The Growth of a Soul

The steamer had passed Flottsund and Domstyrken and the university buildings of Upsala began to appear. Now begins the real stone-throwing! exclaimed one of his companions,—an expression borrowed from the street-riots of 1864. The hilarity induced by punch and breakfast abated; one felt that things were now serious and that the battle of life was beginning. No vows of perpetual friendship were made, no promises of helping each other. The young men had awakened from their romantic dreams; they knew that they would part at the gang-way, new interests would scatter the company which the school-room had united; competition would break the bonds which had united them and all else would be forgotten. The real stone-throwing was about to begin.
It was a new and peculiar society into which he now entered, quite unlike any other. It had privileges like the old house of peers and a jurisdiction of its own; but it was a little Pedlington and reeked of rusticity. All the professors were country-born; not a single one hailed from Stockholm. The houses and streets were like those of Nyköping. And it was here that the head-quarters of culture had been placed, owing to an inconsistency of the government which certainly regarded Stockholm as answering to that description.
The students were regarded as the upper class in the town and the citizens were stigmatised by the contemptuous epithet of Philistines. The students were outside and above the civic law. To smash windows, break down fences, tussle with the police, disturb the peace of the streets,—all was allowed to them and went unpunished; at most they received a reprimand, for the old lock-up in the castle was no more used. For their militia-service they had a special uniform of their own which carried privileges with it. Thus they were systematically educated as aristocrats, a new order of nobility after the fall of the house of peers.
What would have been a crime in a citizen was a practical joke in a student. Just at this time the students' spirits were at a high pitch, as a band of student-singers had gone to Paris, had been successful there, and were acclaimed as conquerors on their return.