tion of it that
is lax.

Of course, where there is so much fighting, the students make it a point
to keep themselves in constant practice with the foil. One often sees
them, at the tables in the Castle grounds, using their whips or canes to
illustrate some new sword trick which they have heard about; and between
the duels, on the day whose history I have been writing, the swords were
not always idle; every now and then we heard a succession of the keen
hissing sounds which the sword makes when it is being put through its
paces in the air, and this informed us that a student was practicing.
Necessarily, this unceasing attention to the art develops an expert
occasionally. He becomes famous in his own university, his renown
spreads to other universities. He is invited to Goettingen, to fight
with a Goettingen expert; if he is victorious, he will be invited
to other colleges, or those colleges will send their experts to him.
Americans and Englishmen often join one or another of the five corps. A
year or two ago, the principal Heidelberg expert was a big Kentuckian;
he was invited to the various universities and left a wake of victory
behind him all about Germany; but at last a little student in Strasburg
defeated him. There was formerly a student in Heidelberg who had picked
up somewhere and mastered a peculiar trick of cutting up under instead
of cleaving down from above. While the trick lasted he won in sixteen
successive duels in his university; but by that time observers had
discovered what his charm was, and how to break it, therefore his
championship ceased.

A rule which forbids social intercourse between members of different
corps is strict. In the dueling-house, in the parks, on the street,
and anywhere and everywhere that the students go, caps of a color group
themselves together. If all the tables in a public garden were crowded
but one, and that one had two red-cap students at it and ten vacant
places, the yellow-caps, the blue-caps, the white caps, and the green
caps, seeking seats, would go by that table and not seem to see it, nor
seem to be aware that there was such a table in the grounds. The student
by whose courtesy we had been enabled to visit the dueling-place, wore
the white cap--Prussian Corps. He introduced us to many white caps, but
to none of another color. The corps etiquette extended even to us, who
were strangers, and required us to group with the white corps only, and
speak only with the whit