The Oxford day.
As the activities of Oxford readily resolve themselves into scholastic, athletic, and social, so the Oxford day, the natural Oxford day, in respect to morning, afternoon, and evening, approximately adopts this order.
Voluntary early rising is not the fashion, but eight o’clock chapel or roll-call compels it on half, or more than half, the days of Term, while the demands of training prevent many men from sleeping as late as their less strenuous fellows. As compared with American students, however, on their native soil, the Oxford student is a late riser. The voice of the scout and the slamming of a bath-tub on the floor rouse the student to a consciousness of the new day. Morning hours begin invariably with a cold tub. Chapel, if attended (ritual service only), requires about fifteen minutes.
Breakfast is taken in one’s own rooms or in the rooms of a friend, alone, or with three or four friends or guests—for the breakfast hour is a favourite time for entertaining, and enjoying a social meal. An Oxford ‘brekker’ is very different from the coffee and rolls of the Continent—it is a good, hearty meal, with satisfying solid courses.
Most lectures are given between nine and one o’clock. These four hours, more than any others, are Oxford’s formal work-time, while the hours from eight in the evening on are those also given to work.
Luncheon, if the student lunch in his rooms or in the College Common-room (only possible in a few Colleges), is a very light meal. But luncheon, again, is a favourite medium for entertaining, especially on Sundays, and when one has guests, luncheon loses its ordinarily simple character.
It requires a more or less elaborate system, especially in a large College, to provide for and keep up with the wants of two or three hundred tables. The cooking is all done in the College kitchen, and from there are sent the dishes which the student orders through his scout. Milk, bread, cheese, ‘drinks,’ and so forth are supplied by the College buttery; cakes, candies, fruits, tea, coffee, and tobaccos are usually obtained from the College ‘Common-room’—all are sent to the ‘stair’, and the scout serves the tables upon the stair. Every student has tea and coffee and sugar, and usually a shelf full of such edibles and drinkables as he chooses, together with dishes and ‘plate’ in his pantry. A kettle of water is usually boiling, or ready to boil, on the trivet before his fireplace, so that he is always prepared to dispense a substantial as well as a cordial hospitality.
Athletics.
The afternoon is given up to sport. Oxford students probably give more time to athletics than any other body of students in the world. At Heidelberg, aside from a few sporadic efforts on the river, the most strenuous exercise indulged in seems to be on the blood-stained floor of the duelling-room in the ‘Hirschgasse’, but less than half the students indulge in this energetic crossing of swords. The French students scarcely understand the term ‘athletics’ at all. America and England lead, and although the American College has a good deal of athletics, and sometimes too much, it is athletics for the minority, whereas at Oxford almost everybody ‘goes in for something’.