Chapter 4 - Page 2

selects the
subjects which he will study, and enters his name for these studies; but
he can skip attendance.

The result of this system is, that lecture-courses upon specialties
of an unusual nature are often delivered to very slim audiences,
while those upon more practical and every-day matters of education are
delivered to very large ones. I heard of one case where, day after day,
the lecturer's audience consisted of three students--and always the
same three. But one day two of them remained away. The lecturer began as
usual--

"Gentlemen,"--then, without a smile, he corrected himself, saying--

"Sir,"--and went on with his discourse.

It is said that the vast majority of the Heidelberg students are hard
workers, and make the most of their opportunities; that they have
no surplus means to spend in dissipation, and no time to spare for
frolicking. One lecture follows right on the heels of another, with very
little time for the student to get out of one hall and into the next;
but the industrious ones manage it by going on a trot. The professors
assist them in the saving of their time by being promptly in their
little boxed-up pulpits when the hours strike, and as promptly out again
when the hour finishes. I entered an empty lecture-room one day just
before the clock struck. The place had simple, unpainted pine desks and
benches for about two hundred persons.

About a minute before the clock struck, a hundred and fifty students
swarmed in, rushed to their seats, immediately spread open their
notebooks and dipped their pens in ink. When the clock began to strike,
a burly professor entered, was received with a round of applause, moved
swiftly down the center aisle, said "Gentlemen," and began to talk as he
climbed his pulpit steps; and by the time he had arrived in his box and
faced his audience, his lecture was well under way and all the pens were
going. He had no notes, he talked with prodigious rapidity and
energy for an hour--then the students began to remind him in certain
well-understood ways that his time was up; he seized his hat, still
talking, proceeded swiftly down his pulpit steps, got out the last word
of his discourse as he struck the floor; everybody rose respectfully,
and he swept rapidly down the aisle and disappeared. An instant rush for
some other lecture-room followed, and in a minute I was alone with the
empty benches once more.

Yes, without doubt, idle students are not the rule. Out of eight hundred
in the town, I knew the faces of only about fifty; but these I saw
everywhere, and daily. They walked about the streets and the wooded
hills, they drove in cabs, they boated on the river, they sipped beer
and coffee, afternoons,