n the field than a temperament of unreasoning indifference as to
what is happening to one. As a matter of fact, the German student would
have to be possessed of much more courage not to fight. He fights not to
please himself, but to satisfy a public opinion that is two hundred years
behind the times.

All the Mensur does is to brutalise him. There may be skill displayed--I
am told there is,--but it is not apparent. The mere fighting is like
nothing so much as a broadsword combat at a Richardson's show; the
display as a whole a successful attempt to combine the ludicrous with the
unpleasant. In aristocratic Bonn, where style is considered, and in
Heidelberg, where visitors from other nations are more common, the affair
is perhaps more formal. I am told that there the contests take place in
handsome rooms; that grey-haired doctors wait upon the wounded, and
liveried servants upon the hungry, and that the affair is conducted
throughout with a certain amount of picturesque ceremony. In the more
essentially German Universities, where strangers are rare and not much
encouraged, the simple essentials are the only things kept in view, and
these are not of an inviting nature.

Indeed, so distinctly uninviting are they, that I strongly advise the
sensitive reader to avoid even this description of them. The subject
cannot be made pretty, and I do not intend to try.

The room is bare and sordid; its walls splashed with mixed stains of
beer, blood, and candle-grease; its ceiling, smoky; its floor, sawdust
covered. A crowd of students, laughing, smoking, talking, some sitting
on the floor, others perched upon chairs and benches form the framework.

In the centre, facing one another, stand the combatants, resembling
Japanese warriors, as made familiar to us by the Japanese tea-tray.
Quaint and rigid, with their goggle-covered eyes, their necks tied up in
comforters, their bodies smothered in what looks like dirty bed quilts,
their padded arms stretched straight above their heads, they might be a
pair of ungainly clockwork figures. The seconds, also more or less
padded--their heads and faces protected by huge leather-peaked caps,--drag
them out into their proper position. One almost listens to hear the
sound of the castors. The umpire takes his place, the word is given, and
immediately there follow five rapid clashes of the long straight swords.
There is no interest in watching the fight: there is no movement, no
skill,