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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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