in the pass schools of to-day,--a modified version of the mediaeval
+trivium and quadrivium. When a new world of intellectual life was
+opened, most academic leaders regarded it with abhorrence. The old
+studies were the only studies to develop the manners and the mind; the
+new studies were barbarous, and dwarfed the understanding. All
+learning had been contained in a pint-pot, and must continue to be so.
+If the old curriculum had prevailed, the old system might have
+continued to serve, in spite of the enormous increase of students; but
+it did not. Discussions of the educational value of the new learning
+are still allowed to consume paper and ink; but the cause of the old
+pint-pot was lost decades ago. All branches are taught, and are open
+to all students.
+
+The live question to-day both in England and America is not whether we
+shall recognize the new subjects, but how and in what proportion we
+shall teach them. In England, where the colleges and the university
+are separate, the teaching and the examining are separate. The student
+prepares in college for an examination by the university. It is as a
+result of this that the subjects of instruction have been divided and
+organized into honor schools; and here again the division and
+organization have resulted in sounder and more efficient functioning.
+In America, such a division has never been made: the teaching and the
+degree-granting offices have remained identical. The professor in each
+"course" is also the examiner, and the freedom of choice of necessity
+goes not by groups of related studies but by small disconnected
+courses. As the field of recognized knowledge developed, new courses
+were added, and the student was granted a greater range of choice.
+Whereas of old all the instruction of the college might and had to be
+taken in four years, the modern courses could scarcely be exhausted in
+a full century. This American system, earliest advocated at Harvard,
+is called the elective system, and has made its way, in a more or less
+developed form, into all American universities worthy of the name. Its
+primary work was that of the Oxford honor schools--the shattering of
+the old pint-pot. It has done this work; but it is now in train to
+become no less a superstition than the older system, and is thus no
+less a menace to the cause of education.
+
+It is perhaps only natural, though it was scarcely to be expected,
+that the university which in late years has most severely criticised
+the elective system is that which a quarter of a century ago
+deliberately advocated it, and in the face of almost universal
+opposition justified it in the eyes of American educators. There has
+evidently been a miscalculation. Yet though Harvard has cautiously
+acknowledged its failure in the persons of no less authorities than
+Professor Muensterberg and Dean Briggs, the element of error has not
+yet been clearly stated, nor has the remedy been proposed. Many things
+have been said against the elective system, but they may all be summed
+up in one phrase: it is not elective. This is no specious paradox. It
+is the offer of free election that is specious.
+
+No offer could seem fairer. The student is at liberty to choose as he
+will. He may specialize microscopically or scatter his attention over
+the universe; he may elect the most ancient subjects or the most
+modern, the hardest or the easiest. No offer, I repeat, could seem
+fairer. But experience disillusions. Some day or other a serious
+student wakes up to the fact that he is the victim of--shall we say a
+thimble-rigging game? For example, let us take the case of a serious
+specialist. Of all the world's knowledge the serious specialist values
+only one little plot. A multitude of courses is listed in the
+catalogue, fairly exhausting his field. Delightful! Clearly he can see
+which walnut-shell covers the pea. He chooses for his first year's
+study four courses--the very best possible selection, the only
+selection, to open up his field. One moment: on closer scrutiny he
+finds that two of the four courses are given at the same hour, and
+that, therefore, he cannot take them in the same year. Still, there
+are at his command other courses, not so well adapted to his purposes,
+but sooner or later necessary. He chooses one. Hold again! On closer
+inspection he finds that appended to the course is a Roman numeral,
+and that the same numeral is against one of his other courses. After
+half an hour's search in the catalogue he finds that, though the two
+courses are given at different hours, and indeed on different days of
+the week, the mid-year and final examinations in both take place on
+the same days. Obviously these two cannot be taken in the same year.
+With dampened spirits his eye lights on a second substitute. He could
+easily deny himself this course; but it is vastly interesting, if not
+important, and he must arrange a year's work. Behold, this most
+interesting course was given last year, and will be given next year,
+but neither love nor money nor the void of a soul hungering for
+knowledge could induce the professor who gives it to deliver one
+sentence of one lecture; he is busy and more than busy with another
+course which will not be given next year. The specialist is at last
+forced to elect a course he does not really want. One entanglement as
+to hours of which the present deponent had knowledge forced a
+specialist in Elizabethan literature to elect--and, being a candidate
+for a degree with distinction, to get a high grade in--a course in the
+history of finance legislation in the United States. This was a tragic
+waste, for so many and so minute are the courses offered that the
+years at the student's disposal are all too few to cover even a
+comparatively narrow field. The specialist may well ruminate on the
+philosophy of Alice and her Wonderland jam. Yesterday he could elect
+anything, and to-morrow anything; but how empty is to-day!
+
+Highly as the modern university regards the serious specialist, a more
+general sympathy will probably be given to the man who is seeking a
+liberal education. Such a man knows that in four years at his disposal
+he cannot gain any real scientific knowledge even of the studies of
+the old-fashioned college curriculum. As taught now, at Harvard, they
+would occupy, according to President Eliot's report for 1894-95, twice
+four years. But by choosing a single group of closely related
+subjects, and taking honors in it, he hopes to master a considerable
+plot of the field of knowledge. I will not say that he chooses the
+ancient classics, for--though they are admirably taught in a general
+way in the great Oxford Honor School of Literae Humaniores--the
+American student may be held to require, even in studying the
+classics, a larger element of scientific culture, which would take
+more time than is to be had. For the same reason I will not say that
+he chooses the modern languages and literatures, though such a choice
+might be defended. Let us say that he chooses a single modern
+language and literature--his own.[4] Surely this is not too large a
+field for four years' study. Of classics, mathematics, science, and
+history he has supposedly been given a working knowledge in the
+preparatory school. For the rest he relies on the elective system.
+
+Even in the beginning, like the specialist, he is unable to choose the
+courses he most wants, because of the conflict of the hours of
+instruction and examination; and this difficulty pursues him year by
+year, increasing as the subjects to be taken grow fewer and fewer. But
+let us dismiss this as an incidental annoyance. His fate is
+foreshadowed when he finds that the multitude of courses by which
+alone he could cover the entire field of English literature would fill
+twice the time at his disposal. Already he has discovered that the
+elective system is not so very elective. He sadly omits Icelandic and
+Gothic, and all but one half course is Anglo-Saxon. Some day he means
+to cover the ground by means of a history of literature and
+translations; but in point of fact, as the subjects are not at all
+necessary for his degree, and as he is overburdened with other work,
+he never does. He sticks to his last, and is the more willing to do
+so because, being wise beyond the wont of undergraduates, he knows
+that it will be well to fortify his knowledge of the English language
+and literature with a complementary knowledge of the history of the
+English people, and of the history and literature of the neighboring
+Germans and French.
+
+Having barely time for a rapid survey of these complementary subjects,
+he elects only the introductory courses. In the aggregate they require
+many precious hours, and to take them he is obliged to omit outright
+English literature of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries; but he
+knows that it is better to neglect a finial or two than the buttresses
+of the edifice he is building. Again he has miscalculated. After his
+complementary courses are begun, and it is too late to withdraw from
+them, he discovers even more clearly than the specialist how very
+unelective the elective system can be. It is the same old question of
+the thimble and the pea. These introductory courses are intended to
+introduce him to the study of history and of literature, not to
+complement his studies of English. What he wanted to know in English
+history was the social and the political movements, the vital and
+picturesque aspect; what he is taught is the sources and
+constitutions--the dry bones. In German and French he wanted to know
+the epochs of literature; he is taught the language, considered
+scientifically, or, at most, certain haphazard authors in whom he has
+only a casual interest. If he is studying for honors, he is obliged to
+waste enough time on these disappointing courses to reach a high grade
+in each. The system of free election is mighty, for he is a slave to
+it.
+
+This difficulty is typical. Thus a student of history or of German who
+wants to study Elizabethan literature for its bearing on his subject
+is obliged to spend one full course--a quarter of a year's work--on
+the language of four or five plays of Shakespeare before he is
+permitted to take a half course on Shakespeare as a dramatist; and
+even then all the rest of the Elizabethan period is untouched.
+
+Let us suppose that our student of English is wary as well as wise,
+preternaturally wary, and leaves all complementary subjects to private
+reading--for which he has no time. He is then able to devote himself
+to the three or four most important epochs in English literature. He
+has to leave out much that is of importance, so that he cannot hope to
+gain a synoptic view of the field as a whole; but of his few subjects
+he will at least be master. Here at last is the thimble that covers
+the pea. Not yet! In four courses out of five of those devoted to the
+greatest writers, the teacher's attention is directed primarily to a
+very special and scientific study of the language; the examination
+consists in explaining linguistic cruxes. Literary criticism, even of
+the most sober kind, is quite neglected. If the student learns only
+what is taught, he may attain the highest grades and the highest
+honors without being able in the end to distinguish accurately the
+spirit of Chaucer from that of Elizabethan literature.
+
+Furthermore, not every student is sufficiently well advised to know
+precisely what courses he requires to attain his end. For example, to
+gain an understanding of the verse forms and even the spirit of Middle
+English and Elizabethan English, it is necessary to know the older
+French and Italian; but, as it happened, our student was not aware of
+the fact until he broke his shins against it, and it was nobody's
+business to tell him of it. And even if he had been aware of it, he
+could not have taken those subjects without leaving great gaps in his
+English studies. He has graduated _summa cum laude_ and with highest
+honors in English; but he has not even a correct outline knowledge of
+his subject. His education is a thing of shreds and patches.
+
+Whatever may be the aim of the serious student, the elective system is
+similarly fatal to it. I must be content with a single instance more.
+The signal merit of the old-fashioned curriculum was that its
+insistence on the classics and mathematics insured a mental culture
+and discipline of a very high order, and of a kind that is impossible
+where the student elects only purely scientific courses, or courses in
+which he happens to be especially interested. Let us suppose that the
+serious student wishes to elect his courses so as to receive this
+discipline. His plight is indicated in "Some Old-fashioned Doubts
+about New-fashioned Education" which have lately been divulged[5] by
+the Dean of Harvard College, Professor Le B. R. Briggs. The
+undergraduate "may choose the old studies but not the old instruction.
+Instruction under an elective system is aimed at the specialist. In
+elective mathematics, for example, the non-mathematical student who
+takes the study for self-discipline finds the instruction too high for
+him; indeed, he finds no encouragement for electing mathematics at
+all." The same is true of the classics.
+
+One kind of student, to be quite candid, profits vastly by the
+elective system, namely, the student whose artistic instinct makes him
+ambitious of gaining the maximum effect, an A.B., with the minimum
+expenditure of means. History D is a good course: the lectures do not
+come until eleven o'clock, and no thought of them blunts the edge of
+the evening before. Semitic C is another good course--only two
+lectures a week, and you can pass it with a few evenings of cramming.
+If such a man is fortunate enough to have learned foreign languages in
+the nursery or in traveling abroad, he elects all the general courses
+in French and German. This sort of man is regarded by Dean Briggs with
+unwonted impatience; but he has one great claim to our admiration. Of
+all possible kinds of students, he alone has found the pea. For him
+the elective system is elective.
+
+The men who developed the elective system, it is quite unnecessary to
+say, had no sinister intention. They were pioneers of educational
+progress who revolted against the narrowness of the old curriculum.
+The nearest means of reform was suggested to them by the German plan,
+and they sought to naturalize this _in toto_ without regard to native
+needs and conditions. But the pioneer work of the elective system has
+been done, and the men who now uphold it in its entirety are clogging
+the wheels of progress no less than those who fought it at the outset.
+The logic of circumstances early forced them to the theory that all
+knowledge is of equal importance, provided only that it is
+scientifically pursued, and this position in effect they still
+maintain. You may elect to study Shakespeare and end by studying
+American finance legislation; but so long as you are compelled to
+study scientifically, bless you, you are free.
+
+The serenity of these men must of late have been somewhat clouded.
+Professor Hugo Muensterberg, as an editorial writer in "Scribner's
+Magazine" lately remarked, "has been explaining, gently but firmly,
+ostensibly to the teachers in secondary schools, but really to his
+colleagues in the Harvard faculty, that they are not imitating the
+German method successfully." In no way is the American college man in
+the same case as the German undergraduate. His preparatory schooling
+is likely to be three years in arrears, and, in any case, what he
+seeks is usually culture, not science. "The new notion of
+scholarship," this writer continues, "by which the degree means so
+much Latin and Greek, or the equivalent of them in botany or
+blacksmithing, finds no favor at all in what is supposed to be the
+native soil of the 'elective system.'" Dr. Muensterberg's own words,
+guarded as they are, are not without point: "Even in the college two
+thirds of the elections are haphazard, controlled by accidental
+motives; election, of course, demands a wide view and broad knowledge
+of the whole field.... A helter-skelter chase of the unknown is no
+election." The writer in "Scribner's" concludes: "It is not desirable
+that a man should sell his birthright for a mess of pottage, even if
+he gets the pottage. If he does not get it, as Dr. Muensterberg
+intimates, of course his state is even worse."
+
+Rough as the elective system is upon the student who aspires to be
+merely a scholar, it is rougher on the undergraduate who only wants to
+train his mind and to equip it for business and professional life. To
+him a purely scientific training is usually a positive detriment.
+Scrupulous exactitude and a sense of the elusiveness of all knowledge
+are an excellent and indispensable part of the bringing up of a
+scholar; but few things are more fitted, if pursued exclusively, to
+check the self-confidence of a normal man and to blight his will. Poor
+Richard had a formula for the case: "A handsaw is a very good thing,
+but not to shave with." Before taking a vigorous hold on the affairs
+of Wall Street or of Washington, our recent graduate has first to get
+away from most of the standards that obtain in the university, or at
+least to supplement them by a host of others which he should have
+learned there. In another passage in the article already quoted, Dean
+Briggs has touched the vital spot. He is speaking of the value, to
+teachers especially, of the peculiar fetich of Teutonized university
+instruction, the thesis, and of its liability to be of fictitious
+value. "Such theses, I suspect, have more than once been accepted for
+higher degrees; yet higher degrees won through them leave the winner
+farther from the best qualities of a teacher, remote from men and
+still more remote from boys. It was a relief the other day to hear a
+head-master say, 'I am looking for an under-teacher. I want first a
+man, and next a man to teach.'" What is true of teaching is even more
+obviously true of the great world of business and of politics. What it
+wants is men.
+
+The cause of the break-down of the elective system, as at present
+constituted, is to be found in the machinery of instruction. The
+office of the teacher has become inextricably mixed up with a totally
+alien office--university discipline. Attendance at lectures is the
+only means of recording a student's presence in the university, and
+success in the examination in lecture courses is the only basis for
+judging of his diligence. At the tolling of a bell the student leaves
+all other affairs to report at a certain place. In the Middle Ages, as
+we have seen, lectures were of necessity the main means of
+instruction. Books were rare and their prices prohibitive. The master
+read and the student copied. To-day, there are tens of thousands of
+books in every college library. Only in the higher courses are
+lectures necessary or profitable. But still instruction is carried on,
+even in the most general courses, by means of professorial lectures.
+Where great periods are covered by leaps and bounds, freshness or
+individuality of treatment is quite impossible. The tolling of the
+college bell dooms hundreds of students to hear a necessarily hurried
+and inarticulate statement of knowledge which has been carefully
+handled in printed form by the most brilliant writers, and to which a
+tutor might refer the student in a few minutes' conference. Modify the
+lecture system? It is the foundation of the police regulation. The
+boasted freedom in elective studies simmers down to this, that it
+enables the student to choose in what courses he shall be made the
+unwilling ally of the administrative officer. The lectures waste the
+time of the student and exhaust the energy of the teacher; but unless
+the lecturers give them and the studious attend, how can the
+university know that the shiftless stay away?
+
+It is necessary, moreover, for the administrator to judge of the
+student's success as well as of his diligence. Twice every year the
+professors hold an examination lasting for three hours in each of
+their several courses. Of late years an ingenious means has been
+devised for making the examination system an even more perfect ally of
+the police. In the middle of each term an examination of one hour is
+held to insure that the student has not only attended lectures but
+studied outside; and, in order to expose the procrastinator, it has
+become the custom for the examination to be given without warning.
+Like the lecture system, the examination system throws the onus of
+discipline on the studious and the teachers. Two thousand students
+write yearly 32,000 examination books. Quite obviously the most
+advanced of the professors cannot spare time for the herculean task of
+reading and duly grading their share of these books. They give over
+most of them to underpaid assistants. The logical result of such a
+system is that the examinations tend to be regarded merely as
+statements of fact, and the reading of the books merely as clerical
+labor. If academic distinctions are disprized in America, both in
+college and out of it, this is amply explained by the fact that they
+attest a student's diligence rather than his ability. They are
+awarded, like a Sunday-school prize, in return for a certain number of
+good-conduct checks.
+
+It is not enough that the machinery of instruction wastes the time of
+the student and debases the office of the examiner; it is, as I have
+said, the cause of the break-down of the elective system. As long as
+each student is required to pursue every study under the eye of the
+disciplinarian, the decision as to what he shall study rests not with
+his desires or his needs, but with an elaborate schedule of lectures
+and examinations. So excessive are the evils of the present system
+that no less a man than Professor William James has advocated the
+abolition of the examinations.
+
+This remedy is perhaps extreme; but the only alternative is almost as
+radical. It is to enable the student, at least the more serious
+student, to slip the trammels of the elective system, and to study
+rationally, and to be rationally examined in, the subject or group of
+subjects which he prefers. In a word, the remedy is to divide and
+organize our courses of instruction for the more serious students into
+groups corresponding in some measure to what the English call honor
+schools.
+
+It may be objected that already it is possible to read for honors. The
+objection will scarcely convince any one who has taken the
+examination. It is oral, and occupies an hour or two. The men who
+conduct it are leading men in the department, and are often of
+world-wide reputation. They are so great that they understand the
+nature of the farce they are playing. No candidate is expected to
+have covered the field of his honor subject even in the broadest
+outlines. When the astute student is not sure of an answer, he
+candidly admits the fact and receives credit for knowing that he does
+not know--a cardinal virtue to the scientific mind. If I may be
+allowed a personal instance, I went up for the examination in English
+literature in complete ignorance as to all but a single brief
+movement. When my ignorances were laid bare, the examiners most
+considerately confined their questions to my period. We had much
+pleasant conversation. Each of the examiners had imparted in his
+courses his latest rays of new light, and each in turn gave me the
+privilege of reflecting these rays to the others. For a brief but
+happy hour my importance was no less than that of the most eminent
+publication of the learned world. It need scarcely be said that such
+examinations are not supposed to have much weight in judging of the
+candidate's fitness. A more important test is a thesis studied from
+original sources, and the most important is good-conduct marks in a
+certain arbitrary number of set lecture courses. The policeman's
+examination is supreme.
+
+
+IV
+
+THE AMERICAN HALL
+
+The college has shown a tendency, as I have indicated, to divide in
+its social life into separate organizations for the purposes of
+residence, dining, and athletics. In the administrative life, at least
+the proctors and the freshman advisers are each in charge of separate
+bodies of undergraduates. In the educational life, a similar tendency
+is noticeable. Year by year there has been an increasing disposition
+to supplement lectures or to substitute them by what is in effect
+tutorial instruction. In the history courses, for example, the
+lectures and examinations have for some time been supplemented by
+private personal conferences. If the student is proceeding properly,
+he is encouraged; if not, he is given the necessary guidance and
+assistance. I do not know what the result has been in the teaching of
+history; but in the teaching of English composition, where the
+conferences have largely supplanted lectures, it has been an almost
+unmixed benefit. The instructor's comments are given a directness and
+a personal interest impossible either in the lecture-room or by means
+of written correction and criticism; and the students are usually
+eager to discuss their work and the means for bettering it. As the
+lecture system proves more and more inadequate, the tutorial
+instruction must necessarily continue to increase, and is not unlikely
+to afford the basis for a more sensibly devised scheme of honor
+schools.
+
+If the American college were organized into separate halls, it would
+be necessary and proper, as Mr. Bolles suggested, to place in each a
+Dean and administrative board; and the most economical plan of
+administration, as he pointed out, would be to give each administrator
+as many duties as possible toward a single set of pupils. Thus the
+proctor on each staircase of the hall would be the adviser of the men
+who roomed on it. It would be only a logical extension of the
+principle to give the proctor-adviser a tutorial office. All this
+indicates a reversion toward the golden age of the mediaeval hall.
+
+Here is where the gain would lie: The administration of the hall would
+make it no longer necessary to rely on the lecture courses for police
+duty, and the wise guidance of a tutor would in some measure remove
+the necessity of the recurrent police examinations. Thus the student
+would be able to elect such courses only as the competent adviser
+might judge best for him; and if the faculty were relieved of the
+labor of unnecessary instruction and examination it would be possible,
+with less expense than the present system involves, to offer a
+well-considered honor examination, and to provide that the examination
+books should be graded not with mere clerical intelligence, but with
+the highest available critical appreciation. Thus and only thus can
+the American honor degree be given that value as an asset which the
+English honor degree has possessed for almost a century.
+
+It would by no means be necessary as at Oxford to make the honor
+examination the only basis for granting the degree. The fewer lecture
+courses which the student found available would be those in which the
+instruction is more advanced--the "university" courses properly
+speaking; and his examinations in these would be a criterion, such as
+Oxford is very much in need of, for correcting the evidence of the
+honor examination. Furthermore, in connection with one or more of
+these courses it would be easy for the student to prepare an honor
+thesis studied from the original sources under the constant advice of
+a university professor. Such an arrangement might be made to combine
+in any desired proportion the merits of the English honor schools
+with the merits of advanced instruction in America. With the
+introduction of the tutor, the American hall would be the complete
+counterpart of the mediaeval hall of the golden age, and would solve
+the educational as well as the social and administrative problem.
+
+As to the details of the new system, experience would be the final
+teacher; but for a first experiment, the English arrangement is in its
+main outline suggestive. An American pass degree might be taken by
+electing, as all students now elect, a certain number of courses at
+random. For the increasing number of those who can afford only three
+years' study, a pass degree would probably prove of the greatest
+advantage. It was by making this sharp distinction between the pass
+degree and the honor degree that the English universities long ago
+solved the question, much agitated still in America, of the three
+years' course. For the honor men[6] two general examinations would
+probably suffice. For his second year honor examination (the English
+"Moderations") a student might select from three or four general
+groups. This examination would necessarily offer precisely that
+opportunity for mental culture the lack of which Dean Briggs laments
+as the worst feature of the elective system as at present conducted.
+Furthermore, it would be easy to arrange the second year honor groups
+so as to include only such subjects as are serviceable both for the
+purposes of a general education and to lead up to the subjects the
+student is likely to elect for final honors. For the final honor
+examination the student might choose from a dozen or more honor
+groups, in any one of which he would receive scientific culture of the
+most advanced type, while at the same time, by means of private
+reading under his tutor, he might fill in very pleasantly the outlines
+of his subject. It is probable that such a system would even
+facilitate the efforts of those who are endeavoring to transplant
+German standards. According to Professor Muensterberg, the student who
+specializes in the German university is a good two years or more in
+advance of the American freshman. The spirit of German instruction
+would thus require that the period of general culture be extended at
+least to the middle of the undergraduate course.
+
+Some such reorganization of our methods of teaching and examining, and
+I fear only this, would enable an undergraduate to choose what he
+wants and to pursue it with a fair chance of success. It would make
+the elective system elective.
+
+A concrete plan for an American hall will perhaps make the project
+clearer. The poorer students at Harvard have for some years had a
+separate dining-hall, Foxcroft, where the fare and the system of
+paying for it are adapted to the slenderest of purses. They have also
+lived mainly in certain primitive dormitories in which the rooms are
+cheapest. More than any other set of men except the clubmen they are a
+united body, or are capable of being made so. When next a bequest is
+received, might not the University erect a building in which a hundred
+or two of these men could live in common? The quadrangle would insure
+privacy, the first requisite of community life; the kitchen and
+dining-hall would insure the maximum comfort and convenience with the
+minimum expense. Nothing could contribute more to the self-respect and
+the general standing of the poorer students than a comfortable and
+well-ordered place and way of living, if only because nothing could
+more surely correct the idiosyncrasies in manners and appearance which
+are fostered by their present discomfort and isolation.
+
+The life of the hall would not of course be as strictly regulated as
+the life in an English college--perhaps no more strictly than in any
+other American college building. If in the hope of creating a closer
+community feeling stricter rules were adopted, they should be adopted,
+as in a mediaeval hall, only by consent of the undergraduates.
+
+Such a hall would develop athletic teams of its own, and would produce
+university athletes. Under the present arrangement, when the poorer
+students are members of university teams, they may, and often do,
+become honorary members of the university clubs; but their lack of
+means and sometimes of the manner of the world make it difficult for
+them to be at home in the clubs; their social life is usually limited
+to a small circle of friends. If they had first been trained in the
+life of a hall, they would more easily fall in with the broader life
+outside; and instead of being isolated as at present, they would exert
+no small influence both in their hall and in the university. Few
+things could be better for the general life of the undergraduate than
+the cooperation of such men, and few things could be better for the
+members of a hall than to be brought by means of its leading members
+into close connection with the life of the university.
+
+If such a hall were successful, it could not fail to attract serious
+students of all sorts and conditions. At Oxford, Balliol has for
+generations been known as in the main unfashionable and scholarly;
+but it is seldom without a blue or two, and its eight has often been
+at the head of the river. As a result of all this, it never ceases to
+attract the more serious men from the aristocracy and even the
+nobility. In America, the success of one residential hall would
+probably lead to the establishment of others, so that in the end the
+life of the university might be given all the advantages of a dual
+organization.
+
+No change could be more far reaching and beneficial. The American
+institutions of the present are usually divided into two classes, the
+university, or "large college," and the "small college." The merit of
+the large colleges is that those fortunately placed in them gain
+greater familiarity with the ways of the world and of men, while for
+those who wish it, they offer more advanced instruction--the
+instruction characteristic of German universities. But to the
+increasing number of undergraduates who are not fortunately placed,
+their very size is the source of unhappiness; and for those
+undergraduates who wish anything else than scientific instruction,
+their virtues become merely a detriment. It is for this reason that
+many wise parents still prefer to intrust the education of their sons
+to the small colleges. These small colleges possess many of the
+virtues of the English universities; they train the mind and cultivate
+it, and at the same time develop the social man. If now the American
+university were to divide its undergraduate department into organized
+residential halls, it would combine the advantages of the two types of
+American institution, which are the two types of instruction the world
+over. Already our college life at its best is as happy as the college
+life in England; and the educational advantages of the four or five of
+our leading universities are rapidly becoming equal to those of the
+four or five leading universities in Germany. A combination of the
+residential hall and the teaching university would reproduce the
+highest type of the university of the Middle Ages; and in proportion
+as life and knowledge have been bettered in six hundred years, it
+would better that type. England has lost the educational virtues of
+the mediaeval university, while Germany, in losing the residential
+halls, has lost its peculiar social virtues. When the American
+university combines the old social life with the new instruction, it
+will be the most perfect educational instruction in the history of
+civilization.
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[4] For a detailed statement as to the course such a student would be
+able to pursue under the English system of honor schools, see Appendix
+III.
+
+[5] _The Atlantic Monthly_, October, 1900.
+
+[6] For full details as to the scheme of an English honor school, see
+Appendix III.
+
+
+
+
+APPENDIX
+
+
+I. ATHLETIC TRAINING IN ENGLAND
+
+In one or two particulars it seemed to me that we might learn from the
+English methods of training. On the Oxford team we took long walks
+every other day instead of track work. Our instructions were to climb
+all the hills in our way. This was in order to bring into play new
+muscles as far as possible, so as to rest those used in running.
+Though similar walks are sometimes given in America as a preliminary
+"seasoning," our training, for months before a meeting, is confined to
+the track. This is not unwise as long as a runner's stride needs
+developing; and in the heat of our summers such walks as the English
+take might sometimes prove exhausting. Yet my personal observations
+convinced me that for distance runners--and for sprinters, too,
+perhaps--the English method is far better. Under our training the
+muscles often seem overpowered by nervous lassitude; at the start of a
+race I have often felt it an effort to stand. In England there was
+little or none of this; we felt, as the bottle-holders are fond of
+putting it, "like a magnum of champagne."
+
+This idea of long walks, which the English have arrived at
+empirically, has been curiously approved in America by scientific
+discovery. It has been shown that after muscles appear too stiff from
+exhaustion to move, they can be excited to action by electric
+currents; while the motor nerves on being examined after such fatigue
+are found to be shrunken and empty, as in extreme old age. The limit
+of muscular exertion is thus clearly determined by the limit of the
+energy of the motor nerve. Now in a perfectly trained runner, the
+heart and lung must obviously reach their prime simultaneously with
+the motor nerves used in running; but since these organs are ordained
+to supply the entire system with fuel, they will usually require a
+longer time to reach prime condition than any single set of nerves.
+Thus continual track work is likely to develop the running nerves to
+the utmost before the heart and lungs are at prime. Conversely stated,
+if the development of the running nerves is retarded so as to keep
+pace with the development of the heart and lungs, the total result is
+likely to be higher. All this amounts to what any good English trainer
+will tell you--that you must take long walks on up and down grades in
+order to rest your running muscles and at the same time give your
+heart and lungs plenty of work--that is, in order to keep from getting
+"track stale."
+
+The amount of work we did from day to day will best be understood,
+perhaps, by quoting one or two of the training-cards. For the hundred
+yards the training during the final ten days was as follows: _Monday_
+and _Tuesday_, sprints (three or four dashes of sixty yards at top
+speed); _Wednesday_, a fast 120 yards at the Queen's Club grounds;
+_Thursday_, walk; _Friday_, sprints; _Saturday_, 100 yards trial at
+Queen's Club; _Sunday_, walk; _Monday_, light work at Queen's Club;
+_Tuesday_, easy walk; _Wednesday_, inter-varsity sports. The man for
+whom this card was written happened to be over weight and short of
+training, or he would have had less track work. If he had been
+training for the quarter in addition to the hundred, he would have had
+fewer sprints, and, instead of the fast 120, a trial quarter a week
+before the sports, with perhaps a fast 200 on the following Friday.
+For the mile, the following is a characteristic week's work, ending
+with a trial: _Sunday_, walk; _Monday_, one lap (1/3 mile); _Tuesday_,
+two laps, fast-ish; _Wednesday_, walk; _Thursday_, easy mile;
+_Friday_, walk; _Saturday_, a two lap trial (at the rate of 4.30 for
+the mile). For the three miles, the following is a schedule of the
+first ten days (the walks are unusually frequent because the "first
+string" had a bruise on the ball of his foot): _Monday_, walk;
+_Tuesday_, walk; _Wednesday_, two slow laps at the Queen's Club;
+_Thursday_, walk; _Friday_, walk; _Saturday_, a long run at the
+Queen's Club; _Sunday_, walk; _Monday_, four laps, fast-ish, at the
+Queen's Club; _Tuesday_, walk; _Wednesday_, inter-varsity sports. The
+chief difference between this work and what we should give in America
+is in the matter of walking.
+
+
+II. CLIMATE AND INTERNATIONAL ATHLETICS
+
+The value of international contests as a basis for comparing English
+and American training is impaired by the fact that the visiting team
+is pretty sure to be under the weather, as may be indicated by
+summarizing the history of international contests. The first
+representatives we sent abroad, the Harvard four-oared crew of 1869,
+became so overtrained on the Thames on work which would have been only
+sufficient at home, that two of the four men had to be substituted.
+The substitutes were taken from the "second" crew, which had just come
+over from the race at Worcester. The men in this crew had been so
+inferior as oarsmen that they had been allowed to compete against Yale
+only after vigorous protest; but in the race against Oxford, owing
+probably to the brevity of their training in England, the substitutes
+pulled the strongest oars in the boat. The crew got off very well, but
+when the time came for the final effort, the two original members had
+not the nervous stamina to respond.
+
+The experience of the Yale athletes who competed against Oxford in
+1894 was much the same. Their performances in the games were so far
+below their American form that they won only the events in which they
+literally outclassed their opponents--the hammer, shot, and broad
+jump. They were sportsmen enough not to explain their poor showing,
+and perhaps they never quite realized how the soft and genial English
+summer had unnerved them; but several competent observers who had
+watched their practice told me that they lost form from day to day.
+Their downfall was doubtless aided by the fact that instead of
+training at Brighton or elsewhere on the coast, they trained in the
+Thames valley and at Oxford.
+
+The experience of the Cornell crew, of which I got full and frank
+information while crossing the Atlantic with them after the race, was
+along the same lines. Before leaving Ithaca, they rowed over the
+equivalent of the Henley course in time that was well under seven
+minutes, and not far from the Henley record of six minutes, fifty-one
+seconds. At Henley they rowed their first trial in seven minutes and
+three seconds, if my memory serves, and in consequence were generally
+expected to win. From that day they grew worse and worse. Certain of
+the eight went stale and had to be substituted. In the race the crew,
+like the earlier Harvard crew, went to pieces when they were called on
+for a spurt--the test of nerve force in reserve--and were beaten in
+wretchedly slow time. They had gone hopelessly stale on work which
+would have been none too much in America.
+
+The experience of the Yale crew in the year after was similar to that
+of Harvard and Cornell. The crew went to pieces and lost the race for
+the lack of precisely that burst of energy for which American
+athletes, and Yale in particular, are remarkable.
+
+Meantime one or two American athletes training at Oxford had been
+gathering experience, which, humble though it was, had the merit of
+being thorough. Mr. J. L. Bremer, who will be remembered in America as
+making a new world's record over the low hurdles, steadily lost
+suppleness and energy at Oxford, so that he was beaten in the quarter
+mile in time distinctly inferior to his best in America. Clearly, the
+effect of the English climate is to relax the nervous system and
+thereby to reduce the athlete's power both of sprinting _per se_ and
+of spurting at the finish of the race. My own experience in English
+training confirmed the conclusion, and pointed to an interesting
+extension of it. I was forced to conclude that the first few weeks in
+England are more than likely to undo an athlete, and especially for
+sprinting; and even if he stays long enough to find himself again, his
+ability to sprint is likely to be lessened. In the long run, on the
+other hand, the English climate produces staying power in almost the
+same proportion as it destroys speed.
+
+When the joint team of track athletes from Yale and Harvard went to
+England in 1899, the powers that were took advantage of past
+experiences, and instead of going to the Thames valley to train, they
+went to Brighton; and instead of doing most of their training in
+England, they gave themselves only the few days necessary to get their
+shore legs and become acquainted with the Queen's Club track. As a
+result, the team was in general up to its normal form, or above it,
+and, except for the fact that one of the men was ill, would have won.
+
+The experience of the English athletes who came to America in 1895
+points to a similar conclusion. Though the heat was intense and
+oppressive and most of the visitors were positively sick, one of the
+sprinters, in spite of severe illness, was far above his previous
+best, while all of the distance men went quite to pieces. Thus our
+climate would seem to reduce the staying power of the English
+athletes, and perhaps to increase the speed of sprinters.
+
+It appears on the whole probable that in these international contests
+the visiting athlete had best do as much as possible of his training
+at home, and it follows that the visiting team is at a distinct and
+inevitable disadvantage.
+
+
+III. AN OXFORD FINAL HONOR SCHOOL
+
+The scope and content of an English honor school is well illustrated
+in the following passage from the Oxford examination statutes, which
+treats of the final school in English literature. The system will be
+seen to be very different from a system under which a student may
+receive honors in ignorance of all but a single movement in English
+literature.
+
+
+Sec. 10. _Of the Honour School of English Language and Literature._
+
+1. The Examination in the School of English Language and Literature
+shall always include authors or portions of authors belonging to the
+different periods of English literature, together with the history of
+the English language and the history of English literature.
+
+The Examination shall also include Special Subjects falling within or
+usually studied in connexion with the English language and literature.
+
+2. Every Candidate shall be expected to have studied the authors or
+portions of authors which he offers (1) with reference to the forms of
+the language, (2) as examples of literature, and (3) in their relation
+to the history and thought of the period to which they belong.
+
+He shall also be expected to show a competent knowledge (1) of the
+chief periods of the English language, including Old English
+(Anglo-Saxon), and (2) of the relation of English to the languages
+with which it is etymologically connected, and (3) of the history of
+English literature, and (4) of the history, especially the social
+history, of England during the period of English literature which he
+offers.
+
+3. The Examination in Special Subjects may be omitted by Candidates
+who do not aim at a place in the First or Second Class.
+
+4. No Candidate shall be admitted to examination in the Final Honour
+School of English Language and Literature, unless he has either
+obtained Honours in some Final Honour School or has passed the First
+Public Examination [_i. e._ Moderation].
+
+5. The Examination shall be under the supervision of a Board of
+Studies.
+
+6. It shall be the duty of the Board of Studies in framing
+regulations, and also of the Examiners in the conduct of the
+Examination, to see that as far as possible equal weight is given to
+language and literature: provided always that Candidates who offer
+Special Subjects shall be at liberty to choose subjects connected
+either with language or with literature or with both.
+
+7. The Board of Studies shall by notice from time to time make
+regulations respecting the Examination; and shall have power--
+
+(1) To prescribe authors or portions of authors.
+
+(2) To specify one or more related languages or dialects to be offered
+either as a necessary or as an optional part of the Examination.
+
+(3) To name periods of the history of English literature, and to fix
+their limits.
+
+(4) To issue lists of Special Subjects in connexion either with
+language or with literature or with both, prescribing books or
+authorities where they think it desirable.
+
+(5) To prescribe or recommend authors or portions of authors in
+languages other than English, to be studied in connexion with Special
+Subjects to which they are intimately related.
+
+(6) To determine whether Candidates who aim at a place in the First or
+Second Class shall be required to offer more than one Special
+Subject.
+
+(_ii_) _Regulations of the Board of Studies for the Examinations in
+1901 and 1902._
+
+The subjects of examination in this School are--
+
+     I. Portions of English Authors.
+
+     II. The History of the English Language.
+
+     III. The History of English Literature.
+
+     IV. (In the case of those Candidates who aim at a
+     place in the First or Second Class) a Special Subject of
+     Language or Literature.
+
+I. ENGLISH AUTHORS.
+
+Candidates will be examined in the following texts:--
+
+     _Beowulf._
+
+     The texts printed in Sweet's _Anglo-Saxon Reader_.
+
+     _King Horn._
+
+     _Havelok._
+
+     Laurence Minot.
+
+     _Sir Gawain and the Green Knight._
+
+     Chaucer's _Canterbury Tales_, the _Prologue_ and the following
+     Tales:--
+
+       _The Knight's_, _The Man of Law's_, _The Prioress's_, _Sir
+       Thopas_, _The Monk's_, _The Nun's Priest's_, _The Pardoner's_,
+       _The Clerk's_, _The Squire's_, _The Second Nun's_, _The Canon's
+       Yeoman's_
+
+     _Piers Plowman_, the _Prologue_ and first seven _passus_ (text
+     B).
+
+     Shakespeare, with a special study of the following Plays:
+     _Midsummer Night's Dream_, _King John,_ _Much Ado about
+     Nothing_, _Macbeth_, _Cymbeline_.
+
+     Milton, with a special study of _Paradise Lost_.
+
+These texts are to be studied (1) with reference to the forms of the
+language; (2) as examples of literature; and (3) in their relation to
+the history and thought of the period to which they belong.
+
+After Milton no special texts are prescribed, but Candidates are
+expected to show an adequate knowledge of the chief authors.
+
+II. HISTORY OF THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE.
+
+Candidates will be examined in the Philology and History of the
+Language, in Gothic (the Gospel of St. Mark), and in Translation from
+Old English and Middle English authors not specially offered.
+
+III. HISTORY OF ENGLISH LITERATURE.
+
+The Examination in the History of English Literature will not be
+limited to the prescribed texts. It will include the history of
+criticism and of style in prose and verse; for these subjects,
+Candidates are recommended to consult the following works:--
+
+     Sidney, _Apology for Poetry_.
+
+     Daniel, _Defence of Rhyme_.
+
+     Dryden, _Essay of Dramatic Poesy_, and _Preface to Fables_.
+
+     Addison, Papers on Milton in the _Spectator_.
+
+     Pope, _Essay on Criticism_.
+
+     Johnson, _Preface to Shakespeare_ and _Lives of the Poets_.
+
+     Wordsworth, _Prefaces, etc., to Lyrical Ballads_.
+
+     Coleridge, _Biographia Literaria_.
+
+IV. SPECIAL SUBJECTS.
+
+Candidates who aim at a place in the First or Second Class will be
+expected to offer a Special Subject, which may be chosen from the
+following list:--
+
+     1. Old English Language and Literature to 1150 A. D.
+
+     2. Middle English Language and Literature, 1150-1400 A. D.
+
+     3. Old French Philology, with special reference to Anglo-Norman
+     French, together with a special study of the following texts:--
+
+       Computus of Philippe de Thaun, Voyage of St. Brandan, The Song
+       of Dermot and the Earl, Les contes moralises de Nicole Bozon.
+
+     4. Scandinavian Philology, with special reference to Icelandic,
+     together with a special study of the following texts:--
+
+       Gylfaginning, Laxdaela Saga, Gunnlaugssaga Ormstungu.
+
+     5. Elizabethan literature, 1558-1637 A. D.
+
+     6. English literature, 1637-1700 A. D.
+
+     7. English literature, 1700-1745 A. D.
+
+     8. Wordsworth and his contemporaries, 1797-1850 A. D.
+
+     9. History of Scottish poetry to 1600 A. D.
+
+Candidates who desire to offer any other subject or period as a
+Special Subject must obtain the leave of the Board of Studies a year
+before the Examination.
+
+Candidates who offer a period of English Literature will be expected
+to show a competent knowledge of the History, especially the Social
+History, of England during such period.
+
+The following scheme of papers is contemplated:--
+
+     1. Beowulf and other Old English texts.
+
+     2. King Horn, Havelok, Minot, Sir Gawain.
+
+     3. Chaucer and Piers Plowman.
+
+     4. Shakespeare.
+
+     5. Milton.
+
+     6. History of the language.
+
+     7. Gothic--O. E. and M. E. translations.
+
+     8. } History of the Literature, including questions
+     9. } on the history of criticism. Two papers, (1)
+          to 1700, (2) after 1700.
+
+     10. Special Subjects.
+
+
+
+
+The Riverside Press
+
+_Electrotyped and printed by H. O. Houghton & Co._
+
+_Cambridge, Mass., U. S. A._
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of An American at Oxford, by John Corbin
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