University of Vermont - Ariel Yearbook (Burlington, VT)

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30 THE ARIEL, 1907 or Schinkenbrot will emerge from the capacious pocket of a Germanj. The faces of the men are strong, but seldom clean-cut and clear-eyed, their frames are heavy but not athletic. I shall meet some of these fellows later at Munich, for the German student is a wide-ranger and sometimes completes his special course at three universities. The women are in large numbers at such a class as this. Then the professor enters in haste. Before he has even reached his desk, he begins, Meine Herren und Damen! 5' fthe order is signiicantj, and proceeds with a frightful velocity thatiseems toioffer defiance to note-liooks. But these students are all masters of short-hand and pens move triumphantly over paper -- you may buy a copy of such verbatim notes, when the course is next repeated, and save yourself many a long sitting. Gccasionally scraping of feet, Scharrenf' a well-known signal, warns the lecturer that his words are not heard at the rear of the room, and he raises his voice, until the shuffling ceases. So the lecture draws to its close. Now, let us watch the student at play. This is the banquet hall of the Rhenania Corps on the evening of the Weihnachts-Kneipe or Christmas Feast. The walls are hung with old banners and armorial bearings, the long tables are groaning under steins and tankards, the fir-tree in the corner is flashing with a hundred lights. Forty men in the caps of the corps are steeped in the joyous spirit of the German yule- tide. The 'I Bier-zeitung of the brotherhood, rich in comic illustrations and teeming with amusing personalities, starts the revel. Songs are sung, as only German boys can sing them. The leader gravely conveys to me his regrets that they have not yet mastered the two national airs of America, The Bowery and Linger longer, Loo, but Tannen- baum, Gambrinus and Gaudeamus more than make good the omis- sion. Salamanders are rubbed, jokes are told, speeches full of innuendo are delivered, all with tremendous effect. Then enters the humorist of the fraternity, with the snowy beard and gray cowl of the VVeihnachts- mann U or Santa Claus. To each and all he presents, amid shouts of laughter from the jolly crew, startling gifts. For instance, the American receives a handsome portrait of his esteemed country-women, The Five

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THE ARIEL, 1907 29 he sat at the head of the table Q wherever he sat would have been the headj directing the talk and joining lustily in the songs. The reverence for him was great, a quarrel in his presence was felt to be sacrilege, and the love of clash and conflict was nobly repressed. Then he drew men to his home, opening up to them in his study great stores of special knowledge, stimulating, quickening them by the force of his personality and example. I shall always recall long walks with him in the 4' Thier- gartenf' His lectures and readings -from Shakspere and the English poets Q Vair is voul and voul is vair, I could not lofe dee, dear, so mooch D sometimes appealed to an American sense of humor, but roads traversed with him in private led always to treasures at the foot of the rainbow, and one was very grateful. In research, the German professor is pre-eminent. The way that he cuts is often very narrow, the path that he blazes through the wood of recondite scholarship is wide enough for only one man, but he sets those with whom he has to do journeying in this or that direction with ax and torch. Lights flash and steel rings everywhere, until the forest becomes known ground. Though others may range more extensively and with far better perspective, he has in accurate, painstaking, intensive scholarship, no equal on earth. And he attains and leads others to the goal in the face of at least one tremendous difficulty, a library system unparalleled in impracticability and inefficiency. Lack of catalogues and a poor library staff necessitate an interval of twenty-four hours between the time of ordering a book and its receipt, or rather the time due for its receipt, for, in many cases, when it is not on the shelves, its whereabouts are so uncertain that it may be reclaimed only when its usefulness is passed. All sufferers from this will doff their hats to the men who have triumphed over such conditions. A university lecture room is perhaps the best place to study the students. It is I2 o'clock and the famous Erich Schmidt is to lecture on Goethe and Schiller. But every German class-hour has 'its aca- demisches viertel or quarter-hour of grace. And this noon one is passed by the men either in refreshing themselves at the wine-and-beer shop kept by Frau Pudelf' the janitor's wife, in the first lobby-room on the left of the entrance, or in procuring orders for theatre-tickets in the first room on the right. But by 12.15 the lecture-hall is ,filled with students, many of them munching rolls or sandwiches Cone never knows when Semmel

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THE A-RIEL, 1907 31 Sisters Barrison, Misses Lona, Qlga, Gertrude, Irmgard and Sophie, die beispiellos populiirsten Damen des Continents. Then the voices break again into song. As I conclude this sketch, that splendid chorus rings in my ears:- 'Wer keine Sorge je und kein Verzagen Weiss, Und wer sich rasch erstiirmt des Lebens Kecken Preis, VVer stiindig lichterloh, dochnie zu Ende brennt, Lebt seinen Iugendtag als richtiger Student, Ia! als richtiger Studentf, l