husbands, the only move was to
hire an extra Pinkerton duenna to attend the fair one, and to smile in
satisfaction over the possession of a wife so much coveted--the joy of
all ownership being largely the ability to excite envy.

College rowdyism, cane-rushes, duels, bloody Monday, the fag system and
hazings are all surviving traditions of these so-called universities
where people who had the price sent their sons into the pedagogic
bull-pen.

As, for centuries, youths who were destined for the priesthood were the
only ones educated, so the monks were the first teachers, and the
monastery was the college.

In the Twelfth Century a college was merely a monkery that took in
boarders, and learning was acquired by absorption.

No records were kept of the students--they simply paid a small fee, were
given a badge and attended lectures when they got ready.

Some students stayed and studied for years, thinking the business of
life was to cram with facts. Such bachelor grubbers with fixed incomes,
like pensioners in a soldiers' home, old and gray, are now to be seen
occasionally in European universities, sticklers for technicalities, hot
after declensions, and happy when they close in on a new exception to a
Greek verb, giving it no quarter. When they come to die, they leave
earth with but a single regret: they have never been able fully to
compass the ablative. But the rough-and-tumble student was the rule,
with nose deep into stein, exaggerating little things into great, making
woful ballad to his mistress' eyebrow.

Such was Milord Hamlet, to whom young Dante bears a strange
resemblance.

A university like this, where the students governed themselves, and the
duties of the faculty consisted largely in protecting the property, had
its advantages. We will come back to self-government yet, but higher up
in the scale. It was like a big country school, in a country town, where
lessons in self-reliance are handed out with the bark on. The survival
of the fittest prevails, and out of the mass emerges now and then a
strong man who makes his mark upon the times.

Dante was back home in Florence from his sojourn abroad, a bit of a
dandy no doubt, with a becoming dash and a touch of sophomoric boldness.
He had not forgotten Beatrice Portinari: often had he thought of her,
the princess of his dreams, and all the dames he had met had been
measured with her as a standard.

She had been married about a year before to a rich bank