An active member of a corps during his first two semesters may do a certain amount of serious work, but as a rule it is looked upon as a time “to loaf and invite one’s soul,” and little attempt is made to do more. Not a few men whom I have known, have not even entered a class-room during the two or three semesters of this blossoming period.
I have spent many days and nights with these young gentlemen, at Heidelberg, at Leipsic, at Marburg, at Bonn, and been made one of them in their jollity and good-fellowship, and I have agreed, and still agree, that “Wir sind die Könige der Welt, wir sind’s durch unsere Freude.”
They are by no means the swashbuckling, bullying, dissolute companions painted by those who know nothing about them. They may drink more beer than we deem necessary for health, or even for comfort; and they may take their exercise with a form of sword practice that we do not esteem, they may be proud of the scars of these imitation duels, but these are all matters of tradition and taste.
When one writes of eating and drinking, it is hardly fair to make comparisons from a personal stand-point. An adult of average weight requires each day 125 grams of proteid or building material, 500 grams of carbohydrates, 50 grams of fat. This equals, in common parlance, one pound of bread, one-half pound of meat, one-quarter pound of fat, one pound of potatoes, one-half pint of milk, one-quarter pound of eggs, assuming that one egg equals two ounces, and one-eighth pound of cheese. Divided into three meals, this means: for breakfast, two slices of bread and butter and two eggs; for dinner: one plateful potato soup, large helping of meat with fat, four moderate-sized potatoes, one slice bread and butter; for tea: one glass of milk and two slices of bread and butter; for supper: two slices of bread and butter and two ounces of cheese.
Plain white bread supplies more caloric, or energy, for the price than any other one food, and, with one or two exceptions, more proteid, or building material, than any other one food.
One to one and a half fluid ounces of alcohol is about the amount which can be completely oxidized in the body in a day. This quantity is contained in two fluid ounces of brandy or whiskey, five fluid ounces of port or sherry, ten of claret or champagne or other light wines, and twenty of bottled beer. All this means that a pint of claret, or two glasses of champagne, or a bottle of beer, or a glass of whiskey with some aerated water during the day will not hurt a man, and adds perhaps to the “agreeableness of life,” as Matthew Arnold phrases it. At any rate, this table of contents is a much safer standard of comparison, in judging the eating and drinking habits of other people, than either your habits or mine.
The German student probably drinks too much, and it is said by safe authorities in Germany that his heart, liver, and kidneys suffer; but he has been at it a long time, and in certain fields of intellectual prowess he is still supreme, and as we only drink with him now occasionally when he is our host, perhaps he had best be left to settle these questions without our criticism.
In general terms, I have always considered, as a test of myself and others, that a healthy man is one who lies down at night without fear, rises in the morning cheerfully, goes to a day’s serious work of some kind rejoicing in the prospect, meets his friends gayly, and loves his loves better than himself.
It is folly to maintain, that it does not require pluck and courage to stand up to a swinging Schläger, and take your punishment without flinching, and then to sit without a murmur while your wounds are sewn up and bandaged. I cannot help my preference for foot-ball, or base-ball, or rowing, or a cross-country run with the hounds, or grouse or pheasant shooting, or the shooting of bigger game, or the driving of four horses, or the handling of a boat in a breeze of wind, but the “world is so full of a number of things” that he has more audacity than I who proposes to weigh them all in the scales of his personal experience, and then to mark them with their relative values.
First of all, it is to be remembered that these Schläger contests between students are in no sense duels; a duel being the setting by one man of his chance of life against another’s chance, both with deadly weapons in their hands. These contests with the Schläger at the German universities, wrongly called duels, are so conducted that there is no possibility of permanent or even very serious injury to the combatants. The attendants who put them into their fighting harness, the doctors who look after them during the contest and who care for them afterward, are old hands at the game, and no mistakes are made.