Smoking divides the honors with beer, although, as one student can smoke about as much as another, there is not that opportunity for display of talent that there is in beer drinking.
The students are all in societies or clubs, and each club wears a cap of a peculiar color. You go into one of the innumerable beer halls, and you see at one table students with blue caps, at another with red, and another with yellow, and so on. They never mix, and each society is at deadly feud with all the others. They sit, and sit, and sit, at these tables, drinking beer out of mugs, and smoking enormous pipes, mostly meerschaum, which they are at great pains to color.
As a red-capped student is supposed to be at mortal feud with all the other colored caps, duels are as common as beer—and I can’t say more than that. But a duel in Heidelberg is not a remarkably sanguinary affair. It is about as harmless as a French duel. They don’t fight with revolvers at ten paces, or shot-guns at thirty, or sabres, or anything of that sort; and instead of trying to kill each other, every possible precaution is taken not to kill at all. The weapons are rapiers, very sharp, and ugly enough, if the duelist really meant business; but both contestants are so swaddled in cloths, so wrapped in cotton defences, that any harm, aside from a cut in the face, is impossible. They fence and thrust, and do all sorts of things, the object being to inflict a wound upon the face; and the student receiving the wound is very proud of it, and if his flesh is healthy enough to heal without a scar, he tears it open. The scars he must have, for they are testimonials, as it were, of his bravery.
So you see on the streets of Heidelberg any number of students with their faces scarred and seamed, horribly disfigured, but not one of them would sell a scar for anything earthly.
Their beer-drinking proclivities I have referred to. Tibbitts had a letter to one of the red-capped students, who immediately introduced him to his club, and the result was—beer. The quantity that Lemuel could consume nettled his friend, and an attempt was made to put him under the table. The Professor, who believes that there is a devil in every drop of beer, warned Tibbitts against joining the party.
“They will get you intoxicated,” said the good old man.
“Will they? Perhaps they will. But, Professor, a young man of good physique, a son of nature, who has lived in Oshkosh, need not fear any man who comes of the effete civilization of Germany. Don’t fear the result of this encounter. I shall do credit to the old flag. To my beloved country I dedicate my stomach. I will fetch them all.”
And so Tibbitts sat down with them, and he drank as often as they did for a half hour, then he urged the drinking, and he called for larger mugs.
There was consternation among the students. Tibbitts’ friend was the President of the club, and a mighty man among the beer drinkers; indeed, he owed his official position to his prowess in this line, and here was a fresh American urging him to deeper and deeper draughts.
The contest waxed warm. One by one the feebler men dropped out until only two remained—Tibbitts and the President. Tibbitts was cool and collected, the President was hot and flurried.