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TEA ON THE LAWN AT THE OXFORD UNION (page 63) 
 
AN AMERICAN AT 
 OXFORD , 
 
 BT 
 
 JOHN CORBIN 
 
 AUTHOR OF "SCHOOLBOY LIFE IN ENGLAND" 
 
 WITH ILLUSTRATIONS 
 
 BOSTON AND NEW YORK 
 
 HOUGHTON, MIFFLIN AND COMPANY 
 
 <$& H*itoer#be pre??, Camfcri&ae 
 
 1903 
 
C7 
 
 COPYRIGHT, 1902, BY JOHN CORBIN 
 ALL RIGHTS RESERVED 
 
 Published May, igo2 
 
TO 
 
 A. F. C. 
 
 t> / > 
 
IVHJABS 
 
 *■ 
 
PREFACE 
 
 BY a curious coincidence, the day on which the 
 last proof of this book was sent to the 
 printer saw the publication of the will of the late 
 Cecil Rhodes, providing that each of the United 
 States is forever to be represented at Oxford by 
 two carefully selected undergraduate students. 
 That the plan will result in any speedy realiza- 
 tion of the ideals of the great exponent of Eng- 
 lish power in the new worlds is perhaps not to 
 be expected. For the future of American educa- 
 tion, on the other hand, few things could be more 
 fortunate. Native and independent as our na- 
 tional genius has always been, and seems likely to 
 remain, it has always been highly assimilative. 
 In the past, we have received much needed aliment 
 from the German universities. For the present, 
 the elements of which we have most need may best, 
 as I think, be assimilated from England. 
 
 Whether or not Americans at Oxford become 
 imbued with Mr. Rhodes's conceptions as to the 
 destiny of the English peoples, they can scarcely 
 
PKEFACE 
 
 fail to observe that Oxford affords to its under- 
 graduates a very sensibly ordered and invigorating 
 life, a very sensibly ordered and invigorating edu- 
 cation. This, as I have endeavored to point out 
 in the following pages, our American universities 
 do not now afford, nor are they likely to afford it 
 until the social and the educational systems are 
 more perfectly organized than they have ever 
 been, or seem likely to be, under the dominance 
 of German ideals. If, however, the new Oxford- 
 trained Americans should ever become an impor- 
 tant factor in our university life, the future is 
 bright with hope. We have assimilated, or are 
 assimilating, the best spirit of German education ; 
 and if we were to make a similar draft on the 
 best educational spirit in England, our universities 
 would become far superior as regards their organi- 
 zation and ideals, and probably also as regards 
 what they accomplish, to any in Europe. The pur- 
 pose and result of an introduction of English 
 methods would of course not be to imitate foreign 
 custom, but to give fuller scope to our native char- 
 acter, so that if the American educational ideals 
 in the end approximate the English more closely 
 than they do at present, such a result would be 
 merely incidental to the fact that the two countries 
 vi 
 
PREFACE 
 
 have at bottom much the same social character and 
 instincts. If Mr. Rhodes's dream is to be realized, 
 it will probably be in some such tardy and round- 
 about but admirably vital manner as this. 
 
 At a superficial glance the testator's intention 
 seems to have been to send the students to Oxford 
 directly from American schools. Such a course, 
 it seems to me, could only work harm. Even if 
 the educational and residential facilities afforded 
 at Oxford were on the whole superior to those of 
 American universities, which they are not, the dif- 
 ference could not compensate the student for the 
 loss of his American university course with all it 
 means in forming lifelong friendships among his 
 countrymen and in assimilating the national spirit. 
 If, however, the Oxford scholarships were awarded 
 to recent graduates of American universities, the 
 greatest advantage might result. The student 
 might then modify his native training so as to 
 complete it and make it more effective. Now the 
 wording of the testament requires only that the 
 American scholars shall " commence residence as 
 undergraduates." This they will be able to do 
 whatever their previous training, and in fact this 
 is what Americans at Oxford have always done in 
 the past. The most valuable A. B. leaves the field 
 vii 
 
PREFACE 
 
 of human knowledge far from exhausted; and the 
 methods of instruction and of examining at Oxford 
 are so different from anything we know that it has 
 even proved worth while for the American to re- 
 peat at Oxford the same studies he took in Amer- 
 ica. The executors of the will should be most 
 vigorously urged to select the scholars from the 
 graduates of American universities. 
 
 The parts of this book that treat most intimately 
 of Oxford life were written while in residence in 
 Balliol College some six years ago. Most of the 
 rest was written quite recently in London. Much 
 ,of the matter in the following pages has appeared 
 in "Harper's Weekly," "The Bachelor of Arts," 
 " The Forum," and " The Atlantic Monthly." It 
 has all been carefully revised and rearranged, and 
 much new matter added. Each chapter has gained, 
 as I hope, by being brought into its natural rela- 
 tion with the other chapters ; and the ideas that 
 have informed the whole are for the first time ade- 
 quately stated. 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 chap. pagb 
 
 Introductory 1 
 
 L THE UNIVERSITY AND THE COLLEGE 
 
 I. The University of Colleges .... 7 
 
 II. The Oxford Freshman 10 
 
 III. A Day in an Oxford College ... 17 
 
 IV. Dinner in Hall 21 
 
 
 
 V. Evening 28 
 
 VI. The Mind of the College 37 
 
 VII. Club Life in the College .... 52 
 
 VIII. Social Life in the University .... 62 
 
 IX. The College and the University ... 74 
 
 II. OXFORD OUT OF DOORS 
 
 I. Slacking on the Isis and the Cherwell . 81 
 
 II. As seen from an Oxford Tub ... 96 
 
 III. A Little Scrimmage with English Rugby . 116 
 
 IV. Track and Field Athletics .... 132 
 V. English and American Sportsmanship . . 145 
 
 HI. THE COLLEGE AS AN EDUCATIONAL FORCE 
 
 I. The Passman 159 
 
 SfL The Honor Schools . . . . . . 171 
 
 >HX The Tutor 178 
 
 IV. Reading for Examinations 184 
 
 ix 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 V. The Examination 190 
 
 /^VL Oxford Qualities and their Defects . . 193 
 
 VII. The University and Reform .... 200 
 
 VIII. The University and the People . . . 206 
 
 IV. THE HISTORY OF THE UNIVERSITY AND THE 
 
 COLLEGE 
 
 I. The University before the College . . 215 
 
 II. Th* Medleval Hall 221 
 
 III. The College System 223 
 
 IV. The Golden Age of the Medieval Hall . 231 
 V. The Origin of the Modern Undergraduate 236 
 
 VI. The Insignificance of the Modern University 239 
 
 >, VII. The College in America 245 
 
 V. THE PROBLEMS OF THE AMERICAN UNIVERSITY 
 ,y I. The Social and Athletic Problem . . . 255 
 
 ^ II. The Administrative Problem .... 272 
 
 - "III. The Educational Problem 281 
 
 V IV. The American Hall 301 
 
 APPENDIX 
 
 I. Athletic Training in England .... 313 
 
 II. Climate and International Athletics . . 316 
 
 IH. An Oxford Final Honor School . . .319 
 
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS 
 
 PAGE 
 
 Tea on the Lawn at the Oxford Union {page 63) Frontispiece 
 
 The Hall Staircase, Christ Church .... 22 
 
 Magdalen Tower from the Bridge .... 30 
 
 A Racing Punt and Punter 84 
 
 Iffley Lock and Mill 90 
 
 The Full Costume of an Eightsman .... 100 
 
 The College Barges : Tubbing in November Floods . 106 
 The Last Day of the Bumping Races of the Summer 
 
 Eights (1895) 112 
 
 An English Rugby Line-up 120 
 
 Throwing in the Ball 124 
 
 New College Cloisters, Bell Tower, and Chapel . . 224 
 New College Gardens — showing the Mediceval Wall of 
 
 Oxford 228 
 
AN AMERICAN AT OXFORD 
 
 THE great German historian of the United 
 States, H. E. Von Hoist, declares 1 that, . 
 " in the sense attached to the word by Europeans, 
 . . . there is in the United States as yet not a 
 single university ; " institutions like Johns Hopkins 
 and Harvard he characterizes as " hybrids of col- 
 lege and university." In his survey of European 
 usage, one suspects that Professor Von Hoist failed 
 to look beyond Germany. The so-called univer- 
 sities of England, for example, are mere aggrega- 
 tions of colleges ; they have not even enough of 
 the modern scientific spirit to qualify as hybrids, 
 having consciously and persistently refused to adopt 
 continental standards. The higher institutions of 
 America belong historically to the English type ; 
 they have only recently imported the scientific 
 spirit. To the great world of graduates and under- 
 graduates they are colleges, and should as far as 
 possible be kept so. 
 
 Yet there is reason enough for calling them 
 
 1 Educational Review, vol. v. p. 113. 
 1 
 
AN AMERICAN AT OXFORD 
 
 hybrids. In the teaching bodies of all of them 
 the German, or so-called university, spirit is very 
 strong, and is slowly possessing the more advanced 
 of our recent graduates and undergraduates. Let 
 us be duly grateful. The first result of this spirit 
 is an extraordinary quickening and diffusion of 
 the modern ideal of scholarship, a devotion to pure 
 science amounting almost to a passion. As to the 
 second result, we may or may not have cause to 
 be grateful. Our most prominent educational 
 leaders have striven consciously to make over our 
 universities on the German plan. We are in the 
 midst of a struggle between old and new forces, 
 and at present the alien element has apparently 
 the upper hand. The social ideal, which only a 
 few years ago was virtually the same in England 
 and America, has already been powerfully modi- 
 fied ; and the concrete embodiment of the new sci- 
 entific spirit, the so-called elective system, has 
 transformed the peculiar educational institution of 
 our Anglo-Saxon people. 
 
 We have gone so far forward that it is possible 
 to gain an excellent perspective on what we are 
 leaving behind. In the ensuing pages I propose 
 to present as plainly as I may the English uni- 
 versity of colleges. I shall not hesitate to give 
 its social life all the prominence it has in fact, 
 
 2 
 
AN AMERICAN AT OXFORD 
 
 devoting much space even to athletic sports. The 
 peculiarity of the English ideal of education is 
 that it aims to develop the moral and social vir- 
 tues, no less than the mental — to train up boys 
 to be men among men. Only by understanding 
 this is it possible to sympathize with the system of 
 instruction, its peculiar excellences, and its almost 
 incredible defects. In the end I hope we shall 
 see more clearly what our colleges have inherited 
 from the parent institutions, and shall be able to 
 judge how far the system of collegiate education 
 expresses the genius of English and American 
 people. 
 
 At the present juncture of political forces in 
 America this consideration has a special impor- 
 tance. The success with which we exert our influ- 
 ence upon distant peoples will depend upon what 
 manner of young men we train up to carry it among 
 them. If the graduates of German institutions are 
 prepared to establish their civilization in the impe- 
 rial colonies, the fact has not yet been shown. The 
 colleges of England have manned the British Em- 
 pire. 
 
THE UNIVERSITY AND THE COLLEGE 
 
THE UNIVERSITY OF COLLEGES 
 
 ONE of the familiar sights at Oxford is the 
 American traveler who stops over on his 
 way from Liverpool to London, and, wandering 
 up among the walls of the twenty colleges from 
 the Great Western Station, asks the first under- 
 graduate he meets which building is the univer- 
 sity. When an Oxford man is first asked this, he 
 is pretty sure to answer that there is n't any uni- 
 versity ; but as the answer is taken as a rudeness, 
 he soon finds it more agreeable to direct inquirers 
 to one of the three or four single buildings, scat- 
 tered hither and yon among the ubiquitous col- 
 leges, in which the few functions of the university 
 are performed. A traveler from our middle West, 
 where " universities " often consist of a single build- 
 ing, might easily set forth for London with the 
 firm idea that the Ashmolean Museum or the Bod- 
 leian Library is Oxford University. 
 
 To the undergraduate the university is an ab- ^ 
 stract institution that at most examines him two 
 or three times, " ploughs " him, or graduates him. 
 7 
 
AN AMERICAN AT OXFORD 
 
 He becomes a member of it by being admitted into 
 one of the colleges. To be sure, he matriculates 
 also as a student of the university ; but the cere- 
 mony is important mainly as a survival from the 
 historic past, and is memorable to him perhaps 
 because it takes place beneath the beautiful medi- 
 aeval roof of the Divinity School ; perhaps because 
 he receives from the Vice-Chancellor a copy of the 
 university statutes, written in mediaeval Latin, 
 which it is to be his chief delight to break. Ex- 
 cept when he is in for " schools," as the examina- 
 tions are called, the university fades beyond his 
 horizon. If he says he is "reading" at Oxford, 
 he has the city in mind. He is more likely to 
 describe himself as " up at " Magdalen, Balliol, or 
 elsewhere. This English idea that a university is 
 a mere multiplication of colleges is so firmly fixed 
 that the very word is defined as " a collection of 
 institutions of learning at a common centre." In 
 the daily life of the undergraduate, in his religious 
 observances, and in regulating his studies, the 
 college is supreme. 
 
 To an American the English college is not at 
 first sight a wholly pleasing object. It has walls 
 that one would take to be insurmountable if they 
 were not crowned with shards of bottles mortared 
 into the coping ; and it has gates that seem capa- 
 
 8 
 
THE UNIVERSITY OF COLLEGES 
 
 ble of resisting a siege until one notices that they 
 are reinforced by a clieval-de-frise, or a row of bent 
 spikes like those that keep the bears in their dens 
 at the Zoo. Professor Von Hoist would certainly 
 regard it as a hybrid between a medi a3vaJ ^etotsteE-J 
 and a nursery ; and one easily imagines him pro- 
 ducing no end of evidence from its history and tra- 
 ditions to show that it is so. Like so many Eng- 
 lish institutions, its outward and visible signs belong 
 to the manners of forgotten ages, even while it is 
 charged with a vigorous and very modern life. A 
 closer view of it, I hope, will show that in spite 
 of the barnacles of the past that cling to it — and 
 in some measure, too, because of them — it is the 
 expression of a very high ideal of undergraduate 
 convenience and freedom. 
 
II 
 
 THE OXFORD FRESHMAN 
 
 WHEN a freshman comes up to his college, 
 he is received at the mediaeval gate by 
 a very modern porter, who lifts boxes and bags 
 from the hansom in a most obliging manner, and 
 is presently shown to his cloistral chambers by 
 a friendly and urbane butler or steward. To ac- 
 commodate the newcomers in the more populous 
 colleges, a measure is resorted to so revolutionary 
 that it shocks all American ideas of academic pro- 
 priety. Enough seniors — fourth and third year / 
 men — are turned out of college to make room for 
 the freshmen. The assumption is that the upper 
 classmen have had every opportunity to profit by 
 the life of the college, and are prepared to flock 
 by themselves in the town. Little communities of 
 four or five fellows who have proved congenial live 
 together in " diggings " — that is, in some towns- 
 man's house — hard by the college gate. This ar- 
 rangement makes possible closer and more intimate 
 relationship among them than would otherwise be 
 likely ; and after three years of the very free life 
 10 
 
THE OXFORD FRESHMAN 
 
 within those sharded walls, a cloistered year outside 
 is usually more than advisable, in view of the final 
 examination. It cannot be said that they leave 
 college without regret ; but I never heard a word 
 of complaint, and it is tacitly admitted that on the 
 whole they profit by the arrangement. 
 
 The more substantial furnishings in the rooms 
 are usually permanent, belonging to the college : 
 each successive occupant is charged for interest on 
 the investment and for depreciation by wear. Thus 
 the furniture is far more comfortable than in an 
 American college room and costs the occupant less. 
 Bed and table linen, cutlery, and a few of the more 
 personal furnishings the student brings himself. 
 If one neglects to bring them, as I confess I did 
 through ignorance, the deficiency is supplied by the 
 scout, a dignitary in the employ of the college, who 
 stands in somewhat more than the place of a servant 
 and less than that of a parent to half a dozen fellows 
 whose rooms are adjacent. The scout levies on the 
 man above for sheets, on the man below for knives 
 and forks, and on the man across the staircase for 
 table linen. There is no call for shame on the 
 one part or resentment on the other, for is not 
 the scout the representative of the hospitality of 
 the college ? " When you have time, sir," he 
 says kindly, " you will order your own linen and 
 11 
 
AN AMERICAN AT OXFORD 
 
 cutlery." How high a state of civilization is im- 
 plied in this manner of receiving a freshman can 
 be appreciated only by those who have arrived 
 friendless at an American university, p- 
 
 The scout is in effect a porter, " goody," and eat- 
 ing-club waiter rolled into one. He has frequently a 
 liberal dash of the don, which he has acquired by 
 extended residence at the university ; for among all 
 the shifting generations of undergraduates, only 
 he and the don are permanent. When he reaches 
 middle age he wears a beard if he chooses, and 
 then he is usually taken for a don by the casual 
 visitor. There is no harm in this ; the scout 
 plays the part con amove, and his long breeding 
 enables him to sustain it to a marvel. Yet for 
 the most part the scout belongs with the world 
 of undergraduates. He has his social clubs and 
 his musical societies ; he runs, plays cricket, and 
 rows, and, finally, he meets the Cambridge scout 
 in the inter-varsity matches. His pay the scout 
 receives in part from the college, but mostly from 
 the students, who give him two to four pounds a 
 term each, according to his deserts. All broken 
 bread, meat, and wine are his perquisites, and 
 tradition allows him to " bag " a fair amount of 
 tea, coffee, and sugar. Out of all this he makes 
 a sumptuous living. I knew only one exception, 
 12 
 
THE OXFORD FRESHMAN 
 
 and that was when four out of six men on a certain 
 scout's staircase happened to be vegetarians, and 
 five teetotalers. The poor fellow was in extremities 
 for meat and in desperation for drink. There was 
 only one more pitiable sight in college, and that 
 was the sole student on the staircase who ate meat 
 and drank wine ; the scout bagged food and drink 
 from him ceaselessly. At the end of one term the 
 student left a half dozen bottles of sherry, which 
 he had merely tasted, in his sideboard ; and when 
 he came back it was gone. " Where 's my sherry, 
 Betts?"he asked. "Sherry, sir? you ain't got 
 no sherry." " But I left six bottles ; you had no 
 right to more than the one that was broken." " Yes, 
 sir ; but when I had taken that, sir, the 'arf dozen 
 was broke." According to Oxford traditions the 
 student had no recourse ; and be it set down to his 
 praise, he never blamed the scout. He bemoaned 
 the fate that bound them together in suffering, and 
 vented his spleen on total abstinence and vegeta- 
 rianism. It may be supposed that the scout's an- 
 tiquity and importance makes him a bad servant ; 
 in the land of the free I fear that it would ; but 
 at Oxford nothing could be more unlikely. The 
 only mark that distinguishes the scout from any 
 other class of waiters is that his attentions to your 
 comfort are carried off with greater ease and 
 13 
 
 s 
 
AN AMERICAN AT OXFORD 
 
 dignity. It may be true that he is president of the 
 Oxford Society of College Servants — the Bones or 
 the Hasty Pudding of the scouts ; that he stroked 
 the 3couts' eight in the townie's bumping races, 
 during the long vac, and afterward rowed against 
 the scouts' eight from Cambridge ; that he cap- 
 tained the scouts' cricket eleven ; that in conse- 
 quence he is a " double blue " and wears the Ox- 
 ford 'varsity color on his hat with no less pride 
 than any other " blue." Yet he is all the more 
 bound, out of consideration for his own dignity, 
 % ^.to show you every respect and attention. 
 
 After the scout, the hosts of the college are the 
 dons. As soon as the freshman is settled in his 
 rooms, or sometimes even before, his tutor meets 
 him and arranges for a formal presentation' to the 
 dean and master. All three are apt to show their 
 interest in a freshman by advising him'as to trying 
 for the athletic teams, joining the college clubs 
 and societies, and in a word as to all the "concerns 
 of undergraduate life except his studies — these 
 come later. If a man has any particular gift, ath- 
 letic or otherwise, the tutor introduces him to the 
 men he should know, or, when this is not feasible, 
 gives a word to the upper classmen, who take the 
 matter into their own hands. If a freshman has 
 nO especial gift, the tutor is quite as sure to say 
 14 
 
THE OXFORD FRESHMAN 
 
 the proper word to the fellows who have most tal- 
 ent for drawing out newcomers. 
 
 In the first weeks of a freshman's residence r 
 he finds sundry pasteboards tucked beneath his / 
 door: the upper classman's call is never more than 
 the formal dropping of a card. The freshman is 
 expected to return these calls at once, and is 
 debarred by a happy custom from leaving his card 
 if he does not find his man. He goes again and 
 again until he does find him. By direct introduc- 
 tion from the tutor or by this formality of calling, 
 the freshman soon meets half a dozen upper class- 
 men, generally second-year men, and in due time 
 he receives little notes like this : — 
 
 Dear Smith, — Come to my rooms if you can 
 to breakfast with Brown and me on Wednesday 
 at 8.30. 
 
 Yours sincerely, 
 
 A. Robinson. 
 
 At table the freshman finds other freshmen whose 
 interests are presumably similar to his own. 
 
 No one supposes_for a moment that all this is ^ 
 done out of simple hnmajn kindness. The fresh- 
 man breakfast is a conventional institution for 
 gathering together the unlicked cubs, so that the 
 local influences may take hold of them. The rep- 
 15 
 
AN AMERICAN AT OXFORD 
 
 utation of the college in general demands that it 
 keep up a name for hospitality ; and in particular 
 the clubs and athletic teams find it of advantage 
 to get the run of all available new material. The 
 freshman breakfast is nothing in the world but a 
 variation of the " running " that is given newcom- 
 ers in those American colleges where fraternity 
 life is strong, and might even be regarded as a 
 NL more civilized form of the rushes and cane sprees 
 and even hazings that used to serve with us to 
 introduce newcomers to their seniors. Many sec- 
 ond-year breakfasts are perfunctory enough ; the 
 host has a truly British air of saying that since 
 for better or for worse he is destined to look upon 
 your face and abide by your deeds, he is willing 
 to make the best of it. If you prove a " bounder," 
 you are soon enough dropped. " / shall soon 
 be a second-year man," I once heard a freshman 
 remark, " and then / can ask freshmen to break- 
 fast, too, and cut them afterward." The point is 
 that every fellow is thrown in the way of meeting 
 the men of his year. If one is neglected in the 
 end, he has no reason to feel that it is the fault 
 of the college. As a result of this machinery for 
 initiating newcomers, a man usually ceases to be 
 a freshman after a single term (two months) of 
 residence ; and it is always assumed that he does. 
 16 
 
Ill 
 
 AY IN AN OXFORD COLLEGE 
 
 WHEN a freshman is once established in 
 college, his life falls into a pleasantly va- 
 ried routine. The day is ushered in by the scout, 
 who bustles into the bedroom, throws aside the 
 curtain, pours out the bath, and shouts, " Half 
 past seven, sir," in a tone that makes it impossible 
 to forget that chapel — or if one chooses, roll-call 
 — comes at eight. Unless one keeps his six chap- 
 els or " rollers " a week, he is promptly " hauled " 
 before the dean, who perhaps " gates " him. To 
 be gated is to be forbidden to pass the college gate 
 after dark, and fined a shilling for each night of 
 confinement. To an American all this brings re- 
 collections of the paternal roof, where tardiness at 
 breakfast meant, perhaps, the loss of dessert, and 
 bedtime an hour earlier. I remember once, when 
 out of training, deliberately cutting chapel to see 
 with what mien the good dean performed his nur- 
 sery duties. His calm was unruffled, his dignity 
 unsullied. I soon came to find that the rules 
 about rising were bowed to and indeed respected 
 17 
 
AN AMERICAN AT OXFORD 
 
 by all concerned, even while they were broken. 
 They are distinctly more lax than those the fellows 
 have been accustomed to in the public schools, and 
 they are conceded to be fo^ the best welfare of the 
 college. 
 
 Breakfast comes soon after chapel, or roll-call. 
 If a man has " kept a dirty roller," that is, has 
 reported in pyjamas, ulster, and boots, and has 
 turned in again, the scout puts the breakfast be- 
 fore the fire on a trestle built of shovel, poker, and 
 tongs, where it remains edible until noon. If a 
 man has a breakfast party on, the scout nia&es 
 sure that he is stirring in season, and, hurrying 
 through the other rooms on the staircase, is pre- 
 sently on hand for as long as he may be wanted. 
 The usual Oxford breakfast is a single course, 
 which not infrequently consists of some one of the 
 excellent English pork products, with an egg or 
 kidneys. There may be two courses, in which 
 case the first is of the no less excellent fresh fish. 
 There are no vegetables. The breakfast is ended 
 with toast and jam or marmalade. When one has 
 fellows in to breakfast, — and the Oxford custom 
 of rooming alone instead of chumming makes such 
 hospitality frequent, — his usual meal is increased 
 by a course, say, of chicken. In any case it leads 
 to a morning cigarette, for tobacco aids digestion, 
 18 
 
A DAY IN AN OXFORD COLLEGE 
 
 and helps fill the hour or so after meals which an 
 Englishman gives to relaxation. 
 
 At ten o'clock the breakfast may be interrupted »• 
 for a moment by the exit of some one bent on /^" 
 attending a lecture, though one apologizes for such 
 an act as if it were scarcely good form. An ap- 
 pointment with one's tutor is a more legitimate 
 excuse for leaving; but even this is always an 
 occasion for an apology, in behalf of the tutor of 
 course, for one is certainly not himself responsible. 
 If a quorum is left, they manage to sit comfort- 
 ably by the fire, smoking and chatting in spite of 
 lectures and tutors, until by mutual consent they 
 scatter to glance at the " Times " and the " Sports- 
 man " in the common-room, or even to get in a bit 
 of reading. 
 
 Luncheon often consists of bread and cheese 
 and jam from the buttery, with perhaps a half 
 pint of bitter beer ; but it may, like the breakfast, 
 come from the college kitchen. In any case it is 
 very light, for almost immediately after it every- 
 body scatters to field and track and river for the 
 exercise that the English climate makes neces- 
 sary and the sport that the English temperament 
 demands. 
 
 By four o'clock every one is back in college 
 tubbed and dressed for tea, which a man serves 
 19 
 
AN AMERICAN AT OXFORD 
 
 himself in his rooms to as many fellows as he has 
 been able to gather in on field or river. If he is 
 eager to hear of the games he has not been able to 
 witness, he goes to the junior common-room or to 
 his club, where he is sure to find a dozen or so of 
 kindred spirits representing every sport of impor- 
 tance. In this way he hears the minutest details 
 of the games of the day from the players them- 
 selves ; and before nightfall — such is the influ- 
 ence of tea — those bits of gossip which in Amer- 
 ica are known chiefly among members of a team 
 have ramified the college. Thus the function of 
 the " bleachers " on an American field is performed 
 with a vengeance by the easy-chairs before a com- 
 mon-room fire; and a man had better be kicked 
 off the team by an American captain than have his 
 shortcomings served up with common-room tea. 
 
 The two hours between tea and dinner may be, 
 and usually are, spent in reading. 
 
 20 
 
IV 
 
 DINNER IN HALL 
 
 AT seven o'clock the college bell rings, and in f\ 
 ^LJL. two minutes the fellows have thrown on 
 their gowns and are seated at table, where the 
 scouts are in readiness to serve them. As a rule 
 a man may sit wherever he chooses ; this is one of 
 the admirable arrangements for breaking up such 
 cliques as inevitably form in a college. But in 
 point of fact a man usually ends by sitting in some 
 certain quarter of the hall, where from day to day 
 he finds much the same set of fellows. Thus all 
 the advantages of friendly intercourse are attained 
 without any real exclusiveness. This may seem a 
 small point ; but an hour a day becomes an item 
 in four years, especially if it is the hour when men 
 are most disposed to be companionable. 
 
 The English College hall is a miniature of 
 Memorial Hall at Harvard, of which it is the pro- 
 totype. It has the same sombrely beautiful roof, 
 the same richness of stained glass. It has also the 
 same memorable and impressive canvases, though 
 the worthies they portray are likely to be the 
 21 
 
AN AMERICAN AT OXFORD 
 
 princes and prelates of Holbein instead of the 
 soldiers, merchants, and divines of Copley and 
 Gilbert Stuart. The tables are of antique oak, 
 with the shadow of centuries in its grain, and the 
 college plate bears the names and date of the 
 Restoration. To an American the mugs he drinks 
 his beer from seem old enough, but the English- 
 man finds them aggressively new. They are not, 
 however, without endearing associations, for the 
 mugs that preceded them were last used to drink 
 a health to King Charles, and were then stamped 
 into coin to buy food and drink for his soldiers. 
 The one or two colleges that, for Puritan princi- 
 ples or thrift, or both, refused to give up their old 
 plate, are not overproud of showing it. 
 
 Across the end of the hall is a platform for 
 high table, at which the dons assemble as soon as 
 the undergraduates are well seated. On Sunday 
 night they come out in full force, and from the 
 time the first one enters until the last is seated, 
 the undergraduates rattle and bang the tables, 
 until it seems as if the glass must splinter. When, 
 as often happens, a distinguished graduate comes 
 up, — the Speaker of the Commons to Balliol, or 
 the Prime Minister to Christ Church, — the en- 
 thusiasm has usually to be stopped by a gesture 
 from the master or the dean. 
 22 
 
THE HALL STAIRCASE, CHRIST CHURCH 
 
DINNER IN HALL 
 
 The dons at high table, like the British peers, 
 mingle judicial with legislative functions. All 
 disputes about sconces are referred to them, and 
 their decrees are absolute. A sconce is a penalty 
 for a breach of good manners at table, and is an 
 institution that can be traced far back into the 
 Middle Ages. The offenses that are sconciblc 
 may be summarized as punning, swearing, talking 
 shop, and coming to hall after high table is in 
 session. Take, for instance, the case of a certain 
 oarsman who found the dinner forms rather too 
 rigid after his first day on sliding seats. By way 
 of comforting himself, he remarked that the Lord 
 giveth and the Lord taketh away. Who is to 
 decide whether he is guilty of profanity ? The 
 master, of course, and his assembled court of dons. 
 The remark and the attendant circumstances are 
 written on the back of an order-slip by the senior 
 scholar present, and a scout is dispatched with it. 
 Imagine, then, the master presenting this question 
 to the dons : Is it profanity to refer by means of a 
 quotation from Scripture to the cuticle one loses 
 in a college boat ? Suppose the dons decree that 
 it is. The culprit has the alternative of paying 
 a shilling to the college library, or ordering a tun 
 of bitter beer. If he decides for beer, a second 
 alternative confronts him : he may drink it down 
 23 
 
AN AMERICAN AT OXFORD 
 
 in one uninterrupted draft, or he may kiss the cup 
 and send it circling the table. If he tries to floor 
 the sconce and fails, he has to order more beer 
 for the table; but if he succeeds, the man who 
 sconced him has to pay the shot and order a sec- 
 ond tun for the table. I never knew but one man 
 to down a sconce. He did it between soup and 
 fish, and for the rest of the evening was as drunk 
 as ever was the Restoration lord who presented 
 the silver tankard to the college. 
 
 After hall the dons go to the senior common-room 
 for the sweet and port. At Trinity they have one 
 room for the sweet and another for port. The stu- 
 dents, meanwhile, in certain of the colleges, may 
 go for dessert to the college store ; that is to say, to 
 a room beneath the hall, where the fancy groceries 
 of the college stock are displayed for sale. There 
 are oranges from Florida and Tangiers, dainty 
 maiden blush apples from New England, figs and 
 dates from the Levant, prunes and prunelles from 
 Italy, candied apricots from France, and the superb 
 English hothouse grapes, more luscious than Si- 
 lenus ever crushed against his palate. There are 
 sweets, cigarettes, and cigars. All are spread 
 upon the tables like a Venetian painting of abun- 
 dance ; but at either end of the room stand two 
 Oxford scouts, with account-books in their hands. 
 24 
 
DINNER IN HALL 
 
 A fellow takes a Tangerine and, with a tap-room 
 gesture, tilts to the scout as if to say, " Here 's 
 looking toward you, landlord ; " or, " I drink to 
 your bonny blue eyes." But he is not confronted 
 by a publican or barmaid ; only a grave underling 
 of the college bursar, who silently records " Brown, 
 orange, 2d.," and looks up to catch the next item. 
 Two other fellows are flipping for cigars, and 
 the second scout is gravely watching their faces to 
 see which way the coin has fallen, recording the 
 outcome without a sign. Some one asks, " How 
 much are chocolate creams, Higgins ? " " .Three 
 ha'pence for four, sir," is the answer, and the 
 student urges three neighbors to share his penny- 
 'orth. The scout records, " Jones, c. c. 1 Jd." 
 
 The minuteness of this bookkeeping is charac- 
 teristic. The weekly battels (bills) always bear a 
 charge of twopence for " salt, etc. ; " and once, 
 when I had not ordered anything during an entire 
 day, there was an unspecified charge of a penny in 
 the breakfast column. I asked the butler what 
 it meant. He looked at me horrified. "Why, 
 sir, that is to keep your name on the books." No 
 penny, I suppose, ever filled an office of greater 
 responsibility, and I still can shudder at so narrow 
 an escape'. I asked if such elaborate bookkeeping 
 was not very expensive. In America, I said, we 
 25 
 
 7< 
 
AN AMERICAN AT OXFOED 
 
 should lump the charges and devote the saving 
 to hiring a better chef. He explained that it had 
 always been so managed ; that the chef was thought 
 very good, sir ; and that by itemizing charges the 
 young gentlemen who wished were enabled to live 
 more cheaply. Obviously, when it costs a penny 
 merely to keep your name on the books, there is 
 need to economize. 
 
 After a quarter of an hour in the store the fellows 
 drop off by twos and threes to read, or to take 
 coffee in some one's room. With the coffee a glass 
 of port is usually taken. Almost all the fellows 
 have spirits and wines, which are sold by the col- 
 lege as freely as any other commodity. If a man 
 wishes a cup served in his room, he has only to say 
 so to his scout. If one waits long enough in the 
 store, he is almost certain to be asked to coffee and 
 wine. The would-be host circulates the room tap- 
 ping the elect on the shoulder and speaking a quiet 
 word, as they select Bones men at Yale. If half a 
 dozen men are left in the store uninvited, one of 
 them is apt to rise to the occasion and invite the 
 lot. It scarcely matters how unpopular a fellow 
 may be. The willingness to loaf is the touch of 
 nature that makes all men kin. « 
 
 After coffee more men fall off to their books ; 
 but the faithful are likely to spend the evening 
 26 
 
DINNER IN HALL 
 
 talking or playing cards — bridge, loo, napp, and 
 whist, with the German importation of skat and 
 the American importation of poker. In one col- 
 lege I knew, there was a nomadic roulette wheel 
 that wandered from room to room pursued by the 
 shadow of the dean, but seldom failed of an even- 
 ing to gather its flock about it. 
 
 27 
 
V 
 
 EVENING 
 
 IN the evening, when the season permits, the 
 fellows sit out of doors after dinner, smoking 
 and playing bowls. There is no place in which 
 the spring comes more sweetly than in an Oxford 
 garden. The high walls are at once a trap for the 
 first warm rays of the sun and a barrier against 
 the winds of March. The daffodils and crocuses 
 spring up with joy as the gardener bids ; and the 
 apple and cherry trees coddle against the warm 
 north walls, spreading out their early buds grate- 
 fully to the mild English sun. For long, quiet 
 hours after dinner they flaunt their beauty to the 
 fellows smoking, and breathe their sweetness to 
 the fellows playing bowls. " No man," exclaims 
 the American visitor, " could live four years in 
 these gardens of delight and not be made gentler 
 and nobler ! " Perhaps ! though not altogether in 
 the way the visitor imagines. When the flush of 
 summer is on, the loiterers loll on the lawn full 
 length ; and as they watch the insects crawl among 
 the grass they make bets on them, just as the 
 28 
 
EVENING 
 
 gravest and most reverend seniors have been known 
 to do in America. 
 
 In the windows overlooking the quadrangle are 
 boxes of brilliant flowers, above which the smoke 
 of a pipe comes curling out. At Harvard some fel- 
 lows have geraniums in their windows, but only 
 the very rich ; and when they began the custom 
 an ancient graduate wrote one of those communi- 
 cations to the " Crimson," saying that if men put 
 unmanly boxes of flowers in the window, how can 
 they expect to beat Yale ? Flower boxes, no sand. 
 At Oxford they manage things so that anybody 
 may have flower boxes ; and their associations are 
 by no means unmanly. This is the way they do 
 it. In the early summer a gardener's wagon from 
 the country draws up by the college gate, and the 
 driver cries, " Flowers ! Flowers for a pair of old 
 bags, sir." Bags is of course the fitting term for 
 English trousers — which don't fit ; and I should 
 like to inform that ancient graduate that the win- 
 dow boxes of Oxford suggest the very badge of 
 manhood. 
 
 As long as the English twilight lingers, the men 
 will sit and talk and sing to the mandolin; and 
 I have heard of fellows sitting and talking all 
 night, not turning in until the porter appeared to 
 take their names at roll-call. On the eve of May 
 29 
 
A 
 
 AN AMERICAN AT OXFORD 
 
 day it is quite the custom to sit out, for at dawn 
 one may go to see the pretty ceremony of heralding 
 the May on Magdalen Tower. The Magdalen choir 
 boys — the sweetest songsters in all Oxford — 
 mount to the top of that most beautiful of Gothic 
 towers, and, standing among the pinnacles, — pin- 
 nacles afire with the spirituality of the Middle Ages, 
 that warms all the senses with purity and beauty, 
 — those boys, I say, on that tower and among those 
 pinnacles, open their mouths and sing a Latin song 
 to greet the May. Meantime, the fellows who 
 have come out to listen in the street below make 
 catcalls and blow fish horns. The song above is 
 the survival of a Romish, perhaps a Druidical, 
 custom ; the racket below is the survival of a Puri- 
 tan protest. That is Oxford in symbol ! Its dig- 
 nity and mellowness are not so much a matter of 
 flowering gardens and crumbling walls as of the 
 traditions of the centuries in which the whole life 
 of the place has deep sources ; and the noblest of 
 its institutions are fringed with survivals that run 
 riot in the grotesque. 
 
 If a man intends to spend the evening out of 
 college, he has to make a dash before nine o'clock ; 
 for love or for money the porter may not let an 
 inmate out after nine. One man I knew was able 
 to escape by guile. He had a brother in Trinity 
 30 
 
MAGDALEN TOWER FROM THE BRIDGE 
 
EVENING 
 
 whom lie very much resembled, and whenever he 
 wanted to go out, he would tilt his mortarboard 
 forward, wrap his gown high about his neck, as it 
 is usually worn of an evening, and bidding the 
 porter a polite good-night, say, " Charge me to my 
 brother, Hancock, if you please." The charge is 
 the inconsiderable sum of one penny, and is the 
 penalty of having a late guest. Having profited 
 by my experience with the similar charge for keep- 
 ing my name on the college books, I never asked 
 its why and wherefore. Both are no doubt sur- 
 vivals of some mediaeval custom, the authority of 
 which no college employee — or don, for the mat- 
 ter of that — would question. Such matters inter- 
 est the Oxford man quite as little as the question 
 how he comes by a tonsil or a vermiform appendix. 
 They are there, and he makes the best of them. 
 
 If a fellow leaves college for an evening, it is for 
 a foregathering at some other college, or to go to 
 the theatre. As a rule he wears a cloth cap. A 
 " billycock " or " bowler," as the pot hat is called, 
 is as thoroughly frowned on now in English col- 
 leges as it was with us a dozen years ago. As for 
 the mortarboard and gown, undergraduate opinion 
 rather requires that they be left behind. This is 
 largely, no doubt, because they are required by law 
 to be worn. So far as the undergraduates are con- 
 31 
 
 x 
 
AN AMERICAN AT OXFORD 
 
 cerned, every operative statute of the university, 
 with the exception of those relating to matricu- 
 lation and graduation, refers to conduct in the 
 streets after nightfall, and almost without excep- 
 tion they are honored in the breach. This is out 
 of disregard for the Vice-Chan cellor of the uni- 
 versity, who is familiarly called the Vice, because 
 he serves as a warning to others for the practice 
 of virtue. The Vice makes his power felt in 
 characteristically dark and tortuous ways. His 
 factors are two proctors, college dons in daytime, 
 but skulkers after nightfall, each of whom has his 
 bulldogs, that is, scouts employed literally to spy 
 upon the students. If these catch you without 
 cap or gown, they cause you to be proctorized or 
 "progged," as it is called, which involves a mat- 
 ter of five shillings or so. As a rule there is little 
 danger of progging, but my first term fell in evil 
 days. For some reason or other the chest of the 
 university showed a deficit of sundry pounds, shil- 
 lings, and pence ; and as it had long ceased to need 
 or receive regular bequests, — the finance of the 
 institution being in the hands of the colleges, — 
 a crisis was at hand. A more serious problem had 
 doubtless never arisen since the great question was 
 solved of keeping undergraduates' names on the 
 books. The expedient of the Vice-Chancellor was 
 32 
 
EVENING 
 
 to summon the proctors, and bid them charge their 
 bulldogs to prog all freshmen caught at night with- 
 out cap and gown. The deficit in the university 
 chest was made up at five shillings a head. 
 
 One of the Vice-Chancellor's rules is that no 
 undergraduate shall enter an Oxford u pub." Now 
 the only restaurant in town, Queen's, is run in 
 conjunction with a pub, and was once the favorite 
 resort of all who were bent on breaking the mo- 
 notony of an English Sunday. The Vice-Chan- 
 cellor resolved to destroy this den of Sabbath- 
 breaking, and the undergraduates resolved no less 
 firmly to defend their stronghold. The result 
 was a hand-to-hand fight with the bulldogs, which 
 ended so triumphantly for the undergraduates that 
 a dozen or more of them were sent down. In the 
 articles of the peace that followed, it was stipu- 
 lated, I was told, that so long as the restaurant 
 was closed Sunday afternoons and nights, it should 
 never suffer from the visit of proctor or bulldog. 
 As a result, Queen's is a great scene of under- 
 graduate foregatherings. The dinners are good 
 enough and reasonably cheap ; and as most excel- 
 lent champagne is to be had at twelve shillings the 
 bottle, the diners are not unlikely to get back to 
 college a trifle buffy, in the Oxford phrase. 
 
 By an interesting survival of mediaeval custom, 
 33 
 
AN AMERICAN AT OXFORD 
 
 the Vice-Chancellor has supreme power over the 
 morals of the town, and any citizen who trans- 
 gresses his laws is visited with summary punish- 
 ment. For a tradesman or publican to assist in 
 breaking university rules means outlawry and ruin, 
 and for certain offenses a citizen may be punished 
 by imprisonment. Over the Oxford theatre the 
 Vice-Chancellor's power is absolute. In my time 
 he was much more solicitous that the undergradu- 
 ate be kept from knowledge of the omnipresent 
 woman with a past than that dramatic art should 
 flourish, and forbade the town to more than one 
 excellent play of the modern school of comedy that 
 had been seen and discussed in London by the 
 younger sisters of the undergraduates. The woman 
 with a present is virtually absent. 
 
 Time was when no Oxford play was quite suc- 
 cessful unless the undergraduates assisted at its 
 first night, though in a way very different from 
 that which the term denotes in France. The 
 assistance was of the kind so generously rendered 
 in New York and Boston on the evening of an 
 athletic contest. Even to-day, just for tradition's 
 sake, the undergraduates sometimes make a row. 
 A lot of B. N. C. men, as the clanny sons of 
 Brazenose College call themselves, may insist that 
 an opera stop while the troupe listen to one of 
 34 
 
EVENING 
 
 their own excellent vocal performances ; and I 
 once saw a great sprinter, not unknown to Yale 
 men, rise from his seat, face the audience, and, 
 pointing with his thumb over his shoulder at the sou- 
 brette, announce impressively, " Do you know, I 
 rather like that girl ! " The show is usually over 
 just before eleven, and then occurs an amusing, if 
 unseemly, scramble to get back to college before 
 the hour strikes. A man who stays out after ten 
 is fined threepence ; after eleven the fine is six- 
 pence. When all is said, why should n't one sprint 
 for threepence ? 
 
 If you stay out of college after midnight, the 
 dean makes a star chamber offense of it, fines you 
 a " quid " or two, and like as not sends you down. 
 This sounds a trifle worse than it is ; for if you 
 must be away, your absence can usually be arranged 
 for. If you find yourself in the streets after 
 twelve, you may rap on some friend's bedroom 
 window and tell him of your plight through the 
 iron grating. He will then spend the first half 
 of the night in your bed and wash his hands in 
 your bowl. With such evidence as this to support 
 him, the scout is not apt, if sufficiently retained, 
 to report a suspected absence. I have even known 
 fellows to make their arrangements in advance 
 and spend the night in town ; but the ruse has its 
 
AN AMERICAN AT OXFORD 
 
 dangers, and the penalty is to be sent down for 
 good and all. 
 
 It is owing to such regulations as these that life 
 in the English college has the name of being clois- 
 tral. Just how cloistral it is in spirit no one 
 can know who has not taken part in a rag in tho 
 quad ; and this is impossible to an outsider, for at 
 midnight all visitors are required to leave, under a 
 heavy penalty to their host. 
 
 36 
 
VI 
 
 THE MIND OF THE COLLEGE 
 
 ANY jubilation is a rag; but the most inter- 
 .Xjl. esting kind, though perhaps the least fre- 
 quent, takes the direction of what we call hazing. 
 It is seldom, however, as hazing has come to be 
 with us, a wanton outbreak. It is a deliberate 
 expression of public opinion, and is carried on 
 sedately by the leading men of the college. The 
 more I saw of it, the more deeply I came to respect 
 it as an institution. 
 
 In its simplest if rarest form it merely consists 
 in smashing up a man's room. The only affair of 
 this kind which I saw took place in the owner's 
 absence ; and when I animadverted on the fact, I 
 was assured that it would have turned out much 
 worse for the man's feelings if he had been pre- 
 sent. He was a strapping big Rugbeian, who had 
 come up with a "reputter," or reputation, as a 
 football player, and had insisted on trying first off 
 for the 'varsity fifteen. He had promptly been 
 given the hoof for being slow and lazy, and when 
 he condescended to try for the college fifteen, his 
 37 
 
AN AMERICAN AT OXFOED 
 
 services were speedily dispensed with for the same 
 reason. As he still carried his head high,it was 
 necessary to bring his shortcomings home fc> him 
 in an unmistakable manner. Brutal as I thought 
 the proceeding, and shameful to grown men, it 
 did him good. He became a hard-working and 
 lowly minded athlete, and prospered. I am not 
 prepared to say that the effect in this particular 
 instance did not justify the means. 
 
 A series of judicial raggings was much more edi- 
 fying. Having pulled their culprit out of bed 
 after midnight, the upper classmen set him upon 
 his window-seat in pyjamas, and with great solem- 
 nity appointed a judge, a counsel for the prose- 
 cution, and a counsel for the defense. Of the 
 charges against him only one or two struck home, 
 and even these were so mingled with the nonsense 
 of the proceedings that their sting was more or 
 less blunted. The man had been given over to his 
 books to the neglect of his personal appearance. It 
 was charged that in pretending to know his sub- 
 junctives he was ministering to the vanity of the 
 dean, who had written a Latin grammar, and that 
 by displaying familiarity with Hegel he was boot- 
 licking the master, who was a recently imported 
 Scotch philosopher. Then the vital question was 
 raised as to the culprit's personal habits. Heaven 
 38 
 
THE MIND OF THE COLLEGE 
 
 defend him now from his legal defender ! It was 
 urgecL that^ as he was a student of Literae Huma- 
 nioresl he might be excused from an acquaintance 
 with the scientific commodity known as H 2 : one 
 might ignore anything, in fact, if only one were 
 interested in Literae Humaniores. By such means 
 as this the face of the college is kept bright and 
 shining. 
 
 Here is a round robin, addressed to the best of 
 fellows, a member of the 'varsity shooting team 
 and golf team. He was a Scotchman by birth and 
 by profession, and even his schoolboy days at Eton 
 had not divested him of a Highland gait. 
 
 " Whereas, Thomas Rankeillor, Gent, of the Uni- 
 versity of Oxford, has, by means of his large feet, 
 uncouth gait, and his unwieldy brogues, wan- 
 tonly and with malice destroyed, mutilated, and 
 otherwise injured the putting greens, tees, and golf 
 course generally, the property of the Oxford Uni- 
 versity Golf Club, whereof he is a member, and 
 
 " Whereas, 2, The said Thomas Rankeillor, etc., 
 has by these large feet, uncouth gait, and unwieldy 
 brogues aforesaid, raised embankments, groins, and 
 other bunkers, hazards, and impediments, formed 
 unnecessary roads, farm roads, bridle paths, and 
 other roads, on the putting greens, tees, and golf 
 course generally, aforesaid ; excavated sundry and 
 39 
 
AN AMEEICAN AT OXFORD 
 
 diverse reservoirs, tanks, ponds, conduits, sewers, 
 channels, and other runnels, needlessly irrigating 
 the putting greens, tees, and golf course generally 
 aforesaid, and 
 
 " Whereas, 3, The said Thomas Rankeillor, etc., 
 has by those large feet, uncouth gait, and unwieldy 
 brogues aforesaid, caused landslips, thus demolish- 
 ing all natural hills, bunkers, and other excres- 
 cences, and all artificial hillocks, mounds, hedges, 
 and other hazards, 
 
 " Hereby we, the circumsigned, do request, peti- 
 tion, and otherwise entreat the aforesaid 
 
 " Thomas Rankeillor, Gent, of the Univer- 
 sity of Oxford, to alter, transform, and otherwise 
 modify his uncouth gait, carriage, and general mode 
 of progression ; to buy, purchase, or otherwise ac- 
 quire boots, shoes, and all other understandings of 
 reasonable size, weight, and material ; and finally 
 that he do cease from this time forward to wear, 
 use, or in any way carry the aforesaid brogues. 
 
 "Given forth this the 17th day of March, 
 1896." 
 
 At times rougher means are employed. At 
 Brazenose there happened to be two men by the 
 same name, let us say, of Gaylor, one of whom had 
 made himself agreeable to the college, while the 
 other had decidedly not. One midnight a party 
 40 
 
THE MIND OF THE COLLEGE 
 
 of roisterers hauled the unpopular Gaylor out of 
 his study, pulled off his bags, and dragged him by 
 the heels a lap or two about the quad. This form 
 of discipline has since been practiced in other col- 
 leges, and is called debagging. The popular Gay- 
 lor was ever afterward distinguished by the name 
 of Asher, because, according to the Book of Judges, 
 Asher abode in his breaches. 
 
 Not dissimilar correctives may be employed, in 
 extreme need, against those mightiest in authority. 
 A favorite device is to screw the oak of an objec- 
 tionable don. Mr. Andrew Lang, himself for- 
 merly a don at Merton, reports a conversation — 
 can it have been a personal experience ? — between 
 a don standing inside a newly screwed oak and his 
 scout, who was tendering sympathy from the stair- 
 case. " What am I to do ? " cried the don. " Mr. 
 Muff, sir," suggested the scout, " when 'e 's screwed 
 up, sir, 'e sends for the blacksmith." At Christ 
 Church, "The House," as it is familiarly called, 
 much more direct and personal methods have been 
 employed. Not many years ago a censor (whose 
 office is that of the dean at other colleges) stirred 
 up unusual ill-will among his wards. They pulled 
 him from his bed, dragged him into Tom Quad, — 
 Wolsey's Quad, — and threw him bodily among the 
 venerable carp of the Mercury Pond. Then they 
 41 
 
AN AMERICAN AT OXFORD 
 
 gathered about in a circle, and, when he raised his 
 head above the surface, thrust him under with 
 their walking-sticks. Something like forty of them 
 were sent down for this, and the censor went trav- 
 eling for his health. 
 
 The memory of this episode was still green when 
 the Duke of Marlborough gave a coming of age 
 ball at Blenheim Palace, and invited over literally 
 hundreds of his Oxford friends. In other colleges 
 the undergraduates were permitted to leave Oxford 
 for the night, but at the House the censor stipu- 
 lated that they be within the gates, as usual, by 
 midnight. This would have meant a break-neck 
 drive of eight miles after about fifteen minutes 
 at the ball, and was far more exasperating to 
 the young Britons than a straightforward refusal. 
 That evening the dons sported their oaks, and 
 carefully bolted themselves within. The night 
 passed in so deep a silence that, for all they 
 knew, the ghost of Wolsey might have been 
 stalking in his cherished quadrangle, the glory of 
 building which the Eighth Henry so unfeelingly 
 appropriated. As morning dawned, the common- 
 room gossips will tell you, the dons crawled fur- 
 tively out of bed, and shot their bolts to find 
 whether they had need of the blacksmith. Not a 
 screw had been driven. The morning showed why 
 42 
 
THE MIND OF THE COLLEGE 
 
 On the stately walls of Tom Quad was painted 
 " Damn the Dons! " and again in capital letters, 
 " Damn the Dons ! " and a third time, in larger 
 capitals, " Damn the Dons ! " There were other 
 inscriptions, less fit to relate ; and stretching alon^ 
 one whole side of the quad, in huge characters, the 
 finely antithetical sentence : " God bless the Duke 
 of Marlborough." The doors of the dean's resi- 
 dence were smeared with red paint ; and against a 
 marble statue of the late Dean Liddell, the Greek 
 lexicographer, a bottle of green ink had been 
 smashed. Two hundred workmen, summoned 
 from a neighboring building, labored two days 
 with rice-root brushes and fuller's earth, but with 
 so little effect that certain of the stones had to be 
 replaced in the walls, and endless scrubbings 
 failed to overcome the affinity between the ink and 
 the literary Liddell. The marble statue has been 
 replaced by one of plaster. 
 
 Compared with the usual Oxford rag, the up- 
 setting of Professor Silliman's statue in the Yale 
 campus by means of a lasso dwindles into insig- 
 nificance, and the painting of 'varsity stockings on 
 John Harvard, which so scandalized the under- 
 graduates that they repaired the damage by volun- 
 tary subscriptions, might be regarded as an act of 
 filial piety. 
 
 43 
 
AN AMEKICAN AT OXFORD 
 
 The more I learned of Oxford motives, the less 
 anxious I was to censure the system of ragging. 
 In an article I wrote after only a few months' stay, 
 I spoke of it as boyish and undignified ; and most 
 Americans, I feel sure, would likewise hold up the 
 hand of public horror. Yet I cannot be wholly 
 thankful that we are not as they. To the under- 
 graduates, ragging is a survival of the excellently 
 efficient system of discipline in the public schools, 
 where the older boys have charge of the manners 
 and morals of the younger ; and historically, like 
 public school discipline, it is an inheritance from 
 the prehistoric past. In the Middle Ages it was 
 apparently the custom to hold the victim's nose 
 literally to the grindstone. In the schools, to be 
 sure, the Sixth Form take their duties with great 
 sobriety of conscience — which is not altogether 
 the case in college ; but the difference of spirit is 
 perhaps justifiable. For a properly authorized 
 committee of big schoolboys to chastise a young- 
 ster who has transgressed is not unnatural, and the 
 system that provides for it has proved successful 
 for five centuries ; but for men to adopt the same 
 attitude towards a fellow only a year or two their 
 junior would be preposterous. Horseplay is a ne- 
 cessary part of the game. The end in both is the 
 same : it is to bring each individual under the in- 
 44 
 
THE MIND OF THE COLLEGE 
 
 fluence of the traditions and standards of the insti- 
 tution of which he has elected to be a part. Just 
 as the system of breakfasting freshmen is by no 
 means as altruistic as it at first appears, the prac- 
 tice of ragging is by no means as brutal. It is as 
 if the college said : We have admitted you and 
 welcomed you, opening up the way to every avenue 
 of enjoyment and profit, and it is for our common 
 good, sir, that you be told of your shortcomings. 
 The most diligent and distinguished scholar is not 
 unlikely to be most in need of a pointed lesson in 
 personal decorum ; and the man who was not Asher 
 may be thankful all his life for the bad quarter of 
 an hour that taught him the difference between 
 those who do and those who do not abide in their 
 breaches. 
 
 With regard to the dons, a similar case might 
 be made. Any one who assumes an authority over 
 grown men that is so nearly absolute should be 
 held to strict honesty and justice of dealing. So 
 far as I could learn, the Christ Church dons who 
 were so severely dealt with were both unjust and 
 insincere, and I came to sympathize in some mea- 
 sure with the undergraduates at the House, who 
 were half humorously inclined to regard the forty 
 outcasts as martyrs. 
 
 This is not to argue that all American hazing 
 45 
 
AN AMERICAN AT OXFORD 
 
 is justifiable. In many cases, especially of late 
 years, it has been as silly and brutal as the most 
 puritanical moralists have declared. To steal the 
 Louisburg Cross from above the door of the Har- 
 vard Library was vandalism if you wish — it was 
 certainly a very stupid proceeding ; and to cele- 
 brate a really notable athletic victory by mutilat- 
 ing the pedestal of the statue of John Harvard 
 was not only stupid, but unworthy of a true sports- 
 man. How much better to make an end with 
 painting 'varsity stockings on the dear old boy's 
 bronze legs, and leave the goody to wash them off 
 next day. What I wish to point out is that where 
 there is vigorous public spirit, it may be more effi- 
 ciently expressed by hazing than by a very nor'- 
 easter of Puritan morality. 
 
 A tradition of the late master of Balliol, Jow- 
 ett, the great humanist, would seem to show that 
 he held some such opinion. It was his custom in 
 his declining years to walk after breakfast in the 
 garden quad, and whenever there were evidences 
 of a rag, even to the extent of broken windows, he 
 would say cheerily to his Jidus Achates, " Ah, Har- 
 die, the mind of the college is still vigorous ; it has 
 been expressing itself." The best possible justifi- 
 cation of the cloistral restrictions of English col- 
 lege life is the facility with which the mind of the 
 46 
 
THE MIND OF THE COLLEGE 
 
 college expresses itself. It is by no means fantas- 
 tic to hint that the decline of well-considered haz- 
 ing in American colleges has come step by step 
 with the breaking up of the bonds of hospitality 
 and comradeship that used to make them well-or- 
 ganized social communities. 
 
 I have not come to this philosophy without deep 
 experience. On one occasion after Hall, I was 
 flown with such insolence against college > restric- 
 tions that the cheval - de -frise above the back 
 gate seemed an affront to a freeborn American. 
 Though the porter's gate was still open, it was im- 
 peratively necessary to scale that roller of iron 
 spikes. I was no sooner astride of it than a mob 
 of townspeople gathered without, and among them 
 a palsied beggar, who bellowed out tfiat he would 
 hextricate me for 'arf a crown, sir. I have sel- 
 dom been in a less gratifying position ; and when 
 I had clambered back into college, I ruefully re- 
 called the explanation my tutor had given me of 
 the iron spikes and bottle shards, — an explanation 
 that at the time had shaken my sides with laughter 
 at British absurdity. My tutor had said that if 
 the fellows were allowed to rag each other in the 
 open streets and smash the townspeople's windows, 
 the matter would be sure to get into the papers 
 and set the uninitiated parent against the univer- 
 47 
 
AN AMERICAN AT OXFORD 
 
 sities. In effect, the iron spikes and the stumps 
 of bottles are admirable, not so much because they 
 keep the undergraduate in, as because they keep 
 the public out ; and since the public includes all 
 people who wish to hextricate you for 'arf a crown, 
 sir, my mind was in a way to be reduced to that 
 British state of illogic in which I regarded only 
 the effect. 
 
 As a last resort I carefully sounded the under- 
 graduates as to whether they would find use for 
 greater liberty. They were not only content with 
 their lot, but would, I found, resent any loosening 
 of the restrictions. To give them the liberty of 
 London at night or even of Oxford, they argued, 
 would tend to break up the college as a social 
 organization and thus to weaken it athletically; 
 for at Oxford they understand what we sometimes 
 do not, that a successful cultivation of sports goes 
 hand in hand with good comradeship and mutual 
 loyalty. 
 
 The only question remaining was of the actual 
 moral results of the semi-cloistral life. Such 
 outbreaks of public opinion as I have described 
 are at the worst exceptional ; they are the last 
 resort of outraged patience. The affair at Christ 
 Church is unexampled in modern times. Many a 
 man of the better sort goes through his four years 
 48 
 
THE MIND OF THE COLLEGE 
 
 at the university without either experiencing or 
 witnessing undergraduate violence. As for drink- 
 ing, in spite of the fact that wine and spirits are 
 sold to undergraduates by the college at any and 
 all times and in any and all quantities, there 
 seemed to be less excessive indulgence than, for 
 instance, at Harvard or at Yale. And the fact 
 that what there was took place for the most part 
 within the college walls was in many respects 
 most fortunate. When fellows are turned loose 
 for their jubilations amid the vices of a city, as is 
 usually the case with us, the consequences to their 
 general morality are sometimes the most hideous. 
 In an English college the men to whom immoral- 
 ity seems inevitable — and such are to be found in 
 all communities — have recourse to London. But 
 as their expeditions take place in daylight and 
 cold blood, and are, except at great risk, cut short 
 when the last evening train leaves Paddington 
 shortly after dinner, it is not possible to carry 
 them off with that dazzling air of the man of the 
 world that in America lures so many silly fresh- 
 men into dissipations for which th^p!Rlve no natu- 
 ral inclination. This little liberty is apparently 
 of great value. The cloistral vice, which seems 
 inevitable in the English public schools, is robbed 
 49 
 
AN AMEKICAN AT OXFOED 
 
 of any shadow of palliation. A fellow who con- 
 tinues it is thought puerile, if nothing worse. 
 When it exists, it is more likely to be the result 
 of the intimate study of the ancient classics, and 
 is then even more looked down upon by the robust 
 Briton as effeminate or decadent. The subject, 
 usually difficult or impossible to investigate, hap- 
 pened to be on the surface at the time of my resi- 
 dence because of the sensational trial of an Ox- 
 ford graduate in London. I was satisfied that the 
 general body of undergraduates was quite free of 
 contamination. On the whole, I should say that 
 the restrictions of college life in England are far 
 less dangerous than the absolute freedom of life 
 in an American college. Under our system a few 
 men profit greatly ; they leave college experienced 
 in the ways of the world and at the same time 
 thoroughly masters of themselves. But it is a 
 strong man — perhaps a blasphemous one — that 
 would ask to be led into temptation. The best 
 system of college residence, I take it, is that which 
 develops thoroughly and spontaneously the normal 
 social instincts, and at the same time leaves men 
 free moral agents. In a rightly constituted fel- 
 low, in fact, the normal social life constitutes the 
 only real freedom. Those frowning college walls, 
 50 
 
THE MIND OF THE COLLEGE 
 
 which we are disposed to regard as instruments of 
 pedagogical tyranny, are the means of nourishing 
 the normal social life, and are thus in effect the 
 bulwarks of a freer system than is known to 
 American universities. 
 
 51 
 
vn 
 
 CLUB LIFE IN THE COLLEGE 
 
 AS a place for the general purposes of resi- 
 JLJl. dence — eating and sleeping, work and play 
 — the English college is clearly quite as well or- 
 ganized and equipped as any of the societies, clubs, 
 or fraternities of an American university. And 
 whereas these are in their very nature small and 
 exclusive, the college is ample in size and is con- 
 sciously and effectively inclusive ; the very fact of 
 living in it insures a well-ordered life and abun- 
 dant opportunity for making friends. Yet within 
 this democratic college one finds all sorts of clubs 
 and societies, except those whose main purpose 
 is residential, and these are obviously not neces- 
 sary. 
 
 By far the larger proportion of the clubs are 
 formed to promote the recognized undergraduate 
 activities. No college is without athletic and de- 
 bating clubs, and there are musical and literary 
 clubs almost everywhere. Membership in all of 
 them is little more than a formal expression of the 
 fact that a man desires to row, play cricket or 
 52 
 
CLUB LIFE IN THE COLLEGE 
 
 football, to debate, read Shakespeare, or play the 
 fiddle. Yet they are all conducted with a degree 
 of social amenity that to an American is as sur- 
 prising as it is delightful. 
 
 The only distinctively social feature of the ath- 
 letic clubs is the wine, which is given to celebrate 
 the close of a successful season. A boating wine 
 I remember was held in a severe and sombre old 
 hall, built before Columbus sailed the ocean blue. 
 It was presided over by a knot of the dons, an- 
 cient oarsmen, whose hearts were still in the sport. 
 They sat on the dais, like the family of a baron 
 of the Middle Ages, while the undergraduates sat 
 about the tables like faithful retainers. All the 
 sportsmen of the college were invited, and every- 
 body made as much noise as he could, especially 
 one of the boating men, who went to the piano and 
 banged out a song of triumph he had written, 
 while we all tumbled into the chorus. One of the 
 fellows — I have always taken it as a compliment 
 to my presence — improvised a cheer after the 
 manner not unknown in America, which was given 
 with much friendly laughter. " Quite jolly, is n't 
 it! n he remarked, with the pride of authorship, 
 " and almost as striking as your cry of ' Quack, 
 quack, quack ! '" He had heard the Yale men give 
 their adaptation of the frog chorus at the athletic 
 53 
 
AN AMERICAN AT OXFORD 
 
 games between Oxford and Yale. About mid- 
 night the college butler passed a loving cup of 
 mulled wine of a spicy smoothness to fill your 
 veins with liquid joy. The recipe, I was told, 
 had been handed down by the butlers of the col- 
 lege since the fourteenth century, being older than 
 the hall in which we were drinking. I have no 
 doubt it was the -cordial Chaucer calls Ypocras, 
 which seems to have brought joy to his warm old 
 heart. After the loving cup had gone about, the 
 fellows cleared away the tables and danced a stag. 
 At this stage of the game the dons discreetly 
 faded away, and the wine resolved itself into a 
 good-natured rag in the quad that was ended only 
 by daylight and the dean. I have seen many 
 feasts to celebrate athletic victory and the break- 
 ing of training, but none as homelike and pleasant 
 all through as the wine of an Oxford college. 
 
 The debating clubs have of necessity a distinct 
 social element, for where there is much talk, food 
 and drink will always be found ; and with the 
 social element there is apt to be some little exclu- 
 siveness. In Balliol there are three debating clubs, 
 and they are of course in some sense rivals. Like 
 the fraternities in an American college, they look 
 over the freshmen each year pretty closely ; and 
 the freshmen in turn weigh the clubs. One fresh- 
 54 
 
CLUB LIFE IN THE COLLEGE 
 
 man gave his verdict as follows : " The fellows in A 
 A are dull, and bathe ; the fellows in B are clever, / , 
 and sometimes bathe ; the fellows in C a*e— s«pso| V " 
 posed to be clever." The saying is not altogether 
 a pleasant one, but will serve to indicate the range 
 of selection of members. In spite of social dis- 
 tinctions, few fellows need be excluded who care to 
 debate or are clubable in spirit. As a system, the 
 clubs are inclusive rather than exclusive. 
 
 Each club convenes at regular intervals, usually 
 in the rooms of such members as volunteer to be 
 hosts. The hour of meeting is directly after din- 
 ner, and while the men gather and settle down to 
 the business of the evening, coffee, port, and to- 
 bacco are provided out of the club treasury. The 
 debates are supposed to be carried on according to 
 the strictest parliamentary law, and the man who 
 transgresses is subject to a sharp rebuff. On one 
 occasion, when the question of paying members of 
 Parliament was up, one speaker gravely argued 
 that the United States Senate was filled with poli- 
 ticians who were attracted by the salary. Though 
 I had already spoken, I got up to protest. The 
 chairman sat me down with the greatest severity 
 — amid a broad and general smile. I had neg- 
 lected, I suppose, the parliamentary remark that 
 I arose to a point of fact. A member's redress in 
 55 
 
AN AMERICAN AT OXFORD 
 
 such instances is to rag the president at the time 
 when, according to custom, interpellations are in 
 order ; and as a rule he avails himself of this 
 opportunity without mercy. On one occasion, a 
 fellow got up in the strictest parliamentary man- 
 ner and asked the president — a famous shot on 
 the moors — whether it was true, as reported, that 
 on the occasion when he lately fell over a fence 
 three wrens and a chipping sparrow fell out of his 
 game-bag. Such ragging as the chair administers 
 and receives may not aid greatly in rational de- 
 bate, but it certainly has its value as a preparation 
 for the shifts and formalities of parliamentary life. 
 It is the first duty of a chairman, even the presi- 
 dent of the Oxford Union, to meet his ragging 
 with cheerfulness and a ready reply, and the first 
 duty of all debaters is to be interesting as well as 
 convincing. In American college debating there 
 is little of such humor and none of such levity. 
 The speakers are drafted to sustain or to oppose a 
 position, often without much reference to their con- 
 victions, and are supposed to do so to the utter- 
 most. The training is no doubt a good one, for life 
 is largely partisan; but a man's success in the 
 world depends almost as much on his tact and good 
 sense as on his strenuosity. 
 
 The Englishman's advantage in address is some- 
 56 
 
CLUB LIFE IN THE COLLEGE 
 
 times offset by deficiencies of information. In a 
 debate on Home Rule, one argument ran somewhat 
 as follows : It is asserted that the Irish are irre- 
 sponsible and lacking in the sense of administrative 
 justice. To refute this statement, I have only to 
 point to America, to the great metropolis of New 
 York. There, as is well known, politics are exclu- 
 sively in the hands of Irish citizens, who, denied the 
 right of self-government — as the American colo- 
 nies were denied similar freedom, I need scarcely 
 point out with what disastrous results to the empire 
 — the Irish immigrants in America, I say, are 
 evincing their true genius for statesmanship in their 
 splendid organization known as Tammany Hill. 
 
 In the better clubs, the debates are often well 
 prepared and cogent. I remember with particular 
 gratitude a discussion as to whether the English 
 love of comfort was not an evidence of softening 
 morals. The discussion was opened with a paper 
 by a young Scotchman of family and fortune. 
 More than any other man I met he had realized 
 the sweetness and pleasantness of Oxford, and all 
 the delights of the senses and of the mind that sur- 
 round the fellows there ; and the result of it was, 
 as it has so often been with such men, a craving 
 for the extreme opposite of all he had known, for 
 moral earnestness and austerity. What right, he 
 57 
 
AN AMERICAN AT OXFORD 
 
 questioned, had one to buy a book which, with ever 
 so little more effort, he might read in the Bodleian, 
 while all the poor of England are uneducated? 
 And was it manly or in any way proper to spend 
 so much time and interest on things that are merely 
 agreeable ? The sense of the meeting seemed to be 
 that comfort in daily life is an evil only when it 
 becomes an end in itself, a self-indulgence ; and that 
 a certain amount of it is necessary to fortify one for 
 the most strenuous and earnest work in the world. 
 I think that debate made us realize, as we never 
 could have realized without it, to what serious end 
 England makes the ways of her young men so 
 pleasant ; yet the more deeply I lived into the life 
 of the university, the more deeply I questioned, as 
 the young Scotchman did, whether the line between 
 the amenities and the austerities was not somewhat 
 laxly drawn. 
 
 The only purely "social club, and therefore the 
 only really exclusive one, is the wine club. In Bal- 
 liol there is a college rule against wine clubs, which 
 seems to be due partly to a feeling against social 
 exclusiveness, and partly perhaps to a distrust of 
 purely convivial gatherings. The purpose of a 
 wine club was served quite as well, however, by 
 an organization that was ostensibly for debating. 
 The notices of meetings were usually a parody of 
 58 
 
CLUB LIFE IN THE COLLEGE 
 
 the notices of the meetings of genuine debating 
 clubs, and the chief business of the secretary was 
 to concoct them in pleasing variety. For instance, 
 it would be Resolved, that this House looks with 
 disfavor upon the gradual introduction of a con- 
 tinental sabbath into England ; or Resolved, that 
 this House looks with marked disfavor upon the 
 assumption that total abstinence is a form of intem- 
 perance. On the evening when the House was 
 defending total abstinence, our host's furniture 
 and tea-things suffered some damage, and as I was 
 in training, I found it advisable to leave early. As 
 I slipped out, the president of the club, a young 
 nobleman, who was himself at the time in training 
 for the 'varsity trial eights, called me back and 
 said with marked sobriety that he had just thought 
 of something. " You are in for the mile run, are n't 
 you ? And in America you have always run the 
 half. Well, then, if you find the distance too long 
 for you, just don't mind at all about the first part 
 of the race, but when you get to the last part, run 
 as you run a half mile. Do it in two minutes, and 
 you can't help beating 'em." He bade me good-night 
 with a grave and authoritative shake of the hand. 
 If he recalled his happy thought next morning, he 
 was unable to avail himself of it, for I grieve to 
 say that in the 'varsity trial race, which came only 
 59 
 
AN AMERICAN AT OXFORD 
 I 
 
 a few days later, he missed his blue by going badly 
 
 to pieces on the finish. 
 
 The meeting at which this occurred was excep- 
 tional. For the most part the fellows were mod- 
 erate enough, and at times I suspected the wine 
 club of being dull. Certainly, we had no such fun 
 as at the more general jubilations — a rag in the 
 quad or a boating wine. I doubt if any one would 
 have cared so very much to belong to the club if 
 it had not afforded the only badge of social dis- 
 tinction in college, and if this had not happened 
 to be an unusually pretty hatband. However suc- 
 cessful a wine club may be, moreover, it is of far 
 less consequence than similar clubs in America. 
 In the first place, since there are one or more of 
 them in each of the twenty colleges, the number 
 of men who belong to them is far greater relatively, 
 which of course means far less exclusion. In the 
 second place, and this is more important, the fel- 
 lows who do not belong are still able to enjoy the 
 life which is common to all members of the college. 
 In general, the social walls of Oxford are like the 
 material ones. Far from being the means of undue 
 exclusion and of the suppression of public feeling, 
 they are the live tissues in which the vital functions 
 of the place are performed. 
 
 Until well along in the nineteenth century, this 
 60 
 
CLUB LIFE IN THE COLLEGE 
 
 life in the college was about the only life ; but of 
 late years the university has begun to feel its unity 
 more strongly, and in social and intellectual life, as 
 in athletjcs, it has become for the first time since 
 the Middle Ages an organic whole. 
 
 61 
 
VIII 
 
 SOCIAL LIFE IN THE UNIVERSITY 
 
 THE first formal organization of the life of 
 the university was, as its name records, the 
 Oxford Union, an institution of peculiar interest 
 to Americans because our universities, though 
 starting from a point diametrically opposite, have 
 arrived at a state of social disorganization no less 
 pronounced than that which the Union was in- 
 tended to remedy. Harvard, which has progressed 
 farthest along the path of social expansion and dis- 
 integration, has already made a conscious effort to 
 imitate the Union. The adamantine spirit of Yale 
 is shaken by the problems of the Sophomore soci- 
 eties ; and it will not be many decades before other 
 universities will be in a similar predicament. It 
 will not be amiss, therefore, to consider what the 
 Oxford Union has been and is. If Americans 
 have not clearly understood it even when attempt- 
 ing to imitate it, one should at least remember that 
 it would not be easy for an Oxford man to explain 
 it thoroughly. 
 
 The Union was founded in 1823, and was pri- 
 62 
 
SOCIAL LIFE IN THE UNIVERSITY 
 
 marily for debating. In fact, it was the only uni- 
 versity debating society. Its members were care- 
 fully selected for their ability in discoursing on 
 the questions of the day. In its debates Gladstone, 
 Lord Rosebery, the Marquis of Salisbury, and 
 countless other English statesmen of recent times 
 got their first parliamentary training. Its present 
 fame in England is largely based upon this fact ; 
 but its character has been metamorphosed. Early 
 in its history it developed social features; and 
 though it was still exclusive in membership, little 
 by little men of all kinds were taken in. At this 
 stage of its development, the Union was not unlike 
 those vast political clubs in London in which any 
 and all principles are subordinated to the kitchen 
 and the wine cellar. The debates, though still of 
 first-rate quality, became more and more an inci- 
 dent ; the club was chiefly remarkable as the epit- 
 ome of all the best elements of Oxford life. The 
 library was filled with men reading or working at 
 special hobbies ; the reading and smoking rooms 
 were crowded ; the lawn was daily thronged with 
 undergraduates gossiping over a cup of tea; the 
 telegram board, the shrine of embryo politicians 
 watching for the results from a general election, 
 was apt to be profaned by sporting men scanning 
 it for the winners of the Derby or the Ascot. In 
 63 
 
AN AMERICAN AT OXFORD 
 
 a word, the Union held the elect of Oxford, intel- 
 lectual, social, and sporting. This is the Union 
 remembered by the older graduates, and except for 
 a single feature, namely, that it was still exclusive, 
 this is the Union that has inspired the projectors 
 of the Harvard Union. 
 
 The Oxford man of the later day knows all too 
 well that this Union is no more. Some years ago, 
 responding to a democratic impulse that has been 
 very strong of late at Oxford, the Union threw 
 down all barriers ; virtually any man nowadays 
 may join it, and its members number well beyond 
 a thousand. The result is not a social millennium. 
 The very feature of inclusiveness that is to be 
 most prominent in the Union at Harvard destroyed 
 the character of the Oxford Union as a represent- 
 ative body. To the casual observer it still looks 
 much as it did a dozen years ago ; but its glory 
 has departed. In any real sense of the word it is 
 a Union no more. The men who used to give it 
 character are to be found in smaller clubs, very 
 much like the clubs of an American university. 
 
 The small university debating clubs are the Rus- 
 sell, the Palmerston, the Canning, and the Chat- 
 ham, each of which stands for some special stripe 
 of political thought, and each of which has a 
 special color which — sure sign of the pride of ex- 
 64 
 
SOCIAL LIFE IN THE UNIVERSITY 
 
 clusiveness — it wears in hatbands. The clubs 
 meet periodically — often weekly — in the rooms 
 of members. Sometimes a paper is read which is 
 followed by an informal discussion ; but the usual 
 exercise is a formal debate. Time was when the 
 best debates came off at the Union, and writers of 
 leading articles in London papers even now look 
 to it as a political weather-vane. The debates 
 there are still earnest and sometimes brilliant, and 
 to have presided over them is a distinction of 
 value in after life ; but as far as I could gather, 
 their prestige is falling before the smaller debating 
 clubs. The main interest at the Union appeared 
 to centre in the interpellation of the president, 
 which is carried on much as in the House of Com- 
 mons, though with this difference, that, following 
 the immemorial custom, it is turned into ragging, 
 When this is over, the major part of the audience 
 clears out to the smoking and reading rooms. In 
 the smaller clubs the exercises are not only seri- 
 ous, but — in spite of the preliminary ragging, 
 which no function at Oxford may flourish without 
 — they are taken seriously. The clubs really 
 include the best forensic ability of Oxford. At 
 the end of each year they give dinners, at which 
 new and old members gather, while some promi- 
 nent politician from Westminster holds forth on 
 65 
 
AN AMERICAN AT OXFORD 
 
 the question of the hour. In a word, these clubs, 
 collectively, are what the Union once was — the 
 training school of British statesmen. 
 
 The university social clubs are of a newness that 
 shocks even an American ; but it would not be 
 quite just to account for the fact by regarding 
 them as mere offshoots, like the debating clubs, of 
 a parent Union. Until the nineteenth century, 
 there really was no university at Oxford, at least in 
 modern times. The colleges were quite independ- 
 ent of one another socially and in athletics, and 
 each of them provided all the necessary instruc- 
 tion for its members. The social clubs which now 
 admit members from the university at large began 
 life as wine clubs of separate colleges, and even 
 to-day the influence of the parent college is apt 
 to predominate. The noteworthy fact is that in 
 proportion as the social prestige of the Union has 
 declined, these college wine clubs, like the small 
 debating clubs, have gained character and pres- 
 tige. 
 
 The oldest of these is the Bullingdon, which is 
 not quite as old, I gathered, as the Institute of 1770 
 at Harvard, and, considered as a university organ- 
 ization, it is of course much younger. It was ori- 
 ginally the Christ Church wine club, and to-day 
 it is dominated by the sporting element of Christ 
 66 
 
' SOCIAL LIFE IN THE UNIVERSITY 
 
 Church, which is the most aristocratic of Oxford 
 colleges. In former years, it is said, the club had 
 kennels at Bullingdon, and held periodic hunts 
 there ; and it is still largely composed of hunting 
 men. To-day it justifies its name mainly by hav- 
 ing an annual dinner beneath the heavy rafters of 
 a mediaeval barn at Bullingdon. On these, as on 
 other state occasions, the members wear a distinc- 
 tive costume — no doubt a tradition from the time 
 when men generally wore colors — which consists 
 of a blue evening coat with white facings and brass 
 buttons, a canary waistcoat, and a blue tie. This 
 uniform is no doubt found in more aristocratic 
 wardrobes than any other Oxford trophy. The 
 influence of the Bullingdon is indirectly to dis- 
 courage athletics, which it regards as unaristocratic 
 and incompatible with conviviality ; so that Christ 
 Church, though the largest of Oxford colleges and 
 one of the wealthiest, is of secondary importance 
 in sports. For this reason the Bullingdon has suf- 
 fered a partial eclipse, for the middle-class spirit 
 which is invading Oxford has given athletic sports 
 the precedence over hunting, while expensive liv- 
 ing and mere social exclusiveness are less the vogue. 
 By a curious analogy, one of the oldest and most 
 exclusive of the clubs at Harvard is similarly out 
 of sympathy with the athletic spirit. 
 67 
 
AN AMERICAN AT OXFOED 
 
 Another old and prominent college wine club 
 that has come to elect members from without is the 
 Phoenix of Brazenose, the uniform of which is per- 
 haps more beautiful than the Bullingdon uniform, 
 consisting of a peculiar dark wine-colored coat, 
 brass buttons, and a light buff waistcoat. In gen- 
 eral, the college wine clubs are more or less taking 
 on a university character. The Annandale Club 
 of Balliol, for instance, has frequent guests from 
 outside, and often elects them to membership out 
 of compliment. At the formal wines the members 
 have the privilege of inviting outside guests. 
 
 The most popular and representative Oxford 
 club is Vincent's, which owes its prominence to the 
 fact that it expresses the enthusiasm of modern 
 Oxford for athletics. It was founded only a 
 third of a century ago, but it must be remembered 
 that inter-varsity boat races did not become usual 
 until 1839, nor a fixture until 1856 ; that the first 
 inter-varsity athletic meeting came in 1864, and the 
 first inter-varsity football game as late as 1873. 
 Vincent's was originally composed largely of men 
 from University College, which was at that time a 
 leader in sports ; but later it elected many men 
 from Brazenose, then in the ascendant. When 
 Brazenose became more prominent in athletics, it 
 gained a controlling influence in Vincent's ; and 
 68 
 
SOCIAL LIFE IN THE UNIVERSITY 
 
 when it declined, as it lately did, the leadership 
 passed on. The name Vincent's came from a 
 printer's shop, above which the club had its rooms. 
 Any second year man is eligible ; in fact, until a 
 few years ago, freshmen were often taken in. The 
 limit of members is ninety, but as the club is 
 always a dozen or so short of this, no good fellow 
 is excluded for lack of a place. When a man is 
 proposed, his name is written in a book, in which 
 space is left for friends in the club to write their 
 names in approval. After this, elections are in 
 the hands of a committee. Like all Oxford clubs, 
 Vincent's will always, I suppose, lean towards 
 men of some special college or group of colleges ; 
 yet it is careful to elect all clubable blues, and, 
 in point of fact, is representative of the univer- 
 sity at large, as, for instance, the Hasty Pudding 
 Club at Harvard, or the senior societies at Yale, to 
 which, on the whole, it most nearly corresponds. 
 
 The most democratic, as well as one of the most 
 recent of the more purely social clubs, is the Grid- 
 iron. It is a dining rather than a social club, and 
 one may invite to his board as many guests who 
 are not members as he chooses. Any good fellow 
 is eligible, though here, again, a man in one of the 
 less known colleges might fail to get in from lack 
 of acquaintances on the election committee. 
 
AN AMERICAN AT OXFORD 
 
 The Union has long lost prestige before this de- 
 velopment of small exclusive clubs. Politically, 
 socially, and even in that most essential depart- 
 ment, the kitchen, it holds a second place. If you 
 ask men of the kind that used to give it its char- 
 acter why they never go there, they will tell you, 
 in the most considerate phrase, how the pressure 
 of other undergraduate affairs is so great that they 
 have not yet found time ; and this is quite true. 
 They may add that next year they intend to make 
 the time, for they believe that one should know all 
 kinds of men at Oxford ; and they are quite sin- 
 cere. But next year they are more preoccupied 
 than ever. If Oxford is united socially, it is not 
 because of the Oxford Union. 
 
 In addition to the clubs which are mainly social, 
 there is the usual variety of special organizations. 
 These, as a rule, are of recent growth. The Musi- 
 cal Union has frequent meetings for practice, and 
 gives at least one concert a year. The Dramatic 
 Society, the O. U. D. S., as it is popularly called, 
 will be seen to be a very portentous organization. 
 In America, college men give comic operas and 
 burlesques, usually writing both the book and the 
 music themselves ; and when they do, there is apt 
 to be a Donnybrook Fair for vulnerable heads in 
 the faculty. So well is musical nonsense adapted to 
 70 
 
SOCIAL LIFE IN THE UNIVERSITY 
 
 the calibre of the undergraduate mind that college 
 plays sometimes find their way to the professional 
 stage, and to no small general favor. At Oxford 
 the Vice-Chancellor, who is a law to himself and to 
 the university, has decreed that there shall be no fun 
 and nonsense. If the absurdities of donnishness 
 are all too fair a mark for the undergraduate wit, 
 the Vice-Chancellor has found a very serviceable 
 scapegoat. He permits the undergraduates to pre- 
 sent the plays of Shakespeare. Surely Shakespeare 
 can stand the racket. The aim of the O. U. D. S. 
 seems to be to get as many blues as possible into 
 the cast of a Shakespearean production, with the 
 idea, perhaps, of giving Oxford its full money's 
 worth. I remember well the sensation made by the 
 most famous of all university athletes, — a " quad- 
 ruple blue," who played on four university teams, 
 was captain of three of them, and held one world's 
 record. The play was " The Merchant of Venice," 
 and the athlete in question was the swarthy Prince 
 of Morocco. Upon opening the golden casket his 
 powers of elocution rose to unexpected heights. 
 Fellows went again and again to hear him cry, 
 " O hell ! what have we here ? " In one way, how- 
 ever, the performances of the O. U. D. S. are 
 really noteworthy. Not even the crudest acting 
 can entirely disguise the influences of birth and 
 71 
 
AN AMERICAN AT OXFORD 
 
 environment ; and few Shakespearean actors have 
 as fine a natural carriage as those companies of 
 trained athletes. For the first time, perhaps, on 
 any stage, the ancient Roman honor more or less 
 appeared in Antonio, and there were really two 
 gentlemen in Yerona. For this reason — or, what 
 is more likely, merely because the plays are given 
 by Oxford men — the leading dramatic critics of 
 London run up every year for the O. U. D. S. 
 performance, and talk learnedly about it in their 
 dignified periodicals. Both the musical and the 
 dramatic societies have an increasing social ele- 
 ment, and the dramatic society has a house of its 
 own. 
 
 Of at least one association I happened upon, I 
 know of no American parallel. One Sunday after- 
 noon, a lot of fellows who had been lunching each 
 other in academic peace were routed from college 
 by a Salvation Army gathering that was sending 
 up the discordant notes of puritanical piety just 
 outside the walls. In the street near by we came 
 upon a quiet party of undergraduates in cap and 
 gown. They were standing in a circle, at the foot 
 of the Martyr's Memorial, and were alternately 
 singing hymns and exhorting the townspeople who 
 gathered about. Their faces were earnest and 
 simple, their attitude erect. If they were conscious 
 72 
 
SOCIAL LIFE IN THE UNIVERSITY 
 
 of doing an unusual thing, they did not show it. I 
 don't remember that they moved any of us to re- 
 pent the pleasantness of our ways, but I know that 
 they filled the most careless of us with a very defi- 
 nite admiration. One of the fellows said that he 
 thought them mighty plucky, and that they had 
 the stuff at least out of which sportsmen are made. 
 The phrase is peculiarly British, but in the under- 
 graduate vernacular there is no higher epithet of 
 praise. In America there are slumming societies 
 and total abstinence leagues ; but I never knew any 
 body of men who had the courage to stand up in 
 the highway and preach their gospel to passers-by. 
 
 73 
 
IX 
 
 THE COLLEGE AND THE UNIVERSITY 
 
 THE distinctive feature of the social organiza- 
 tion of Oxford life is said to be the colleges. 
 Fifty years ago the remark held good, but to-day 
 it requires an extension. The distinctive feature 
 is the duality of the social organization: a man 
 who enters fully into undergraduate affairs takes 
 part both in the life of the college and in the life 
 of the university. The life of the college, in so 
 far as it is wholesome, is open to all newcomers ; 
 it is so organized as to exert powerfully upon 
 them the force of its best influences and tradi- 
 tions, and is thus in the highest degree inclusive. 
 The life of the university, in so far as it is vigor- 
 ous, is in the main open only to those who bring 
 to it special gifts and abilities, and is therefore 
 necessarily exclusive. In college, one freely en- 
 joys all that is fundamental in the life of a young 
 man — a pleasant place to sleep in and to dine 
 in, pleasant fellows with whom to work and to 
 play. In the university, one finds scope for his 
 special capacities in conviviality or in things of 
 74 
 
THE COLLEGE AND THE UNIVEKSITY 
 
 the mind. More than any other institution, the 
 English university thus mirrors the conditions of 
 social life in the world at large, in which one is 
 primarily a member of his family, and takes part/ 
 in the life of the outside community in proportion 
 as his abilities lead him. 
 
 The happiest thing about all this is that it af- 
 fords the freest possible interplay of social forces. 
 As soon as a newcomer gains distinction, as he 
 does at once if he has the capacity, he is noticed 
 by the leading men of the college, and is thus in 
 a way to be taken into the life of the university. 
 From the college breakfast it is only a step to 
 the Gridiron, from the college eight to Vincent's, 
 and from the debating society to the Chatham 
 or the Canning. These, like all undergraduate 
 clubs, are in yearly need of new members, and 
 the older men in college are only too glad to urge 
 the just claims of the younger for good-fellow- 
 ship sake, and for the general credit of their insti- 
 tution. 
 
 Even when a fellow has received all the univer- 
 sity has to offer, he is still amenable to the duality 
 of Oxford life. In American institutions, in pro- 
 portion as a man is happily clubbed, he is by the 
 very nature of the social organization withdrawn 
 from his college mates ; but at Oxford he still 
 75 
 
AN AMERICAN AT OXFORD 
 
 dines in Hall, holds forth at the college debating 
 society, plays on the college teams, and, until his 
 final year, he lives within the college walls. First, 
 last, and always his general life is bound up with 
 that of the college. 
 
 The prominent men thus become a medium by 
 which every undergraduate is brought in touch 
 with the life of the university. The news of the 
 athletic world is reported at Vincent's over after- 
 noon tea ; and at dinner time the men who have 
 discussed it there relate it to their mates in the 
 halls of a dozen colleges. A celebrated debater 
 brings the news of the Union or of the smaller 
 clubs; and whatever a man's affiliations in the 
 university, he can scarcely help bringing the re- 
 port of them back with him. In an incredibly 
 short time all undergraduate news, and the judg- 
 ments upon it of those best qualified to judge, 
 ramify the college ; and men who seldom stir be- 
 yond its walls are brought closely in touch with 
 the innermost spirit of the university life. Here, 
 again, those forbidding walls make possible a free- 
 dom of social interplay which is unknown in 
 America. The real union of Oxford, social, ath- 
 letic, and intellectual, is quite apart from the so- 
 called Oxford Union ; it results from the nice 
 adjustment between the general residential life of 
 76 
 
THE COLLEGE AND THE UNIVERSITY 
 
 the colleges and the specialized activities of the 
 university. 
 
 The immediate effect of this union is the hum- 
 ble one of making the present life of the under- 
 graduate convenient and enjoyable ; but its ulti- 
 mate effect is a matter of no little importance. 
 Every undergraduate, in proportion to his suscep- 
 tibilities and capacities, comes under the influence 
 of the social and intellectual traditions of Oxford, 
 which are the traditions of centuries of the best 
 English life. In Canada and Australia, South 
 Africa and India, you will find the old Oxonian 
 wearing the hatband, perhaps faded and weather- 
 stained, that at Oxford denoted the thing he was 
 most proud to stand for ; and wherever you find 
 him, you will find also the manners and standards 
 of the university, which are quite as definite a part 
 of him, though perhaps less conspicuous. With- 
 out a large body of men animated by such tradi- 
 tions, it is no exaggeration to say that it would 
 not have been possible to build up the British 
 empire. If the people of the United States are 
 to bear creditably the responsibilities to civiliza- 
 tion that have lately fallen to them, or have been 
 assumed, there is urgent need for institutions that 
 shall similarly impose upon our young men the 
 best traditions and influences of American life. 
 77 
 
n 
 
 OXFORD OUT OP DOORS 
 
SLACKING ON THE ISIS AND THE CHERWELL 
 
 THE dual development of college and univer- 
 sity, with all its organic coordinations, exists 
 also in the sports of Oxford. The root and trunk 
 of the athletic spirit lies in the colleges, though its 
 highest development is found in university teams. 
 To an American, this athletic life of the college 
 will be found of especial interest, for it is the basis 
 of the peculiar wholesomeness and moderation of 
 Oxford sports. If the English take their pleasures 
 sadly, as they have been charged with doing ever 
 since Froissart hit upon the happy phrase, they 
 are not so black a pot but that they are able to 
 call us blacker ; in the light of international con^ 
 tests, they have marveled at the intensity with 
 which our sportsmen pursue the main chance. The 
 difference here has a far deeper interest than the 
 critic of boating or track athletics often realizes. 
 Like the songs of a nation, its sports have a defi- 
 nite relation to its welfare : one is tempted to say, 
 Let me rule the games of my countrymen and who 
 will may frame their laws. At least, I hope to 
 81 
 
AN AMERICAN AT OXFORD 
 
 be pardoned if I speak with some particularity of 
 the out-of-door life, and neglect the lofty theme 
 of inter-varsity contests for the humbler pursuits 
 of the common or garden undergraduate. 
 
 The origin of the boating spirit is no doubt 
 what the Oxonian calls slacking, for one has to 
 learn to paddle in a boat before he can row to 
 advantage ; and in point of fact the bumping races 
 are supposed to have originated among parties of 
 slackers returning at evening from up the river. 
 If I were to try to define what a slacker is, I sup- 
 pose you could answer that all Oxford men are 
 slackers ; but there are depths beneath depths of 
 far niente. The true slacker avoids the worry and 
 excitement of breakfast parties and three-day 
 cricket matches, and conserves his energies by 
 floating and smoking for hours at a time in his 
 favorite craft on the Isis and the Cherwell — or 
 " Char," as the university insists on calling it. He 
 is a day-dreamer of day-dreamers ; and despised as 
 he is by the more strenuous Oxford men, who yet 
 stand in fear of the fascination of his vices, he is 
 as restful a figure to an American as a negro bask- 
 ing on a cotton-wharf, and as appealing as a beg- 
 gar steeped in Italian sunlight. Merely to think 
 of his uninterrupted calm and his insatiable appe- 
 tite for doing nothing is a rest to occidental 
 82 
 
SLACKING 
 
 nerves ; and though one may never be a roust- 
 about and loaf on a cotton-wharf, one may at any 
 time go to Oxford and play through a summer's 
 day at slacking. 
 
 Before you come out, you must make the ac- 
 quaintance of the O. U. H. S. — that is, the Uni- 
 versity Humane Society. In the winter, when there 
 is skating, the Humane Society man stands by the 
 danger spot with a life-buoy and a rope ; and in 
 the summer, when the streams swarm with plea- 
 sure-craft, he wanders everywhere, pulling slackers 
 out of the Isis and the Char. In view of the 
 fact that, metaphorically speaking at least, you 
 can shake hands with your neighbors across either 
 of these streams, the Humane Society man is not 
 without his humors. 
 
 You may get yourself a tub or a working-boat 
 or a wherry, a rob-roy or a dinghy, for every craft 
 that floats is known on the Thames ; but the favor- 
 ite craft are the Canadian canoe and the punt. 
 The canoe you will be familiar with, but your 
 ideas of a punt are probably derived from a farm- 
 built craft you have poled about American duck- 
 marshes — which bears about the same relation- 
 ship to this slender, half-decked cedar beauty that 
 a canal-boat bears to a racing-shell. 
 
 During your first perilous lessons in punting, 
 83 
 
AN AMERICAN AT OXFORD 
 
 you will probably be in apprehension of ducking 
 your mentor, who is lounging among the cushions 
 in the bow. But you cannot upset the punt any 
 more than you can discompose the Englishman ; 
 the punt simply upsets you without seeming to be 
 aware of it. And when you crawl dripping up the 
 bank, consoled only by the fact that the Humane 
 Society man was not at hand with his boat-hook 
 to pull you out by the seat of the trousers, your 
 mentor will gravely explain how you made your 
 mistake. Instead of bracing your feet firmly on 
 the bottom and pushing with the pole, you were 
 leaning on the pole and pushing with your feet. 
 When the pole stuck in the clay bottom, of course 
 it pulled you out of the boat. 
 
 Steering is a matter of long practice. When 
 you want to throw the bow to the left, you have 
 only to prjr the stern over to the right as you are 
 pulling the pole out of the water. To throw the 
 bow to the right, ground the pole a foot or so wide 
 of the boat, and then lean over and pull the boat 
 up to it. That is not so easy, but you will learn 
 the wrist motion in time. When all this comes 
 like second nature, you will feel that you have 
 become a part of the punt, or rather that the punt 
 has taken life and become a part of you. 
 
 A particular beauty of punting is that, more 
 84 
 
A RACING PUNT AND PUNTER 
 
SLACKING 
 
 than any other sport, it brings you into personal 
 contact, so to speak, with the landscape. In a few 
 days you will know every inch of the bottom of 
 the Char, some of it perhaps by more intimate 
 experience than you desire. Over there, on the 
 outer curve of the bend, the longest pole will not 
 touch bottom. Fight shy of that place. Just 
 beyond here, in the narrows, the water is so shal- 
 low that you can get the whole length of your 
 body into every sweep. As for the shrubbery on 
 the bank, you will soon learn these hawthorns, 
 if only to avoid barging into them. And the 
 Magdalen chestnut, which spreads its shade so 
 beautifully above the water just beyond, becomes 
 quite familiar when its low-reaching branches have 
 once caught the top of your pole and torn it from 
 your hands. 
 
 The slackers you see tied up to the bank on 
 both sides of the Char are always here after 
 luncheon. An hour later their craft will be as 
 thick as money-bugs on the water, and the joys of 
 the slackers will be at height. You won't, as a 
 rule, detect happiness in their faces, but it is al- 
 ways obvious in the name of the craft. One manj 
 calls his canoe " Vix Satis," which is the mark the 
 university examining board uses to signify that 
 man's examination paper is a failure. Another has 
 85 
 
 n» 
 
AN AMERICAN AT OXFORD 
 
 " P. T. O." on his bows — the " Please Turn Over * 
 which an Englishman places at the bottom of a 
 card where we say " Over." Still another calls his a 
 canoe the " Non-conformist Conscience " — which, \ 
 as you are expected to remark, is very easily upset. * 
 All this makes the slacker even happier than if he 
 were so un-English as to smile his pleasure, for 
 he has a joke ready-made on his bow, where there 
 is no risk of any one's not seeing it. 
 
 These pollard willows that line the bank are not 
 expected to delight your eye at first sight, but as 
 you see them day after day, they grow on you like 
 the beauty of the bull-terrier pup that looks at you 
 over the gunwale of the boat tied beneath them. 
 They have been topped to make their roots strike 
 deeper and wider into the soil, so that when the 
 freshets come in the spring the banks will stand 
 firm. The idea came some centuries ago from 
 Holland, but has been so thoroughly Englished 
 that the university, and, indeed, all England, 
 would scarcely be itself without its pollard willows. 
 And though the trees are not in themselves grace- 
 ful, they make a large part of the beauty of the 
 river scenery. The sun is never so golden as ,up 
 there among their quivering leaves, and no shadow 
 is so deep as that in the water at their feet. 
 
 The bar of foam ahead of us is the overflow 
 
SLACKING 
 
 from the lasher — that is to say, from the still 
 water above the weir. The word " lasher " is obso- 
 lete almost everywhere else in England, and even 
 to the Oxford mind it describes the lashing over- 
 flow rather than the lache or slack water above. 
 When we " shoot the lasher," as the phrase goes, 
 you will get a hint as to why the obsolete term 
 still clings to this weir. Those fellows beyond 
 who have tied up three deep to the bank are 
 waiting to see us get ducked ; but it is just as 
 easy to shoot the lasher as to upset in it; and 
 with that swarm of slackers watching, it makes a 
 difference which you do. We have only to get up 
 a fair pace and run into it on a diagonal. The 
 lashing torrent will catch our bows, but we shall 
 be half over before it sweeps them quite around ; 
 and then it will catch the stern in turn, and whirl 
 the bow back into the proper direction. A sud- 
 den lurching of the bow, the roaring of a torrent 
 beneath, a dash of spray — and we are in still 
 water again. 
 
 In order to reach the inn at Marston by four we 
 must pole on. If we were true slackers, to be sure, 
 we should have brought a spirit lamp and a basket 
 of tea, and tied up in the first convenient nook on 
 the bank ; but these are heights of slacking to 
 which the novice cannot aspire. Just beyond here 
 87 
 
AN AMERICAN AT OXFORD 
 
 we shall have to give the Thames Conservancy man 
 threepence to roll the punt around a weir. If 
 there were ladies with us, we should have to let 
 them walk a quarter of a mile on shore* for just 
 above is Parson's Pleasure, the university bath- 
 ing-hole; and these men, who would not let the 
 Yale and the Cornell athletes appear in sleeveless 
 " zephyrs," plunge into a frequented waterway 
 without any zephyrs at all. 
 
 Above Parson's Pleasure we emerge from Meso- 
 potamia — as the pretty river bottom is called in 
 which the Char divides into several channels — 
 and come in sight of the 'varsity cricket-ground. 
 There is a game on against a picked eleven from 
 the Marylebone Club ; and every few minutes, if 
 we waited, we might see the statuesque figures in 
 white flannel suddenly dash after a ball or trot 
 back and forth between the wickets. Few slackers 
 have had energy to get beyond this point ; and as 
 we pole among the meadows, the cuckoo's homely 
 voice emphasizes the solitude, singing the same 
 two notes it sang to Shakespeare — and to Chaucer 
 before him, for the matter of that. 
 
 At Marston, having ordered tea of the red- 
 cheeked housewife, it is well to ask the innkeeper 
 for credit. He is a Parisian, whose sociological 
 principles, it is said, were the cause of his ventur- 
 88 
 
SLACKING 
 
 ing across the Channel — in Paris, a man will even 
 go as far as that for his opinions ; and while his 
 cheery English spouse, attended by troops of his 
 red-cheeked boys, brings out the thin buttered 
 bread, he will revile you. What business have you 
 to ask an honest yeoman to lend you money ? If 
 he were to go down to Oxford and ask the first 
 gentleman he met to lend him half a crown to feed 
 his starving family, should he get it ? Should he ? 
 And what right have you to come to his house — 
 his home ! — and demand food at his board ? You 
 are a gentleman ; but what is a gentleman ? A 
 gentleman is the dregs of the idleness of centuries ! 
 Then he will declaim about his plans for the reno- 
 vation of the world. All this time his well-fed 
 wife has been pouring out the tea and slicing the 
 Genoa cake ; and now, with a smile of reassurance, 
 she takes our names and college. But the inn- 
 keeper's eloquence does not flag, and it will not 
 until you tell him with decision that you have had 
 enough. This you are loath to do, for he has fur- 
 nished you with a new ideal of happiness. The 
 cotton-wharf negro sometimes wants leisure, the 
 repose of the cricketer is at times rudely broken in 
 upon, and even the slacker is liable to his ducking; 
 but to stand up boldly against the evils of the 
 world and to picture the new Utopia while your 
 89 
 
AN AMERICAN AT OXFORD 
 
 wife averts all practical consequences, this is otium 
 cum dignitate. 
 
 This journey up the Char, though all-popular 
 with the undergraduate, is not the only one worth 
 taking. We might have gone down the Isis to the 
 Iffley Mill and the sleepy little Norman church 
 near by. This would have taken us through the 
 thick of the college crews training for the summer 
 eights. But the rules of the river are so compli- 
 cated that no man on earth who has not given 
 them long hours of study can understand them ; 
 and if an eight ran into us, we should be fined a 
 quid or two — one quid for a college eight, and 
 two for the 'varsity. Below Iffley, indeed, there is 
 as much clear punting as you could desire, and here 
 you are in the full current of Thames pleasure- 
 boats. The towing-path skirts the water, so that 
 when you are tired of punting you can get out and 
 tow your craft. The stretch of river here I hold 
 memorable as the scene of the only bit of dalliance 
 I ever witnessed in this most sentimental of en- 
 vironments. A young man and a young woman 
 had tied the painter of their punt to the middle of 
 a paddle, and shoulder by shoulder were loitering 
 along the river-side. Twenty yards behind, three 
 other men and a baffled chaperon were steering the 
 punt clear of the bank, and boring one another. 
 90 
 
SLACKING 
 
 The best trip on the Isis is into the backwaters. 
 These are a mesh of tiny streams that break free 
 from the main , current above Oxford and lose 
 themselves in the broad bottom-lands. The islands 
 they form were chosen in the Dark Ages as the 
 sites of religious houses ; for not only was the land 
 fertile, but the network of deep, if tiny, streams 
 afforded defense from the heathen, while the main 
 channel of the Thames afforded communication 
 with the Christian world. The ruins of these, or 
 of subsequent monasteries, remain to-day brooding 
 over a few Tudor cottages and hamlets, with a mill 
 and a bakery and an inn or two to sustain life in the 
 occasional undergraduate who lazes by in his canoe. 
 
 The most interesting of these ruins is Wytham. 
 The phrase is exact, for the entire hamlet was 
 built from a venerable religious house shortly after 
 the dissolution of the monasteries. You can im- 
 agine the size of Wytham. If you don't watch 
 very closely as you paddle up the sedgy backwater, 
 you will miss it entirely, and that would be a pity, 
 for its rude masonry, thatched roofs, and rustic 
 garden fronts seem instinct with the atmosphere 
 of Tudor England. The very tea roses, nodding 
 languidly over the garden wall, smell, or seem to 
 smell, as subtly sweet as if they had been pressed 
 for ages between the leaves of a mediaeval romance. 
 91 
 
AN AMERICAN AT OXFORD 
 
 I am not quite sure that they do, though, for 
 these ancient hamlets have strange ways of pulling 
 the wool — a true golden fleece, to be sure — over 
 American eyes. Once at twilight I heard a knot 
 of strolling country men and women crooning a 
 tune which was so strangely familiar that I imme- 
 diately set it down as a village version of one of 
 the noble melodies of that golden age when English 
 feeling found its natural vent in song. As it 
 drew nearer, I suddenly recognized it. It was a far- 
 away version of " Mammy's Little Alabama Coon." 
 
 I have still faith, though, in a certain mediaeval 
 barmaid I chanced upon in the backwaters. The 
 circumstances of our meeting were peculiar. As I 
 drifted along one Sunday, perched on an after- 
 thwart of the canoe, the current swept me toward 
 a willow that leaned over the water, and I put up 
 my hand to fend off. I chanced to be laughing to 
 myself at the time at the thought of a fellow who, 
 only the day before at the lasher, had tried to do 
 the same thing. The lasher was forcing his punt 
 against the willow on the opposite bank, where- 
 upon, to my heart's delight, he lazily tried to fend 
 it off with his arms. The punt refused to be 
 fended off, and he stooped with an amusing effect 
 of deliberation plump into the water. He was 
 hauled out by the O. U. H. S. man hard by. 
 92 
 
SLACKING 
 
 I was interrupted in these pleasant reminis- 
 cences by the roaring of waters about my ears, min- 
 gled with a boorish guffaw from one of the fellows 
 behind me. . . . But I started to tell about the 
 mediaeval barmaid. Making my way to a bake- 
 house up the stream, I hung my coat and trousers 
 before the fire on a long baker's pote, and put 
 my shoes inside the oven on a dough tray. My 
 companion of the horse-laugh hung my shirt on 
 a blossoming almond-tree, and then left for the 
 lunch hamper. He had scarcely gone when I 
 heard the rustle of skirts at the door. " What 
 do you want ? " I cried. " I want my dinner," 
 was the friendly reply. It was the barmaid 
 of a neighboring public house, in her Sunday 
 frock. 
 
 When she saw me she smiled, but maintained a 
 dignity of port that — I insist upon it — was in- 
 stinct with the simple and primitive modesty of the 
 Middle Ages. It was the modesty of the people 
 before whom Adam in the Chester mystery play 
 was required by the stage directions to " stand 
 nakyd and not be ashamyd." My barmaid advised 
 me to take off my stockings and hang them up be- 
 fore the fire. The advice I admit came as a shock, 
 but on reflection I saw that it was capital. For 
 one happy moment I lived in the broad, wholesome 
 93 
 
AN AMERICAN AT OXFORD 
 
 atmosphere of the Middle Ages. It was like a 
 breath from Chaucer's England. 
 
 Then the baker rushed into the room, in a cut- 
 away Sunday coat of the latest style. He had 
 baked for an Oxford college so long that he had 
 become infected with the squeamish leaven of the 
 nineteenth century. He called the girl a huzzy, 
 and, taking her by the shoulder, hustled her into 
 the garden, and then passed her plum pudding 
 out to her gingerly through a crack in the door. 
 He covered me with apologies and a bath-robe ; 
 but I did not mind either, for as the barmaid ran 
 back to the inn she was laughing what I still insist 
 upon believing to have been the simple joyous 
 laughter of the Middle Ages. 
 
 But we must hurry to get back to college in 
 time for dinner. And even at that we shall have 
 to stop here at Magdalen bridge and give a street 
 boy sixpence to take the punt the rest of the way. 
 We land at the foot of the tower just as the late 
 afternoon sun is gilding its exquisite pinnacles, 
 and the chimes in its belfry are playing the pre- 
 lude to the hour of seven. It is a melody worth 
 all the Char and the Isis, with all their weirs 
 and their willows. Other mediaeval chimes fill 
 you with a delicious sorrow for the past ; but when 
 they cease, and the great bell tolls out the hour, 
 94- 
 
SLACKING 
 
 you think only of the death of time. It leaves 
 you sadly beneath the tower, in the musty cellar- 
 age. But the melody that the Magdalen chimes 
 utter is full of the fervid faith, the aspirations, of 
 our fathers. It lifts you among the gilded pin- 
 nacles, or perhaps ever so little above them. 
 
 95 
 
II 
 
 AS SEEN FROM AN OXFORD TUB 
 
 TO the true slacker, the college barges that 
 line the Isis are an object of aversion, for 
 into them sooner or later every fellow who loves 
 the water finds his way, and then there is an end 
 of slacking. Each of the barges is a grammar 
 school of oarsmanship, where all available men are 
 taught everything, from what thickness of leather 
 to wear on the heels of their boating-shoes to the 
 rhythm in rowing by which alone an eight can 
 realize its full speed ; and from the barges issues 
 a navy of boats and boating-men more than ten 
 times as large as that of an American university. 
 When Mr. R. C. Lehmann arrived at Cambridge 
 to coach the Harvard crew, he was lost in admira- 
 tion of the Charles River and the Back Bay, and 
 in amazement at the absence of boats on them. At 
 either Yale or Harvard it would be easy to give 
 space to both of the fleets that now swarm on the 
 slender Isis and threadlike Cam. We have water 
 enough — as a Congressman once remarked of our 
 fighting navy — it is only the boats that are lack- 
 96 
 
AS SEEN FROM AN OXFORD TUB 
 
 ing. The lesson we have to learn of our English 
 cousins is not so much a matter of reach and 
 swing, outrigger and blades, as a generous and 
 wholesome interest in boating for the sake of the 
 boat and of the water ; and it is less apparent in 
 an Oxford 'varsity eight than in the humblest tub 
 of the humblest college. 
 
 The first suggestion that I should go out to be 
 tubbed came from the gray-bearded dean of the 
 college, who happened at the time to be taking me 
 to the master for formal presentation. I told him 
 that I had tried for my class crew, and that three 
 days on the water had convinced the coach that I 
 was useless. He fell a pace behind, looked me 
 over, and said that I might at least try. As this 
 was his only advice, I did not forget it ; and when 
 my tutor, before advising me as to my studies, also 
 urged me to row, I gave the matter some serious 
 thought. 
 
 I found subsequently that every afternoon, be- 
 tween luncheon and tea, the college was virtually 
 deserted for field, track, and river ; and it dawned 
 upon me that unless I joined the general exodus I 
 should temporarily become a hermit. Still, my 
 earlier unhappy experience in rowing was full in 
 mind, and I set out for the barge humble in spirit, 
 and prepared to be cursed roundly for three days, 
 97 
 
AN AMERICAN AT OXFORD 
 
 and " kicked out," or, as they say in Oxford, 
 " given the hoof," on the fourth. 
 
 Few memories could be so unhappy, however, as 
 to resist the beauty of the banks of the Isis. At 
 New Haven, the first impression an oarsman gets is 
 said to be an odor so unwelcome that it is not to 
 be endeared even by four years of the good-fellow- 
 ship and companionship of a Yale crew. At Har- 
 vard, the Charles — "Our Charles," as Longfellow 
 spoke of it in a poem to Lowell — too often presents 
 aspects which it would be sacrilege to dwell on. 
 What the " royal-towered Thame " and " Camus, 
 reverend sire," may have been in the classic days 
 of English poetry it is perhaps safest not to in- 
 quire ; suffice it that to-day they are — and espe- 
 cially the Thames — all that the uninitiated ima- 
 gine " our Charles." Nowhere does the sun stream 
 more cheerfully through the moist gray English 
 clouds ; nowhere is the grass more green, the ivy 
 more luxuriant, and the pollard willows and slen- 
 der elms and poplars more dense in foliage. And 
 every building, from the thatched farm-cottage in 
 Christ Church meadow to the Norman church at 
 Iffley, is, as it were, more native and more a part 
 of creation than the grass and trees. The Eng- 
 lish oarsman, it is true, cannot be as conscious of 
 all this as an American visitor. Yet the love of 
 98 
 
AS SEEN FROM AN OXFORD TUB 
 
 outdoors, which has been at work for centuries 
 in beautifying the English landscape, is not the 
 least part of the British sporting instinct. Where 
 an American might loiter in contemplation of these 
 woods, fields, and streams, an Englishman shoots, 
 hunts, crickets, and rows in them. 
 
 When you enter the barge on the river, you 
 feel keenly the contrast with the bare, chill boat- 
 houses of the American universities. On the centre 
 tables are volumes of photographs of the crews and 
 races of former years ; the latest sporting papers 
 are scattered on chairs and seats ; and in one cor- 
 ner is a writing-table, with note-paper stamped 
 " Balliol Barge, Oxford." There is a shelf or two 
 of bound " Punches," and several shelves of books 
 — " Innocents Abroad " and " Indian Summer," 
 beside " Three Men in a Boat " and " The Dolly 
 Dialogues." On the walls are strange and occult 
 charts of the bumping races from the year one — 
 which, if I remember rightly, is 1837. At the far 
 end of the room is a sea-coal fire, above which 
 shines the prow of a shell in which the college 
 twice won the Ladies' Plate at Henley. 
 
 The dressing-room of the barge is sacred to the 
 
 members of the eight, who at the present season 
 
 are engaged in tubbing the freshmen in the hope 
 
 of finding a new oar or two. At the appointed 
 
 99 
 
AN AMEEICAN AT OXFOED 
 
 hour they appear, in eightsman blazers if it is fair, 
 or in sou'westers if it is not — sad to relate, it 
 usually is not — and each chooses a couple of men 
 and leads them out to the float. Meanwhile, with 
 the rest of the candidates — freshmen, and others 
 who in past years have failed of a place in the 
 torpids — you lounge on easy-chairs and seats, 
 reading or chatting, until your own turn comes to 
 be tubbed. It is all quiet like a club, except that 
 the men are in full athletic dress. 
 
 The athletic costume is elaborate, and has been 
 worn for a generation — since top-hats and trousers 
 were abandoned, in fact — in more or less its 
 present form. It consists of a cotton zephyr, flan- 
 nel shorts flapping about the knees, and socks, or 
 in winter Scotch hose gartered above the calves. 
 The sweater, which, in cold weather, is worn on the 
 river, has a deep V neck, supplemented when the 
 oarsman is not in action by a soft woolen scarf 
 or cloud. Over all are worn a flannel blazer and 
 cap embroidered with the arms of the college. 
 This uniform, with trifling variations, is used in 
 all sports on field and river, and it is infinitely 
 more necessary, in undergraduate opinion, than 
 the academic cap and gown which the rales of the 
 university require to be worn after dark. This 
 seemingly elaborate dress is in effect the most 
 100 
 
THE FULL COSTUME OF AN EIGHTSMAX 
 
AS SEEN FROM AN OXFORD TUB 
 
 sensible in the world, and is the best expression I 
 know of the cheerful and familiar way in which an 
 Englishman goes about his sports. Reduced to its 
 lowest terms, it is no more than is required by 
 comfort and decency. With the addition of sweater, 
 scarf, blazer, and cap, it is presentable in social 
 conversation — indeed, in the streets of the city. 
 It is in consequence of this that an afternoon in 
 the barge is — except for the two tubbings on the 
 river — so much like one spent in a club. 
 
 In America an oarsman wears socks and trunks 
 which are apt to be the briefest possible. If he 
 wears a shirt at all, it is often a mere ribbon 
 bounding the three enormous apertures through 
 which he thrusts his neck and shoulders. Before 
 going on the river he is likely to shiver, in spite of 
 the collar of his sweater ; and after he comes in, 
 his first thought is necessarily of donning street 
 clothes. There is, in consequence, practically no 
 sociability in rowing until the crews are selected 
 and sent to the training-table. A disciple of Sar- 
 tor Resartus would be very likely to conclude that, 
 until American rowing adapts itself to the English 
 costume, it must continue to be — except for the 
 fortunate few — the bare, unkindly sport it has 
 always been. 
 
 All this time I have had you seated in an arm- 
 101 
 
AN AMERICAN -AT OXFOED 
 
 chair beside the sea-coal fire. Now an eightsman 
 comes into the barge with two deep-breathing 
 freshmen, and nods us to follow him to the boat 
 the three have just quitted. On a chair by the 
 door as we go out are several pads, consisting of a 
 rubber cloth faced with wool. These are spongeo 
 pilenes, or so I was told, which in English are 
 known as Pontius Pilates — or Pontiuses for short. 
 The eightsman will advise you to take a Pontius to 
 protect your white flannel shorts from the water 
 on the seat ; for there is always a shower threaten- 
 ing, unless indeed it is raining. Every one knows, 
 however, including the eightsman, that the wool is 
 a no less important part of the Pontius than the 
 rubber : it will save you many painful impressions 
 of the dinner form in hall. 
 
 We are already on the river, and pair-oars, 
 fours, and eights are swarming about us. M Come 
 forward," cries our coach, "ready — paddle!" 
 and we take our place in the procession of craft 
 that move in one another's wake down the narrow 
 river. The coach talks pleasantly to us from time 
 to time, and in the course of an afternoon we get a 
 pretty good idea of what the English stroke con- 
 sists in. 
 
 The sun bursts through the pearl-gray clouds, 
 and glows in golden ponds on the dense verdure of 
 102 
 
AS SEEN FROM AN OXFORD TUB 
 
 grass and trees. " Eyes in the boat," shouts the 
 stern voice of conscience ; but the coach says, "See, 
 fellows. Here 's a Varsity trial eight. Watch 
 them row, and you will see what the stroke looks 
 like. Those fellows in red caps belong to the 
 Leander." 
 
 Their backs are certainly not all flat, and to an 
 American eye the crew presents a ragged appear- 
 ance as a whole ; but a second glance shows that 
 every back swings in one piece from the hips, and 
 that the apparent raggedness is due to the fact 
 that the men on the bow side swing in one line, 
 while those on the stroke side swing in another 
 parallel line. They sway together with absolute 
 rhythm and ease, and the boat is set on a rigidly 
 even keel. Our coach looks them over critically, 
 especially his three college-mates, one of whom at 
 least he hopes will be chosen for the 'varsity eight. 
 No doubt he aimed at a blue himself two years 
 ago, when he came up ; but blues are not for every 
 man, even of those who row well and strongly. 
 He watches them until they are indistinguishable 
 amid the myriad craft in the distance. " It 's 
 jolly fine weather," he concludes pleasantly, with a 
 familiar glance at the sky, which you are at liberty 
 to follow. " Come forward. Ready — paddle ! " 
 We are presently in the barge again with the other 
 103 
 
AN AMERICAN AT OXFORD 
 
 fellows. A repetition of this experience after half 
 an hour ends the day's work. 
 
 When I tried for the freshman crew in America*, 
 I was put with seven other unfortunates into a 
 huge clinker barge, in charge of the sophomore 
 coxswain. On the first day I was told to mind 
 the angle on my oar. On the second day I was 
 told to keep my eyes in the boat, damn me ! On 
 the third day, the sophomore coxswain wrought 
 himself into a fury, and swore at me for not keep- 
 ing the proper angle. When I glanced out at my 
 blade he yelled, " Damn you, eyes in the boat ! " 
 This upset me so that I forgot thereafter to keep a 
 flat back at the finish of the stroke. When we 
 touched the float he jumped out, looked at my 
 back, brought his boot against it sharply, and told 
 me that there was no use in trying to row unless 
 I could hold a flat back and swing my body be- 
 tween my knees. That night I sat on a dictionary 
 with my feet against the footboard and tried to 
 follow these injunctions, until my back seemed 
 torn into fillets, but it would not come flat. I 
 never went down to the river again, and it was 
 two years before I summoned courage to try an- 
 other sport. The bullyragging sophomore cox- 
 swain I came to know very well in later years, 
 and found hkn as courteous and good-hearted as 
 104 
 
AS SEEN FROM AN OXFORD TUB 
 
 any man. To this day, if I mention our first 
 meeting, he looks shy, and says he does n't re- 
 member it. He says that the flat back is a dis- 
 carded fetish in Harvard boating circles, that even 
 before the advent of Mr. Lehmann cursing and 
 kicking were largely abandoned ; and moreover 
 (fortissimo) that the freshman crew he helped to 
 curse and kick into shape was the only one in ten 
 years that won. 
 
 After a fortnight's tubbing in pair-oars, the bet- 
 ter candidates are tubbed daily in fours, and the 
 autumn races are on the horizon. At the end of 
 another week the boats are finally made up, and 
 the crews settle down to the task of " getting to- 
 gether." Each of the fours has at least one sea- 
 soned oarsman to steady it, and is coached from 
 the coxswain's seat by a member of the college 
 eight. Sometimes, if the November floods are not 
 too high, the coach runs or bicycles along the tow- 
 ing-path, where he can see the stroke in profile. 
 If a coach swears at his men, there is sure to have 
 been provocation. His favorite figure of speech 
 is sarcasm. At the end of a heart-breaking burst 
 he will say, " Now, men, get ready to row" or, " I 
 say, fellows, wake up ; canH you make a differ- 
 ence ? " The remark of one coach is now a tra- 
 dition — " All but four of you men are rowing 
 105 
 
AN AMERICAN AT OXFORD 
 
 badly, and they 're rowing damned badly 1 " This 
 convention of sarcasm is by no means old. One 
 of the notable personages in Eights' Week is a 
 little man who is pointed out to you as the Last 
 of the Swearing Coaches. Tempora mutantur. 
 Perhaps my friend the ex-coxswain is in line for 
 a similar distinction. 
 
 When the fours are once settled in their tubs, 
 the stroke begins to go much better, and the daily 
 paddle is extended so as to be a real test of 
 strength and endurance for the new men, and for 
 the man from the torpid a brisk practice spin. 
 Even at this stage very few of the new men are 
 " given the hoof ; " the patience of the coachers is 
 monumental. 
 
 The tubbing season is brought to an end with 
 a race between the fours. Where there are half a 
 dozen fours in training, two heats of three boats 
 each are rowed the first day, and the finals be- 
 tween the best two crews on the following day. 
 The method of conducting these races is charac- 
 teristic of boating on the Isis and the Cam. As 
 the river is too narrow to row abreast, the crews 
 start a definite distance apart, and row to three 
 flags a mile or so up the river, which are exactly 
 as far apart as the boats were at starting. At 
 each of these flags an eightsman is stationed. In 
 106 
 
AS SEEN FROM AN OXFORD TUB 
 
 the races I saw they flourished huge dueling pis- 
 tols, and when the appropriate crew passed the 
 flag, the appropriate man let off his pistol. The 
 crew that is first welcomed with a pistol-shot wins. 
 These races are less exciting than the bumping 
 races; yet they have a picturesque quality of their 
 own, and they settle the question of superiority 
 with much less rowing. The members of the win- 
 ning four get each a pretty enough prize to re- 
 member the race by, and the torpidsman at stroke 
 holds the " Junior fours cup " for the year. 
 
 The crowning event of the season of tubbing is 
 a wine, to which are invited all boating-men in 
 college, and the representative athletes in other 
 sports. In Balliol it is called the " Morrison 
 wine," as the races are called " Morrison fours," 
 in honor of an old Balliol man, a 'varsity oar and 
 coach, who established the fund for the prizes. 
 The most curious thing about this affair is that 
 it is not given, as it would be in America, at the 
 expense of the college, or even of the men who 
 have been tubbed, but at the expense of those who 
 are finally chosen to row in the races. 
 
 To my untutored mind the hospitality of Eng- 
 lish boating seemed a pure generosity. It made 
 me uncomfortable at first, with the sense that I 
 could never repay it ; but I soon got over this, and 
 107 
 
AN AMERICAN AT OXFORD 
 
 basked in it as in the sun. The eightsmen devote 
 their afternoons to coaching you because there are 
 seats to be filled in the torpid and in the eight ; 
 they speak decently because they find that in the 
 long run decency is more effective ; and they hold 
 the wine because they wish to honor the sport in 
 which they have chosen to stake their reputations 
 as athletes. In a word, where in America we row 
 by all that is self-sacrificing and loyal, in England 
 the welfare ' of boating is made to depend upon 
 its attractiveness as a recreation and a sport ; if 
 it were not enjoyable to the normal man, nothing 
 could force fellows into it. 
 
 The relationship of the autumn tubbing and its 
 incidental sociability to the welfare of the sport 
 in the college and in the university seems remote 
 enough to the American mind, for out of the score 
 of fellows who are tubbed only three or four, on 
 an average, go farther in the sport. Yet it is typi- 
 cal of the whole ; and it will help us in following 
 the English boating season. Throughbut the year 
 there are two converging currents of activity in 
 boating. On the one hand, the tubs in the au- 
 tumn term develop men for the torpids, which 
 come on during the winter term ; and the torpids 
 develop men for the summer eights. On the 
 other hand, the Varsity trials in the autumn term 
 108 
 
AS SEEN FROM AN OXFORD TUB 
 
 develop men for the 'varsity eight, which trains 
 and races in the winter term ; and the 'varsity 
 oarsmen, like the men who have prospered in tubs 
 and torpids, end the season in the eights of their 
 respective colleges. The goal of both the novice 
 and the veteran is thus the college eight. 
 
 The torpid is, so to speak, the understudy to the 
 college eight. In order to give full swing to the 
 new men, no member of the eight of the year 
 before is allowed to row in it ; and the leading 
 colleges man two torpids — sometimes even three. 
 The training here is much more serious than in 
 the tubs ; wine, spirits, and tobacco are out of 
 order. The races, which are conducted like the 
 celebrated May Eights, are rowed in midwinter — 
 in the second of the three Oxford terms — under 
 leaden skies, and sometimes with snow piled up 
 along the towing-path. On the barges, instead of 
 the crowds of ladies, gayly dressed and bent on 
 a week of social enjoyment, one finds knots of 
 loyal partisans who are keen on the afternoon's 
 sport. The towing-path, too, is not so crowded as 
 in May "Week ; but nothing could surpass the din 
 of pistols and rattles and shouting that accompa- 
 nies the races. If the men in the torpid do not 
 learn how to row the stroke to the finish under the 
 excitement of a race, it is not for the lack of 
 109 
 
AN AMERICAN AT OXFORD 
 
 coaching and experience. When the torpids break 
 training, there are many ceremonies to signalize 
 the return to the flesh-pots : one hardly realizes 
 that the weeks of sport and comradeship have all 
 gone to the filling of a place or two in the college 
 eight. 
 
 All this time, while the tubs and torpids have 
 been training up new men, the 'Varsity Boat Club, 
 whose home is on the shore of the Isis opposite the 
 row of college barges, has also, so to speak, been 
 doing its tubbing. The new men for the 'var- 
 sity are chiefly those who have come to the front 
 in the May Eights of the previous year — oars of 
 two or three seasons' standing ; though occasion- 
 ally men are taken directly from the Eton eight, 
 which enters yearly for the Ladies' Plate at Hen- 
 ley. The new men will number ten or a dozen ; 
 and early in the autumn they are taken out in 
 tubs. They are soon joined by as many of last 
 year's blues as are left in Oxford. The lot is 
 divided into two eights, as evenly matched as pos- 
 sible, which are coached separately. These are 
 called the Trial Eights, or 'Varsity Trials. To 
 "get one's trials" is no mean honor. It is the 
 sine qua non of membership to the Leander — 
 admittedly the foremost boating club of the world. 
 Toward the end of the first term there is a race 
 110 
 
AS SEEN FROM AN OXFORD TUB 
 
 of two and a half miles between the two trial 
 eights at Moulsford, where the Thames is wide 
 enough to permit the two boats to race abreast. 
 Of the men who row in the trials the best ten or 
 a dozen are selected to train for the Varsity dur- 
 ing the winter term. 
 
 Of the training of the 'varsity eight it is not 
 necessary to speak here at length. The signal 
 fact is that the men are so well schooled in the 
 stroke, and so accustomed to racing, that a season 
 of eight weeks at Oxford and at Putney is enough 
 to fit them to go over the four miles and a quarter 
 between Putney and Mortlake with the best possi- 
 ble results. The race takes place in March, just 
 after the close of the winter term. 
 
 The series of races I have mentioned gives some 
 idea of the scheme and scope of English boating, 
 but it is by no means exhaustive. The strength 
 of the boating spirit gives rise to no end of casual 
 and incidental races. Chief among these are the 
 coxswainless fours, which take place about the mid- 
 dle of the autumn term, while the trials are on the 
 river. The crews are from the four or five chief 
 boating colleges, and are made up largely from 
 the men in the 'varsity trials. The races have 
 no relation that I could discover to the 'varsity 
 race ; the only point is to find which college has 
 111 
 
AN .^MERICAN AT OXFORD 
 
 the best four, and it is characteristic that merely 
 for the sport of it the training of the 'varsity 
 trials is interrupted. 
 
 After the 'varsity race the members of the crew- 
 rest during what remains of the Easter vacation, 
 and then take their places in the boats of their 
 respective colleges. Here they are joined by the 
 other trials men, the remaining members of last 
 year's college eight, and the two or three men 
 who have come up from the torpids. Now begins 
 the liveliest season in boating. Every afternoon 
 the river is clogged with eights rowing to Iffley or 
 to Sandford, and the towing-path swarms with 
 enthusiasts. The course in the May bumping 
 races is a mile and a quarter long — the same as 
 the course of the torpids — and the crews race 
 over it every day for a week, with the exception of 
 an intervening Sunday, each going up a place or 
 down a place in the procession daily according as 
 it bumps or is bumped. These races, from the 
 point of view of the expert oarsman, are far less 
 important than the 'varsity race ; yet socially they 
 are far more prominent, and the enthusiasm they 
 arouse among the undergraduates is incomparable. 
 The vitality of Oxford is in the colleges : the uni- 
 versity organizations are the flowers of a very 
 sturdy root and branch. 
 
 112 
 
AS SEEN FEOM AN OXFORD TUB 
 
 The difference between American and English 
 boating is that we lack the root and branches of 
 the college system. In a university of from three 
 to four thousand men there are, in addition to the 
 'varsity crew, four class crews and perhaps a few 
 scratch crews. In England, each of the score of 
 colleges, numbering on an average something like 
 one hundred and fifty men apiece, mans innumera- 
 ble fours, one or more eight-oared torpids, and the 
 college eight. A simple calculation will show that 
 with us one man in fifty to seventy goes in for the 
 sport, while in England the proportion is one man 
 in five to seven. 
 
 The difference in spirit is as great as the dif- 
 ference in numbers. In America, the sole idea 
 in athletics, as is proclaimed again and again, is 
 to beat the rival team. No concession is made to 
 the comfort or wholesomeness of the sport; men 
 are induced to train by the excellent if somewhat 
 grandiose sentiment that they owe it to the univer- 
 sity to make every possible sacrifice of personal 
 pleasure. Our class crews, which have long ceased 
 to represent any real class rivalry, are maintained 
 mainly in the hope of producing 'varsity materials 
 The result of these two systems is curiously at 
 variance with the intention. At Oxford, where 
 rowing is very pleasant indeed, and where for 
 113 
 
AN AMERICAN AT OXFORD 
 
 the greater part of the year the main interest 
 centres in college crews, the 'varsity reaches a high 
 degree of perfection, and the oarsmen, without 
 quite being aware of the fact, represent their uni- 
 versity very creditably ; while at Yale, and until 
 recently at Harvard, the subsidiary crews have 
 been comparative failures in producing material, 
 and the 'varsity is in consequence somewhat in the 
 position of an exotic, being kept alive merely by 
 the stimulus of inter-varsity rivalry. 
 
 The recent improvement at Harvard is due to 
 Mr. Rudolph C. Lehmann, the celebrated Cam- 
 bridge and Leander oar who coached the Harvard 
 crews of 1897 and 1898, in the sportsmanlike 
 endeavor to stimulate a broader and more expert 
 interest in boating. His failure to bring either of 
 the crews to victory, which to so many of us sig- 
 nified the utter failure of his mission, has had 
 more than a sufficient compensation in the fact that 
 he established at Harvard something like the Eng- 
 lish boating system. Anything strictly similar to 
 the torpids and eights is of course out of the ques- 
 tion, because we have no social basis such as the 
 colleges afford for rivalry in boating ; but the lack 
 of colleges has in a measure been remedied by 
 creating a factitious rivalry between improvised 
 boating clubs, and the system of torpids and eights 
 114 
 
AS SEEN FROM AN OXFORD TUB 
 
 has been crudely imitated in the so-called graded 
 crews. A season of preliminary racing has thus 
 been established, on the basis of which the can- 
 didates for the 'varsity crew are now selected, so that 
 instead of the nine months of slogging in the tank 
 and on the river, in which the more nervous and 
 highly organized candidates were likely to succumb 
 and the stolid men to find a place in the boat, the 
 eight is made up as at Oxford of those who have 
 shown to best advantage in a series of spirited races. 
 Crude as the new Harvard system is as compared 
 with the English system, it has already created a 
 true boating spirit, and has trained a large body 
 of men in the established stroke, placing the sport 
 at Harvard on a sounder basis than at any other 
 American university. It has thus been of infinitely 
 more advantage, by the potentiality of an example, 
 than any number of victories at New London. To 
 realize the full benefit of the system of graded 
 crews and preliminary races, it is only necessary 
 to supersede the arbitrary and meaningless division 
 into clubs by organizations after the manner of 
 English colleges which shall represent something 
 definite in the general life of the university. 
 
 115 
 
Ill 
 
 A LITTLE SCRIMMAGE WITH ENGLISH RUGBY 
 
 THE relationship between the colleges and the 
 university exists in a greater or less degree 
 in all sports. There is a series of matches among 
 the leading colleges in cricket, and a " cup tie " in 
 Association football. These sports are almost as 
 popular as rowing, and have many excellences 
 which it would be pleasant to point out and pro- 
 fitable perhaps to emulate ; but it seems best to 
 concentrate attention on the sports which are best 
 understood in America, such as Rugby football and 
 athletics. The workings of the college system may 
 be most clearly seen in them, and the spirit of 
 English sportsmanship most sympathetically ap- 
 preciated. 
 
 The rivalry between the Association and the 
 Rugby games has made English football players 
 quite unexpectedly sensitive to comparisons. I 
 had scarcely set foot upon a Rugby field when 
 I was confronted with the inevitable question as 
 to English Rugby and American. I replied that 
 from a hasty judgment the English game seemed 
 116 
 
ENGLISH RUGBY 
 
 haphazard and inconsequent. '* We don't kill one 
 another, if that 's what you mean by 'inconse- 
 quent,' " my companion replied ; and I soon found 
 that a report that two players had been killed in 
 the Thanksgiving Day match of the year before 
 had never been contradicted in England. " That 
 is the sport," my friend continued, " which Caspar 
 Whitney says, in his * Sporting Pilgrimage,' has im- 
 proved English Rugby off the face of the earth ! " 
 
 The many striking differences between English 
 and American Rugby arise out of the features of 
 our game known as " possession of the ball " and 
 " interference." In the early days of the Ameri- 
 can game, many of the most sacred English tradi- 
 tions were unknown, and the wording of the Eng- 
 lish rules proved in practice so far from explicit 
 that it was not possible to discover what it meant, 
 much less to enforce the rules. 
 
 One of the traditions favored a certain com- 
 parative mildness of demeanor. The American 
 players, on the contrary, favored a campaign of 
 personal assault for which the general rules of the 
 English scrummage lent marked facilities. It soon 
 became necessary in America to line the men up 
 in loose order facing each other, and to forbid vio- 
 lent personal contact until the actual running with 
 the ball should begin. This clearly made it neces- 
 117 
 
AN AMERICAN AT OXFORD 
 
 sary that the sides should in turn put the ball 
 in play, and consequently should alternately have 
 possession of it. Under this arrangement, each 
 side is in turn organized on the offensive and the 
 defensive. 
 
 The upshot of this was that the forwards, who 
 in the parent English game have only an incidental 
 connection with the running of the backs, become 
 a part of each successive play, opening up the way 
 for the progress of the ball. According to the Eng- 
 lish code, this made our forwards off-side, so that 
 the rule had to be changed to fit the new practice. 
 It then appeared that if the forwards could play 
 ahead of the ball, the backs could do so too ; and 
 here you have the second great American feature. 
 The result of " possession " of the ball and " inter- 
 ference " is an elaborate and almost military code 
 of tactics unknown in the English game. 
 
 In the course of time I had unusual facilities for 
 observing English Rugby. During the Morrison 
 wine which ended the season of tubbing on the 
 river, the captain of the Balliol fifteen threw his 
 arms about me, and besought me to play on the 
 team. He had not a single three-quarters, he said, 
 who could get out of his own way running. I 
 pleaded an attack of rheumatism and ignorance of 
 the game. He said it did not matter. " And I 'm 
 118 
 
v 
 
 ENGLISH 
 
 half blind," I added. " So am I," he interrupted, 
 " but we '11 both be all right in the morning." I 
 said I referred to the fact that I was very near- 
 sighted ; but he took all excuses as a sign of re- 
 sentment because he had failed to invite me to 
 breakfast in my freshman term ; he appeared to 
 think it his duty to breakfast all possible candi- 
 dates. Such are the courtesies of an English cap- 
 tain, and such are the informalities of English 
 training. 
 
 The next morning the captain wrote me that 
 there was a match on against Merton, and asked 
 me to come out a quarter of an hour before the 
 rest for a little coaching. A quarter of an hour to 
 learn to play football ! In spite of the captain's 
 predictions of the night before, I was not so sure 
 that he was yet " all right ; " so I went out to 
 the porter's lodge and scanned the bulletin board. 
 My name stared me in the face. I had scarcely 
 time to take luncheon and don a pair of football 
 shorts. 
 
 The practice my coach gave me consisted in run- 
 ning the length of the field three or four times, 
 passing the ball back and forth as we went. His 
 instructions with regard to the game were equally 
 simple. To keep in proper position I had only to 
 watch my Merton vis-a-vis and take a place sym- 
 119 
 
AN AMERICAN AT OXFORD 
 
 metrical with his. When the enemy heeled the 
 ball out of the " scrummage " to their quarter-back, 
 putting us for the moment on the defensive, I was 
 to watch my man, and, if the ball was passed 
 to him, to tackle him. If he passed it before I 
 could tackle him I was still to follow him, leaving 
 the man who took the ball to be watched by my 
 neighbor, in order that I might be on hand if my 
 man received it again. An American back, when 
 his side is on the defensive, is expected to keep his 
 eye on his vis-a-vis while the ball is being snapped 
 back ; but his main duty is to follow the ball. An 
 English back under similar circumstances is ex- 
 pected only to follow his man. If our side hap- 
 pened to heel out the ball from the scrum and one 
 of our three-quarters began to run with it, we were 
 on the offensive, and the other three-quarters and 
 I were to follow at his heels, so that when he was 
 about to be tackled — " collared," the English say 
 — he could pass it on to us. There is, as I have 
 said, no such thing as combined " interference " 
 among the backs. A player who gets between the 
 man with the ball and the enemy's goal is rankly 
 off-side. It is not to be understood that the cap- 
 tain coached all this information into me. I had 
 to buttonhole him and pump it out word by word. 
 Coaching of any sort is all but unknown on Eng- 
 120 
 
ENGLISH RUGBY 
 
 lish football fields. What there is of the game 
 is learned at school — or in the nursery ! 
 
 When the opposing teams scattered over the 
 field for the kick-off, I noticed with satisfaction 
 that there was not a spectator on the grounds to 
 embarrass me. It is so in almost all English col- 
 lege games — the fellows are more than likely to 
 have sports of their own on, and anyway, what is 
 the use in hanging round the fields where other 
 fellows are having all the fun ? 
 
 On the kick-off, luckily, the ball did not come 
 to my corner of the field, for I could scarcely have 
 seen it, much less caught it. Our side returned 
 the kick and the " scrum " formed. The nine for- 
 wards gathered compactly in a semi-ellipse, bent 
 their bodies together in a horizontal plane, with 
 their heads carefully tucked beneath the mass, and 
 leaned against the opposing mass of forwards, who 
 were similarly placed. When the two scrums were 
 thoroughly compacted, the umpire tossed the ball 
 on the ground beneath the opposing sets of legs, 
 whereupon both sides began to struggle. The 
 scrum in action looks like a huge tortoise with 
 a score of legs at each end, which by some unac- 
 countable freak of nature are struggling to walk 
 in opposite directions. The sight is certainly awe- 
 inspiring, and it was several days before I realized 
 121 
 
AN AMEKICAN AT OXFOKD 
 
 that it masked no abstrusely working tactics ; there 
 is little, if anything, in it beyond the obvious grunt- 
 ing and shoving. 
 
 The backs faced each other in pairs ranged out 
 on the side of the scrum that afforded the broader 
 field for running. The legs in the Balliol scrum 
 pushed harder and the bodies squirmed to more 
 advantage, for our men had presently got the ball 
 among their feet. They failed to hold it there, 
 however, and it popped out into a half-back's 
 hands. He passed it quickly to one of my com- 
 panions at three-quarters, who dodged his man 
 and ran toward the corner of the field. I followed, 
 and just as the full-back collared him he passed 
 the ball to me. Before I had taken three rheu- 
 matic strides I had two men hanging at my back ; 
 but when they brought me down, the ball was just 
 beyond the line. The audience arose as one man 
 — to wit, the referee, who had been squatting on 
 the side lines — and shouted, " Played. Well 
 played ! " I had achieved universal fame. Dur- 
 ing the rest of the game the Balliol scrum, which 
 was a very respectable affair of its kind, kept the 
 ball to itself, while we backs cooled our heels. 
 
 A few days later, in a game against Jesus, the 
 scrums were more evenly matched, and the ball 
 was heeled out oftener. I soon found that my 
 ^ 122 
 
ENGLISH EUGBY 
 
 eyes were not sharp enough to follow quick pass- 
 ing ; and when, just before half-time, a punt came 
 in my direction, I was horrified to see the ball mul- 
 tiply until it looked like a flock of balloons. As 
 luck had it, I singled out the wrong balloon to 
 catch. Jesus fell on the ball just as it bounced 
 over the goal-line. In the second half the captain 
 put one of the forwards in my place, and put me 
 in the scrum. 
 
 The play here was more lively, though scarcely 
 more complex or difficult. Each forward stuck 
 his head beneath the shoulders of the two men in 
 front of him, grasped their waists, and then heaved, 
 until, when the ball popped out of the scrum, the 
 word came to dissolve. There were absolutely no 
 regular positions ; the man who was in the front 
 centre of one scrummage might be in the outskirts 
 of the next. On some teams, I found, by inquiry, 
 a definite order is agreed on, but this is regarded 
 as of doubtful advantage. 
 
 When the umpire or a half-back tosses the ball 
 into the scrummage, there are, at an ultimate analy- 
 sis, four things that can happen. First, the two 
 sides may struggle back and forth, carrying the 
 ball on the ground at their feet ; this play is called a 
 " pack." Second, the stronger side may cleave the 
 weaker, and run down the field, dribbling the ball 
 123 
 
AN AMERICAN AT OXFORD 
 
 yard by yard as they go, until either side picks it 
 up for a run, or else drops on it and cries " down." 
 Third, one side may be able to " screw the scrum," 
 a manoeuvre which almost rises to the altitude of 
 a " play." The captain shouts " Right ! " or per- 
 haps " Left ! " and then his forwards push diago- 
 nally, instead of directly, against their opponents. 
 The result is very like what we used to call a 
 revolving wedge, except that, since the ball is car- 
 ried on the ground, the play eventuates, when suc- 
 cessful, in a scattering rush of forwards down the 
 field, dribbling the ball at their feet, just as when 
 the scrum has been cloven. The fourth possibility 
 is that the side that gets the ball amongst its 
 eighteen legs allows it to ooze out behind, or, if its 
 backs are worthy of confidence, purposely heels it 
 out. Thereupon results the play I have already 
 described : one of the half-backs pounces upon it 
 and passes it deftly to the three-quarters, who run 
 with it down the field, if necessary passing it back 
 and forth. In plays which involve passing or drib- 
 bling, English teams sometimes reach a very high 
 degree of skill : few sights on the football field 
 are more inspiring than to see a " combination " 
 of players rush in open formation among their 
 opponents, shifting the ball from one to another 
 with such rapidity and accuracy as to elude all 
 124 
 
ENGLISH RUGBY 
 
 attempts to arrest it. As a whole, the game of the 
 forwards is much more fun than that of the backs, 
 though decidedly less attractive in the eyes of the 
 spectators — a consideration of slight importance 
 on an English field ! 
 
 Just as I began to get warmed to my new work 
 I smashed my nose against the head of a Balliol 
 man who was dodging back into the push. The 
 captain told me that I need not finish the game ; 
 but as it is against the English rules to substitute 
 players and we were still far from sure of winning, 
 I kept to my grunting and shoving. At the end 
 of the game the captain very politely gave me the 
 hoof. This was just what I expected and deserved ; 
 but I was surprised to find that the fellows had 
 objected to my playing the game through with a 
 bloody nose. They would have preferred not to 
 be bled upon. 
 
 This regard for pleasantness and convenience, 
 which to an American is odd enough, is character- 
 istic even of 'varsity football. The slenderness of 
 the preliminary training of a Varsity fifteen is in- 
 credible to any American who has not witnessed 
 it. To sift the candidates there is a freshman 
 match and a senior match, with perhaps one or 
 two " squashes " — that is to say, informal games 
 — besides. And even these tests are largely a 
 125 
 
AN AMERICAN AT OXFORD 
 
 matter of form. Men are selected chiefly on their 
 public school reputations or in consequence of 
 good work on a college fifteen. The process of 
 developing players, so familiar to us, is unknown. 
 There is no coaching of any kind, as we under- 
 stand the word. When a man has learned the 
 game at his public school or in his college, he has 
 learned it for all time, though he will, of course, 
 improve by playing for the university. The need 
 of concentrated practice is greatly lessened by the 
 fact that the soft English winter allows as long a 
 season of play as is desired. The team plays a 
 game or two a week against the great club teams 
 of England — Blackheath, Richmond, London 
 Scottish, Cardiff, Newport, and Huddersfield — 
 with perhaps a bit of informal kicking and punt- 
 ing between times. When the weather is too bad, 
 it lays off entirely. 
 
 All this does not conduce to the strenuousness 
 of spirit Americans throw into their sports. In an 
 inter-varsity match I saw the Oxford team which 
 was fifty per cent, better allow itself to be shoved 
 all over the field : it kept the game a tie only by 
 the rarest good fortune. It transpired later that 
 the gayeties of Brighton, whither the team had 
 gone to put the finishing touches on its training, 
 had been too much for it. In an American uni- 
 126 
 
ENGLISH RUGBY 
 
 versity such laxity would be thought the lowest 
 depth of unmanliness, but I could not see that any 
 one at Oxford really resented it ; at most it was a 
 subject for mild sarcasm. You can't expect a team 
 to be in the push everywhere ! 
 
 This lack of thorough preparation is even more 
 characteristic of the international teams — Eng- 
 land, Ireland, Scotland, and Wales — that yearly 
 play for the championship of Great Britain. They 
 are chosen from the most brilliant players in the 
 leading clubs, and local jealousy makes the task of 
 choosing most delicate. The temptation is to take 
 a man or two impartially from each of the great 
 fifteens. As the international teams take little or 
 no practice as a whole, the tendency in the great 
 games is to neglect the finer arts of dribbling and 
 passing in combination — the art8 for which each 
 player was severally chosen — and revert to the 
 primitive grunting and shoving. In the great 
 games, accordingly, the team which is man for man 
 inferior as regards the fine points may prevail by 
 sheer strength, so that the result is liable to be 
 most unsatisfactory. Some years ago, owing to 
 local jealousy, the Welsh international had to be 
 chosen mainly from a single club — with the result 
 that it won the championship ; and in 1901 the 
 canny Scotch team won by intentionally selecting 
 127 
 
AN AMERICAN AT OXFORD 
 
 its members, in spite of local jealousy, on the score 
 of their familiarity with one another's play. 
 
 The very rules under which the game is played 
 are calculated to moderate the struggle. As a 
 result of the rule against substituting, to which I 
 have referred, any extreme of hard play in the 
 practice games, such as lays off dozens of good 
 American players yearly, is not likely to be en- 
 couraged. Of course good men " crock," as they 
 call it ; but where an injury is practically certain 
 to disqualify a man from the inter-varsity match, 
 the football limp and the football patch can 
 scarcely be regarded as the final grace of athletic 
 manhood. Willful brutality is all but unknown ; 
 the seriousness of being disqualified abets the nor- 
 mal English inclination to play the game like a 
 person of sense and good feeling. The physical 
 effect of the sport is to make men erect, lithe, 
 and sound. And the effect on the nervous system 
 is similar. The worried, drawn features of the 
 American player on the eve of a great contest are 
 unknown. An Englishman could not understand 
 how it has happened that American players have 
 been given sulphonal during the last nights of 
 training. English Rugby is first of all a sport, 
 an exercise that brings manly powers into play ; 
 as Hamlet would say, the play 's the thing. It is 
 128 
 
ENGLISH RUGBY 
 
 eminently an enjoyable pastime, pleasant to watch, 
 and more pleasant to take part in. 
 
 That our American game is past hoping for on 
 the score of playability is by no means certain. 
 As the historical critics of literature are fond of 
 saying, a period of rapid development is always 
 marked by flagrant excesses, and the development 
 of modern American football has been of astonish- 
 ing rapidity. Quite often the game of one season 
 has been radically different from the games of all 
 preceding seasons. This cannot continue always, 
 for the number of possible variations is obviously 
 limited, and when the limit is reached American 
 Rugby will be, like English Rugby, the same old 
 game year in and;year out. Everybody, from the 
 youngest prep, to the oldest grad., will know it 
 and love it. 
 
 The two vital points in which our game differs 
 from the English — " possession of the ball " and 
 " interference " — are both the occasion of vigorous 
 handling of one's opponents. When an American 
 player is tackled, he seldom dares to pass the ball 
 for fear of losing possession of it, so that our rule 
 is to tackle low and hard, in order to stop the ball 
 sharply, and if possible to jar it out of the runner's 
 grasp. In England, it is still fair play to grab a 
 man by the ankle. This is partly because of the 
 129 
 
AN AMERICAN AT OXFORD 
 
 softness of the moist thick English turf ; but more 
 largely because, as passing is the rule, the tackier 
 in nine cases out of ten aims at the ball. The 
 result is that a man is seldom slammed to the 
 earth as he would be in our game. It is this fact 
 that enables the English player to go bare-kneed. 
 
 The danger from interference in the American 
 game is also considerable. When a man is blocked 
 off, he is liable to be thrown violently upon the far 
 from tender bosom of our November mother-earth. 
 Any one familiar with the practice of an American 
 eleven will remember the constant cry of the 
 coaches : " Knock your man on the ground ! Put 
 him out of the play ! " It has been truly enough 
 said that the American game has exaggerated the 
 most dangerous features of the two English games 
 — the tackling of English Rugby and the " charg- 
 ing'' or body-checking of the Association game. 
 
 Yet this is only a partial statement of the case. 
 These elements of possession of the ball and inter- 
 ference have raised our game incalculably above 
 the English game as a martial contest. Whereas 
 English Rugby has as yet advanced very little be- 
 yond its first principles of grunting and shoving, 
 the American game has always been supreme as 
 a school and a test of courage ; and it has always 
 tended, albeit with some excesses, toward an in- 
 130 
 
ENGLISH RUGBY 
 
 comparably high degree of skill and strategy. 
 Since American football is still in a state of tran- 
 sition, it is only fair to judge the two games by 
 the norm to which they are severally tending. The 
 Englishman has on the whole subordinated the 
 elements of skill in combination to the pleasant- 
 ness of the sport, while the American has some- 
 what sacrificed the playability of the game to his 
 insatiate struggle for success and his inexhaust- 
 ible ingenuity in achieving it. More than any 
 other sport, Rugby football indicates the divergent 
 lines along which the two nations are developing. 
 By preferring either game a man expresses his 
 preference for one side of the Atlantic over the 
 other. 
 
 131 
 
IV 
 
 TRACK AND FIELD ATHLETICS 
 
 IN track and field athletics, the pleasantness and 
 informality of English methods of training 
 reach a climax. In America we place the welfare 
 of our teams in the hands of a professional trainer, 
 who, through his aide-de-camp, the undergraduate 
 captain, is apt to make the pursuit of victory pretty 
 much a business. Every autumn newcomers are 
 publicly informed that it is their duty to the uni- 
 versity to train for the freshman scratch games. 
 At Oxford, I was surprised to find, there was not 
 only no call for candidates, but no trainer to whom 
 to apply for aid. The nearest approach to it was 
 the groundsman at the Iflfley Kunning Grounds, a 
 retired professional who stoked the boilers for the 
 baths, rolled the cinder-path, and occasionally acted 
 as "starter." As his "professional" reputation as 
 a trainer was not at stake in the fortunes of the 
 Oxford team, his attitude was humbly advisory. 
 The president of the Athletic Club never came near 
 the grounds, being busy with rowing on a 'varsity 
 trial eight, and later with playing Association foot- 
 132 
 
TRACK AND FIELD ATHLETICS 
 
 ball for the university. To one accustomed to 
 train not only for the glory of his alma mater but 
 for the reputation of his trainer, the situation was 
 uninspiring. 
 
 As I might have expected, the impetus to train 
 came from the college. I was rescued from a fit 
 of depression by a college-mate, a German, who 
 wanted some one to train with. At school he had 
 run three miles in remarkable time ; but later, when 
 an officer in the German army, his horse had rolled 
 over him at the finish of a steeple-chase, and the 
 accident had knocked out his heart ; so he was going 
 to try to sprint. I advised him against all train- 
 ing, and the groundsman shook his head. Yet he 
 was set upon showing the Englishmen in Balliol 
 that a German could be a sportsman. This was 
 no idle talk, as I found later, when he fainted in 
 the bath after a fast hundred, and failed by no 
 one knows how little of coming to. We were soon 
 joined by a third Balliol man, a young Greek poet, 
 whose name is familiar to all who are abreast of 
 the latest literary movement at Athens. He was 
 taking up with athletics because of his interest in 
 the revival of the ancient glories of Greece. When 
 I asked him what distance suited him best — 
 whether he was a sprinter or a runner — he an- 
 swered with the sweet reasonableness of the Hel- 
 133 
 
AN AMERICAN AT OXFORD 
 
 lenic nature that any distance would suit him that 
 suited me. A motlier trio than we, I suppose, 
 never scratched a cinder-path. Yet the fellows in 
 our college seemed almost as interested as they 
 were amused ; and we soon found that even so 
 learned a place as Balliol would have been glad 
 to bolster its self-esteem by furnishing its quota 
 of "running blues." What was lacking in the 
 way of stimulus from the university was more 
 than made up for by the spontaneous interest of 
 the fellows in college. 
 
 The rudimentary form of athletics is in meet- 
 ings held by the separate colleges. These occur 
 throughout the athletic season, namely, the autumn 
 term and the winter term ; and as hard on to a 
 score of colleges give them, they come off pretty 
 often. The prizes are sums of money placed with 
 the Oxford jeweler, to be spent in his shop as the 
 winners see fit. In America, the four classes, which 
 are the only sources of athletic life independent 
 of the university, are so moribund socially that it 
 never occurs to them to get out on the track for 
 a day's sport. It is true that we sometimes hold 
 inter-class games, but the management of these is 
 in the hands of the university ; they are inspired 
 solely by a very conscious attempt to develop new 
 men, and to furnish the old ones with practice in 
 134 
 
TRACK AND FIELD ATHLETICS 
 
 racing. The vitality of the athletic spirits in the 
 English colleges is witnessed by the fact that an 
 Oxford college frequently meets a fit rival at Cam- 
 bridge in a set of dual games just for the fun of it. 
 
 The only bond between the numerous college 
 meetings and the university sports is a single event 
 in each, called a strangers' race, which is open to all 
 comers. The purpose of these races is precisely 
 that of our inter-class meetings — to give all pro- 
 mising athletes practice in competition. As the 
 two prizes in each strangers' race average five 
 pounds and thirty shillings respectively, the races 
 are pretty efficient. Though the " blues " some- 
 times compete — Cross made his record of 1 m. 
 54|s. for the half mile in one of them — they 
 generally abandon them to the new men of pro- 
 mise. While the president and the " blues " 
 generally are rowing and playing football, the col- 
 leges thus automatically, develop new material for 
 the team. 
 
 The climax of the athletic meetings of the 
 autumn term is the freshman sports, held on two 
 days, with a day's interval. The friends of the 
 various contestants make up a far larger audience 
 than one finds at similar sports in America ; and 
 a brass band plays while the races are on. The 
 whole thing is decidedly inspiring; and for the 
 135 
 
AN AMERICAN AT OXFORD 
 
 first time one is brought face to face with the fact 
 that there are inter-varsity games in store. 
 
 When the winter term opens, bleak and rainy, 
 the strangers' races bring out more upper class- 
 men. By and by the " blues " themselves appear 
 in sweater, muffler, and blazer, and " paddle " about 
 the track to supple their muscles and regain dis- 
 used racing strides. At the end of a fortnight I 
 noticed a middle-aged gentleman with whom the 
 prominent athletes conferred before and after each 
 day's work. I soon found that he was Mr. C. N. 
 Jackson, a don of Hertford College, who should 
 always be remembered as the first hurdler to finish 
 in even time. It is Be who — save the mark — 
 takes the place of our American trainers. At one 
 of our large American universities about this time, 
 as I afterwards learned, a very different scene 
 was enacting. The trainer and the captain called 
 a mass-meeting and collected a band of Mott 
 Haven champions of the past to exhort the Uni- 
 versity to struggle free from athletic disgrace. 
 Though the inter-varsity games were nearly four 
 months in the future — instead of six or seven 
 weeks as at Oxford — those ancient athletes aroused 
 such enthusiasm that 268 men undertook the three 
 months of indoor training. To one used to such 
 exhortations, the Oxford indifference was as chill- 
 136 
 
TRACK AND FIELD . ATHLETICS 
 
 ing as the weather we were all training in. Mr. 
 Jackson seemed never to notice me ; and how could 
 I address him when he had not even asked me to 
 save the university from disgrace ? I was forced 
 to the unheroic expedient of presenting a card of 
 introduction. To my surprise, I found that he 
 had been carefully watching my work from day to 
 day, but had not felt justified in giving advice 
 until I asked for it. 
 
 Even during the final period of training, every- 
 thing happened so pleasantly and naturally that I 
 had none of the nervous qualms common among 
 American athletes. At first I thought I missed the 
 early morning walks our teams take daily, the com- 
 panionship and jollity of the training-table, and the 
 sense that the team was making a common sacrifice 
 for an important end. Yet here, too, the college 
 made up in a large measure for what I failed to 
 find in the university. One of our eightsmen was 
 training with a scrub four that was to row a crew 
 of schoolboys at Winchester ; and we had a little 
 course of training of our own. Every morning we 
 walked out for our dip to Parson's Pleasure, and 
 breakfasted afterward beneath an ancient ivied 
 window in the common room. In the pleasantness 
 and quiet of those sunlit mornings, I began to 
 realize that our training-table mirth, which is some- 
 137 
 
AN AMERICAN AT OXFORD 
 
 times so boisterous, is in part at least due to in- 
 tense excitement and overwrought nerves. And 
 the notion of self-sacrifice, which appeals to us so 
 deeply, seemed absurd where we were all training 
 for the pleasure and wholesomeness of sport, and 
 for the sake of a ribbon of blue. 
 
 The interest the university took in our welfare 
 became made manifest when the "first strings" 
 were sent off to Brighton for the change in climate 
 which all English teams require before great 
 games. Some of the rest of us, who had nowhere 
 else to go, went with them, but most of the men 
 went home to train. The second string in the three 
 miles stayed up at Oxford for commemoration, and 
 joined us after three consecutive nights of dancing. 
 He said that he found he needed staying up work. 
 
 Every morning at Brighton the president made 
 the round of our quarter of the hotel shortly before 
 eight o'clock, and spoiled our waking naps to rout 
 us out for our morning's walk, which included a 
 plunge into the Channel. For breakfast, as indeed 
 for all our meals, we had ordinary English fare, with 
 the difference only that it was more abundant. 
 
 On alternate days our training consisted in cross- 
 country walks of ten or a dozen miles. Our fa- 
 vorite paths led along the chalk cliffs, and com- 
 manded a lordly view of the Channel. Sometimes, 
 138 
 
TRACK AND FIELD ATHLETICS 
 
 for the sake of variety, we went by train io the 
 Devil's Dyke and tramped back over the downs, 
 now crossing golf-links and now skirting cornfields 
 ablaze with poppies. All this walking filled our 
 lungs with the Brighton air, and by keeping our 
 minds off our races, prevented worry. Sprinters 
 and distance men walked together, though the 
 sprinters usually turned back a mile or two before 
 the rest. The rate prescribed was three and a half 
 miles an hour ; but our spirits rose so high that we 
 had trouble in keeping it below five. 1 
 
 The training dinners furnished the really memo- 
 rable hours of the day. A half -pint of " Burton 
 bitter " was a necessity, and a pint merely rations. 
 If one preferred, he might drink Burgundy ad lib., 
 or Scotch and soda. After trials there was cham- 
 pagne. When I told the fellows that in America 
 our relaxation consists in ice-cream for Sunday 
 dinner, they set me down as a humorist. After 
 dinner, instead of coffee and tobacco, we used to 
 go out to the West Pier, which was a miniature 
 Coney Island, and amuse ourselves with the vari- 
 ous attractions. The favorite diversion was seeing 
 the Beautiful Living Lady Cremated. The attrac- 
 tion was the showman, who used to give an elabo- 
 
 1 For a note on the value of walking as a part of athletic train- 
 ing-, see Appendix I. 
 
 139 
 
AN AMERICAN AT OXFORD 
 
 rate oration in Lancashire brogue. Every word 
 of it was funny, but especially the closing sentence : 
 " The Greeks 'ad a ancient custom of porun' a lie- 
 bation on the cinders of the departud, which cus- 
 tom, gentlemen, we omits." We used to laugh so 
 heartily at this that the showman would join in, 
 and even the beautiful living lady would snicker 
 companion ably, as she crawled away beneath the 
 stage. If the reader is unable to see the fun of 
 it, there is no help for him — except, perhaps, 
 an English training dinner. 
 
 The rest of the evenings we used to spend in 
 strolling about among the crowd, breathing the 
 salt air, and listening to the music. We did not 
 lack companionship, for the Oxford and Cambridge 
 cricket elevens were at Brighton, and the entire 
 Cambridge athletic team. Many of the cricketers, 
 and not a few of the Cambridge athletes — whom 
 the Oxford men called " Cantabs," and sometimes 
 even " Tabs " — paraded the place puffing bulldog 
 pipes. The outward relationship between the rival 
 teams was simply that of man to man. If one 
 knew a Cambridge man he joined him, and intro- 
 duced the fellows he happened to be walking with. 
 One day the Cambridge president talked frankly 
 about training, urging us to take long walks, and 
 inviting us to go with his men. The only reason 
 140 
 
TRACK AND FIELD ATHLETICS 
 
 we did not go was that our day for walking hap- 
 pened to be different from theirs. 
 
 The days on which we did our track work we 
 spent largely in London, at the Queen's Club 
 grounds, in order to get a general sense of the 
 track and of the conditions under which the sports 
 were to take place. Sometimes, however, we ran 
 at Preston Park, on the outskirts of Brighton. 
 
 On the day of the inter-varsity meeting, our Vr 
 team came together as a whole for the first time in 
 the dressing-rooms of the Queen's Club. The fel- 
 lows dropped in one by one, in frock coats, top hats, 
 and with a general holiday air. The Oxford broad- 
 jumper, who was the best man at the event in Eng- 
 land, had been so busy playing cricket all season, 
 and smoking his pipe with the other cricketers 
 on the pier at Brighton, that he had not had time 
 even to send to Oxford for his jumping-shoes. In 
 borrowing a pair he explained that unless a fellow 
 undertook the fag of thorough training, he could 
 jump better without any practice. Our weight- 
 thrower, a freshman, had surprised himself two 
 days previously by making better puts than either 
 of the Cambridge men had ever done ; but as 
 nobody had ever thought it worth while to coach 
 him, he did not know how he had done it, and was 
 naturally afraid he could n't do it again. He 
 141 
 
AN AMERICAN AT OXFORD 
 
 showed that he was a freshman by appearing to 
 care whether or not he did his best J but even his 
 imagination failed to grasp the fact that the team 
 which won was to have the privilege of meeting 
 Yale in America. As it turned out, if either of 
 these men had taken his event, Oxford, instead of 
 Cambridge, would have met Yale. 
 
 As I went out to start in my race, the question 
 of half-sleeves which Englishmen require in all 
 athletic contests was settled in my mind. The 
 numberless seasonable gowns in the stands and 
 the innumerable top hats ranged on all sides about 
 the course made me feel as if I were at a lawn 
 party rather than at an athletic meeting. I suf- 
 fered as a girl suffers at her first evening party, or 
 rather as one suffers in those terrible dreams where 
 one faces the problem of maintaining his dignity 
 in company while clad in a smile or so. Waiving 
 the question of half-sleeves, I should have con- 
 sented to run in pyjamas. 
 
 In the race I had an experience which raised a 
 question or two that still offer food for reflection. 
 As my best distance — a half mile — was not in- 
 cluded in the inter-varsity program, I ran in the 
 mile as second string. There was a strong wind 
 and the pace was pretty hot, even for the best of 
 us, namely, the Cambridge first string, who had won 
 142 
 
TRACK AND FIELD ATHLETICS 
 
 the race the year before in 4 min. 19^ sec., — 
 the fastest mile ever run in university games. As 
 the English score in athletic games, only first places 
 count, and on the second of the three laps I found 
 myself debating whether it is not unnecessarily 
 strenuous to force a desperate finish where the 
 only question is how far a man can keep in front 
 of the tail end. Several of the fellows had already 
 dropped out in the quietest and most matter of 
 fact manner ; and as we were finishing the lap 
 against the wind, I became a convert to the Eng- 
 lish code of sportsmanship. 
 
 As the bunch drew away from me and turned 
 into the easy going of the sheltered stretch, I was 
 filled with envy of them, and with uncontrollable 
 disgust at myself, the like of which I had never 
 felt when beaten, however badly, after making a 
 fair struggle. And when I saw them finishing 
 against the hurricane, striding as if they were run- 
 ning upstairs, I felt the heroism of a desperate 
 finish as I had never done before. It did not help 
 matters when I realized that it was the last race I 
 was ever to run. 
 
 At the Sports' dinner that night at the Holborn 
 
 Restaurant, I pocketed some of my disgust. The 
 
 occasion was so happy that I remember wishing 
 
 we might have something like it after our meet- 
 
 143 
 
AN AMERICAN AT OXFORD 
 
 ings at home, for good-fellowship chastens the 
 pride of winning and gives dignity to honest defeat. 
 There was homage for the victors and humorous 
 sympathy for the vanquished. Light blue and 
 dark blue applauded and poked fun at each other 
 impartially. Sir Richard Webster, Q. C, now 
 Lord Chief Justice, himself an old blue, presided 
 at the dinner, and explained how it was that the 
 performances of his day were really not to be 
 sneezed at ; and the young blues, receiving their 
 prizes, looked happy and said nothing. After 
 dinner, we divided into squads and went to the 
 Empire Theatre of Varieties, Cantab locking arms 
 with Oxonian. By supper time, at St. James', I 
 was almost cheerful again. 
 
 Yet the disgust of having quitted that race has 
 never left me. The spirit of English sportsman- 
 ship will always seem to me very gracious and 
 charming. As a nation, I think we can never be 
 too thankful for the lesson our kinspeople have to 
 teach us in sportsmanly moderation and in chivalry 
 toward an opponent. But every man must draw 
 his own line between the amenities of life and the 
 austerities ; and I know one American who hopes 
 never again to quit a contest, even a contest in 
 sport, until he has had the humble satisfaction of 
 doing his best. 
 
 144 
 
ENGLISH AND AMERICAN SPORTSMANSHIP 
 
 THE prevalence of out-of-door sports in Eng- 
 land, and the amenity of the English sport- 
 ing spirit, may be laid, I think, primarily, to the 
 influence of climate. Through the long, temper- 
 ate summer, all nature conspires to entice a man 
 out of doors, while in America sunstroke is immi- 
 nent. All day long the village greens in England 
 are thronged with boys playing cricket in many- 
 colored blazers, while every stream is dotted with 
 boats of all sorts and descriptions ; and in the 
 evenings, long after the quick American twilight 
 has shut down on the heated earth, the English 
 horizon gives light for the recreations of those 
 who have labored all day. In the winter the re- 
 sult is the same, though the cause is very different. 
 Stupefying exhalations rise from the damp earth, 
 and the livelong twilight that does for day forces 
 a man back for good cheer upon mere animal 
 spirits. In the English summer no normal man 
 could resist the beckoning of the fields and the 
 river. In the winter it is sweat, man, or die. 
 145 
 
AN AMERICAN AT OXFORD 
 
 It is perhaps because of the incessant call to be 
 out of doors that Englishmen care so little to have 
 their houses properly tempered. At my first din- 
 ner with the dons of my college, the company 
 assembled about a huge sea-coal fire. On a rough 
 calculation the coal it consumed, if used in one of 
 our steam-heaters, would have heated the entire 
 college to incandescence. As it was, its only effect 
 seemed to be to draw an icy blast across our ankles 
 from mediaeval doors and windows that swept the 
 fire bodily up the chimney, and left us shivering. 
 One of the dons explained that an open fire has 
 two supreme advantages : it is the most cheerful 
 thing in life, and it insures thorough ventilation. 
 I agreed with him heartily, warming one ankle in 
 my palms, but demurred that in an American 
 winter heat was as necessary as cheerfulness and 
 ventilation. "But if one wears thick woolens," 
 he replied, " the cold and draught are quite endur- 
 able. When you get too cold reading, put on your 
 great-coat." I asked him what he did when he 
 went out of doors. " I take off my great-coat. It is 
 much warmer there, especially if one walks briskly." 
 Some days later, when I went to dine with my 
 tutor, my hostess apologized for the chill of the 
 drawing-room. " It will presently be much warmer," 
 she added ; " I have always noticed that when 
 146 
 
SPORTSMANSHIP 
 
 you have sat in a room awhile, it gets warm from 
 the heat of your bodies." She proved to be right. 
 But when we went into the dining-room, we found 
 it like a barn. She smiled with repeated reassur- 
 ances. Again she proved right ; but we had hardly 
 tempered the frost when we had to shift again 
 to the drawing-room, which by this time again 
 required, so to speak, to be acclimated. Mean- 
 while my tutor, who was of a jocular turn of mind, 
 diverted our thoughts from our suffering by rag- 
 ging me about American steam heat, and forced 
 me, to his infinite delight, to admit that we aim 
 to keep our rooms warmed to sixty-eight degrees 
 Fahrenheit. Needless to say, this don was an ath- 
 lete. As the winter wore away, I repeatedly saw 
 him in Balliol hockey squashes, chasing the ball 
 about with the agility of a terrier pup. At night- 
 fall, no doubt, he returned to his wife and family 
 prepared to heat any room in the house to the 
 required temperature. Heaven forbid that I should 
 resent the opprobrium Englishmen heap upon our 
 steam heat ! I merely wish to point out that the 
 English have failed as signally as we, though for the 
 opposite reason, in making their houses habitable 
 in the winter, and that an Englishman is forced 
 into athletics to resist the deadly stupefaction of 
 a Boeotian climate, and to keep his house warm. 
 147 
 
AN AMERICAN AT OXFORD 
 
 In a sportsman it would be most ungracious to 
 inveigh against English weather. The very qual- 
 ities one instinctively curses make possible the full 
 and varied development of outdoor games, which 
 Americans admire without stint. Our football 
 teams do day labor to get fit, and then, after a 
 game or so, the sport is nipped in the bud. To 
 teach our oarsmen the rudiments of the stroke we 
 resort to months of the galley-slavery of tank-row- 
 ing. Our track athletes begin their season in the 
 dead of winter with the dreary monotony of wooden 
 dumb-bells and pulley-weights, while the baseball 
 men are learning to slide for bases in the cage. 
 In England the gymnasium is happily unknown. 
 Winter and summer alike the sportsman lives 
 beneath the skies, and the sports are so diverse 
 and so widely cultivated that any man, whatever 
 his mental or physical capacity, finds suitable 
 exercise that is also recreation. 
 
 It is because of this universality of athletic 
 sports that English training is briefer and less 
 severe. The American makes, and is forced to 
 make, a long and tedious business of getting fit, 
 whereas an Englishman has merely to exercise 
 and sleep a trifle more than usual, and this only 
 for a brief period. Our oarsmen work daily from 
 January to July, about six months, or did so be- 
 148 
 
SPOKTSMANSHIP 
 
 fore Mr. Lehmaim brought English ideas among 
 us ; the English 'varsity crews row together nine 
 or ten weeks. Our football players slog daily for 
 six or seven weeks; English teams seldom or 
 never " practice," and play at most two matches a 
 week. Our track athletes are in training at fre- 
 quent intervals throughout the college year, and 
 are often at the training-table six weeks ; in Eng- 
 land six weeks is the maximum period of training, 
 and the men as a rule are given only three days 
 a week of exercise on the cinder-track. To an 
 American training is an abnormal condition ; to an 
 Englishman it is the consummation of the normal. 
 The moderation of English training is power- 
 fully abetted by a peculiarity of the climate. 
 The very dullness and depression that make exer- 
 cise imperative also make it impossible to sustain 
 much of it. The clear, bright American sky — 
 the sky that renders it difficult for us to take 
 the same delight in Italy as an Englishman takes, 
 and leads us to prefer Ruskin's descriptions to 
 the reality — cheers the American athlete ; anc 1 
 the crispness of the atmosphere and its extreme 
 variability keeps his nerves alert. An English 
 athlete would go hopelessly stale on work that 
 would scarcely key an American up to his highest 
 pitch. 
 
 149 
 
AN AMERICAN AT OXFORD 
 
 The effect of these differences on the tempera- 
 ment of the athlete is marked. The crispness and 
 variety of our climate foster nervous vitality at 
 the expense of physical vitality, while the equa- 
 bility of the English climate has the opposite 
 effect. In all contests that require sustained 
 effort — distance running and cross-country run- 
 ning, for example — we are in general far behind ; 
 while during the comparatively few years in which 
 we have practiced athletic sports we have shown, 
 on the whole, vastly superior form in all contests 
 depending upon nervous energy — sprinting, hur- 
 dling, jumping, and weight-throwing. 
 
 Because of these differences of climate and of 
 temperament, no rigid comparisons can be made 
 between English and American training ; but it is 
 probably true that English athletes tend to train 
 too little. Mr. Horan, the president of the Cam- 
 bridge team that ran against Yale at New Haven, 
 said as much after a very careful study of Amer- 
 ican methods ; but he was not convinced that our 
 thoroughness is quite worth while. The law of 
 diminishing returns, he said, applies to training as 
 to other things, so that, after a certain point, very 
 little is gained even for a great sacrifice of con- 
 venience and pleasantness. Our American ath- 
 letes are twice as rigid in denying the spirit for 
 150 
 
SPORTSMANSHIP 
 
 an advantage, Mr. Horan admitted, of enough to 
 win by. 
 
 The remark is worth recording : it strikes the 
 note of difference between English and American 
 sportsmanship. After making all allowances for 
 the conditions here and abroad that are merely 
 accidental, one vital difference remains. For bet- 
 ter or for worse, a sport is a sport to an English- 
 man, and whatever tends to make it anything else 
 is not encouraged ; as far as possible it is made 
 pleasant, socially and physically. Contests are 
 arranged without what American undergraduates 
 call diplomacy ; and they come off without jockey- 
 ing. It is very seldom that an Englishman for- 
 gets that he is a man first and an athlete after- 
 wards. Yet admirable as this quality is, it has its 
 defects, at least to the transatlantic mind. Even 
 more, perhaps, than others, Englishmen relish 
 the joy of eating their hearts at the end of a 
 contest, but they have no taste for the careful pre- 
 paration that alone enables a man to fight out a 
 finish to the best advantage. It is no doubt true, 
 as the Duke of Wellington said, that the battle of 
 Waterloo was won on the playing-fields of Eng- 
 land ; but for any inconsiderable sum I would agree 
 to furnish a similar saying as to why the generals 
 in South Africa ran into ambush after ambush. 
 151 
 
AN AMERICAN AT OXFORD 
 
 In America, sportsmanship is almost a religion. 
 Fellows mortify the flesh for months and leave no 
 means untried that may help to bring honor to 
 their college ; or if they don't, public opinion 
 brings swift and sure retribution. It is true that 
 this leads to excesses. Rivalries are so strong that 
 undergraduates have been known to be more than 
 politic in arranging matches with each other. So 
 the graduate steps in to moderate the ardor of 
 emulation, and often ends by keeping alive an- 
 cient animosities long after they would have been 
 forgotten in the vanishing generations of under- 
 graduates. The Harvard eleven wants to play the 
 usual football game ; but it is not allowed to, be- 
 cause a committee of graduates sees fit to snub 
 Yale; the athletic team wants to accept a chal- 
 lenge from Oxford and Cambridge, but it is not 
 allowed to because Pennsylvania, which is not 
 challenged, has a better team, and it is the policy 
 of the university (which has an eye to its gradu- 
 ate schools) to ingratiate sister institutions. In a 
 word, the undergraduates are left to manage their 
 studies while the faculty manages their pastimes. 
 
 When a contest is finally on, excesses are ram- 
 pant. Of occasional brutalities too much has per- 
 haps been said ; but more serious errors are unre- 
 proved. There is a tradition that it is the duty of 
 152 
 
SPORTSMANSHIP 
 
 all non-athletes to inspire the 'varsity teams by 
 cheering the play from the side lines ; and from 
 time to time one reads leading articles in the col- 
 lege papers exhorting men to back the teams. 
 ^■The spectator is thus given an important part in 
 every contest, and after a 'varsity match he is 
 praised or blamed, together with the members of 
 the team, according to his deserts. Yale may out- 
 play Harvard, but if Harvard sufficiently out- 
 cheers Yale she wins, and to the rooters belong 
 the praise. In baseball games especially, a sea- 
 son's championship is not infrequently decided by 
 the fact that the partisans of one side are more 
 numerous, or for other reasons make more noise. 
 These are serious excesses, and are worthy of the 
 pen of the robustest reformer ; but after all has 
 been said they are incidents, and in the slow 
 course of time are probably disappearing. 
 
 The signal fact is that our young men do what 
 they do with the diligence of enthusiasm, and with 
 the devotion that inspires the highest courage. 
 It is not unknown that, in the bitterness of failure, 
 American athletes have burst into tears. When 
 our English cousins hear of this they are apt to 
 smile, and doubtless the practice is not altogether 
 to be commended ; but in the length and breadth 
 of a man's experience there are only two or three 
 153 
 
AN AMERICAN AT OXFORD 
 
 things one would wish so humbly as the devo- 
 tion that makes it possible. Such earnestness 
 is the quintessence of Americanism, and is prob- 
 ably to be traced to the signal fact that in the 
 struggle of life we all start with a fighting chance 
 of coming out on top. Whatever the game, so 
 long as it is treated as a game, nothing could be as 
 wholesome as the spirit that tends to make our 
 young men play it for all it is worth, to do every- 
 thing that can be done to secure victory with per- 
 sonal honor. In later years, when these men stand 
 for the honor of the larger alma mater, on the field 
 of battle or in the routine of administration, it is 
 not likely that they will altogether forget the vir- 
 tues of their youth. 
 
 The superiority of English sportsmanship arises, 
 not from the spirit of the men, but from the breadth 
 of the development of the sports, and this, climate 
 aside, is the result of the division of the university 
 into colleges. The average college of only a hun- 
 dred and fifty men maintains two football teams 
 — a Rugby fifteen and an Association eleven — 
 an eight and two torpids, a cricket eleven, and 
 a hockey eleven. Each college has also a set of 
 athletic games yearly. If we add the men who 
 play golf, lawn and court tennis, rackets and fives, 
 who swim, box, wrestle, and who shoot on the 
 154 
 
SPORTSMANSHIP 
 
 ranges of the gun club, the total of men schooled 
 in competition reaches eighty to one hundred. A 
 simple calculation will show that when so many are 
 exercising daily, few are left for spectators. Not 
 a bench is prepared, nor even a plank laid on the 
 spongy English turf, to stand between the hanger-on 
 and pneumonia. A man's place is in the field of 
 strife ; to take part in athletic contests ie dmost 
 as much a matter of course as to bathe _, Of late 
 years there has been a tendency in England to be- 
 lieve that the vigor of undergraduates — and of all 
 Englishmen, for the matter of that — is in deca- 
 dence. As regards their cultivation of sports at 
 least, the reverse is true. Contests are more numer- 
 ous now than ever, and are probably more earnestly 
 waged. What is called English decadence is in 
 reality the increasing superiority of England's 
 rivals. 
 
 Quite aside from the physical and moral benefit 
 to the men engaged, this multiplication of contests 
 has a striking effect in lessening the importance of < 
 winning or losing any particular one of them. It 
 is more powerful than any other factor in keep- 
 ing English sports free from the excesses that have 
 so often characterized our sports. From time to 
 time a voice is raised in America as of a prophet 
 of despair demanding the abolition of inter-uni- 
 155 
 
AN AMERICAN AT OXFORD 
 
 versity contests. As yet the contests have not 
 been abolished, and do not seem likely to be. 
 Might it not be argued without impertinence that 
 the best means of doing away with the excesses in 
 question is not to have fewer contests, but more of 
 them ? If our universities were divided into resi- 
 dential units, corresponding roughly to the Eng- 
 lish colleges, the excesses in particular contests 
 could scarcely fail to be mitigated ; and what is 
 perhaps of still higher importance, the great body 
 of non-athletes would be brought directly under 
 the influence of all those strong and fine traditions 
 of undergraduate life which centre in the spirit of 
 .sportsmanship. 
 
 Note. For a discussion of the influences of climate in interna- 
 tional athletics, see Appendix II. 
 
 156 
 
Ill 
 
 THE COLLEGE AS AN EDUCATIONAL 
 FORCE 
 
THE PASSMAN 
 
 IN the educational life of Oxford, as in the 
 social and athletic life, the distinctive fea- 
 ture, at least to the American mind, is the dual- 
 ity of organization in consequence of which an 
 undergraduate is amenable first to his college and 
 then to the university : the college teaulifis and 
 the university exa mine s. In America, so far as the 
 undergraduate is concerned, the college and the 
 university are identical : the instructor in each 
 course of lectures is also the examiner. It follows 
 from this that whereas in America the degree is 
 awarded on the basis of many separate examina- 
 tions — one in each of the sixteen or more "courses" 
 which are necessary for the degree — in England 
 it is awarded on the basis of a single examination. 
 ^For three or four years the college tutor labors 
 with his pupil, and the result of his labors is 
 gauged by an examination, set and judged by the 
 university. This system is characteristic of both 
 Cambridge and Oxford, and for that matter, of all 
 159 
 
AN AMERICAN AT OXFORD 
 
 English education ; and the details of its organiza- 
 tion present many striking contrasts to American 
 educational methods. J 
 
 Sir Isaac Newton's happy thought of having a 
 big hole in his door for the cat and a little hole for 
 the kitten must have first been held up to ridicule 
 by an American. In England, the land of classes, 
 it could hardly fail of full sympathy. In America 
 there is but one hole of exit, though men differ in 
 their proportions as they go out through it. In 
 England there are passmen and classmen. 
 
 To say that the passman is the kitten would not 
 be altogether precise. He is rather a distinct spe- 
 cies of undergraduate. More than that, he is the 
 historic species, tracing his origin quite without 
 break to the primal undergraduate of the Middle 
 Ages. He is a tradition from the time when the 
 fund of liberal knowledge was so small that the 
 . university undertook to serve it all up in a pint- 
 pot to whoever might apply. The pint-pot still 
 exists at Oxford ; and though the increasing know- 
 ledge of nine centuries long ago overflowed its 
 brim, the passman still holds it forth trustfully to 
 his tutor. The tutor patiently mingles in it an 
 elixir compounded of as many educational simples 
 as possible, and then the p assm an presents it to 
 
 ^the examiners, who smile and dub him Bachelor 
 160 
 
THE PASSMAN 
 
 of Arts. After three years, if he is alive and pays 
 the sum of twelve pounds, they dub him Master. 
 
 The system for granting the pass degree is, in 
 its broader outlines, the same as for all degrees. 
 In the first examination — that for matriculation 
 — it is identical for passmen and classmen. This 
 examination is called " responsions," and is, like its 
 name, of mediaeval origin. It is the equivalent of 
 the American entrance examination ; but by one 
 of the many paradoxes of Oxford life it was for 
 centuries required to be taken after the pupil had 
 been admitted into residence in one of the colleges. 
 In the early Middle Ages the lack of preparatory 
 schools made it necessary first to catch your under- 
 graduate. It was not until the nineteenth century 
 that a man could take an equivalent test before 
 coming up, for example at a public school ; but it 
 is now fast becoming the rule to do so ; and it is 
 probable that all colleges will soon require an 
 entrance examination. In this way two or thre 
 terms more of a student's residence are devoted to 
 preparation for the two later and severer university 
 tests. 
 
 The subjects required for matriculation are easy 
 
 enough, according to our standards. Candidates 
 
 offer : (1) The whole of arithmetic, and either (a) 
 
 elementary algebra as far as simple equations in- 
 
 161 
 
AN AMERICAN AT OXFORD 
 
 volving two unknown quantities, or (6) the first 
 two books of Euclid ; (2) Greek and Latin gram- 
 mar, Latin prose composition, and prepared trans- 
 lation from one Greek and one Latin book. The 
 passages for prepared translation are selected from 
 six possible Greek authors and five possible Latin 
 authors. The influence of English colonial ex- 
 pansion is evident in the fact that candidates who 
 are not " European British subjects " may by spe- 
 cial permission offer classical Sanskrit, Arabic, 
 or Pali as a substitute for either Greek or Latin : 
 the dark-skinned Orientals, who are so familiar a 
 part of Oxford life, are not denied the right to 
 study the classics of their native tongues. Thus 
 the election of subjects is a well-recognized part of 
 responsions, though the scope of the election does 
 not extend to science and the modern languages. 
 
 Once installed in the college and matriculated 
 in the university, both passman and honor man are 
 examined twice and twice only. The first public 
 examination, more familiarly called "moderations," 
 or " mods," takes place in the middle of an under- 
 graduate's course. Here the passmen have only 
 a single subject in common with the men seeking 
 honors, namely, the examination in Holy Scrip- 
 ture, or the Rudiments of Faitn and Religion, 
 more familiarly called " Divinners," which is to 
 162 
 
THE PASSMAN 
 
 say Divinities. The subject of the examination is 
 the gospels of St. Luke and St. John in the Greek 
 text ; and either the Acts of the Apostles or the 
 two books of Kings in the Revised Version. As 
 in all Oxford examinations, cram-books abound 
 containing a reprint of the questions put in recent 
 examinations ; and, as many of these questions 
 recur from year to year, the student of Holy Scrip- 
 ture is advised to master them. A cram-book 
 which came to my notice is entitled " The Under- 
 graduate's Guide to the Rudiments of Faith and 
 Religion," and contains, among other items of 
 useful information : tables of the ten plagues ; of 
 the halting-places during the journey in the wil- 
 derness ; of the twelve apostles ; and of the seven 
 deacons. The book recommends that the kings of 
 Judah and Israel, the journeys of St. Paul, and 
 the Thirty-nine Articles shall be committed to 
 memory. The obviously pious author of this guide 
 to the rudiments of these important accomplish- 
 ments speaks thus cheerfully in his preface : " The 
 compiler feels assured that if candidates will but 
 follow the plan he has suggested, no candidate of 
 even ordinary ability need have the least fear of 
 failure." According to report, it is perhaps not 
 so easy to acquire the rudiments of faith and re- 
 ligion. In a paper set some years ago, as one of 
 163 
 
AN AMERICAN AT OXFORD 
 
 the examiners informed me, a new and unexpected 
 question was put : " Name the prophets and dis- 
 criminate between the major and the minor." One 
 astute passman wrote : " Far be it from me to 
 make discriminations between these wise and holy- 
 men. The kings of Judah and Israel are as fol- 
 lows." Unless a man passes the examination, he 
 has to take it again, and the fee to the examiner is 
 one guinea. " This time I go through," exclaimed 
 an often ploughed passman. " I need these guineas 
 for cigars." Those who are not " European British 
 subjects " may substitute certain sacred works in 
 Sanskrit, Arabic, or Pali ; and those who object 
 for conscientious scruples to a study of the Bible 
 may substitute the Phaedo of Plato ; but the saga- 
 cious undergraduate knows that if he does this he 
 must have no conscientious scruples against harder 
 work. 
 
 In America there is no such examination, so far 
 as I know. At Harvard an elective course in 
 the history and literature of the Jews is given by 
 the Semitic department ; and if this does not 
 insure success in acquiring the rudiments of faith 
 and religion, it was, on one occasion at least, the 
 means of redoubling the attendance at chapel. 
 Just before the final examination, it transpired 
 that the professor in charge of the course was con- 
 164 
 
THE PASSMAN 
 
 ducting morning service, and was giving five min- 
 ute summaries of Jewish history. For ten days 
 the front pews were crowded with waistcoats of 
 unwonted brilliance ; the so-called sports who had 
 taken the course as a snap were glad to grind it up 
 under the very best auspices. 
 
 Let me not be misunderstood. In the long run, 
 the English undergraduates no doubt add greatly 
 to their chances of spiritual edification. At the 
 very least they gain a considerable knowledge of 
 one of the great monuments of the world's litera- 
 ture. In America the Bible is much less read in 
 families than in England, so that it would seem 
 much more important to prescribe a course in Bib- 
 lical history and literature. At one time Professor 
 Child gave a course in Spenser and the English 
 Bible, and is said to have been moved at times 
 when reading before his classes to a truly Eliza- 
 bethan access of tears. Some years before the 
 great master died, he gave up the course in despair 
 at the Biblical ignorance of his pupils. The usual 
 Harvard undergraduate cannot name five of the 
 prophets, with or without discrimination, or be cer- 
 tain of five of the kings of Judah. As I write this, 
 I am painfully uncertain as to whether there were 
 as many as five. 
 
 But to return to our muttons. The remaining 
 165 
 
AN AMERICAN AT OXFORD 
 
 subjects for pass moderations are : (1) Portions of 
 three classic authors, two Greek and one Latin, or 
 two Latin and one Greek. The passages of each 
 author to be studied are prescribed, but the candi- 
 date may elect, with certain slight limitations, from 
 eight Greek and eight Latin authors " of the best 
 age." As in the case of responsions and Holy- 
 Scripture, Sanskrit, Arabic, or Pali may be substi- 
 tuted for either Greek or Latin. The examination 
 covers not only grammar and literature, but any 
 question arising out of the text. Besides these are 
 required : (2) Latin prose composition ; (3) sight 
 translation of Greek and Latin; and (4) either 
 logic or the elements of geometry and algebra. 
 
 The final pass examination allows a considerable 
 range of election. Three general subjects must be 
 offered. At least one of these must be chosen from 
 the following: Greek, Latin, Sanskrit, Persian, 
 German, and French. If a candidate wishes, he 
 may choose two of his three subjects in ancient 
 language, literature, and history, or in modern lan- 
 guage, literature, history, and economics. The 
 remaining one or two subjects may be chosen from 
 a dozen courses ranging through the elements of 
 mathemathics, natural science, law, and theology. 
 This range of choice is very different from that in 
 America, in that a student is not permitted freely 
 166 
 
THE PASSMAN 
 
 to elect subjects without reference to one another. 
 For the pass degree, no considerable originality or 
 grasp of the subject is necessary, any more than for 
 an undistinguished degree in an American college ; 
 but the body of necessary facts is pretty sure to be 
 well ordered, if not digested. The idea of group- 
 ing electives is the fundamental difference between 
 English and American education. In the case of 
 the honor man it will be seen to be of chief im- 
 portance. 
 
 In order to take the Oxford degree, it is further 
 necessary to be in residence three years, and a man 
 may reside four years before going up for his final 
 examination. The period of study — or loafing — 
 may be broken in various ways ; and it is charac- 
 teristic that though a man may anticipate his time 
 and take his last examination before the last term 
 of his third year, he is required to reside at the 
 university, studies or no studies, until the minimum 
 residence is completed. Nothing could indicate » 
 more clearly the importance which is attached to 
 the merely social side of university life. 
 
 It is, in fact, as a social being that the passman f\ 
 usually shines. You may know him most often 
 from the fact that you sight him in the High by 
 a waistcoat of many colors. At night he is apt 
 to evade the statutes as to academicals ; but if he 
 167 
 
AN AMERICAN AT OXFORD 
 
 wears his gown, he wraps it about his neck as if it 
 were a muffler, and tilts his mortar-board at all 
 angles. He is the genius of the fox terrier and 
 the bulldog pipe; he rides to the hounds, and is 
 apt in evading the vice-chancellor's regulations as 
 to tandems and four-in-hands. Or perhaps he sits 
 comfortably in his rooms discoursing lightly of the 
 impious philosophies that are the studies of the 
 classman, and writes Horatian verse for the " Isis " 
 ^and the " Oxford Magazine." He does anything, 
 in fact, that is well-bred, amusing, and not too 
 strenuous. Curiously enough, it sometimes hap- 
 pens that he does sufficient reading on his own ac- 
 count to give him no little real culture. Of late 
 there has been a reaction in favor of the pass 
 school as affording a far better general education. 
 
 If the passman loiters through the three or four 
 years, it is mainly the fault — or the virtue — of 
 the public school he comes from. Of late the best 
 public schools have had so strong and admirable 
 an influence that boys have often been kept in 
 them by their parents until they reach the age 
 limit, generally nineteen. By this time they have 
 anticipated most of the studies required for a pass 
 degree in the university, and find little or nothing 
 to do when they go up but to evade their tutors 
 and to u reside." It is by this means, as the satir- 
 168 
 
THE PASSMAN 
 
 ist long ago explained, that Oxford has become an 
 institution of such great learning. Every fresh- 
 V- man brings to it a little knowledge and no gradu- 
 ate takes any away. 
 
 There is reason in all this. In the first place, 
 as I have said, the passman is the historical un- 
 dergraduate, and little short of a convulsion could 
 disestablish him — that is the best of British rea- 
 sons. Moreover, to be scrupulously just, the pass- 
 man knows quite as much as the American stu- 
 dent who barely takes a degree by cramming a 
 few hours with a venal tutor before each of his 
 many examinations, and perhaps more than the 
 larger proportion of German students who confine 
 their serious interests to the duel and the Kneipe, 
 and never graduate. And then, the Oxonian 
 argues amiably, if it were not for the pass schools, 
 the majority of the passmen would not come to 
 Oxford at all, and would spend their impression- 
 able period in some place of much less amenity. 
 Clearly, they learn all that is necessary for a gen- 
 tleman to know, and are perhaps kept from a 
 great deal that is dangerous to young fellows with 
 money and leisure. It means much to the aristo- 
 cracy and nobility of England that, whatever their 
 ambitions and capacities, they are encouraged by 
 the pursuit of a not too elusive A. B. to stay four 
 169 
 
AN AMERICAN AT OXFORD 
 
 years in the university. Even the ambitious stu- 
 dent profits by the arrangement. Wherever his 
 future may lie, in the public service, in law, medi- 
 cine, or even the church, it is of advantage to know 
 men of birth and position — of far greater advan- 
 tage, from the common sensible English point of 
 view, than to have been educated in an atmosphere 
 of studious enthusiasm and exact scholarship. 
 
 170 
 
II 
 
 THE HONOR SCHOOLS 
 
 THE modern extension of the world's know- 
 ledge, with the corresponding advance in 
 educational requirements, which are perhaps the 
 most signal results of the nineteenth century, 
 could not fail to exert a powerful influence on all 
 university teaching. In the United States, the 
 monument to its influence is the elective system. 
 In England, it is the honor schools. Both coun- 
 tries felt the inadequacy of the antique pint-pot 
 of learning. The democratic New World has not 
 dreamed of making a sharp distinction between 
 the indifferent and the ambitious. Under the 
 lead of the scientific spirit of the German uni- 
 versities, it has placed the noblest branches of 
 human knowledge on a par with the least twig of 
 science. With characteristic conservatism Eng- 
 land kept the old pint-pot for the unscholarly, to 
 whom its contents are still of value, though ex- 
 tending its scope to suit the changing spirit of the 
 age ; and for those who felt the new ambitions 
 it made new pint-pots, each one of which should 
 171 
 
AN AMERICAN AT OXFORD 
 
 contain the essence gathered from a separate field 
 of learning. The new pint-pots are the honor 
 schools, and the children of the new ambition are 
 the honor men. 
 
 The honor schools of Oxford are eight in num- 
 ber. Here again the English conservatism is 
 evident. The oldest of them, literas humaniores, 
 which was at first the only honor school, has 
 for its subject-matter a thorough view of classi- 
 cal language, literature, and thought. It is an 
 edition de luxe of the old pass school. Because 
 of the nobility of its proportions, it is familiarly 
 called " greats," and it justifies its name by 
 enrolling almost half of all Oxford candidates 
 for the honor degree. An overwhelming majority 
 of famous Oxford graduates have taken their 
 degree in " greats." The other schools are some- 
 times known as the minor schools. Mathematics 
 was originally a part of the school in literae hu- 
 maniores, but was soon made into a separate 
 school. Since then schools have been established 
 in six new subjects — natural science, jurispru- 
 dence, modern history, theology, Oriental studies, 
 and English. Under our elective system, a stu- 
 dent continues through his four years, choosing 
 each year at random, or as the fates decree, this, 
 that, or the other brief " course." Under the 
 172 
 
THE HONOR SCHOOLS 
 
 honor system a man decides sooner or later which 
 one of the several branches he most desires, and 
 sets out to master it. 
 
 An Oxford man's decision may be made at the 
 outset; but far the larger number of men defer 
 the choice. They do this by reading for modera- 
 tions, for pass moderations as well as honor mods 
 may be followed by an honor school at finals. 
 The subject-matter for honor mods is, roughly 
 speaking, the same as for pass mods — the classics 
 and kindred studies ; but the field covered is con- 
 siderably more extended, and to take a high class 
 the student is required to exhibit in his examina- 
 tion papers no little grasp of the subjects as a 
 whole, and if possible to develop his own individ- 
 uality in the process. Having done with moder- 
 ations, an honor man is forced to choose a final 
 school. The logical sequence of honor mods is 
 literaB humaniores ; but one may choose instead 
 modern history, theology, Oriental studies, or 
 English. 
 
 The men who commit themselves to a choice at 
 the outset are those who go in for science or juris- 
 prudence. These men L begin by reading for a 
 form of moderations known as science prelimi- 
 naries or jurisprudence preliminaries. 
 
 The exact sequence of examinations is fixed only 
 173 
 
AN AMERICAN AT OXFORD 
 
 by common sense. The school of history is open 
 to those who have taken pass mods, and even to 
 those who have taken the jurisprudence prelimi- 
 nary, though mods is usually preferred in order to 
 give a man the use of the necessary languages. If 
 a science man's chief work is to be in astronomy 
 or physics, which require some mathematics, he 
 may take the mathematical mods, and devote only 
 the second half of his course to science. 
 
 Even after a man has chosen his subject and 
 begun to work on it with his tutor, there is con- 
 siderable range of election. As classical mods are 
 supposed to cover all the subjects essential to 
 polite education, election is mainly a question as 
 to the ancient authors read. If a man knows what 
 final school he is to enter, he may choose his 
 authors accordingly. Thus, a history man chooses 
 the ancient historians ; a man who intends to enter 
 the school in English literature, the ancient poets 
 and dramatists. In addition to such authors, all 
 candidates for classical mods choose, according to 
 their future needs, one of four subjects : the his- 
 tory of classical literature, comparative classical 
 philology, classical archaeology, and logic. The 
 preliminary examinations in natural science and 
 in jurisprudence are concerned with a general 
 view of the field, and thus do not admit of much 
 174 
 
THE HONOR SCHOOLS 
 
 variation, whatever the branch to be pursued later ; 
 and the same is true of mathematical moderations. 
 A man who chooses any one of these three honor 
 schools has made the great choice of bidding 
 good-by to the classics. 
 
 In the final schools the range of choice is greater 
 than at moderations, and is greater in some schools 
 than in others. Literae humaniores offers the 
 least scope for election. The reason is that the 
 subject-matter is a synthetic view of the classic 
 world entire. Still, in so vast a field, a student 
 perforce selects, laying emphasis on those aspects 
 of the ancient world which he considers (or which 
 he expects the examining board to consider) of 
 most interest and importance. It has been ob- 
 jected even at Oxford that such a course of study 
 gives a student little or no training in exact schol- 
 arship. The examination statutes accordingly give 
 a choice of one among no less than forty special 
 subjects, the original sources of which a man may 
 thresh out anew in the hope of adding his iota to 
 the field of science ; and, on six months' notice, a 
 student may, under approval, select a subject of 
 his own. The unimportance of this part of the 
 "greats " curriculum is evident in the fact that it 
 is recommended, not required. 
 
 The history school requires the student to cover 
 175 
 
AN AMEEICAN AT OXFORD 
 
 the constitutional and political history of England 
 entire, political science and economy, with economic 
 history, constitutional law, and political and de- 
 scriptive geography. It also requires a special 
 subject " carefully studied with reference to the 
 original authorities," and a period of general his- 
 tory. If a student does not aim at a first or sec- 
 ond class at graduation, he may omit certain parts 
 of all this. In any case, he has to choose from 
 the general history of the modern world one special 
 period for a more detailed examination. In the 
 school of natural science, the student, after filling 
 in the broad outlines of the subject for his pre- 
 liminary, must choose for his final examination 
 one of the following seven subjects : physics, chem- 
 istry, animal physiology, zoology, botany, geology, 
 and astronomy. Besides the written examination, 
 a " practical " examination of three hours is re- 
 quired to show the student's ability at laboratory 
 work. These three honor schools are the most 
 important, and may be regarded as representative. 
 After a man has taken one honor' degree, for 
 example, in literae humaniores, he may take an- 
 other, for example, in modern history. He then 
 becomes a double honor man, and if he has got a 
 first class in both schools, he is a " double first." 
 In America, the election of studies goes by frag- 
 176 
 
THE HONOR SCHOOLS 
 
 mentary subjects, and the degree is awarded for 
 passing some four such subjects a year, the whole 
 number being as disconnected, even chaotic, as the 
 student pleases or as chance decrees. In England, 
 the degree is granted for final proficiency in a 
 coherent and well-balanced course of study; but 
 within this not unreasonable limit there is the 
 utmost freedom of election. The student first 
 chooses what honor school he shall pursue, and 
 then chooses the general lines along which he shall 
 pursue it. 
 
 177 
 
Ill 
 
 THE TUTOR 
 
 IN preparing for his two " public examinations," 
 the pupil is solely in the hands of a college 
 tutor. Any familiar account of the Oxford don is 
 apt to make him appear to the American, and espe- 
 cially to the German mind, a sufficiently humble 
 person. His first duty is the very unprofessional 
 one of making newcomers welcome. He invites 
 his pupils to breakfast and to dinner, and intro- 
 duces them to their fellows so that they shall enter 
 easily into the life of the college ; he tells them 
 to go in for one or another of the various under- 
 graduate activities. As a teacher, moreover, his 
 position is strikingly similar to that of the venal 
 tutors in our universities, who amiably keep lame 
 ducks from halting, and temper the frost of the 
 examination period to gilded grasshoppers. It is 
 all this that makes the American scholar so apt to 
 smile at the tutor, and the German, perhaps, to 
 sniff. The tutor is not easily put down. If he 
 1 replies with anything more than a British silence, 
 it is to say that after all education cannot be quite 
 178 
 
THE TUTOR 
 
 dissociated from a man's life among his fellows. 
 And then there is the best of all English reasons 
 why the tutor should think well of his vocation : it 
 is approved by custom and tradition. Newman, 
 Pusey, Jowett, Pater, Stubbs, Lang, and many 
 such were tutors, and they thought it well worth 
 while to spend the better part of each day with 
 their pupils. 
 
 Homely as are the primary duties of the tutor, 
 it is none the less necessary that certain infor- 
 mation should be imparted. The shadow of the 
 examiners looms across the path twice in the three 
 or four years of an undergraduate's life. There 
 is no dodging it : in order to get a degree, certain 
 papers must be written and well written. Here 
 is where the real dignity of the tutor resides, the 
 attribute that distinguishes him from all German ; 
 and American teachers. He is responsible to the % 
 college that his pupils shall acquit themselves well 
 before the examiners, — that the reputation of the 
 college shall be maintained. By the same token, 
 the examiners are responsible to the university 
 that its degrees shall be justly awarded, so that 
 the course of education in England is a struggle 
 of tutor against examiner. In Germany and in 
 America, an instructor is expected to be a master 
 of his subject ; he may be or may not be — and 
 179 
 
AN AMERICAN AT OXFORD 
 
 usually is not — a teacher. In England, a tutor 
 may be a scholar, and often is not. His success 
 is measured first and foremost by the excellence of 
 the papers his pupils write. Is Donkin of Balliol 
 a good tutor ? Well, rather, he has got more firsts 
 than any don in Oxford ; by which is meant of 
 course that his pupils have got the firsts. A col- 
 lege is rated partly by its number of blues and 
 partly by its number of firsts. For a tutor to lead 
 his pupils to success is as sacred a duty as for an 
 athletic undergraduate to play for the university. 
 The leisurely, not to say loafing, tutor of eigh- 
 teenth-century tradition has been reformed out of 
 existence. If the modern tutor fails of any high 
 attainment as a scholar, it is mainly because he is 
 required to be a very lively, strenuous, and effi- 
 cient leader of youth. 
 
 The means by which the tutor conducts his 
 charges in the narrow path to success in the schools 
 are characteristic. The secret lies in gaining the 
 good-will of the pupil. Thus any breakfasts, 
 luncheons, and dinners that the hospitable tutor 
 gives to his pupils while they are learning the 
 ways of the place are bread cast upon the waters 
 in a very literal sense. For a decent fellow to 
 neglect the just wishes of a teacher to whom he is 
 indebted is easy enough on occasions; but syste- 
 180 
 
THE TUTOR 
 
 matically to shirk a genuine debt of gratitude with- 
 out losing caste with one's self requires supreme 
 ingenuity. If you don't want to get into the 
 clutches of your tutor, don't take the least chance 
 of getting to like him. This is the soundest ad- 
 vice ever given by the wary upper classman. It 
 has not been ordained by nature that the soul of 
 the teacher is sib to the soul of the taught, but 
 clearly, by exercising the humanities, the irre- 
 pressible conflict may be kept within bounds. 
 
 \/ Sometimes harsher measures are necessary. 
 
 ' Then a man is sent up to the Head of the college, 
 which is not at all a promotion. One fellow used 
 to tell a story of how Jowett, the quondam master 
 of Balliol, chastised him. When he reported, the 
 Master was writing, and merely paused to say : 
 " Sit down, Mr. Barnes, you are working with Mr. 
 tft&JJil, are you not ? " The culprit said he was, 
 and sat down. Jowett wrote on, page after page, l 
 
 while the undergraduate fidgeted. Finally Jbwett *ft /Wf * 
 looked up and remarked : " Mr. Be*3«Ji says you I 
 are not. Good-morning." After that the under- 
 graduate was more inclined to work with Mr. 
 Ec mhi n. V 
 
 For graver offenses a man is imprisoned within 
 the paradise behind the college walls — " gated," 
 the term is. One fellow I knew — a third year 
 181 
 
AN AMERICAN AT OXFORD 
 
 man who roomed out of college — was obliged to 
 lodge in the rooms of the dean, Mr. J. L. Stra- 
 chan Davidson. The two turned out excellent 
 friends. No one could be altogether objection- 
 able, the undergraduate explained, whose whiskey 
 and tobacco were as good as the dean's. In ex- 
 treme cases a man may be sent down, but if this 
 happens, he must either have the most unfortunate 
 of dispositions, or the skin of a rhinoceros against 
 tact and kindness. 
 
 It is by similar means that the don maintains 
 his intellectual ascendency. Nothing is more for- 
 eign to Oxford than an assumption of pedagogic 
 authority. Mr. Hilaire Belloc, who is now not 
 unknown in London as a man of letters, used to 
 tell of a memorable encounter with Jowett. Mr. 
 Belloc was holding forth in his vein of excellent 
 enthusiasm with regard to his countrymen. For a 
 long time Jowett listened with courteously quali- 
 fied assent, but finally said : " Mr. Belloc, do you 
 know the inscription which is said to stand above 
 the gate to Hell ? " Mr. Belloc was ready with 
 •the familiar line from Dante. " No, Mr. Belloc, 
 Id on parle frangais." The oratory of even a 
 president of the Oxford Union broke down in 
 laughter. Under such a system a mutual confi- 
 dence increases day by day between teacher and 
 182 
 
THE TUTOR 
 
 taught, which may end in a comradeship more inti- 
 mate than that between father and son. 
 
 Our universities are fast adopting the German 
 or pseudo-German idea that an advanced educa- 
 tion consists merely in mastering the subject one 
 may choose to pursue. The point of departure is 
 the "course." If we gain the acquaintance of 
 Lowell or Longfellow, Agassiz, Child, or Norton, 
 we have to thank our lucky stars. In England, 
 the social relationship is the basis of the system 
 of instruction. 
 
 183 
 
IV 
 
 READING FOR EXAMINATIONS 
 
 HOW easy is the course of Oxford discipline 
 on the whole is evident in the regulations 
 as to the times for taking the examinations. The 
 earliest date when a man may go up for modera- 
 tions is his fifth term after matriculation. As 
 there are four terms a year, this earliest date falls 
 at the outset of his second year. For a passman 
 there is apparently no time beyond which it is for- 
 bidden to take mods, or finals either. An honor 
 man may repeat his attempts at mods until eight 
 terms are gone — two full and pleasant years ; that 
 is, he may take mods in any of three terms — al- 
 most an entire year. For finals he may go up as 
 early as his eleventh term, and as late as his six- 
 teenth — giving a latitude of more than a year. If 
 he wishes to take a final examination in a second 
 subject, he may do so up to his twentieth term. 
 Clearly, the pupil's work is done without pressure 
 other than the personal influence of the tutor. 
 When an American student fails to pass his ex- 
 aminations on the hour, he is disclassed and put on 
 184 
 
READING FOR EXAMINATIONS 
 
 probation, the penalty of which is that he cannot 
 play on any of the athletic teams. On this point, 
 at least, the Oxford system of discipline is not the 
 less childish of the two. 
 
 As to the nature of the work done, it is aptly 
 expressed in the Oxford term, " reading." The 
 aim is not merely to acquire facts. From week to 
 week the tutor is apt to meet his pupils, and espe- 
 cially the less forward ones, in familiar conversa- 
 tion, often over a cup of tea and a cigarette. He 
 listens to the report of what the pupil has lately 
 been reading, asks questions to see how thor- 
 oughly he has comprehended it, and advises him 
 as to what to read next. When there are several 
 pupils present, the conference becomes general, 
 and thus of greater advantage to all. In the dis- 
 cussions that arise, opposing views are balanced, 
 phrases are struck out and fixed in mind, and the 
 sum of the pupil's knowledge is given order and 
 consistency. The best tutors consciously aim at 
 such a result, for it makes all the difference be- 
 tween a brilliant and a dull examination paper, 
 and the examiners highly value this difference. 
 
 The staple of tutorial instruction is lectures. In 
 
 the old days the colleges were mutually exclusive 
 
 units, each doing the entire work of instruction 
 
 for its pupils. This arrangement was obviously 
 
 185 
 
AN AMERICAN AT OXFORD 
 
 wasteful, in that it presupposed a complete and 
 adequate teaching force in each of the twenty 
 colleges. Latterly, a system of "intercollegiate 
 lectures*' has been devised, under which a tutor 
 lectures only on his best subjects and welcomes 
 pupils from other colleges. These intercollegiate 
 tutorial lectures are quite like lecture courses at an 
 American college, except that they are not used as 
 a means of police regulation. Attendance is not 
 compulsory, and there are no examinations. A man 
 issues from the walls of his college for booty, and 
 comes back with what he thinks he can profit by. 
 
 The importance of the university examinations 
 is thus proportionate to their rarity. The exam- 
 iners are chosen from the best available members 
 of the teaching force of the university ; they are 
 paid a very considerable salary, and the term of 
 service is of considerable length. The prepara- 
 tion for the examination, at least as regards honor 
 men, has a significance impossible under our sys- 
 tem. Matters of fact are regarded mainly as 
 determining whether a man shall or shall not get 
 his degree ; the class he receives — there are four 
 classes — depends on his grasp of facts and upon 
 the aptitude of his way of writing. No man can 
 get either a first or a second class whose know- 
 ledge has not been assimilated into his vitals, and 
 186 
 
READING FOR EXAMINATIONS 
 
 who has not attained in some considerable degree 
 the art of expression in language. 
 
 One of the incidents of reading is a set of 
 examinations set by the colleges severally. They 
 take place three times a year, at the end of each 
 term, and are called collections — apparently from 
 the fact that at this time certain college fees used 
 to be collected from the students. The papers are 
 set by the dons, and as is the case with all tutorial 
 exercises, the results have nothing at all to do with 
 the class a man receives in the public examinations 
 — mods and finals. I was surprised to find that 
 it was rather the rule to crib ; and my inquiries 
 disclosed a very characteristic state of affairs. One 
 man, who was as honorable in all respects as most 
 fellows, related how he had been caught cribbing. 
 His tutor took the crib and examined it carefully. 
 " Quite right," he said. "In fact, excellent. Don't 
 be at any pains to conceal it. By the finals, of 
 course, you will have to carry all these things in 
 your head; at present, all we want to know is 
 how well you can write an examination paper." 
 The emphasis as to the necessity of knowing how 
 to write was quite as genuine as the sarcasm. These 
 examinations have a further interest to Americans. 
 They are probably a debased survival of exami- 
 nations which in centuries past were a police reg- 
 187 
 
AN AMERICAN AT OXFOED 
 
 ulation to test a student's diligence, and thus had 
 some such relation to a degree as our hour ex- 
 aminations, midyears, and finals. In other words, 
 they suggest a future utility for our present mid- 
 years and finals, if ever a genuine honor examina- 
 tion is made requisite for an American honor 
 degree. 
 
 For the greater part of his course, an under- 
 graduate's reading is by no means portentous. It 
 was Dr. Johnson, if I am not mistaken, whose aim 
 was " five good hours a day." At Oxford, this is 
 the maximum which even a solid reading man re- 
 quires of himself. During term time most men 
 do much less, for here is another of the endlessly 
 diverting Oxford paradoxes : passman and class- 
 man alike aim to do most of their reading in vaca- 
 tions. As usual, a kernel of common sense may 
 be found. If the climate of England is as little 
 favorable to a strenuous intellectual life as it is 
 to strenuous athleticisms, the climate of Oxford is 
 the climate of England to the nth. power. A man's 
 intellectual machinery works better at home in the 
 country. And even as the necessity of relaxation 
 is greater at Oxford, so is the chance of having 
 fun and of making good friends — of growing used 
 to the ways of the world of men. The months at 
 the university are the heyday of life. The home 
 188 ' 
 
READING FOR EXAMINATIONS 
 
 friends and the home sports are the same yesterday 
 and forever. The university clearly recognizes all 
 this. It rigidly requires a man to reside at Oxford 
 a certain definite time before graduation ; but how 
 and when he studies and is examined, it leaves 
 to his own free choice. A man reads enough 
 at Oxford to keep in the current of tutorial 
 instruction, and to get on the trail of the books 
 to be wrestled with in vacation. 
 
 189 ' 
 
V 
 
 THE EXAMINATION 
 
 WHEN mods and finals approach, the tune 
 is altered. Weeks and months together 
 the fellows dig and dig, morning, noon, and night. 
 All sport and recreation is now regarded only as 
 sustaining the vital forces for the ordeal. Some- 
 times, in despair at the distractions of Oxford life, 
 * knots of fellow sufferers form reading parties, gain 
 permission to take a house together in the country, 
 and draw up a code of terrible penalties against 
 the man who suggests a turn at whist, the for- 
 bidden cup, or a trip to town. From the simplest 
 tutorial cram-book to the profoundest available 
 monograph, no page is left unturned. And this 
 is only half. The motto of Squeers is altered. 
 When a man knows a thing, he goes and writes it. 
 Passages apt for quotation are learned by rote; 
 phrases are polished until they are luminous ; 
 periods are premeditated ; paragraphs and sections 
 prevised. An apt epigram turns up in talk or in 
 reading — the wary student jots it down, polishes 
 it to a point, and keeps it in ambush to dart it at 
 190 
 
THE EXAMINATION 
 
 this or that possible question. One man I knew 
 was electrified with Chaucer's description of the 
 Sergeant of the Law, — 
 
 No wher so bisy a man as lie ther nas, 
 And yet he semed bisier than he was ; — 
 
 and fell into despair because he could not think of 
 any historical personage in his subject-matter to 
 whom it might aptly apply. On the other hand, 
 there was Alfred the Great, whose character was 
 sure to be asked for. Did I know any line of 
 Chaucer that would hit off Alfred the Great ? So 
 unusual to quote Chaucer. 
 
 All this sort of thing has, of course, its limits. 
 In the last days of preparation, the brains are few 
 that do not reel under their weight of sudden 
 knowledge ; the minds are rare that are not dazzled 
 by their own unaccustomed brilliance. The super- 
 latively trained athlete knocks off for a day or two- 
 before an important contest — and perhaps has a 
 dash at the flesh-pots by way of relaxing tension 
 from the snapping point. So does the over-read 
 examinee. He goes home to his sisters and his 
 aunts, and to all the soothing wholesomeness of 
 English country life. 
 
 And then that terrible week of incessant exami- 
 nations! All the facts and any degree of style 
 will fail to save a man unless he has every resource 
 191 
 
AN AMERICAN AT OXFORD 
 
 ready at command. No athletic contest, perhaps 
 no battle, could be a severer test of courage. Life 
 does not depend upon the examination, but a living 
 may. In America, degrees are more and more 
 despised ; but in England, it still pays to disar- 
 range the alphabet at the end of one's name, or 
 to let it be known to a prospective employer that 
 one is a first-class honor man. The nature of the 
 young graduate's employment and his salary too 
 have a pretty close correspondence with his class 
 at graduation. If he can add a blue to a first, the 
 world is his oyster. The magnitude of the issue 
 makes the examinee — or breaks him. Brilliant 
 and laborious students too often come off with a 
 bare third, and happy audacity has as often brought 
 the careless a first. It may seem that the ordeal 
 is unnecessarily severe ; but even here the reason 
 may be found, if it be only granted that the aim 
 of a university is to turn out capable men. The 
 honor examination requires some knowledge, more 
 address, and most of all pluck — pluck or be 
 plucked, as the Cambridge phrase is ; and these 
 things in this order are what count in the life of 
 the British Empire. 
 
 192 
 
VI 
 
 OXFORD QUALITIES AND THEIR DEFECTS 
 
 UNDER the German-American system, the 
 main end is scholarly training. Our gradu- 
 ates are apt to have the Socratic virtue of knowing 
 how little they know — and perhaps not much be- 
 sides. Even for the scholar this knowledge is not 
 all. Though the English undergraduate is not 
 taught to read manuscripts and decipher inscrip- 
 tions — to trace out knowledge in its sources — the 
 examination system gives him the breadth of view 
 and mental grasp which are the only safe founda- 
 tions of scholarship. If he contributes to science, 
 he usually does so after he has left the university. 
 The qualities which then distinguish him are rare 
 among scholars — sound common sense and catho- 
 licity of judgment. Such qualities, for instance, 
 enabled an Oxford classical first to recognize Schlie- 
 mann's greatness while yet the German universities 
 could only see that he was not an orthodox re- 
 searcher according to their standards. If a man 
 were bent on obtaining the best possible scholarly 
 training, he probably could not do better than to 
 193 
 
AN AMERICAN AT OXFORD 
 
 take an English B. A. and then a German or an 
 American Ph. D. As for the world of deeds and 
 of men, the knowledge which is power is that 
 which is combined with address and pluck ; and 
 the English system seems based on practical sense, 
 in that it lays chief stress on producing this rare 
 combination. 
 
 To attribute to the honor schools the success 
 with which Englishmen have solved the problems 
 of civic government and colonial administration 
 would be to ignore a multitude of contributory 
 causes ; but the honor schools are highly charac- 
 teristic of the English system, and are responsible 
 for no small part of its success. A striking illus- 
 tration of this may be seen in the part which the 
 periodical press plays in public affairs. In Amer- 
 ica, nothing is rarer than a writer who combines 
 broad information with the power of clear and 
 convincing expression. The editor of any seri- 
 ous American publication will bear me out in the 
 observation that, notwithstanding the multitude of 
 topics of the deepest and most vital interest, it is 
 difficult to find any one to treat them adequately ; 
 and any reader can satisfy himself on this point 
 by comparing the best of our periodicals with the 
 leading English reviews. Now the writing of a 
 review article requires nothing more nor less than 
 194 
 
OXFORD QUALITIES AND DEFECTS 
 
 the writing of a first-class examination paper, even 
 to the element of pluck ; for to marshal the full 
 forces of the mind in the pressure of public life 
 or of journalism requires self-command in a very 
 high degree. The same thing is as obvious in the 
 daily papers. The world is filled with English 
 newspaper men who combine with reportorial train- 
 ing the power of treating a subject briefly and tell- 
 ingly in its broadest relations. 
 
 The public advantage of this was not long ago 
 very aptly exemplified. When our late war sud- 
 denly brought us face to face with the fact that 
 our national destiny had encountered the destinies 
 of the great nations of the world, the most thought- 
 ful people were those who felt most doubt and 
 uncertainty; the more one considered, the less 
 could one say just what he thought. At that 
 crisis a very clear note was sounded. The London 
 correspondents of our papers — Englishmen, and 
 for the most part honor men — presented the issue 
 to us from British and imperialistic point of view 
 with a vigor and conviction that had immediate 
 effect, as we all remember, and gave the larger 
 part of the nation a new view of the crisis, and a 
 new name for it. It was not until weeks later that 
 our own most thoughtful writers as a body per- 
 ceived the essential difference between our position 
 195 
 
AN AMERICAN AT OXFORD 
 
 and that of Great Britain, and we have scarcely 
 yet discarded the word " imperialism." The know- 
 ledge, address, and pluck — or shall we call it 
 audacity? — of the English correspondents enabled 
 them to make a stroke of state policy. This is 
 only one of many citable instances. 
 
 To the robustious intelligence of the honor man, 
 it must be admitted, the finer enthusiasm of sci- 
 entific culture is likely to be a sealed book. The 
 whole system of education is against it. Even if 
 a student is possessed by the zeal for research, few 
 tutors, in their pursuit of firsts, scruple to dis- 
 courage it. " That is an extremely interesting 
 point, but it will not count for schools." One stu- 
 dent in a discussion with his tutor quoted a novel 
 opinion of Schwegler's, and was confuted with the 
 remark, " Yes, but that is the German view." It 
 is this tutor who is reported to have remarked: 
 " What I like about my subject is that when you 
 know it you know it, and there 's an end of it." 
 His subject was that tangle of falsehood and mis- 
 conception called history. It must, of course, be 
 remembered in extenuation that with all his social 
 and tutorial duties, the don is very hard worked. 
 And considering the pressure of the necessary pre- 
 paration for schools, the temptation to shun the 
 byways is very great. 
 
 196 
 
OXFORD QUALITIES AND DEFECTS 
 
 The examining board for each school is elected 
 by the entire faculty of that school from its own 
 members ; and though it is scarcely possible for an 
 unscrupulous examiner to frame the questions to 
 suit his own pupils, there is nothing to prevent the 
 tutor from framing his pupils' knowledge to meet 
 the presumptive demands of the examiners. " We 
 shall have to pay particular attention to Scottish 
 history, for Scotus is on the board, and that is his 
 hobby." In the school of literae humaniores, no 
 one expects either pupil or tutor to go far into 
 textual criticism, philology, or archaeology. These 
 branches are considered only as regards their re- 
 sults. In history, a special subject has to be studied 
 with reference to its original sources, but its rela- 
 tive importance is small, and a student is discour- 
 aged from spending much time on it. Stubbs's 
 " Select Charters " are the only original documents 
 required, and even with regard to these all conclu- 
 sions are cut and dried. 
 
 To be sure there is a science school, but few men 
 elect it, and it is in distinctly bad odor. In the 
 slang of the university it is known as " stinks/' 
 and its laboratories as " stink shops." One must 
 admit that its unpopularity is deserved. As it is 
 impossible that each of the twenty colleges should 
 have complete apparatus, the laboratories are main- 
 197 
 
AN AMERICAN AT OXFORD 
 
 tained by the university, and not well maintained, 
 for the wealth of Oxford is mainly in the coffers 
 of the colleges. The whole end of laboratory work 
 at Oxford is to prepare the student for a " practi- 
 cal examination " of some three hours. The Lin- 
 acre professor has made many strenuous efforts, 
 and has delivered much pointed criticism, but he 
 has not yet been able to place the school on a 
 modern or a rational basis. In his nostrils, per- 
 haps, more than those of the university, the school 
 of science is unsavory. 
 
 Many subjects of the highest practical impor- 
 tance are entirely ignored. No advanced instruc- 
 tion is offered in modern languages and literatures 
 except English, and the school in English is only 
 six years old and very small. No one of the tech- 
 nical branches that are coming to be so prominent 
 a part of American university life is as yet recog- 
 nized. 
 
 The Oxford honor first knows what he knows 
 and sometimes he knows more. Few things are as 
 distressing as the sciolism of a second-rate English 
 editor of a classic. The mint sauce quite forgets 
 that it is not Lamb. The English minor reviewer 
 exhibits the pride of intellect in its purest form. 
 The don perhaps intensifies these amiable foibles. 
 There is an epigram current in Oxford which the 
 198 
 
OXFORD QUALITIES AND DEFECTS 
 
 summer guide will tell you Jowett wrote to cele- 
 brate his own attainments : — 
 
 Here I am, my name is Jowett ; 
 
 I am the master of Balliol College. 
 All there is to know, I know it. 
 
 What I know not is not knowledge. 
 
 This is clearly a satire written against Jowett, and 
 it would be more clearly a legitimate satire if 
 aimed at the generality of dons. 
 
 199 
 
VII 
 
 THE UNIVERSITY AND REFORM 
 
 THIS tale of Oxford shortcomings is no news 
 to the English radical. The regeneration 
 of the university has long been advocated. On the 
 one hand, the reformers have tried to make it pos- 
 sible, as it was in the Middle Ages, to live and 
 study at Oxford without being attached to any 
 of the colleges ; on the other, they have tried to 
 bring into the educational system such modern 
 subjects and methods of study as are cultivated in 
 Germany, where the new branches have been 
 so admirably grafted on the mediaeval trunk. In 
 general it must be said that Oxford is becoming 
 more democratic and even more studious ; but the 
 advance has come in spite of the constitution of the 
 university. All studied attempts at reform have 
 proved almost ludicrously futile. 
 
 In order to combat the monopoly of the colleges, 
 and to build up a body of more serious students 
 without their walls, a new order of " unattached " 
 students was created. The experiment has no 
 doubt been interesting, but it cannot be said that 
 200 
 
THE UNIVERSITY AND REFORM 
 
 it has revived the glorious democracy and the intel- 
 lectual enthusiasm of the mediaeval university. 
 Few things could be lonelier, or more profitless 
 intellectually, than the lot of the unattached stu- 
 dents. Excluded by the force of circumstances 
 from the life of the colleges, they have no more 
 real life of their own than the socially unaffiliated 
 in American universities. They have been forced 
 to imitate the organization of the colleges. They 
 lunch and dine one another as best they can, hold 
 yearly a set of athletic games, and place a boat in 
 the college bumping races. They have thus come 
 to be precisely like any of the colleges, except that 
 they have none of the felicities, social or intellec- 
 tual, that come from life within walls. 
 
 From time to time the introduction of new honor 
 schools is proposed to keep pace with modern learn- 
 ing. A long-standing agitation in favor of a school 
 in modern languages was compromised by the 
 founding of the school in English ; but it is not 
 yet downed, and before the century is over may 
 yet rise to smite conservatism. Coupled with this 
 there is an ever-increasing desire to cultivate re- 
 search. As yet these agitations have had about 
 as much effect as the kindred agitation that led to 
 the rehabilitation of the unattached student. 
 
 The Bodleian Library is a treasure chest of the 
 201 
 
AN AMERICAN AT OXFORD 
 
 rarest of old books and of unexplored documents ; 
 but nothing in the Bod counts for schools, and so 
 the shadow of an undergraduate darkens the door 
 only when he is showing off the university to his 
 sisters — and to other fellows'. When I applied 
 for permission to read, the fact that I wore a com- 
 moner's gown, as I was required to by statute 
 while reading there, almost excluded me. If I 
 had been after knowledge useful in the schools, 
 no doubt I should have been obliged to consult a 
 choice collection of well-approved books across the 
 way in the camera of the Radcliffe. In America, 
 a serious student is welcome to range in the stack, 
 and to take such books as he needs to his own 
 rooms. Some few researchers come to the Bodleian 
 from the world without to spend halcyon days be- 
 neath the brave old timber roof of Duke Hum- 
 phrey's Library ; but any one used to the freedom 
 of books in America would find very little encour- 
 agement to do so. The librarian is probably an 
 eminently serviceable man according to the tradi- 
 tions of the Bodleian ; but there are times when 
 he appears to be a grudging autocrat intrenched 
 behind antique rules and regulations. In the 
 Middle Ages it was the custom to chain the books 
 to the shelves, as one may still observe in the 
 quaint old library of Merton College. The modern 
 202 
 
THE UNIVERSITY AND REFORM 
 
 method at the Bodleian would seem to be a refine- 
 ment on the custom. And what is not known 
 about the Bodleian in the Bodleian would fill a 
 library almost as large. In the picture gallery- 
 hangs a Van Dyck portrait of William Herbert, 
 Earl of Pembroke, a former chancellor of the uni- 
 versity, a nephew of Sir Philip Sydney, son of 
 Mary, Countess of Pembroke, and the once reputed 
 patron to whom Shakespeare addressed the first 
 series of his sonnets. The librarian did not know 
 how or when the portrait came into the possession 
 of the University, or whether it was an original ; 
 and not being required to know by statute, he did 
 not care to find out, and did not find out. 
 
 The crowning absurdity of the educational sys- 
 tem is the professors, and here is an Oxford para- 
 dox as yet unredeemed by a glimmering of rea- 
 son. When I wanted assistance as to a thesis 
 on which I was working, my tutor referred me to 
 the Regius Professor of Modern History, who he 
 thought would be more likely than any one else to 
 know about the sources of Elizabethan literature. 
 
 Few as are the professors, they are all too many 
 for the needs of Oxford. They are learned and 
 ardent scholars, many of them with a full measure 
 of German training in addition to Oxford culture. 
 But in proportion as they are wise and able they 
 203 
 
AN AMERICAN AT OXFORD 
 
 are lifted out of the life of the university. They 
 lecture, to be sure, in the schools ; and now and 
 then an undergraduate evades his tutor long 
 enough to hear them. Several young women may 
 be found at their feet — students from Somerville 
 and Lady Margaret. When the subject and the 
 lecturer are popular, residents of the town drop in. 
 But as regards the great mass of undergraduates, 
 wisdom crieth in the streets. The professors are 
 as effectually shelved as ever their learned books 
 will be when the twentieth century is dust. " The 
 university, it is true," Mr. Brodrick admits in 
 his " History of Oxford," " has yet to harmonize 
 many conflicting elements which mar the symme- 
 try of its institutions." 
 
 This torpor in which the university lies is no 
 mere matter of accident. I quote from Mr. Glad- 
 stone's Romanes Lecture, delivered in 1892 : — 
 
 " The chief dangers before the English uni- 
 versities are probably two : one that in [culti- 
 vating ?] research, considered as apart from their 
 teaching office, they should relax and consequently 
 dwindle [as teachers ?] ; the other that, under 
 pressure from without, they should lean, if ever 
 so little, to that theory of education, which would 
 have it to construct machines of so many horse 
 power rather than to form character, and to rear 
 204 
 
THE UNIVERSITY AND REFORM 
 
 into true excellence the marvelous creature we call 
 man ; which gloats upon success in life, instead of 
 studying to secure that the man shall ever be 
 greater than his work, and never bounded by it, 
 but that his eye shall boldly run — 
 
 Along the line of limitless desire." 
 
 Few will question the necessity of rising above 
 the sphere of mere science and commercialism ; 
 but many will question whether the way to rise is 
 not rather by mastering the genius of the century 
 than by ignoring it. It is scarcely too much to 
 say that the greatest intellectual movement of the 
 nineteenth century, though largely the work of 
 English scientists, has left no mark on Oxford 
 education. If, as Professor Von Hoist asserts, 
 the American universities are hybrids, Oxford 
 and Cambridge cannot be called universities at 
 all. 
 
 205 
 
VIII 
 
 THE UNIVERSITY AND THE PEOPLE 
 
 AS a result of the narrowness of the scope 
 Jl\- of Oxford teaching, the university has 
 no relation to the industrial life of the people 
 — a grave shortcoming in a nation which is not 
 unwilling to be known as a nation of shopkeepers. 
 The wail of the British tradesman is not unfa- 
 miliar. Wares " made in Germany " undersell 
 English wares that used to command the market ; 
 and being often made of a cheaper grade to suit 
 the demands of purchasers, the phrase " made in 
 Germany " is clearly indicative of fraudulent in- 
 tention. 
 
 Certain instances are exceptionally galling. 
 Aniline dyes were first manufactured from the 
 residuum of coal tar in Great Britain. But enter- 
 prising Germany, which has coal-fields of its own, 
 sent apprentices to England who learned the 
 manufacture, and then by means of the chemistry 
 taught in the German universities, revolutionized 
 the process, and discovered how to extract new 
 colors from the coal tar, so that now the bulk of 
 206 
 
THE UNIVEKSITY AND THE PEOPLE 
 
 aniline dyes are made in Germany. Obviously, 
 the German chemist is a perfidious person. The 
 Yankee is shrewd and well taught in the technical 
 professions. He makes new and quite unexam- 
 pled tools, and machinery of all sorts. It takes 
 the Briton some years to be sure that these are 
 not iniquitous — a Yankee trick ; but in the end 
 he adopts them. Even then, to the Briton's sur- 
 prise, the Yankee competes successfully. A com- 
 mission (no German spy) is sent to America to 
 find out why, and on its return gleefully reports 
 that the Yankee works his tools at a ruinous rate, 
 driving them so hard that in a decade it will be 
 necessary to reequip his plant entire. At the end 
 of the decade, the conservative Englishman's tools 
 are as good as if they had been kept in cotton bat- 
 ting ; but by this time the Yankee has invented 
 newer and more economical devices, and when he 
 reequips his plant with them he is able to undersell 
 the English producer even more signally. The 
 honest British manufacturer sells his old tools to 
 an unsuspecting brother in trade and adopts the 
 new ones. The Yankee machinist is obviously as 
 perfidious as the German chemist. The upper 
 middle classes in England realize that the desti- 
 nies of Great Britain and America run together, 
 and they are very hospitable to Americans, but 
 207 
 
AN AMERICAN AT OXFORD 
 
 the industrial population hate us scarcely less than 
 they hate the Germans. 
 
 All this is, of course, not directly chargeable to 
 the English universities : but the fact remains that 
 in Germany and in America the educational sys- 
 tem is 'the most powerful ally of industry. Here 
 again the English radical is on his guard. From 
 time to time, in letters to the daily papers or 
 political speeches before industrial audiences, the 
 case is very clearly stated. In a recent epistolary 
 agitation in " The Times " it was shown that 
 whereas.American and German business men learn 
 foreign languages, Englishmen attempt to sell their 
 wares by means of interpreters, and do not even 
 have their pamphlets and prospectuses translated. 
 Admitting the facts, one gentleman gravely urged 
 that if only the English would stick out the fight, 
 their language would soon be the business language 
 of the world. If it is the conscious purpose of the 
 nation to make it so, it might be of advantage to 
 spell the language as -it has been pronounced in 
 the centuries since Chaucer ; already with some 
 such purpose the Germans are adopting Roman 
 characters. But at least it will be many decades 
 before English is the Volapiik of business, and 
 meantime England is losing ground. From the 
 point of view of the mere outsider, it would seem 
 208 
 
THE UNIVERSITY AND THE PEOPLE 
 
 of little moment to England what language is used, 
 if the profits of the business transacted accrue to 
 Russian, German, and American corporations. 
 
 It has even been strongly urged that commercial 
 and technical subjects be taught in the universities. 
 Cambridge and the University of Glasgow have 
 already a fund with this in view; and the new 
 Midland University at Birmingham, of which Mr. 
 Joseph Chamberlain is chancellor, is to be mainly 
 devoted to commercial science and engineering. 
 It cannot be foretold that the ancient universities 
 will hold their own against the modern. In a speech 
 at Birmingham (January 17, 1901), Mr. Cham- 
 berlain said: "Finance is the crux of the situa- 
 tion. Upon our finance depends entirely the ex- 
 tent to which we shall be able to develop this new 
 experiment. With us, in fact, money is the root 
 ■of all good. I am very glad to say that the pro- 
 mises of donations which, when I last addressed 
 you, amounted to £330,000, have risen since then 
 to an estimated amount of about £410,000. . . . 
 Now .£410,000 is a large sum. I heard the other 
 day that the University of Cambridge, which has 
 for some time past been appealing for further as- 
 sistance, has only up to the present time received 
 £60,000. I most deeply regret that their fund is 
 not larger, and I regret also that ours is so small." 
 209 
 
AN AMERICAN AT OXFORD 
 
 Oxford has apparently not entered the new com- 
 petition even in a half-hearted manner. For cen- 
 turies it has been the resort of the nobility and 
 aristocracy, the "governing classes," and though 
 the spirit of the age has so far invaded it as to 
 have been in Mr. Gladstone's eyes its chief danger, 
 the university has as yet only the slenderest con- 
 nection with the industrial life of the nation. 
 
 The virtues of the Oxford educational system, 
 like those of the social and athletic life, are pretty 
 Nearly traceable in the main to the division of the 
 university into colleges ; at least, it is hard to see 
 how anything other than this could have suggested 
 the idea of having one body to teach the student 
 and another to examine him. And they have a 
 strong family likeness one to another, the concrete 
 result being a highly sturdy and effective charac- 
 ter. But the educational system differs from the 
 social and athletic system in that the defects of its 
 qualities are the more vigorous. As far as these 
 defects result from the educational system, they 
 are chargeable not so much to the preponderance 
 of the colleges as to the torpor of the university ; 
 and they are powerfully abetted by the Oxford 
 tradition as to the nature and function of a lib- 
 eral education. This has not always been the case 
 at Oxford. To understand the situation more 
 210 
 
THE UNIVERSITY AND THE PEOPLE 
 
 clearly, it is necessary to review in brief the origin 
 and the growth of the colleges, and the extinction 
 of the mediaeval university. This will throw further 
 light on Oxford's social history. We shall thus be 
 better able to judge how and to what extent the 
 college system offers a solution for the correction 
 of our American instruction. 
 
 211 
 
IV 
 
 THE HISTORY OF THE UNIVERSITY AND 
 THE COLLEGE 
 
( 
 
 THE UNIVERSITY BEFORE THE COLLEGE 
 
 IN the beginning was the university. The col- 
 leges were as unimportant as the university 
 is now. If it be admitted that the university 
 exists to-day, they were less important ; for there 
 were no colleges. The origin of the university was 
 probably due to a migration of students in 1167 
 from the then world-famous University of Paris. 
 The first definite mention of a studium generate 
 at Oxford, or assembly of masters of the different 
 faculties, dates from 1185, when Giraldus Cam- 
 brensis, as he himself relates, read his new work, 
 " Topographia Hibernia," before the citizens and 
 scholars of the town, and entertained in his hostel 
 " all the doctors of the different faculties." 
 
 At this time, and for many centuries afterward, 
 Oxford, like other mediaeval universities, was a 
 guild, and was not unlike the trade guilds of the 
 time. Its object was to train and give titles to 
 those who dealt in the arts and professions. The 
 master tanner was trained by his guild to make 
 leather, and he made it ; the master of arts was 
 215 
 
AN AMERICAN AT OXFORD 
 
 trained by the university to teach, and he taught. 
 He was required to rent rooms in the university 
 schools, for a year and even two, and to show that 
 he deserved his title of master by lecturing in them, 
 and conducting " disputations." The masters lived 
 directly from the contributions of their hearers, 
 their means varying with the popularity of their 
 lectures ; and the students were mainly poor clerks, 
 who sought degrees for their money value. 
 
 The lectures were mere dictations from manu- 
 script, necessitated by the lack of accessible texts. 
 The students copied the lectures verbatim for 
 future study. The instruction in arts covered the 
 entire field of secular knowledge, the " seven arts," 
 the trivium (grammar, rhetoric, and logic or dialec- 
 tic), and the quadrivium (music, arithmetic, geom- 
 etry, and astronomy). The lectures were the main 
 and often the only means of imparting know- 
 ledge. The disputations were scholastic arguments 
 — debates — on some set question, and were con- 
 ducted by the masters. They were the practical 
 application of what the student had learned from 
 the lectures, and were the chief means of intel- 
 lectual training. Besides attending lectures and . 
 disputing, the candidate for the degree had to pass 
 an examination ; but the great test of his acquire- 
 ment seems to have been the skill with which he 
 216 
 
UNIVERSITY AND COLLEGE 
 
 used his knowledge in debate. Thus the formal 
 disputations occupied very much the same place as 
 the modern written examinations, and they must 
 have required very much the same rare combina- 
 tion of knowledge, address, and pluck. All learn- 
 ing was in a pint-pot ; but it was a very serviceable 
 pint-pot. 
 
 The university education did not make a man 
 above the work of the world : it made him an en- 
 gine of so many horse power to perform it. It 
 brought him benefices in that great sphere of ac- 
 tivity, the mediaeval Church, and important posts 
 in that other sphere of mediaeval statecraft, which 
 was so often identified with the Church. If the 
 clerk was above the carpenter, it was not because 
 he came from a different station in life, for he 
 often did not : it was because his work was more 
 important. And he was far above the carpenter. 
 It was a strenuous, glorious life, and the man of 
 intelligence and training found his level, which 
 is the highest. The kings and the nobility were 
 warriors, and may have affected to despise educa- 
 tion ; but they were far from despising educated 
 men. The machinery of state was organized and 
 controlled by clerks from the university. If the 
 scientific and mechanical professions had existed 
 then, there is no doubt that they would not have 
 217 
 
AN AMERICAN AT OXFORD 
 
 been despised as to-day, but would have had full 
 recognition. 
 
 Socially, the university was chaos. In the ab- 
 sence of colleges, all the students lived with the 
 townsmen in " chamberdekyns," which appear to 
 be etymologically and historically the forbears of 
 the " diggings " to which the fourth year man now 
 retreats when he has been routed from college by 
 incoming freshmen and by the necessity of reading 
 for his final examination. But such discipline 
 as is now exerted over out-of -college students was 
 undreamed of. In his interesting and profoundly 
 scholarly history of the universities of the Middle 
 Ages, the Rev. Hastings Rashdall gives a vivid 
 picture of mediaeval student life, which was pretty 
 much the same in all the universities of Europe. 
 Boys went up to the university at as early an age 
 as thirteen, and the average freshman could not 
 have been older than fifteen ; yet they were allowed 
 almost absolute liberty. Drunkenness was rarely 
 treated as a university offense ; and for introduc- 
 ing suspicious women into his rooms, it was only 
 on being repeatedly caught that an undergraduate 
 was disciplined. At the University of Ingolstadt, 
 a student who had killed another in a drunken 
 quarrel had his scholastic effects and garments 
 confiscated by the university. He may have been 
 218 
 
UNIVERSITY AND COLLEGE 
 
 warned to be good in future, but he was not 
 expelled. "It is satisfactory to add," Rashdall 
 continues, " that at Prague, a Master of Arts, be- 
 lieved to have assisted in cutting the throat of a 
 Friar Bishop, was actually expelled." The body 
 of undergraduates was " an undisciplined student- 
 horde." Hende Nicholas, in Chaucer's " Miller's 
 Tale," is, it must be admitted, a lively and ad- 
 venturing youth ; but he might have been much 
 livelier without being untrue to student life in 
 chamberdekyns. 
 
 The townspeople seem to have been the not 
 unnatural fathers of the tradesmen and landlords 
 of modern Oxford ; and the likeness is well borne 
 out in the matter of charges. But where to-day 
 a man sometimes tries amiably to beat down the 
 landlord's prices, the way of the Middle Ages was 
 to beat down the landlord. As the student was in 
 many cases of the same station in life as the towns- 
 man, he naturally failed to command the servility 
 with which the modern undergraduate is regarded. 
 Both sides used to gird on their armor, and meet 
 in battles that began in bloodshed and often ended 
 in death. Pages of Eashdall's history are filled 
 with accounts of savage encounters between town 
 and gown, which are of importance historically as 
 showing the steps by which the university achieved 
 219 
 
AN AMERICAN AT OXFORD 
 
 the anomalous legal dominance over the city which 
 it still in some measure retains. For our present 
 purpose, it is enough to note that mediaeval Oxford 
 was unruly, very. " Fighting," says Rashdall, 
 " was perpetually going on in the streets of Oxford. 
 . . . There is probably not a single yard of ground 
 in any part of the classic High Street that lies 
 between St. Martin's and St. Mary's [almost a 
 quarter of a mile] which has not at one time or 
 other been stained with human blood. There are 
 historic battlefields on which less has been spilt." 
 
 As if this were not enough, there were civil feuds. 
 In the Middle Ages, sectional differences were 
 more obvious and more important than now ; and 
 the first subdivision of the universities, both in 
 England and on the Continent, was by " nations." 
 At Oxford there were two nations ; and if, when 
 the north countryman rubbed elbows with the 
 south countryman, he was offended by his silken 
 gown and soft vowels, he rapped him across the 
 pate. Hence more strife and bloodshed. Amid 
 all this disorder there was a full measure of medi- 
 aeval want and misery. At best, the student of 
 moderate means led a precarious life ; and poor 
 students, shivering, homeless, and starved, lived by 
 the still reputable art of the beggar. Something 
 had to be done. 
 
 220 
 
II 
 
 THE MEDIEVAL HALL 
 
 THE mediaeval spirit of organization, which 
 resulted in so many noble and deathless in- 
 stitutions, was not slow in exerting itself against 
 the social chaos of the university. Out of chaos 
 grew the halls, and out of the halls the colleges. 
 The first permanent organizations of student life 
 were small, and had their origin in the immediate 
 wants of the individual. To gain the economy of 
 cooperation and the safety of numbers, the students 
 at Oxford, as at Paris and elsewhere, began to live 
 in separate small colonies under one roof. These 
 were called aulse or halls. They were no less in- 
 teresting in themselves than for the fact that they 
 were the germ out of which the Oxford college 
 system grew. 
 
 At first the halls appear to have been mere 
 chance associations. Each had a principal who 
 managed its affairs ; but the principal had no offi- 
 cial status, and might even be an undergraduate. 
 The halls correspond roughly to the fraternities 
 of American college life. Their internal rule 
 was absolutely democratic. The students lived to- 
 221 
 
AN AMERICAN AT OXFORD 
 
 gether by mutual consent under laws of their own 
 framing, and under a principal of their own elect- 
 ing. They were quite without fear or favor of the 
 university. The principal's duties were to lease 
 the hall, to be a sort of over-steward of it, and 
 to lead in enforcing the self-imposed rules of the 
 community. His term of office, like his election, 
 depended on the good-will of his fellows ; if he 
 made himself disliked, they were quite at liberty 
 to take up residence elsewhere. In the thirteenth 
 century there was really no such thing as uni- 
 versity discipline. The men who lived in the halls 
 came and went as they pleased, and were as free 
 as their contemporary in chamberdekyns to loiter, 
 quarrel, and carouse. Chaucer's " Reeve's Tale " 
 gives us a glimpse into " Soler Halle at Cante- 
 bregge," from which it would appear that the 
 members were quite as loose and free as Hende 
 Nicholas, their Oxford contemporary. But the 
 liberty was an organized liberty. In contrast with 
 the chaos of the life of the students in chamber- 
 dekyns, the early halls must have been brave places 
 to work and to play in, and one might wish that a 
 fuller record had been left of the life in them. It 
 was their fate to be obsoured by the greater splen- 
 dor and permanence of the colleges to which they 
 paved the way. 
 
 222 
 
Ill 
 
 THE COLLEGE SYSTEM 
 
 THE English college, roughly speaking, is a 
 mediaeval hall supported by a permanent 
 fund which the socii or fellows administer. The 
 first fund for the support of scholars was be- 
 queathed in 1243, but it can scarcely be regarded 
 as marking the first college, for it provided for two 
 scholars only, and these lived where they pleased. 
 In 1249 William of Durham bequeathed a fund 
 for the support of ten or more masters of arts. At 
 first these also lived apart ; it was only in 1280, 
 after the type of the English college had been 
 fixed, that they were formed into the body now 
 known as University College. The first organized 
 community at Oxford was founded by Sir John 
 de Balliol some little time before 1266 ; but the 
 allowances to the scholars, as was the case in col- 
 leges of the University of Paris, after which it was 
 doubtless modeled, were not from a permanent 
 fund, being paid annually by the founder. Balliol 
 cannot therefore be regarded as the first character- 
 istic English college. It was not until 1282 that 
 223 
 
AN AMERICAN AT OXFORD 
 
 Sir John's widow, Dervorguilla, adopted the new 
 English idea by making the endowment of the 
 " House of Balliol " permanent, and placing it 
 under the management of the fellows. 
 
 The real founder of the English college was 
 Walter de Merton. In 1264 Walter provided by- 
 endowment for the permanent maintenance of 
 twenty scholars, who were to live together in a hall 
 as a community ; and in 1274 he drew up the 
 statutes which fix the type of the earliest English 
 college. The principal of Merton was not, like the 
 principal of a mediaeval hall, the temporary head of 
 a chance community, but a permanent head with 
 established, power; and he had to manage, not 
 the periodic contributions of free associates, but a 
 landed estate held in permanent trust. He was 
 called " warden," a title which the head of Merton 
 retains to this day. This idea of a body supported 
 in a permanent residence by a permanent fund is 
 perhaps of monastic origin, and was accompanied 
 by certain features of brotherhood rule. The 
 scholars lived a life of order and seclusion which 
 was in striking contrast to the life of the students 
 in chamberdekyns, and even of those in the halls. 
 But with the monastic order they had also the mo- 
 nastic democracy, so that in one way the govern- 
 ment of the college was strikingly similar to that 
 224 
 
THE COLLEGE SYSTEM 
 
 of the halls. Vacancies in the community were 
 filled by cobptation, and the warden was elected 
 by the thirteen senior fellows from their own num- 
 ber. Though partly monastic in constitution, the 
 Hall of Merton was not properly a religious body. 
 The fellows took no vows, and seem rather to have 
 been expected to enter lay callings. This College 
 of Merton was the result of a gradual development 
 of the hall along monastic lines — a lay brother- 
 hood of students. It was destined to work a revo- 
 lution in English university life and in English 
 university teaching. The constitutions of Uni- 
 versity and Balliol were, as I have indicated, 
 remodeled on the lines of Merton ; and other col- 
 leges were founded as follows : Exeter, 1314 ; 
 Oriel, 1324 ; Queens, 1341 ; and Canterbury, now 
 extinct, 1362, most of which were profoundly influ- 
 enced by the constitution of Merton. 
 
 It was at first no part of the duty of the 
 elders (socii, or, as Chaucer calls them, felawes) 
 to teach the younger. The scholars of the college 
 received the regular mediaeval education in the 
 university. But even in Merton the germ of tu- 
 torial instruction was present. Twelve " parvuli " 
 who were not old enough, or sufficiently used to 
 the Latin tongue, to profit by the lectures and dis- 
 putations of the university, lived in or near the 
 225 
 
AN AMERICAN AT OXFORD 
 
 colleges and were taught by a grammar master; 
 and it appears that even the older scholars might, 
 " without blushing," consult this grammar master 
 on matters that " pertained to his faculty." In his 
 relation to these older students the grammar mas- 
 ter may be regarded as the precursor of the system 
 of tutorial instruction. 
 
 The first college to develop regular undergrad- 
 uate instruction within its walls was " S. Marie 
 College of Winchester in Oxford," founded in 
 1379, by William of Wykeham. " S. Marie's " 
 brought in so many innovations that it came to be 
 called " New College," a title which, incongruously 
 enough, it has retained for more than five hundred 
 years. Wykeham's first innovation was to place 
 the grammar master, for the greater good of his 
 pupils, at the head of a " college " of seventy boys 
 at Winchester, thus outlining the English system 
 of public schools. New College was accordingly 
 able to exclude all who had not attained the ripe 
 age of fifteen. The effect of this innovation on 
 the college was peculiar. When the boys came up 
 from Winchester, they appear to have been farther 
 advanced than most of the undergraduates attend- 
 ing lectures and disputes m the university schools ; 
 in any case, Wykeham arranged that the older fel- 
 lows should supplement the university teaching by 
 226 
 
THE COLLEGE SYSTEM 
 
 private tuition within the college. Little by little 
 the New College type succeeded that of Merton. 
 Magdalen College, founded in 1448, carried the 
 tutorial system to its logical end by endowing lec- 
 tureships in theology, metaphysics, and natural 
 philosophy. The older colleges — those of the 
 Merton type — little by little followed this new 
 example, so that by the end of the Middle Ages it 
 was possible for a student to receive his entire in- 
 struction within the walls of his college. In Wol- 
 sey's splendid foundation, Cardinal College (1522), 
 now styled Christ Church, there was a still more 
 ample endowment for professorships. At first the 
 college instruction was regarded as supplementary 
 to the university teaching, though it soon became 
 far more important. The masters of the university 
 continued to read lectures on the recognized sub- 
 jects, living as of old on fees from those who chose 
 to listen ; but they were clearly unable to compete 
 with the endowed tutors and professors of the col- 
 leges. By the beginning of the fifteenth century, 
 the mediaeval teaching master was disappearing. 
 The only real teaching in arts — by all odds the 
 ^most popular branch of study at Oxford — was 
 given within the colleges and halls. 
 
 The discipline of the earlier colleges was much 
 severer than that of to-day, but the difference is 
 227 
 
AN AMERICAN AT OXFORD 
 
 one of degree rather than of kind. The lectures 
 in schools began at six, instead of nine; and at 
 any hour it was forbidden to leave the college ex- 
 cept on a studious errand. When attending out- 
 of-college lectures, all scholars were required to go 
 and come in a body ; and in one set of statutes even 
 a chaplain was forbidden to leave the gates, except 
 to go to lectures or to the library, without taking 
 at least one companion, who, in the antique phrase 
 of the statute, was to be a " witness of his honest 
 conversation." There were only two meals a day, 
 dinner at ten and supper at five. Breakfast, now 
 the great rallying-point of Oxford hospitality, was 
 the invention of a more luxurious age. Of ath- 
 letics there was none, or next to none. The only 
 licensed hilarities were certain so-called "honest 
 jokes," with which the tutors were in at least 
 one case required to regale their pupils after din- 
 ner, and a u potation " which was permitted after 
 supper, perhaps as an offset to the " honest jokes." 
 The severity of these regulations is mainly ex- 
 plainable in the fact that the inmates of the col- 
 leges were fed, clothed, and housed out of the en- 
 dowment, and might thus be reasonably expected 
 to give a good account of themselves. Further- 
 more, they were most of them mere boys. A stat- 
 ute dating as late as 1527 requires that " scholars " 
 228 
 
THE COLLEGE SYSTEM 
 
 shall be at least twelve years old. At fourteen or 
 fifteen a scholar might become a fellow. The aver- 
 age age of " determining " as bachelor of arts was 
 little if at all over seventeen. At nineteen, the 
 age at which the modern Oxonian comes up from 
 the public schools, the mediaeval student might, if 
 he were clever, be a master of arts, lecturing and 
 disputing in schools for the benefit of the bach- 
 elors and scholars of the university. 
 
 The modern Oxonian delights to tell visiting 
 friends that he is forbidden by statute to play 
 marbles on the steps of the Bodleian, and to roll 
 hoop in the High ; but if a mediaeval master of 
 arts were to " come up " to-day, he would be 
 amused, not that so many rules framed for his 
 boyish pupils of old should be applied to grown 
 men, but that the men so obviously require a check 
 to juvenile exuberance. Yet this much has been 
 gained, that the outgrown restrictions of college 
 life have kept Oxford wholesomely young. The 
 survivals of the monastic system meanwhile have 
 kept it wholesomely democratic. 
 
 After the colleges reached their full develop- 
 ment, the extinction of the mediaeval university as 
 an institution for teaching was largely a matter of 
 form. The quietus was given in 1569. The Earl 
 of Leicester, then chancellor, ordered that the 
 229 
 
AN AMERICAN AT OXFORD 
 
 government should be in the hands of the chan- 
 cellor, doctors, proctors, and the heads of the col- 
 leges and halls. In 1636 (the year of the found- 
 ing of the first American college) the statutes of 
 the university were revised and codified by Arch- 
 bishop Laud ; the sole authority was placed in the 
 hands of an oligarchy composed of the leading 
 dons of the colleges. The government was lim- 
 ited to the vice-chancellor, the proctors, and the 
 heads of houses, and the vice-chancellor and the 
 proctors were elected in sequence by each of the 
 colleges from its own members. The teaching of 
 the university was now legally as well as actually 
 in the hands of the college tutors, and the exam- 
 ination was in the hands of a board chosen by the 
 colleges. University lectures were still delivered 
 in the schools by the regent masters, but they had 
 ceased to play any important part in Oxford edu- 
 cation. 
 
 230 
 
IV 
 
 THE GOLDEN AGE OF THE MEDIAEVAL HALL 
 
 LIKE the colleges, the halls meanwhile tended 
 gradually towards an organized community 
 life. The starting-point was a regulation that the 
 principal should give the university security for 
 the rent of the house. The logical result of this 
 was that the principal became the representative 
 of the university, and the hall one of its recog- 
 nized institutions. The advantage of living in 
 separate communities meantime had become so 
 clearly evident that by the middle of the fifteenth 
 century chamberdekyns were abolished. All stu- 
 dents not living in a college were required to live 
 in a hall. It was thus that the halls lost some of 
 their democratic independence. At this period in 
 their development they may be roughly compared 
 to such modern American halls as Claverly at 
 Harvard, where the residents govern their own 
 affairs in the main, admitting newcomers only by 
 vote, but are all alike subject to the authority of 
 a resident university proctor. The analogy is by 
 no means close, for the principal of the mediaeval 
 231 
 
AN AMERICAN AT OXFORD 
 
 hall was not so much a resident policeman as the 
 actual head of the community. 
 
 As the colleges developed tutorial instruction, 
 the halls followed suit; the local administrator 
 became responsible not only for the social regime, 
 but for the tuition of the undergraduates. The 
 halls thus differed from the college mainly in that 
 they had no corporate existence such as is neces- 
 sary to an endowed institution. The mediaeval 
 hall was now in its golden age ; it was a well-con- 
 ceived instrument for all the purposes of resi- 
 dence and of education. It is especially to be 
 noted that the regime of the community was still 
 in the main democratic. Though the head was 
 appointed by the university, he had to be accepted 
 by vote of the undergraduates, a provision that 
 was still observed, at least in one instance, until 
 the close of the nineteenth century. 
 
 The discipline of the halls of the fifteenth cen- 
 tury, severe though it was by comparison with that 
 of the earliest halls, was far less severe than the 
 discipline in the colleges. It was quite as much 
 as the university could accomplish, according to 
 Rashdall, " to prevent students expelled from one 
 hall being welcomed at another, to prevent the 
 masters themselves condoning or sharing the worst 
 excesses of their pupils, to compel fairly regular 
 232 
 
MEDIEVAL HALL 
 
 attendance at lectures and other university or col- 
 lege exercises, to require all students to return 
 home by curfew at 8 or 9 p. M., to get the outer 
 doors of the pedagogy locked till morning, and to 
 insist on the presence of a regent throughout the 
 night." When the early habits of the community 
 generally are remembered, it will be evident that 
 these regulations still allowed a vast deal of liberty, 
 or rather of license. Boys of fifteen or sixteen 
 living in the very centre of large and densely 
 populated towns were in general perfectly free to 
 roam about the streets up to the hour at which 
 all respectable citizens were accustomed, if not 
 actually compelled by town statutes, to retire to 
 bed. 
 
 The halls were reduced in number by the wars 
 of the Roses and by a period of intellectual stag- 
 nation that followed, but they still numbered 
 seventy-one, as against eighteen colleges (includ- 
 ing those maintained by monasteries, which disap- 
 peared with the Reformation) ; and the number of 
 their students is estimated at seven hundred, as 
 against three hundred in the colleges. In the light 
 of subsequent development it seems probable that 
 it would have been far better for the university if 
 the halls had remained the characteristic subdivi- 
 sion. Their fate was decided not by any inherent 
 233 
 
AN AMERICAN AT OXFORD 
 
 superiority on the part of the colleges, but by the 
 force of corporate wealth. 
 
 Even in the fifteenth century, the halls were 
 tending to pass into the possession of the colleges, 
 and later events made the tendency a fact. " As 
 stars lose their light when the sun ariseth," says 
 an ancient Cambridge worthy, " so all these hostels 
 decayed by degrees when endowed colleges began 
 to appear." The Reformation, and a recurrent 
 pestilence, " the sweating sickness," a kind of 
 inflammatory rheumatism due apparently to the 
 unwholesome situation of the university, resulted 
 in a sharp falling off in the number of students. 
 The colleges lived on, however thinned their ranks, 
 by virtue of the endowments ; but the halls dis- 
 appeared with the students who had frequented 
 them. In 1526 it was recorded that sixteen had 
 lately been abandoned. When the numbers of the 
 university swelled again under Elizabeth, the in- 
 crease found place partly in the few halls that 
 were left, but mainly in the colleges. In 1602 
 there were only eight halls, and these were all 
 mere dependencies of separate colleges. " Singulce 
 singulis a colegiis pendent" as a contemporary 
 expresses it. Only one of these, St. Edmund Hall, 
 now retains even a show of the old democratic 
 independence, and this has lately been brought 
 234 
 
MEDLEVAL HALL 
 
 into closer subjection to Queen's College. Socially 
 as well as educationally, the mediaeval university- 
 faded before the organization and endowment of 
 the colleges. The life of Oxford was concentrated 
 in a dozen or more separate institutions, and so 
 thoroughly concentrated that there was little asso- 
 ciation, intellectual or social, between any two of 
 them. 
 
 235 
 
THE ORIGIN OF THE MODERN UNDER- 
 GRADUATE 
 
 IF the tutors of New College were epoch-mak- 
 ing, the amplitude and splendor of its social 
 life were no less so. Its original buildings are in 
 such perfect preservation that it is hard to believe 
 that they are almost the oldest in Oxford, and 
 that the New College quadrangle is the father of 
 all quads. The establishment of the " head M was 
 of similar dignity. The master of Balliol received 
 forty shillings yearly ; the warden of New College, 
 forty pounds. In the statutes of an old Cam- 
 bridge college we find it required that since it 
 would be " indecent " for the master to go afoot, 
 and " scandalous" to the college for him to "con- 
 ducere hackeneye," he might be allowed one horse. 
 The warden of New College had a coach and six. 
 As century followed century the value of the en- 
 dowments increased, and the scale of living was 
 proportionately raised. The colleges in general 
 became the home of comfort, and sometimes of a 
 very positive luxury. 
 
 236 
 
THE MODERN UNDERGRADUATE 
 
 In the colleges of the Middle Ages the students 
 were the socii, and were maintained by the endow- 
 ment. These are the dons and foundationers, or 
 scholarship men, of to-day. But the comfort and 
 order of the life in the colleges were very attrac- 
 tive, and the sons of the rich were early welcomed 
 as "gentlemen commoners," precursors of the mod- 
 ern " commoners." The statutes of Magdalen make 
 the first clear provision for receiving and teach- 
 ing such " non-foundation " students. They permit 
 the admission of twenty filii nobilium as commen- 
 sales, or commoners, in the vernacular. At first 
 these were few and unimportant ; in the centuries 
 during which the numbers of the university were 
 at an ebb, they could easily be accommodated 
 within the depleted colleges. When the univer- 
 sity increased under Elizabeth, the idea of living 
 in halls in the mediaeval fashion, as we have seen, 
 was obsolescent, so that the result of the increase 
 was to enlarge the colleges. Thus, largely as a 
 matter of chance, the commoners of to-day, the char- 
 acteristic and by far the larger part of the under- 
 graduate body, live under a regime invented for 
 the endowed scholars of the Middle Ages, and the 
 democratic license of the mediaeval undergraduate 
 at large has given way to a democratic rule of 
 commoners in colleges. Though the commoner is 
 237 
 
AN AMERICAN AT OXFORD 
 
 no longer called a gentleman commoner, he is more 
 than likely to come from a family of position and 
 means, for the comfort of life in the colleges is 
 expensive. All this has transformed Oxford from 
 a mediaeval guild of masters and apprenticed stu- 
 dents, a free mart of available knowledge, into a 
 closely organized anteroom to social and profes- 
 sional life. 
 
 238 
 
VI 
 
 THE INSIGNIFICANCE OF THE MODERN 
 UNIVERSITY 
 
 THOUGH the university as a teaching body 
 pined before the rising colleges, and for 
 centuries lay in a swoon, it was not dead. It was 
 kept alive by certain endowments for lecturers. 
 But so thoroughly did the college tutors supply all 
 undergraduate needs that, unless walls indeed have 
 ears, the lectures were never heard. The profes- 
 sors gradually abandoned the university schools 
 and gave the unattended lectures in their own 
 houses. Such lectures were known as " study lec- 
 tures." Even these gave way to silence. An odd 
 situation was caused by the fact that there were 
 also salaries paid to university proctors, a part 
 of whose duty it was to see that the professorial 
 lectures were properly given. When a proctor ap- 
 peared, the learned professor would snatch up his 
 manuscript and read until his auditor got tired 
 and left. This was one case in which a thief was 
 not the person to catch a thief ; such energy on 
 the part of the proctor was unusual, and was re- 
 239 
 
AN AMERICAN AT OXFORD 
 
 garded as in extremely bad form. The abuse pro- 
 ceeded so far that in some cases, when hearers 
 appeared at the appointed hour, the professors 
 refused point blank to read their lectures. The 
 climax of the farce was that at graduation students 
 were fined for having cut these lectures that had 
 never been given. When Samuel Johnson was 
 fined for neglecting a college lecture to go " slid- 
 ing on Christ Church Meadow," he exclaimed, 
 " Sir, you have fined me twopence for missing a 
 lecture that was not worth a penny ! " His un- 
 timely departure from Oxford has lamentably left 
 us to conjecture what he would have said upon 
 paying the university fines at graduation for cut- 
 ting lectures that had never been given. 
 
 Even the university examinations became farcical. 
 Under the Laudian statutes the very examiners be- 
 came corrupt. Instead of a feast of reason and a 
 flow of soul, the wary student provided his examiner 
 with good meat and wine ; and the two, with what 
 company they bade in, got gloriously drunk to- 
 gether. B. A. meant Bacchanal of Arts. Even 
 when the forms of examination were held to, the farce 
 was only less obvious. A writer in Terrce Filius, 
 March 24, 1721, tells us that the examination con- 
 sisted in " a formal repetition of a set of syllogisms 
 upon some ridiculous question in logick, which the 
 240 
 
THE MODERN UNIVERSITY 
 
 candidates get by rote, or perhaps read out of their 
 caps, which lie before them." These commodious 
 sets of syllogisms were called strings, and descended 
 from undergraduate to undergraduate in a regular 
 succession like themes and mechanical drawings in 
 an American club or fraternity. U I have in my 
 custody a book of strings upon most or all of the 
 questions discussed in a certain college noted for 
 its ratiocinative faculty ; on the first leaf of which 
 are these words : Ex dono Richardi P — — eprimce 
 classi benefactoris munificentissimi." Lord Eldon 
 took his degree at University College by an ex- 
 amination that consisted of two questions : " What 
 is the meaning of Golgotha ? " and " Who founded 
 University College ? " It was, no doubt, the bearers 
 of degrees thus achieved who owned those mar- 
 velous libraries of the eighteenth century, which 
 consisted of pasteboard boxes exquisitely backed in 
 tooled calf, and labeled with the names of the 
 standard Greek and Latin classics. 
 
 The decline of the university teaching and ex- 
 amination did not result in a corresponding rise in 
 the colleges. Each of the dozen and more institu- 
 tions was supposed, as I have said, to keep a sepa- 
 rate faculty in arts, and often in law and theology 
 as well. If there had been any incentive to ambi- 
 tion, the colleges might have vied with one another 
 241 
 
AN AMERICAN AT OXFORD 
 
 in their impossible task, or at least have gone far 
 enough to bring about a reform. But they were 
 rich and did not care. The wealth of collegiate 
 endowments, that had begun by ruining the uni- 
 versity, ended by ruining the colleges. There were 
 still earnest teachers and students at Oxford, but 
 they were not the rule. The chief energies of the 
 tutors were spent in increasing their salaries by a 
 careful management of the estates, and in evading 
 their pupils. In " the splendid foppery of a well- 
 turned period " Gibbon thus pictures the dons of 
 Magdalen in 1752 : " Their deep and dull potations 
 excused the brisk intemperance of youth." Only 
 one result was possible. In 1821 T. J. Hogg, 
 Shelley's college-mate at University College, re- 
 ferred to Oxford as a seat of learning. " Why do 
 you call it so ? " Shelley cried indignantly. " Be- 
 cause," Hogg replied, "it is a place in which 
 learning sits very comfortably, well thrown back 
 as in an easy chair, and sleeps so soundly that 
 neither you nor I nor anybody else can wake her." 
 Permanent endowments had transferred the seat 
 of learning from a nobly indigent university to 
 the colleges, and the deep and dull potations of 
 endowed tutors had put it asleep on the common- 
 room chairs. 
 
 The nineteenth century did not altogether arouse 
 242 
 
THE MODERN UNIVERSITY 
 
 it. " The studies of the university," according to 
 the testimony of the Oxford Commission of 1850, 
 " were first raised from their abject state by a 
 statute passed in 1800." Heretofore all students 
 had pursued the same studies, and there was no dis- 
 tinction to be gained at graduation except the mere 
 fact of becoming a Bachelor of Arts. The statute 
 of 1800 provided that such students as chose might 
 distinguish themselves from the rest by taking 
 honors ; and for both passman and honor man it 
 provided a dignified and quite undebauchable uni- 
 versity examining board. At first the subjects 
 studied were, roughly speaking, the same for pass- 
 man and honor man ; the difference was made by 
 raising the standard of the honor examination. 
 The examination followed the mediaeval custom in 
 being mainly oral ; and though it soon came to be 
 written, it still preserves the tradition of the medi- 
 aeval disputation by including a viva voce which is 
 open to the attendance of the public. Throughout 
 the nineteenth century the development consisted 
 mainly in adding a few minor schools. 
 
 The good and bad features of the English col- ! 
 lege system as a whole should not be hard to dis- 
 tinguish. In all social aspects the colleges are as 
 nearly perfect as human institutions are capable of 
 becoming, and they are the foundation of an un- 
 243 
 
L< 
 
 AN AMERICAN AT OXFORD 
 
 equaled athletic life. Educationally, their qualities 
 are mixed. For the purpose of common or garden 
 English gentlemen, nothing could be better than a 
 happy combination of tutorial instruction and uni- 
 versity examining. For the purposes of scholarly 
 instruction in general, and of instruction in the 
 modern sciences and mechanic arts in particular, 
 few things could be worse than the system as at 
 present construed. 
 
 To exult over the superiority of American insti- 
 tutions in so many of the things that make up a 
 modern university would not be a very profitable 
 proceeding. Let us neglect the imperfections of 
 Oxford. It is of much greater profit to consider 
 the extraordinary social advantages that arise from 
 the division of the university into colleges, and the 
 educational advantages of the honor schools. These 
 are points with regard to which we are as poor as 
 Oxford is poor in the scope of university instruction. 
 
 The point will perhaps be clearer for a brief 
 review of the manner in which our college system 
 grew out of the English. The development is the 
 reverse of what we have just been considering. In 
 England, the colleges overshadowed the university 
 and sapped its life. With us, the university has 
 overshadowed the college and is bidding fair to 
 annihilate it. 
 
 244 
 
VII 
 
 THE COLLEGE IN AMEEICA 
 
 IN 1636 the Commonwealth of Massachusetts 
 passed an act to establish a " schoole or col- 
 ledge," and set apart a tract of land in " New 
 Towne " as its seat, which they called Cambridge. 
 Our Puritan forefathers had carried from the 
 English university the conviction that " sound 
 learning " is the " root of true religion," and were 
 resolved, in their own vigorous phrase, that it 
 should not be " buried in the graves of the fathers." 
 In 1638 a master of arts of Emmanuel College, 
 Cambridge, John Harvard, bequeathed to the new 
 institution his library and half his fortune, some 
 £780. A timber building was erected and a cor- 
 poration formed which bore the donor's name. 
 From the regulations in force in 1655 it is evident 
 that in its manner of life, its laws of government, 
 the studies taught, and the manner of granting the 
 degree, Harvard College was a close counterpart of 
 the English college of the early seventeenth cen- 
 tury, its very phraseology including such terms as 
 " disputing," " proceeding," "determining." It was 
 245 
 
AN AMERICAN AT OXFOKD 
 
 the first institution of higher education in British 
 America. Until the founding of the first state 
 university, the University of Virginia, in 1819, the 
 constitution afforded the principal model for sub- 
 sequent foundations, and to-day colleges of the 
 Harvard type are perhaps the strongest factor in 
 American education. Harvard thus transplanted 
 to American soil the full measure of the traditions 
 of the Middle Ages, many of which exist in a mod- 
 ified form to-day. 
 
 In " Harvard College by an Oxonian " Dr. 
 George Birkbeck Hill suggests that John Harvard 
 expected others to found similar institutions which 
 collectively were to reproduce the University of 
 Cambridge in New England. The supposition is 
 by no means impossible, and the manuscript records 
 in the Harvard Library would perhaps reward re- 
 search. But whatever the intention, it is abundantly 
 clear that in the full English sense of the word 
 no second college was established at Cambridge. 
 The first constitution was in all essentials the same 
 as that of to-day. Hutchinson's " History of Mas- 
 sachusetts " records (1676) : " There are but four 
 fellowships, the two seniors have each SOL per 
 ann. and the two juniors 15/., but no diet is allowed : 
 There are tutors to all such as are admitted stu- 
 dents. . . . The government of these colledges is 
 246 
 
THE COLLEGE IN AMEKICA 
 
 in the governor and magistrates of Massachusetts 
 and the president of the colledge, together with the 
 teaching elders of the six adjacent towns." The 
 fellows are the forbears of the modern corporation, 
 the tutors of the faculty ; and though the institu- 
 tion has been separated from the state, the " teach- 
 ing elders " are the earliest overseers. Furthermore, 
 the endowment of Harvard has remained undi- 
 vided ; and generations elapsed before the present 
 very un-English division was made by which the 
 teaching force is separated into independent facul- 
 ties for arts and the various professions. From the 
 first the "college" was a "university" in that it 
 granted degrees ; and less than twenty years after 
 its founding the two terms are used as synonymous ; 
 an appendix to what is called the charter of Har- 
 vard "College" calls the institution a "Univer- 
 sity." This confusion of terms still persists, and 
 is found at most other American institutions, the 
 constitutions of which were largely modeled after 
 that of Harvard. For generations the endowments 
 and the teaching force of the American college and 
 university were identical. Thus as regards its con- ./ 
 stitution the typical American university is a single 
 English college writ large. 
 
 Almost from the outset, however, there were, in 
 one sense of the word, several colleges. In " An 
 247 
 
AN AMERICAN AT OXFORD 
 
 Inventory of the whole Estate of Harv d Colledge 
 taken by the President & Fellows as they find the 
 same to be Decemb. 10, 1654," the first two items 
 are as follows : — 
 
 " Imp r s. The building called the old colledge, con- 
 teyning a Hall, Kitchen, Buttery, Cellar, Turrett 
 & 5 Studeys & therin 7 chambers for students in 
 them. A Pantry & small corne Chamber. A li- 
 brary & Books therin, vallued at 400 lb . 
 
 "It. Another house called Goffes colledge, & 
 was purchased of Edw: Goffe. conteyning five 
 chambers. 18 studyes. a kitchen cellar & 3 gar- 
 retts." 1 
 
 It is to be noted that "Old Colledge," which 
 was Harvard's building, had a kitchen, buttery, 
 and cellar, a pantry and a small corn chamber, 
 and was thus primitively modeled after an Eng- 
 lish hall or college. Presumably the inmates, 
 like their cousins across the water, dined in the 
 hall. As for " Goffe's colledge," granting that 
 the punctuation of the inventory is intentional, it 
 had a kitchen cellar, which would seem to imply 
 a kitchen; and it is not impossible that there 
 should be a comma after " kitchen." No hall is 
 mentioned, and it is hardly likely that there could 
 have been so imposing a room in what was built 
 
 1 William G. Brown in The Nation, vol. 61, No. 1585, p. 346. 
 248 
 
THE COLLEGE IN AMERICA 
 
 for a private house ; but it would have been possible 
 and natural to serve meals in the largest of the five 
 "chambers." A third building Hutchinson's his- 
 tory describes as " a small brick building called the 
 Indian Colledge, where some few Indians did study, 
 but now it is a printing house," the first printing 
 house in British America. The two earliest build- 
 ings at Harvard would thus be the abodes of sepa- 
 rate communities, and though I can find no intima- 
 tion as to the Indian College, it can scarcely be 
 doubted that since it was established for the sepa- 
 rate use of the redskins, it contained a separate 
 living-plant. A later record shows that there was 
 a separate kitchen in the first Stoughton Hall. 
 
 These early " colledges " at Harvard are more 
 properly termed halls, and such as survived are 
 now so called. They had probably little in com- 
 mon with the democratic English halls of the Mid- 
 dle Ages. Both at Oxford and at Cambridge the 
 halls of the seventeenth century were, as I have 
 said, mere pendants of the colleges; they must 
 have had a separate character as a social commu- 
 nity and a certain independence ; but if they had 
 separate endowments, they did not manage them, 
 and each of them depended for its instruction 
 mainly on the college to which it was affiliated. 
 The printed records of the early American halls are 
 249 
 
AN AMEEICAN AT OXFORD 
 
 too meagre to warrant definite conclusions ; but 
 they seem to show that the halls were conceived in 
 the spirit of the English hall of the seventeenth 
 century, in that they provided for separate social 
 and residential communities without separate en- 
 dowment or teaching force. If the increase of 
 students at Harvard had been rapid, it is not un- 
 likely that many new halls would have been estab- 
 lished, each the home of a complete community ; 
 but for half a century the number fluctuated be- 
 tween fifteen and thirty. If we take the English 
 estimate of two hundred and fifty as the largest 
 feasible size for a single community, the limit 
 was not reached until as late as 1840. By 1676 
 the timber " colledge " built at the charge of Mr. 
 Harvard, which bore his name, had been super- 
 seded by the first Harvard Hall, which Hutchinson 
 describes as " a fair pile of brick building covered 
 with tiles by reason of the late Indian warre not 
 yet finished. ... It contains twenty chambers for 
 students, two in a chamber, a large hall which 
 serves for a chapel ; over that a convenient library." 
 In these ample accommodations it was found that 
 the student body could be most conveniently and 
 cheaply fed as a single community. Thus, like the 
 idea of a group of colleges with separate finances 
 and teaching bodies, the idea of separate residential 
 250 
 
THE COLLEGE IN AMERICA 
 
 halls must have passed away with the generation 
 of divines educated in England. The American 
 college and the American university remained iden- 
 tical, not only educationally and in their finances, 
 but as a social organization. This fact has caused 
 a curious reversion in America toward the mediae- 
 val type of university, both socially and education- 
 ally. 
 
 As the university has expanded, it has declined 
 socially : to-day the residential life is only a degree 
 better than that in the ancient chamberdekyns. 
 Educationally, the reversion has been fortunate : 
 the university is alive to the needs of the life about 
 it. If it here resembles the modern German uni- 
 versities, this is largely due to the fact that both 
 have more faithfully preserved the system and the 
 spirit of the Middle Ages : the resemblance is 
 quite as much a matter of native growth in Amer- 
 ica as of foreign imitation. In England, the me- 
 diaeval idea of a multiplicity of residential bodies 
 has survived, and the educational idea of the 
 mediaeval university has perished. In Germany, 
 the educational idea has survived, and the old com- 
 munity life has perished. In America, the two 
 ideas have survived by virtue of their identity. 
 But for the same reason both are in a rudimen- 
 tary and very imperfect state of development. 
 251 
 

 THE PROBLEMS OF THE AMERICAN UNI- 
 VERSITY 
 
I 
 
 THE SOCIAL AND ATHLETIC PROBLEM 
 
 THE imperfection of the modern American 
 university in its social organization has been 
 stated with the utmost clearness and authority, at 
 least as regards Harvard. The " Harvard Gradu- 
 ates' Magazine" for September, 1894. published 
 posthumously an article by Frank Bolles, late sec- 
 retary of the college, entitled " The Administrative 
 Problem." " In the present state of affairs," says 
 Mr. Bolles, " student social life is stunted and dis- 
 torted. . . . There is something very ugly in the 
 possibility of a young man's coming to Cambridge, 
 and while here sleeping and studying alone in a 
 cheerless lodging, eating alone in a dismal restau- 
 rant, feeling himself unknown, and so alone in his 
 lectures, his chapel, and his recreations, and not 
 even having the privilege of seeing his administra- 
 tive officers, who know most of his record, without 
 having to explain to them at each visit who he is 
 and what he is, before they can be made to remem- 
 ber that he is a living, hoping, or despairing part 
 of Harvard College." 
 
 255 
 
AN AMERICAN AT OXFORD 
 
 Some of these men who fail to find a place in 
 the social community meet their isolation grimly 
 and are embittered against life. Others, after a 
 few months or a year of lonesomeness and neglect, 
 give up their university career broken-hearted, and 
 by so doing perhaps take the first step in a life of 
 failures. One man of whom I happened to know 
 confided to his daily themes a depth of misery of 
 which it can only be hoped that it was hysterical. 
 At night when he heard a step on his staircase he 
 prayed that it might be some one coming to see 
 him. The tide of undergraduate life and of joy 
 in living flowed all about him and left him thirst- 
 ing. If a man finds sweetness in the uses of such 
 adversity, it can only be by virtue of the firmest 
 and calmest of tempers. Sometimes fellows starve 
 physically without a friend with whom to share 
 their hardship, living perhaps on bread, milk, and 
 oatmeal, which they cook over the study lamp. 
 Occasionally one hears disquieting rumors that 
 such short rations have resulted in disease and 
 even death before the authorities were aware. If 
 this be so, the hardships of life in the earliest 
 mediaeval university, though far enough removed 
 from us to be picturesque, could hardly have been 
 more real. 
 
 The sickness of the body politic has been por- 
 256 
 
SOCIAL AND ATHLETIC PEOBLEM 
 
 trayed with artistic sympathy and veracity by Mr. 
 C. M. Flandrau, in his "Harvard Episodes," 
 the wittiest and most searching of studies of un- 
 dergraduate life. It is no doubt for this reason 
 that the book is both read and resented by the 
 healthy and unthinking college man. 
 
 To dwell on such individual instances would be 
 unpleasant. The point of importance is to show 
 how the social chaos affects the health of the 
 community as a whole. As it happens, we have a 
 barometer. For better or for worse, the moving 
 passion of the undergraduate body, aside from 
 studies, is athletic success. If athletics prosper, it 
 is because the life of the college finds an easy and 
 natural expression ; if athletics languish, there is 
 pretty sure to be some check on wholesome func- 
 tioning. 
 
 The causes of Harvard's abundant failures and 
 the remedies have been a fertile theme of discussion. 
 One cause is obvious. The rivals with distress- 
 ing frequency have produced better teams. Every 
 one knows that what Cambridge chooses to call 
 Yale luck is nine parts Yale pluck ; and the qual- 
 ity is well developed at Princeton, Pennsylvania, 
 and elsewhere. But why is it developed at these 
 places more than at Harvard? The explanations 
 are legion. The first cry was bad coaching. This 
 257 
 
AN AMERICAN AT OXFORD 
 
 was repeated until the fault was corrected, at least 
 in part, and until every one was wholly tired of 
 hearing the explanation. Then came the cry of 
 bad physical training. This in turn was repeated 
 until it brought partial remedy and total weariness 
 of the agitation. By and by, all other complaints 
 having been worn threadbare, Harvard's defeat 
 was attributed to the fog on Soldier's Field. It 
 is not unlikely that the fog will be dissipated 
 and the athletes duly benefited. Yet it is far 
 from certain that this will make the athletic body 
 sound. 
 
 The fault lies deeper than Yale pluck — or even 
 the fog on Soldier's Field. It is to be found in 
 the conditions, social, administrative, and even edu- 
 cational, which are at the basis of the life of the 
 university. If these conditions were peculiar to 
 Harvard, it would decidedly not be worth while 
 to discuss them publicly. But they are inherent 
 in the type of university of which Harvard is the 
 earliest and most developed example, and are des- 
 tined to crop out in every American institution of 
 learning in proportion as it grows, as Harvard has 
 grown, from the English college of a few decades 
 ago into the Teutonized university of the present 
 and of the future. In considering the causes, it is 
 necessary to speak concretely of our one eminent 
 258 % 
 
SOCIAL AND ATHLETIC PKOBLEM 
 
 example ; but the main fact brought out will be 
 applicable in greater or less degree to the present 
 or future of any American college. 
 
 The sources of Harvard's weakness are mainly- 
 social. When the college was small, it had its 
 share of victory ; but almost from the year when it 
 began to outgrow its rivals, its prowess declined. 
 Forty years ago, and even less, the undergraduate 
 constitution of American institutions was, roughly 
 speaking, that of the colleges of Oxford and Cam- 
 bridge : a freshman was measurably sure of falling 
 into easy relationship with the fellows of his class 
 and of other classes, and thus of finding his level 
 or his pinnacle in athletic teams and in clubs. 
 Considered as a machine for developing good fel- 
 lows and good sportsmen, it was well adjusted and 
 well oiled ; it worked. But it was not capable of 
 expansion. Two or three hundred fellows can live 
 and even dine together with comfort and an in- 
 crease of mutual understanding ; they soon become 
 an organized community. When a thousand or 
 two live as a single community and dine at one 
 board (let us call it dining), the social bond re- 
 laxes. Next door neighbors are unknown to one 
 another, having no common ground of meeting, 
 and even the college commons fail to bring them 
 together. The relaxing influence of the hour spent 
 259 
 
/ 
 
 AN AMERICAN AT OXFOED 
 
 / at table and in the subsequent conversation, dur- 
 ing which social intercourse should most freely 
 flourish, is quite lost. The undergraduate body is 
 a mob, or at best an aggregation of shifting cliques. 
 If men live in crowds or in cliques, their life is 
 that of crowds or of cliques, and is unprofitable 
 both to themselves and to the community that 
 should prosper by their loyal activity. 
 
 It is true that there are societies and clubs, but 
 these also to a certain degree have been swamped 
 in the rising tide of undergraduates. With fresh- 
 man classes as large as those of to-day, the old 
 social machinery becomes incapable of sifting the 
 clubable from the less clubable, those who deserve 
 recognition in the body of undergraduates from 
 those who do not. The evil is increased by the 
 fact that as a rule in America the social life is 
 organized early in the undergraduate course, so 
 that the men who fail of election in the first year 
 or two have failed for good. There are, to be 
 sure, cases in which men who have later developed 
 signal merit have been taken into the all-important 
 societies and clubs of the upper classmen, and 
 sometimes these societies make a special and most 
 creditable effort thus to remedy the failures of the 
 system ; but the men who are thus elected are an 
 exception, and an exception of the kind that proves 
 260 
 
SOCIAL AND ATHLETIC PROBLEM 
 
 the rule. Unless a man has been prominent in 
 one of the large preparatory schools, or becomes 
 prominent in athletics in the first year or so, there 
 is only one way to make sure of meeting such fel- 
 lows as he wishes to know, and that is both to 
 choose friends and to avoid them with an eye to 
 social chances, a method which is scarcely to be 
 commended. As the incoming classes grow larger, 
 there is an increasingly large proportion of under- 
 graduates who fail to qualify in the first year or 
 two in any of these ways. Throughout their 
 course they neither receive benefit from the gen- 
 eral life of the university nor contribute to it. 
 They are often of loyal and disinterested charac- 
 ter, and they not infrequently develop into men 
 of exceptional ability in all of the paths of under- 
 graduate life ; not a few of them have been 'varsity 
 captains. But instead of exerting the influence 
 on the welfare of the university which such men 
 might and should exert, they find it impossible to 
 get into the main currents, and revolve impotently 
 on the outside, each in the particular eddy where 
 fate has thrust him. 
 
 At Harvard, where the evil has long been recog- 
 nized, a remedy has been sought in increasing the 
 membership of the great sophomore and senior 
 societies, the Institute of 1770 and the Hasty Pud- 
 261 
 
AN AMERICAN AT OXFORD 
 
 ding Club. The result has been the reverse of 
 what was intended. The larger the club the less 
 compact its life and its influence, — what a few 
 men have gained the club has lost. The tendency 
 toward disintegration is confirmed by a peculiarity 
 of the organization of the societies. The first half 
 of the members of the Institute form a separate 
 club, the D. K. E., or Dickey. From this the sec- 
 ond half are excluded, becoming a sort of social 
 fringe ; they often form a part of the mob that 
 dines at Memorial or of the cliques that dine in 
 boarding-houses, and are only a shade less ex- 
 cluded than the rest from the centres of the col- 
 lege life. If this inner club, the Dickey, were the 
 instrument of a united and efficient public spirit, 
 the case would not be so bad, but its members in 
 turn are split into a number of small clubs ; as a 
 social organization the Dickey is mainly a name. 
 If now these small clubs took a strong part in the 
 general life of the college, the case would still not 
 be so bad ; but each spends its main strength in 
 struggling with the others to secure as many mem- 
 bers as possible from the first ten of the Dickey. 
 They are scarcely to be regarded as engines of 
 public spirit. 
 
 The same is true of the great senior society, the 
 Hasty Pudding. Its most prominent members 
 262 
 
SOCIAL AND ATHLETIC PROBLEM 
 
 belong to the few small clubs of upper classmen ; 
 the rest are as much a social fringe as the later 
 tens of the Institute. And the senior clubs, like 
 the clubs of the under classmen, are more inter- 
 ested in their private politics than in the policy of 
 the college as a whole. At Yale the senior societies 
 still exert a strong and generally wholesome influ- 
 ence, but at Harvard they have long ceased to do 
 so, if they ever did. In proportion as a man is suc- 
 cessful in the social world the system lifts him out 
 of the body of undergraduate life. The reward of 
 athletic distinction or of good-fellowship is a sort 
 of pool pocket, upon getting into which a man is 
 definitely out of the game. The leaders in the 
 college life, social and athletic, are chosen on the 
 superficial tests of the freshman year, and are 
 not truly representative ; and the organization of 
 which they become a part is calculated only to 
 suppress general and efficient public spirit. The 
 outer layers are dead wood and the kernels sterile. 
 This is at least one reason why Harvard does not 
 oftener win. 
 
 In all this there is no place for a philosophy of 
 despair. The spirit of the undergraduate, clubbed 
 and unclubbed, is normal and sound. The efforts 
 which the clubs themselves make from time to 
 time to become representative are admirably pub- 
 263 
 
AN AMERICAN AT OXFORD 
 
 lie spirited ; and there is no less desire on the part 
 of the outsiders to live for the best interests of the 
 college. On the day of an athletic contest the 
 university is behind the team, heart and lungs; 
 and when defeat comes it is felt alike by all condi- 
 tions of men. From time to time ancient athletes 
 journey to Cambridge to exhort the undergraduate 
 body to pull together ; and it is a poor orator in- 
 deed who cannot set in motion strong currents of 
 enthusiasm. Half an hour of earnest talk on the 
 strenuous life from Theodore Roosevelt has often 
 been known to raise a passion of aspiration that 
 has positively lasted for weeks. But the social 
 system cannot be galvanized into life and function- 
 ing. The undergraduates aspire and strive, but 
 every effort is throttled by a Little Old Man of the 
 Sea. When all is said and done, the mob and 
 the cliques remain mob and cliques ; with discord 
 within and exclusive without, there is small hope 
 of organized efficiency. 
 
 At Yale the oligarchic spirit of the senior socie- 
 ties is compact and operative where that of the 
 Harvard clubs is not; but Yale also is being 
 swamped. The vast and increasing mob of the 
 unaffiliated has several times within the last de- 
 cade shown a shocking disrespect for the sacred 
 authority of the captains ; and the non-represent- 
 264 
 
SOCIAL AND ATHLETIC PROBLEM 
 
 ative character of the sophomore societies, from 
 which the senior societies are recruited, has been 
 a public scandal. One result of this disorder is 
 that the ancient athletic prestige is slipping away, 
 or is so far in abeyance that it is again a question 
 whether Harvard or Yale has — shall we say the 
 worse team ? The case of the older universities is 
 typical. Other institutions are expanding as fast 
 or faster, and it is only a question of time when 
 the increase of numbers will swamp the social 
 system. 
 
 That there is something rotten in the state of 
 Denmark has of late been officially recognized, at 
 least at Harvard. In order to create a general 
 social and athletic life in the community a Union 
 has been established, modeled on the Oxford 
 Union. It would be pleasant to picture the Col- 
 lege House of the future shaking hands with Clav- 
 erly, the Phi Beta Kappa linking elbows with the 
 Porcellian, and the fellows who now, in spite of 
 a desire to be sociable, have lived through four 
 years of solitary confinement each in his petty 
 circle, enjoying the bosom friendship of all the 
 men they may desire to know. It would be plea- 
 sant but perhaps not altogether warrantable, when 
 one considers the essential nature of the Union. 
 
 The Oxford Union of celebrity, as has been 
 265 
 
AN AMERICAN AT OXFORD 
 
 pointed out in an earlier chapter, is a thing of the 
 past. It was an exclusive institution, in which no 
 attempt was made to foster universal brotherhood. 
 When it was thrown open to the entire undergrad- 
 uate world, it lost caste and authority. The elect 
 flocked by themselves each in his own exclusive 
 club. If the Harvard Union had been modeled 
 on the old exclusive Oxford Union, it might per- 
 haps have been equally efficient in bringing to- 
 gether a broadly representative body of men. But 
 it was modeled on the modern democratic Union. 
 Here is a plain case : When the Oxford Union 
 ceased to be exclusive, its best elements flocked by 
 themselves, and the result is a growth of small 
 exclusive clubs. At Harvard the exclusive clubs 
 and societies are both ancient and honorable, and, 
 moreover, very comfortable, and it hardly seems 
 likely that their members will rout themselves out 
 of their cosy corners to join the merry rout at the 
 Harvard Union. 
 
 This is not to cast a gloomy eye upon the new 
 university club; it is rather by way of empha- 
 sizing the importance of the work it has to do, and 
 will succeed in doing. Hitherto the lounging 
 grounds of the unaffiliated (alas ! that in such an 
 alma mater so many are forever unaffiliated!) 
 have been public billiard-rooms and tobacco shops. 
 266 
 
SOCIAL AND ATHLETIC PROBLEM 
 
 For the solace of a midnight supper one had to go 
 to the locally familiar straw-hatted genius of the 
 sandwich, and for the luxury of a late breakfast to 
 John of the Holly Tree. And John the Orange 
 Man! Great worthies these, ancient and most 
 honorable. But even in the enchantment of retro- 
 spect they somehow or other explain why so many 
 fellows choose to live, for the most part, in small 
 cliques in one another's rooms and cultivate the 
 deadly chafing-dish. For the unaffiliated — by far 
 the larger part of each class — the new club-house 
 will be a Godsend. It is much more fun to cut a 
 nine-o'clock lecture if you are sure of a comfort- 
 able chair at breakfast and a real napkin ; and 
 even in the brutal gladness of youth, it is pleasant 
 at a midnight supper to be seated. And then, 
 after that athletic dinner at Memorial, a place to 
 loaf quietly over a pipe with whatever congenial 
 spirit one finds, and listen to the clicking of bil- 
 liard-balls ! It is also proposed that the 'varsity 
 athletes have their training tables at the new 
 Union, so that any fellow may come to know them 
 clothed and in their right minds. I fancy that the 
 new club will leave those old worthies a trifle lone- 
 some, and will banish the chafing-dish forever. 
 
 The spirit of an old graduate somehow takes 
 kindly to the idea of a place like that. How the 
 267 
 
AN AMERICAN AT OXFORD 
 
 spirit of Bishop Brooks, for instance, would enjoy 
 slipping in of an evening for the cigar they have 
 denied him in the house erected in his memory ! 
 And for the graduate in the flesh the club-house 
 will be no less welcome, especially if he is unlucky 
 enough not to have a club of his own to go back 
 to. To love one's alma mater it is, of course, not 
 necessary to have a club ; but it somehow inter- 
 feres with the sentiment of a home-coming to be 
 obliged to go back to Boston by trolley for lunch- 
 eon and dinner, and to eat it among aliens. In 
 the new Union it will even be possible to put up 
 for the night. A long step has been made in 
 advance of the old unhappy order. Yet the new 
 Union leaves the vital evil in the community life 
 as far as ever from solution. 
 
 What the authorities have failed to do con- 
 sciously may, according to present indications, be 
 accomplished, in some manner at least, by an un- 
 conscious growth. When Memorial became inad- 
 equate to the mere demand for seating-room, new 
 dining-halls were established. In the future it is 
 possible that these new halls may be kept within 
 the line where community life becomes impossible 
 and mob life begins. If they could be, the pro- 
 blem would be at least one step nearer solution. 
 But to gain the highest effect of community organi- 
 268 
 
SOCIAL AND ATHLETIC PROBLEM 
 
 zation, it is necessary that the men who dine in the 
 same hall shall live near one another. Under the 
 present system this rarely happens, and when it 
 does, it does not even follow that they know one 
 another by sight. Until the halls represent some 
 real division in undergraduate life — separate and 
 organized communities — they must remain the re- 
 sort of a student mob. 
 
 Fortunately, another movement is discernible in 
 the direction of separate residential organization. 
 Already certain of the dormitories in American 
 universities are governed democratically by the 
 inmates : no student is admitted except by order 
 of a committee of the members. The fraternity 
 houses so widely diffused in America offer a still 
 better example, almost a counterpart, of the halls 
 of the golden age of the mediaeval university. Any 
 considerable development of hall or fraternity life 
 in the great universities would result in a dual 
 organization of the kind that has proved of such 
 advantage in England, so that a man would have 
 his residence in a small democratic community, and 
 satisfy his more special interests in the exclusive 
 clubs of the university. In such an arrangement 
 the hall would profit by the clubman as the club- 
 man would gain influence through the hall. All 
 undergraduates would thus be united in the gen- 
 269 
 
AN AMEEICAN AT OXFORD 
 
 eral university life in a way which is now un- 
 dreamed of, and which is unlikely, as I think, even 
 in the new Harvard Union. 
 
 The tendency toward division in the dining-halls 
 and the dormitories is evident also in athletics ; 
 but here it is very far from unconscious. The 
 division by classes long ago ceased to be an ade- 
 quate means of developing material for the 'varsity 
 teams, and when the English rowing coach, Mr. R. 
 C. Lehmann, was in charge of the Harvard oars- 
 men, he outlined a plan for developing separate 
 crews not unlike the college crews of England. 
 This system has since been effected with excellent 
 results. Separate boating clubs have been estab- 
 lished, each of which has races among its own 
 crews and races with the crews of its rivals. Only 
 one thing has prevented the complete success of 
 the system. The division into clubs is factitious, 
 representing no real rivalry such as exists among 
 English colleges. To supply this rivalry, it is 
 only necessary that each boat club shall represent 
 a hall. The same division would of course be 
 equally of benefit in all branches of sport. The 
 various teams within the university would then 
 represent a real social rivalry, such as has long 
 ceased to exist. This could scarcely fail to pro- 
 duce the effect that has been so remarkable at the 
 270 
 
SOCIAL AND ATHLETIC PEOBLEM 
 
 English universities. As in England, a multiplica- 
 tion of contests would on the one hand develop far 
 better university material, and on the other hand 
 it would lessen rather than exaggerate the exces- 
 sive importance of intercollegiate contests. 
 
 271 
 
n 
 
 THE ADMINISTRATIVE PROBLEM 
 
 THE administrative evil of the American uni- 
 versity, as typified in Harvard, Mr. Bolles 
 described even more vividly than the social evil. 
 The bare fact of the problem he stated as follows : 
 " In 1840 the college contained 250 students ; in 
 1850, 300 ; in 1860, 450 ; in 1870, 600 ; in 1880, 
 800 ; in 1890, 1300 ; in 1894, 1600." He then 
 pointed out that the only means the authorities have 
 found for meeting this increasing demand on the 
 administrative office is, not to divide the students 
 into separate small bodies each under a single ad- 
 ministrator, but to divide the duties of administra- 
 tion among several officers. Thus each of the added 
 officers is required to perform his duty toward the 
 entire student body. It is apparently assumed that 
 he can discharge one duty toward two or three 
 thousand students as intelligently as in former years 
 he could discharge two or three duties toward two 
 or three hundred. By this arrangement the most 
 valuable factor in administration is eliminated — 
 personal knowledge and personal contact between 
 272 
 
THE ADMINISTRATIVE PROBLEM 
 
 the administrator and his charges. It is said that 
 the members of the administrative board of the col- 
 lege — professors whose time is of extreme value to 
 the university and to the world, and who receive no 
 pay as administrators — sit three hours a night three 
 nights in the week deciding the cases that come 
 before them, not from personal knowledge of the 
 undergraduates concerned, but from oral and doc- 
 umentary reports. "It is only by a fiction that 
 the Recorder [or the Dean, or the member of the 
 administrative board] can be assumed to have any 
 personal knowledge of even a half of the men 
 whose absences he counts, whose petitions he acts 
 upon, and against whose delinquencies he remon- 
 strates ; yet the fiction is maintained while its 
 absurdity keeps on growing. ... If the rate of 
 growth and our present administrative system are 
 maintained, the Dean and Recorder of Harvard 
 College will [in 1950] be personally caring for 
 6500 individuals, with all of whom they will be 
 presumed to have an intelligent acquaintance." 
 
 Mr. Bolles lived through the period in which a 
 brilliant band of German-trained American pro- 
 fessors, having made over our educational system 
 as far as possible on German lines, were endeavor- 
 ing to substitute German discipline, or lack of it, for 
 the traditional system of collegiate residence which 
 273 
 
AN AMERICAN AT OXFORD 
 
 aims to make the college a well-regulated social com- 
 munity. At one time these reformers rejoiced in the 
 fact that Harvard students attended the ice carni- 
 val at Montreal or basked in the Bermudan sun 
 while the faculty had no means of knowing where 
 they were and no responsibility for the success of 
 their college work. The Overseers, however, were 
 not in sympathy with the Teutonized faculty, and 
 soon put an end to this ; but the reformers were, 
 and perhaps still are, only waiting the opportunity 
 to establish again the Teutonic license. " It is 
 sometimes said," Mr. Bolles continues, " that Har- 
 vard may eventually free itself from all its remain- 
 ing parental responsibility and leave students' 
 habits, health, and morals to their individual care, 
 confining itself to teaching, research, and the grant- 
 ing of degrees. Before it can do this, it must be 
 freed from dormitories. As long as fifteen hundred 
 of its students live in monastic quarters provided 
 or approved by the university, so long must the 
 university be held responsible by the city, by par- 
 ents, and by society at large, for the sanitary and 
 moral condition of such quarters. The dormitory 
 system implies and necessitates oversight of health 
 and morals. The trouble to-day is that the admin- 
 istrative machinery in use is not capable of doing 
 all that is and ought to be expected of it. . . . If it 
 274 
 
THE ADMINISTRATIVE PROBLEM 
 
 be determined openly that the health and morals 
 of Harvard undergraduates are not to occupy the 
 attention of the Dean and Board of the college, 
 then the present system may be perpetuated, but 
 if this determination is not reached, then either the 
 system must be changed or the present attempt to 
 accomplish the impossible will go on until something 
 
 Since Mr. Bolles's day there has been much ear- 
 nest effort to solve the administrative problem ; but 
 the difficulties have increased rather than dimin- 
 ished. The duties of the Dean are still much the 
 same as when the freshman class numbered one 
 hundred instead of five. Only the Dean has been 
 improved. He is at least five times as human and 
 five times as earnest as any other Dean ; but the 
 freshman class keeps on growing, and when he has 
 satisfied his very exacting conscience and retires 
 (or, not having satisfied his conscience, perishes), 
 no man knows where his better is to be found. Of 
 the Secretary and the Recorder and his assistants 
 Mr. Bolles has spoken. A Regent has among 
 other duties a general charge of the rooms the 
 fellows live in, and usually makes each room and 
 its occupant a yearly visit — which the occupant, 
 in the perversity of undergraduate nature, regards 
 as a visitation. Then there is the physician. So 
 275 
 
AN AMERICAN AT OXFORD 
 
 large a proportion of the undergraduates were found 
 to be isolated and unhappy in their circumstances, 
 and remote from the knowledge of the authorities, 
 that it became necessary to appoint some one to 
 whom they might appeal in need. Thus the details 
 as to each undergraduate's residence are in the 
 hands of seven different officials, each of whom, in 
 order to attain the best results, requires a personal 
 acquaintance with the thousands of undergraduates. 
 Furthermore the entire body of undergraduates 
 changes every four years. If every administrator 
 had the commodity of lives commonly attributed 
 to the cat, the duties of their offices would still be 
 infinitely beyond them. 
 
 Mr. Bolles suggested a solution of the adminis- 
 trative problem : " If the college is too large for its 
 dean and administrative board to manage in the 
 way most certain to benefit its students, it should 
 be divided, using as a divisor the number . . . 
 which experts may agree in thinking is the number 
 of young men whom one dean and board should 
 be expected to know and govern effectively.' ' 
 
 When Mr. Bolles wrote, one class of administra- 
 tive officer and one only was limited in his duties 
 to a single small community : in each building in 
 which students lived, a proctor resided who was 
 supposed to see that the Regent's orders were 
 276 
 
THE ADMINISTRATIVE PROBLEM 
 
 enforced. Since then another step has been taken 
 in the same direction ; a board of advisers has been 
 established, each member of which is supposed to 
 have a helpful care of twenty-five freshmen. These 
 two officials, it will be seen, divide the adminis- 
 trative duties of an English tutor. That they 
 represent a step toward Mr. Bolles's solution of 
 the administrative difficulty has probably never 
 occurred to the authorities ; and as yet it must be 
 admitted the step is mainly theoretical. The posi- 
 tion of both, as I know from sad personal experi- 
 ence, is such that their duties, like those of all 
 other administrators, resolve into a mere matter of 
 police regulation. The men are apt to resist all 
 friendly advances. In the end, a proctor's activi- 
 ties usually consist in preventing them of a Sunday 
 from shouting too loud over games of indoor football, 
 and at other times from blowing holes through the 
 cornice with shotguns. The case of the freshman 
 adviser is much the same. His first duty is to 
 expound to his charges the mysteries of the elective 
 system, and to help each student choose his courses. 
 According to the original intention, he was to 
 exert as far as possible a beneficial personal in- 
 fluence on newcomers ; but the result seldom fol- 
 lows the intention. Beyond the visit which each 
 freshman is obliged to make to his adviser in 
 277 
 
AN AMERICAN AT OXFORD 
 
 order to have his list of electives duly signed, 
 there is nothing except misdemeanor to bring the 
 two within the same horizon. When the adviser 
 takes pains to proffer hospitality, the freshman's 
 first thought is that he is to be disciplined. When, 
 as often happens, a proctor is also a freshman 
 adviser, he unites the two administrative duties of 
 an English tutor; but his position is much less 
 favorable in that his duties are performed toward 
 two distinct bodies of men. With time, tact, and 
 labor, he might conceivably force himself into per- 
 sonal relationship with his fifty-odd charges ; but 
 the inevitable ground of meeting, such as the Eng- 
 lish tutor finds in his teaching, is lacking. An 
 attempt to become acquainted is very apt to ap- 
 pear gratuitous. In point of fact, such acquaint- 
 ance is scarcely expected by the university, and 
 is certainly not paid for. What little an admin- 
 istrator earns is apt to be so much an hour (and 
 not so very much) for teaching. A gratuitous 
 office is so difficult that one hesitates to perform 
 it gratuitously. If the young instructor is bent 
 on making himself unnecessary trouble, there is 
 plenty of opportunity in connection with his teach- 
 ing ; and here, of course, owing to the characteris- 
 tic lack of organic coordination, he has to deal 
 with a body of men who, except by rare accident, 
 278 
 
THE ADMINISTRATIVE PROBLEM 
 
 are quite distinct both from those whom he advises 
 and those whom he proctorizes. The system at 
 Harvard may be different in detail from that at 
 other American universities ; but wherever a large 
 body of undergraduates are living under a single 
 administrative system, it can scarcely be different 
 in kind. 
 
 Enough has been said to show that the only 
 office which an administrator can perform is a 
 police office. Where the college and the univer- 
 sity are identical, the element of personal influence 
 is necessarily eliminated. But if the college were 
 divided into separate administrative units, the 
 situation would be very different. The seven gen- 
 eral and two special offices I have indicated might 
 be discharged, as regards each undergraduate, by 
 a dean and a few proctor-advisers ; and as the stu- 
 dents and their officers would be living in the 
 same building, personal knowledge and influence 
 might become the controlling force. The solution 
 of the administrative problem is identical with 
 the solution of the social and athletic problem, and 
 in both cases a movement toward it is begun. 
 If the student body is eventually divided into resi- 
 dential halls of the early mediaeval type, much good 
 will result, and probably nothing but good, even 
 if the tutorial function proper is absent. As to 
 279 
 
AN AMEKICAN AT OXFOKD 
 
 the addition of the tutorial function, that is a 
 question of extreme complexity and uncertainty, 
 in order to grasp which it is necessary to review 
 the peculiar educational institutions of American 
 universities. 
 
 280 
 
Ill 
 
 THE EDUCATIONAL PROBLEM 
 
 AS regards the American teaching system, the 
 -£jL fact that the college so long remained iden- 
 tical with the university has caused little else than 
 good. At Oxford and Cambridge, when a demand 
 arose for instruction in new fields, the university 
 could not meet it because it had little or no wealth 
 and had surrendered its teaching function ; and 
 the score of richly endowed colleges, by force of 
 their inertia, collectively resisted the demand. 
 The enlargement in the scope of instruction has 
 been of the slowest. In America, each new de- 
 mand instantly created its supply. The moment 
 the students in theology required more than a single 
 professor, their tuition fees as well as other funds 
 could be applied to the creation of a divinity 
 school ; and the professorships in law, medicine, 
 and the technical professions were likewise organ- 
 ized into schools, each fully equipped under a 
 separate faculty for the pursuit of its special 
 aim. Thus the ancient college was developed by 
 segregation into a fully organized modern univer- 
 281 
 
AN AMERICAN AT OXFORD 
 
 sity. American institutions are composed of a 
 reduplication, not of similar colleges, but of dis- 
 tinct schools, each with its special subject to teach. 
 This fact makes possible a far higher standard of 
 instruction. The virtue of the administrative and 
 social organization in the English university, as 
 has been pointed out, results from division of the 
 university into separate communities, — distinct 
 organs, each with its separate activity. The vir- 
 tue of the American university in its teaching 
 functions results from a precisely similar cause. 
 
 In the case of the college, one or two details 
 have lately been the occasion of criticism. In the 
 educational as in the social and administrative 
 functions, the machinery is apparently overgrown. 
 Until well into the nineteenth century, the body 
 of instruction offered was much the same as in 
 the English colleges of the seventeenth century, or 
 in the pass schools of to-day, — a modified version 
 of the mediaeval trivium and quadrivium. When 
 a new world of intellectual life was opened, most 
 academic leaders regarded it with abhorrence. 
 The old studies were the only studies to develop 
 the manners and the mind ; the new studies were 
 barbarous, and dwarfed the understanding. All 
 learning had been contained in a pint -pot, and 
 must continue to be so. If the old curriculum had 
 . 282 
 
THE EDUCATIONAL PROBLEM 
 
 prevailed, the old system might have continued 
 to serve, in spite of the enormous increase of stu- 
 dents ; but it did not. Discussions of the educa- 
 tional value of the new learning are still allowed 
 to consume paper and ink ; but the cause of the 
 old pint-pot was lost decades ago. All branches 
 are taught, and are open to all students. 
 
 The live question to-day both in England and 
 America is not whether we shall recognize the 
 new subjects, but how and in what proportion we 
 shall teach them. In England, where the colleges 
 and the university are separate, the teaching and 
 the examining are separate. The student pre- 
 pares in college for an examination by the univer- 
 sity. It is as a result of this that the subjects of 
 instruction have been divided and organized into 
 honor schools ; and here again the division and 
 organization have resulted in sounder and more 
 efficient functioning. In America, such a division 
 has never been made : the teaching and the de- 
 gree-granting offices have remained identical. The 
 professor in each " course " is also the examiner, 
 and the freedom of choice of necessity goes not 
 by groups of related studies but by small discon- 
 nected courses. As the field of recognized know- 
 ledge developed, new courses were added, and the 
 student was granted a greater range of choice. 
 283 
 
AN AMERICAN AT OXFORD 
 
 "Whereas of old all the instruction of the college 
 might and had to be taken in four years, the mod- 
 ern courses could scarcely be exhausted in a full 
 century. This American system, earliest advo- 
 cated at Harvard, is called the elective system, 
 and has made its way, in a more or less developed 
 form, into all American universities worthy of the 
 name. Its primary work was that of the Oxford 
 honor schools — the shattering of the old pint-pot. 
 It has done this work ; but it is now in train to 
 become no less a superstition than the older sys- 
 tem, and is thus no less a menace to the cause of 
 education. 
 
 It is perhaps only natural, though it was scarcely 
 to be expected, that the university which in late 
 years has most severely criticised the elective sys- 
 tem is that which a quarter of a century ago de- 
 liberately advocated it, and in the face of almost 
 universal opposition justified it in the eyes of 
 American educators. There has evidently been a 
 miscalculation. Yet though Harvard has cau- 
 tiously acknowledged its failure in the persons of 
 no less authorities than Professor Miinsterberg and 
 Dean Briggs, the element of error has not yet been 
 clearly stated, nor has the remedy been proposed. 
 Many things have been said against the elective 
 system, but they may all be summed up in one 
 284 
 
THE EDUCATIONAL PROBLEM 
 
 phrase: it is not elective. This is no specious 
 paradox. It is the offer of free election that is 
 specious. 
 
 No offer could seem fairer. The student is at 
 liberty to choose as he will. He may specialize 
 microscopically or scatter his attention over the 
 universe ; he may elect the most ancient subjects 
 or the most modern, the hardest or the easiest. 
 No offer, I repeat, could seem fairer. But experi- 
 ence disillusions. Some day or other a serious 
 student wakes up to the fact that he is the victim 
 of — shall we say a thimble-rigging game ? For 
 example, let us take the case of a serious special- 
 ist. Of all the world's knowledge the serious 
 specialist values only one little plot. A multitude 
 of courses is listed in the catalogue, fairly exhaust- 
 ing his field. Delightful ! Clearly he can see 
 which walnut-shell covers the pea. He chooses for 
 his first year's study four courses — the very best 
 possible selection, the only selection, to open up his 
 field. One moment : on closer scrutiny he finds 
 that two of the four courses are given at the same 
 hour, and that, therefore, he cannot take them in 
 the same year. Still, there are at his command 
 other courses, not so well adapted to his purposes, 
 but sooner or later necessary. He chooses one. 
 Hold again ! On closer inspection he finds that ap- 
 285 
 
AN AMERICAN AT OXFORD 
 
 pended to the course is a Roman numeral, and that 
 the same numeral is against one of his other courses. 
 After half an hour's search in the catalogue he 
 finds that, though the two courses are given at dif- 
 ferent hours, and indeed on different days of the 
 week, the mid-year and final examinations in both 
 take place on the same days. Obviously these two 
 cannot be taken in the same year. With damp- 
 ened spirits his eye lights on a second substitute. 
 He could easily deny himself this course ; but it is 
 vastly interesting, if not important, and he must 
 arrange a year's work. Behold, this most inter- 
 esting course was given last year, and will be given 
 next year, but neither love nor money nor the void 
 of a soul hungering for knowledge could induce the 
 professor who gives it to deliver one sentence of 
 one lecture ; he is busy and more than busy with 
 another course which will not be given next year. 
 The specialist is at last forced to elect a course he 
 does not really want. One entanglement as to hours 
 of which the present deponent had knowledge forced 
 a specialist in Elizabethan literature to elect — and, 
 being a candidate for a degree with distinction, to 
 get a high grade in — a course in the history of 
 finance legislation in the United States. This was 
 a tragic waste, for so many and so minute are the 
 courses offered that the years at the student's dis- 
 286 
 
THE EDUCATIONAL PROBLEM 
 
 posal are all too few to cover even a comparatively 
 narrow field. The specialist may well ruminate 
 on the philosophy of Alice and her Wonderland 
 jam. Yesterday he could elect anything, and to- 
 morrow anything ; but how empty is to-day ! 
 
 Highly as the modern university regards the 
 serious specialist, a more general sympathy will 
 probably be given to the man who is seeking a lib- 
 eral education. Such a man knows that in four 
 years at his disposal he cannot gain any real sci- 
 entific knowledge even of the studies of the old- 
 fashioned college curriculum. As taught now, at 
 Harvard, they would occupy, according to Presi- 
 dent Eliot's report for 1894-95, twice four years. 
 But by choosing a single group of closely related 
 subjects, and taking honors in it, he hopes to mas- 
 ter a considerable plot . of the field of knowledge. 
 I will not say that he chooses the ancient classics, 
 for — though they are admirably taught in a gen- 
 eral way in the great Oxford Honor School of 
 Literae Humaniores — the American student may 
 be held to require, even in studying the classics, 
 a larger element of scientific culture, which would 
 take more time than is to be had. For the same 
 reason I will not say that he chooses the modern 
 languages and literatures, though such a choice 
 might be defended. Let us say that he chooses a 
 287 
 
AN AMERICAN AT OXFORD 
 
 single modern language and literature — his own. 1 
 Surely this is not too large a field for four years' 
 study. Of classics, mathematics, science, and his- 
 tory he has supposedly been given a working 
 knowledge in the preparatory school. For the rest 
 he relies on the elective system. 
 
 Even in the beginning, like the specialist, he is 
 unable to choose the courses he most wants, be- 
 cause of the conflict of the hours of instruction and 
 examination ; and this difficulty pursues him year 
 by year, increasing as the subjects to be taken 
 grow fewer and fewer. But let us dismiss this as 
 an incidental annoyance. His fate is foreshadowed 
 when he finds that the multitude of courses by 
 which alone he could cover the entire field of Eng- 
 lish literature would fill twice the time at his dis- 
 posal. Already he has discovered that the elective 
 system is not so very elective. He sadly omits 
 Icelandic and Gothic, and all but one half course 
 is Anglo-Saxon. Some day he means to cover the 
 ground by means of a history of literature and 
 translations ; but in point of fact, as the subjects 
 are not at all necessary for his degree, and as he 
 is overburdened with other work, he never does. 
 
 1 For a detailed statement as to the course such a student would 
 be able to pursue under the English system of honor schools, see 
 Appendix III. 
 
 288 
 
THE EDUCATIONAL PEOBLEM 
 
 He sticks to his last, and is the more willing to do 
 so because, being wise beyond the wont of under- 
 graduates, he knows that it will be well to fortify 
 his knowledge of the English language and litera- 
 ture with a complementary knowledge of the his- 
 tory of the English people, and of the history and 
 literature of the neighboring Germans and French. 
 Having barely time for a rapid survey of these 
 complementary subjects, he elects only the intro- 
 ductory courses. In the aggregate they require 
 many precious hours, and to take them he is 
 obliged to omit outright English literature of the 
 eighteenth and nineteenth centuries ; but he knows 
 that it is better to neglect a finial or two than 
 the buttresses of the edifice he is building. Again 
 he has miscalculated. After his complementary 
 courses are begun, and it is too late to withdraw 
 from them, he discovers even more clearly than the 
 specialist how very unelective the elective system 
 can be. It is the same old question of the thimble 
 and the pea. These introductory courses are in- 
 tended to introduce him to the study of history 
 and of literature, not to complement his studies of 
 English. What he wanted to know in English his- 
 tory was the social and the political movements, the 
 vital and picturesque aspect; what he is taught 
 is the sources and constitutions — the dry bones. 
 289 
 
AN AMEKICAN AT OXFOKD 
 
 In German and French he wanted to know the 
 epochs of literature ; he is taught the language, 
 considered scientifically, or, at most, certain hap- 
 hazard authors in whom he has only a casual inter- 
 est. If he is studying for honors, he is obliged to 
 waste enough time on these disappointing courses 
 to reach a high grade in each. The system of 
 free election is mighty, for he is a slave to it. 
 
 This difficulty is typical. Thus a student of 
 history or of German who wants to study Eliza- 
 bethan literature for its bearing on his subject is 
 obliged to spend one full course — a quarter of a 
 year's work — on the language of four or five 
 plays of Shakespeare before he is permitted to take 
 a half course on Shakespeare as a dramatist ; and 
 even then all the rest of the Elizabethan period is 
 untouched. 
 
 Let us suppose that our student of English is 
 wary as well as wise, preternaturally wary, and 
 leaves all complementary subjects to private read- 
 ing — for which he has no time. He is then able 
 to devote himself to the three or four most impor- 
 tant epochs in English literature. He has to leave 
 out much that is of importance, so that he cannot 
 hope to gain a synoptic view of the field as a 
 whole ; but of his few subjects he will at least be 
 master. Here at last is the thimble that covers 
 290 
 
THE EDUCATIONAL PROBLEM 
 
 the pea. Not yet ! In four courses out of five of 
 those devoted to the greatest writers, the teacher's 
 attention is directed primarily to a very special 
 and scientific study of the language ; the examina- 
 tion consists in explaining linguistic cruxes. Lit- 
 erary criticism, even of the most sober kind, is 
 quite neglected. If the student learns only what 
 is taught, he may attain the highest grades and the 
 highest honors without being able in the end to 
 distinguish accurately the spirit of Chaucer from 
 that of Elizabethan literature. 
 
 Furthermore, not every student is sufficiently 
 well advised to know precisely what courses he 
 requires to attain his end. For example, to gain 
 an understanding of the verse forms and even the 
 spirit of Middle English and Elizabethan English, 
 it is necessary to know the older French and Italian ; 
 but, as it happened, our student was not aware of 
 the fact until he broke his shins against it, and it 
 was nobody's business to tell him of it. And even 
 if he had been aware of it, he could not have taken 
 those subjects without leaving great gaps in his 
 English studies. He has graduated summa cum 
 laude and with highest honors in English ; but he 
 has not even a correct outline knowledge of his 
 subject. His education is a thing of shreds and 
 patches. 
 
 291 
 
AN AMERICAN AT OXFORD 
 
 Whatever may be the aim of the serious student, 
 the elective system is similarly fatal to it. I must 
 be content with a single instance more. The sig- 
 nal merit of the old-fashioned curriculum was that 
 its insistence on the classics and mathematics in- 
 sured a mental culture and discipline of a very 
 high order, and of a kind that is impossible where 
 the student elects only purely scientific courses, or 
 courses in which he happens to be especially inter- 
 ested. Let us suppose that the serious student 
 wishes to elect his courses so as to receive this dis- 
 cipline. His plight is indicated in " Some Old- 
 fashioned Doubts about New-fashioned Education " 
 which have lately been divulged 1 by the Dean of 
 Harvard College, Professor Le B. R. Briggs. 
 The undergraduate "may choose the old studies 
 but not the old instruction. Instruction under an 
 elective system is aimed at the specialist. In elec- 
 tive mathematics, for example, the non-mathemati- 
 cal student who takes the study for self-discipline 
 finds the instruction too high for him ; indeed, he 
 finds no encouragement for electing mathematics 
 at all." The same is true of the classics. 
 
 One kind of student, to be quite candid, profits 
 vastly by the elective system, namely, the student 
 whose artistic instinct makes him ambitious of 
 
 1 The Atlantic Monthly, October, 1900. 
 
 292 
 
THE EDUCATIONAL PKOBLEM 
 
 gaining the maximum effect, an A. B., with the 
 minimum expenditure of means. History D is a 
 good course : the lectures do not come until eleven 
 o'clock, and no thought of them blunts the edge 
 of the evening before. Semitic C is another good 
 course — only two lectures a week, and you can 
 pass it with a few evenings of cramming. If such 
 a man is fortunate enough to have learned foreign 
 languages in the nursery or in traveling abroad, 
 he elects all the general courses in French and 
 German. This sort of man is regarded by Dean 
 Briggs with unwonted impatience ; but he has one 
 great claim to our admiration. Of all possible 
 kinds of students, he alone has found the pea. 
 For him the elective system is elective. 
 
 The men who developed the elective system, it is 
 quite unnecessary to say, had no sinister intention. 
 They were pioneers of educational progress who 
 revolted against the narrowness of the old curric- 
 ulum. The nearest means of reform was suggested 
 to them by the German plan, and they sought to nat- 
 uralize this in toto without regard to native needs 
 and conditions. But the pioneer work of the elec- 
 tive system has been done, and the men who now 
 uphold it in its entirety are clogging the wheels of 
 progress no less than those who fought it at the out- 
 set. The logic of circumstances early forced them 
 293 
 
AN AMEEICAN AT OXFORD 
 
 to the theory that all knowledge is of equal impor- 
 tance, provided only that it is scientifically pursued, 
 and this position in effect they still maintain. 
 You may elect to study Shakespeare and end by 
 studying American finance legislation ; but so long 
 as you are compelled to study scientifically, bless 
 you, you are free. 
 
 The serenity of these men must of late have been 
 somewhat clouded. Professor Hugo Miinsterberg, 
 as an editorial writer in " Scribner's Magazine " 
 lately remarked, " has been explaining, gently but 
 firmly, ostensibly to the teachers in secondary 
 schools, but really to his colleagues in the Harvard 
 faculty, that they are not imitating the German 
 method successfully." In no way is the American 
 college man in the same case as the German under- 
 graduate. His preparatory schooling is likely to 
 be three years in arrears, and, in any case, what he 
 seeks is usually culture, not science. " The new 
 notion of scholarship," this writer continues, " by 
 which the degree means so much Latin and Greek, 
 or the equivalent of them in botany or blacksmith- 
 ing, finds no favor at all in what is supposed to 
 be the native soil of the ' elective system.' " Dr. 
 Miinsterberg's own words, guarded as they are, are 
 not without point : " Even in the college two thirds 
 of the elections are haphazard, controlled by acci- 
 294 
 
THE EDUCATIONAL PROBLEM 
 
 dental motives ; election, of course, demands a 
 wide view and broad knowledge of the whole field. 
 ... A helter-skelter chase of the unknown is no 
 election." The writer in " Scribner's " concludes : 
 " It is not desirable that a man should sell his 
 birthright for a mess of pottage, even if he gets the 
 pottage. If he does not get it, as Dr. Miinsterberg 
 intimates, of course his state is even worse." 
 
 Rough as the elective system is upon the student 
 who aspires to be merely a scholar, it is rougher on 
 the undergraduate who only wants to train his mind 
 and to equip it for business and professional life. 
 To him a purely scientific training is usually a posi- 
 tive detriment. Scrupulous exactitude and a sense 
 of the elusiveness of all knowledge are an excellent 
 and indispensable part of the bringing up of a 
 scholar ; but few things are more fitted, if pursued 
 exclusively, to check the self-confidence of a normal 
 man and to blight his will. Poor Richard had a 
 formula for the case : " A handsaw is a very good 
 thing, but not to shave with." Before taking a 
 vigorous hold on the affairs of Wall Street or of 
 Washington, our recent graduate has first to get 
 away from most of the standards that obtain in the 
 university, or at least to supplement them by a 
 host of others which he should have learned there. 
 In another passage in the article already quoted, 
 295 
 
AN AMEKICAN AT OXFOED 
 
 Dean Briggs has touched the vital spot. He is 
 speaking of the value, to teachers especially, of the 
 peculiar fetich of Teutonized university instruction, 
 the thesis, and of its liability to be of fictitious value. 
 " Such theses, I suspect, have more than once been 
 accepted for higher degrees ; yet higher degrees 
 won through them leave the winner farther from 
 the best qualities of a teacher, remote from men 
 and still more remote from boys. It was a relief 
 the other day to hear a head-master say, ' I am 
 looking for an under-teacher. I want first a man, 
 and next a man to teach.' " What is true of teach- 
 ing is even more obviously true of the great world 
 of business and of politics. What it wants is men. 
 The cause of the break-down of the elective sys- 
 tem, as at present constituted, is to be found in the . 
 machinery of instruction. The office of the teacher 
 has become inextricably mixed up with a totally 
 alien office — university discipline. Attendance 
 at lectures is the only means of recording a student's 
 presence in the university, and success in the ex- 
 amination in lecture courses is the only basis for 
 judging of his diligence. At the tolling of a bell 
 the student leaves all other affairs to report at a cer- 
 tain place. In the Middle Ages, as we have seen, 
 lectures were of necessity the main means of instruc- 
 tion. Books were rare and their prices prohibitive. 
 . 296 
 
THE EDUCATIONAL PROBLEM 
 
 The master read and the student copied. To-day, 
 there are tens of thousands of books in every col- 
 lege library. Only in the higher courses are lectures 
 necessary or profitable. But still instruction is 
 carried on, even in the most general courses, by 
 means of professorial lectures. Where great periods 
 are covered by leaps and bounds, freshness or indi- 
 viduality of treatment is quite impossible. The toll- 
 ing of the college bell dooms hundreds of students 
 to hear a necessarily hurried and inarticulate state- 
 ment of knowledge which has been carefully handled 
 in printed form by the most brilliant writers, and 
 to which a tutor might refer the student in a few 
 minutes' conference. Modify the lecture system ? 
 It is the foundation of the police regulation. The 
 boasted freedom in elective studies simmers down 
 to this, that it enables the student to choose in 
 what courses he shall be made the unwilling ally 
 of the administrative officer. The lectures waste 
 the time of the student and exhaust the energy 
 of the teacher ; but unless the lecturers give them 
 and the studious attend, how can the university 
 know that the shiftless stay away ? 
 
 It is necessary, moreover, for the administrator 
 
 to judge of the student's success as well as of his 
 
 diligence. Twice every year the professors hold 
 
 an examination lasting for three hours in each of 
 
 297 
 
AN AMERICAN AT OXFOED 
 
 their several courses. Of late years an ingenious 
 means has been devised for making the examina- 
 tion system an even more perfect ally of the police. 
 In the middle of each term an examination of one 
 hour is held to insure that the student has not 
 only attended lectures but studied outside ; and, in 
 order to expose the procrastinator, it has become 
 the custom for the examination to be given without 
 warning. Like the lecture system, the examination 
 system throws the onus of discipline on the studious 
 and the teachers. Two thousand students write 
 yearly 32,000 examination books. Quite obviously 
 the most advanced of the professors cannot spare 
 time for the herculean task of reading and duly 
 grading their share of these books. They give over 
 most of them to underpaid assistants. The logical 
 result of such a system is that the examinations 
 tend to be regarded merely as statements of fact, 
 and the reading of the books merely as clerical 
 labor. If academic distinctions are disprized in 
 America, both in college and out of it, this is amply 
 explained by the fact that they attest a student's 
 diligence rather than his ability. They are awarded, 
 like a Sunday-school prize, in return for a certain 
 number of good-conduct checks. 
 
 It is not enough that the machinery of instruction 
 wastes the time of the student and debases the office 
 298 
 
THE EDUCATIONAL PROBLEM 
 
 of the examiner ; it is, as I have said, the cause of 
 the break-down of the elective system. As long as 
 each student is required to pursue every study 
 under the eye of the disciplinarian, the decision as 
 to what he shall study rests not with his desires or 
 his needs, but with an elaborate schedule of lectures 
 and examinations. So excessive are the evils of 
 the present system that no less a man than Professor 
 William James has advocated the abolition of the 
 examinations. 
 
 This remedy is perhaps extreme ; but the only 
 alternative is almost as radical. It is to enable the 
 student, at least the more serious student, to slip 
 the trammels of the elective system, and to study 
 rationally, and to be rationally examined in, the 
 subject or group of subjects which he prefers. In 
 a word, the remedy is to divide and organize our 
 courses of instruction for the more serious students 
 into groups corresponding in some measure to what 
 the English call honor schools. 
 
 It may be objected that already it is possible to 
 read for honors. The objection will scarcely con- 
 vince any one who has taken the examination. It 
 is oral, and occupies an hour or two. The men 
 who conduct it are leading men in the department, 
 and are often of world-wide reputation. They are so 
 great that they understand the nature of the farce 
 299 
 
AN AMERICAN AT OXFORD 
 
 they are playing. No candidate is expected to have 
 covered the field of his honor subject even in the 
 broadest outlines. When the astute student is not 
 sure of an answer, he candidly admits the fact and 
 receives credit for knowing that he does not know 
 — a cardinal virtue to the scientific mind. If I 
 may be allowed a personal instance, I went up for 
 the examination in English literature in complete 
 ignorance as to all but a single brief movement. 
 When my ignorances were laid bare, the examin- 
 ers most considerately confined their questions to 
 my period. We had much pleasant conversation. 
 Each of the examiners had imparted in his courses 
 his latest rays of new light, and each in turn gave 
 me the privilege of reflecting these rays to the 
 others. For a brief but happy hour my importance 
 was no less than that of the most eminent publica- 
 tion of the learned world. It need scarcely be said 
 that such examinations are not supposed to have 
 much weight in judging of the candidate's fitness. 
 A more important test is a thesis studied from 
 original sources, and the most important is good- 
 conduct marks in a certain arbitrary number of set 
 lecture courses. The policeman's examination is 
 supreme. 
 
 300 
 
IV 
 
 THE AMERICAN HALL 
 
 THE college has shown a tendency, as I have 
 indicated, to divide in its social life into sep- 
 arate organizations for the purposes of residence, 
 dining, and athletics. In the administrative life, 
 at least the proctors and the freshman advisers are 
 each in charge of separate bodies of undergradu- 
 ates. In the educational life, a similar tendency 
 is noticeable. Year by year there has been an 
 increasing disposition to supplement lectures or 
 to substitute them by what is in effect tutorial 
 instruction. In the history courses, for example, 
 the lectures and examinations have for some time 
 been supplemented by private personal confer- 
 ences. If the student is proceeding properly, he 
 is encouraged; if not, he is given the necessary 
 guidance and assistance. I do not know what the 
 result has been in the teaching of history ; but in 
 the teaching of English composition, where the 
 conferences have largely supplanted lectures, it 
 has been an almost unmixed benefit. The in- 
 structor's comments are given a directness and a 
 301 
 
AN AMERICAN AT OXFORD 
 
 personal interest impossible either in the lecture- 
 room or by means of written correction and crit- 
 icism; and the students are usually eager to dis- 
 cuss their work and the means for bettering it. 
 As the lecture system proves more and more inad- 
 equate, the tutorial instruction must necessarily 
 continue to increase, and is not unlikely to afford 
 the basis for a more sensibly devised scheme of 
 honor schools. 
 
 If the American college were organized into 
 separate halls, it would be necessary and proper, 
 as Mr. Bolles suggested, to place in each a Dean 
 and administrative board ; and the most econo- 
 mical plan of administration, as he pointed out, 
 would be to give each administrator as many 
 duties as possible toward a single set of pupils. 
 Thus the proctor on each staircase of the hall 
 would be the adviser of the men who roomed on it. 
 It would be only a logical extension of the prin- 
 ciple to give the proctor-adviser a tutorial office. 
 All this indicates a reversion toward the golden 
 age of the mediaeval hall. 
 
 Here is where the gain would lie : The ad- 
 ministration of the hall would make it no longer 
 necessary to rely on the lecture courses for police 
 duty, and the wise guidance of a tutor would in 
 some measure remove the necessity of the recur- 
 302 
 
THE AMERICAN HALL 
 
 rent police examinations. Thus the student would 
 be able to elect such courses only as the compe- 
 tent adviser might judge best for him ; and if the 
 faculty were relieved of the labor of unnecessary 
 instruction and examination it would be possible, 
 with less expense than the present system involves, 
 to offer a well-considered honor examination, and 
 to provide that the examination books should be 
 graded not with mere clerical intelligence, but with 
 the highest available critical appreciation. Thus 
 and only thus can the American honor degree be 
 given that value as an asset which the English 
 honor degree has possessed for almost a century. 
 
 It would by no means be necessary as at Oxford 
 to make the honor examination the only basis for 
 granting the degree. The fewer lecture courses 
 which the student found available would be those 
 in which the instruction is more advanced — the 
 " university " courses properly speaking ; and his 
 examinations in these would be a criterion, such as 
 Oxford is very much in need of, for correcting the 
 evidence of the honor examination. Furthermore, 
 in connection with one or more of these courses it 
 would be easy for the student to prepare an honor 
 thesis studied from the original sources under the 
 constant advice of a university professor. Such 
 an arrangement might be made to combine in any 
 303 ' 
 
AN AMERICAN AT OXFORD 
 
 desired proportion the merits of the English 
 honor schools with the merits of advanced instruc- 
 tion in America. With the introduction of the 
 tutor, the American hall would be the complete 
 counterpart of the mediaeval hall of the golden age, 
 and would solve the educational as well as the 
 social and administrative problem. 
 
 As to the details of the new system, experience 
 would be the final teacher ; but for a first experi- 
 ment, the English arrangement is in its main out- 
 line suggestive. An American pass degree might 
 be taken by electing, as all students now elect, a 
 certain number of courses at random. For the 
 increasing number of those who can afford only 
 three years' study, a pass degree would probably 
 prove of the greatest advantage. It was by mak- 
 ing this sharp distinction between the pass degree 
 and the honor degree that the English universities 
 long ago solved the question, much agitated still 
 in America, of the three years' course. For the 
 honor men * two general examinations would prob- 
 ably suffice. For his second year honor exami- 
 nation (the English " Moderations ") a student 
 might select from three or four general groups. 
 This examination would necessarily offer precisely 
 
 1 For full details as to the scheme of an English honor school, 
 see Appendix III. 
 
 304 
 
THE AMERICAN HALL 
 
 that opportunity for mental culture the lack of 
 which Dean Briggs laments as the worst feature 
 of the elective system as at present conducted. 
 Furthermore, it would be easy to arrange the sec- 
 ond year honor groups so as to include only such 
 subjects as are serviceable both for the purposes 
 of a general education and to lead up to the sub- 
 jects the student is likely to elect for final honors. 
 For the final honor examination the student might 
 choose from a dozen or more honor groups, in any 
 one of which he would receive scientific culture 
 of the most advanced type, while at the same time, 
 by means of private reading under his tutor, he 
 might fill in very pleasantly the outlines of his 
 subject. It is probable that such a system would 
 even facilitate the efforts of those who are en- 
 deavoring to transplant German standards. Ac- 
 cording to Professor Miinsterberg, the student who 
 specializes in the German university is a good 
 two years or more in advance of the American 
 freshman. The spirit of German instruction would 
 thus require that the period of general culture be 
 extended at least to the middle of the undergradu- 
 ate course. 
 
 Some such reorganization of our methods of 
 teaching and examining, and I fear only this, would 
 enable an undergraduate to choose what he wants 
 305 
 
AN AMERICAN AT OXFOKD 
 
 and to pursue it with a fair chance of success. It 
 would make the elective system elective. 
 
 A concrete plan for an American hall will per- 
 haps make the project clearer. The poorer stu- 
 dents at Harvard have for some years had a sepa- 
 rate dining-hall, Foxcrof t, where the fare and the 
 system of paying for it are adapted to the slender- 
 est of purses. They have also lived mainly in 
 certain primitive dormitories in which the rooms 
 are cheapest. More than any other set of men 
 except the clubmen they are a united body, or are 
 capable of being made so. When next a bequest 
 is received, might not the University erect a build- 
 ing in which a hundred or two of these men could 
 live in common? The quadrangle would insure 
 privacy, the first requisite of community life ; the 
 kitchen and dining-hall would insure the maxi- 
 mum comfort and convenience with the minimum 
 expense. Nothing could contribute more to the 
 self-respect and the general standing of the poorer 
 students than a comfortable and well-ordered place 
 and way of living, if only because nothing could 
 more surely correct the idiosyncrasies in manners 
 and appearance which are fostered by their pre- 
 sent discomfort and isolation. 
 
 The life of the hall would not of course be as 
 strictly regulated as the life in an English college 
 306 
 
THE AMERICAN HALL 
 
 ■ — perhaps no more strictly than in any other 
 American college building. If in the hope of cre- 
 ating a closer community feeling stricter rules were 
 adopted, they should be adopted, as in a mediaeval 
 hall, only by consent of the undergraduates. 
 
 Such a hall would develop athletic teams of its 
 own, and would produce university athletes. Under 
 the present arrangement, when the poorer students 
 are members of university teams, they may, and 
 often do, become honorary members of the univer- 
 sity clubs ; but their lack of means and sometimes 
 of the manner of the world make it difficult for 
 them to be at home in the clubs; their social life 
 is usually limited to a small circle of friends. If 
 they had first been trained in the life of a hall, 
 they would more easily fall in with the broader life 
 outside ; and instead of being isolated as at pre- 
 sent, they would exert no small influence both in 
 their hall and in the university. Few things could 
 be better for the general life of the undergraduate 
 than the cooperation of such men, and few things 
 could be better for the members of a hall than to 
 be brought by means of its leading members into 
 close connection with the life of the university. 
 
 If such a hall were successful, it could not fail 
 to attract serious students of all sorts and condi- 
 tions. At Oxford, Balliol has for generations been 
 307 
 
AN AMERICAN AT OXFORD 
 
 known as in the main unfashionable and scholarly ; 
 but it is seldom without a blue or two, and its eight 
 has often been at the head of the river. As a re-, 
 suit of all this, it never ceases to attract the more 
 serious men from the aristocracy and even the no- 
 bility. In America, the success of one residential 
 hall would probably lead to the establishment of 
 others, so that in the end the life of the university 
 might be given all the advantages of a dual organ- 
 ization. 
 
 No change could be more far reaching and bene- 
 ficial. The American institutions of the present 
 are usually divided into two classes, the university, 
 or " large college," and the " small college." The 
 merit of the large colleges is that those fortu- 
 nately placed in them gain greater familiarity with 
 the ways of the world and of men, while for those 
 who wish it, they offer more advanced instruction 
 — the instruction characteristic of German univer- 
 sities. But to the increasing number of undergrad- 
 uates who are not fortunately placed, their very size 
 is the source of unhappiness; and for those under- 
 graduates who wish anything else than scientific in- 
 struction, their virtues become merely a detriment. 
 It is for this reason that many wise parents still 
 prefer to intrust the education of their sons to the 
 small colleges. These small colleges possess many 
 308 
 
THE AMERICAN HALL 
 
 of the virtues of the English universities ; they 
 train the mind and cultivate it, and at the same 
 time develop the social man. If now the American 
 university were to divide its undergraduate depart- 
 ment into organized residential halls, it would com- 
 bine the advantages of the two types of American 
 institution, which are the two types of instruction 
 the world over./' Already our college life at its 
 best is as happy as the college life in England ; 
 and the educational advantages of the four or five 
 of our leading universities are rapidly becoming 
 equal to those of the four or five leading universi- 
 ties in Germany. A combination of the residential 
 iall and the teaching university would reproduce 
 the highest type of the university of the Middle 
 Ages ; and in proportion as life and knowledge 
 have been bettered in six hundred years, it would 
 better that type. England has lost the educational 
 virtues of the mediaeval university, while Germany, 
 in losing the residential halls, has lost its peculiar 
 social virtues. When the American university 
 combines the old social life with the new instruc- 
 tion, it will be the most perfect educational instruc- 
 tion in the history of civilization. 
 
APPENDIX 
 
APPENDIX 
 
 I. ATHLETIC TRAINING IN ENGLAND 
 
 TN one or two particulars it seemed to me that we might 
 -*■ learn from the English methods of training. On the 
 Oxford team we took long walks every other day instead 
 of track work. Our instructions were to climb all the 
 hills in our way. This was in order to bring into play 
 new muscles as far as possible, so as to rest those used 
 in running. Though similar walks are sometimes given 
 in America as a preliminary il seasoning," our training, 
 for months before a meeting, is confined to the track. 
 This is not unwise as long as a runner's stride needs 
 developing ; and in the heat of our summers such walks 
 as the English take might sometimes prove exhausting. 
 Yet my personal observations convinced me that for dis- 
 tance runners — and for sprinters, too, perhaps — the 
 English method is far better. Under our training the 
 muscles often seem overpowered by nervous lassitude ; at 
 the start of a race I have often felt it an effort to stand. 
 In England there was little or none of this ; we felt, as 
 the bottle-holders are fond of putting it, " like a magnum 
 of champagne." 
 
 This idea of long walks, which the English have ar- 
 rived at empirically, has been curiously approved in 
 313 
 
APPENDIX 
 
 America by scientific discovery. It has been shown 
 that after muscles appear too stiff from exhaustion to 
 move, they can be excited to action by electric cur- 
 rents ; while the motor nerves on being examined after 
 such fatigue are found to be shrunken and empty, as in 
 extreme old age. The limit of muscular exertion is thus 
 clearly determined by the limit of the energy of the motor 
 nerve. Now in a perfectly trained runner, the heart and 
 lung must obviously reach their prime simultaneously 
 with the motor nerves used in running ; but since these 
 organs are ordained to supply the entire system with fuel, 
 they will usually require a longer time to reach prime 
 condition than any single set of nerves. Thus continual 
 track work is likely to develop the running nerves to the 
 utmost before the heart and lungs are at prime. Con- 
 versely stated, if the development of the running nerves 
 is retarded so as to keep pace with the development of 
 the heart and lungs, the total result is likely to be higher. 
 All this amounts to what any good English trainer will 
 tell you — that you must take long walks on up and down 
 grades in order to rest your running muscles and at the 
 same time give your heart and lungs plenty of work — 
 that is, in order to keep from getting "track stale." 
 
 The amount of work we did from day to day will best 
 be understood, perhaps, by quoting one or two of the 
 training-cards. For the hundred yards the training 
 during the final ten days was as follows : Monday and 
 Tuesday -, sprints (three or four dashes of sixty yards at 
 top speed) ; Wednesday, a fast 120 yards at the Queen's 
 314 
 
APPENDIX 
 
 Club grounds ; Thursday, walk ; Friday, sprints ; Sat- 
 urday, 100 yards trial at Queen's Club ; Sunday, walk ; 
 Monday, light work at Queen's Club ; Tuesday, easy 
 walk ; Wednesday, inter-varsity sports. The man for 
 whom this card was written happened to be over weight 
 and short of training, or he would have had less track 
 work. If he had been training for the quarter in addi- 
 tion to the hundred, he would have had fewer sprints, 
 and, instead of the fast 120, a trial quarter a week 
 before the sports, with perhaps a fast 200 on the follow- 
 ing Friday. For the mile, the following is a character- 
 istic week's work, ending with a trial : Sunday, walk ; 
 Monday, one lap (£ mile) ; Tuesday, two laps, fast- 
 ish ; Wednesday, walk ; Thursday, easy mile ; Friday, 
 walk ; Saturday, a two lap trial (at the rate of 4.30 
 for the mile). For the three miles, the following is a 
 schedule of the first ten days (the walks are unusually 
 frequent because the ** first string " had a bruise on the 
 ball of his foot) : Monday, walk ; Tuesday, walk ; 
 Wednesday, two slow laps at the Queen's Club ; Thurs- 
 day, walk ; Friday, walk ; Saturday, a long run at the 
 Queen's Club ; Sunday, walk ; Monday, four laps, fast- 
 ish, at the Queen's Club ; Tuesday, walk ; Wednesday, 
 inter-varsity sports. The chief difference between this 
 work and what we should give in America is in the 
 matter of walking. 
 
 315 
 
APPENDIX 
 
 n. CLIMATE AND INTERNATIONAL ATHLETICS 
 The value of international contests as a basis for com- 
 paring English and American training is impaired by 
 the fact that the visiting team is pretty sure to be under 
 the weather, as may be indicated by summarizing the 
 history of international contests. The first representa- 
 tives we sent abroad, the Harvard four-oared crew of 
 1869, became so overtrained on the Thames on work 
 which would have been only sufficient at home, that two 
 of the four men had to be substituted. The substitutes 
 were taken from the "second" crew, which had just 
 come over from the race at Worcester. The men in this 
 crew had been so inferior as oarsmen that they had been 
 allowed to compete against Yale only after vigorous pro- 
 test ; but in the race against Oxford, owing probably to 
 the brevity of their training in England, the substitutes 
 pulled the strongest oars in the boat. The crew got off 
 very well, but when the time came for the final effort, 
 the two original members had not the nervous stamina 
 to respond. 
 
 The experience of the Yale athletes who competed 
 against Oxford in 1894 was much the same. Their per- 
 formances in the games were so far below their Ameri- 
 can form that they won only the events in which they 
 literally outclassed their opponents — the hammer, shot, 
 and broad jump. They were sportsmen enough not to 
 explain their poor showing, and perhaps they never quite 
 realized how the soft and genial English summer had 
 316 
 
APPENDIX 
 
 unnerved them ; but several competent observers who had 
 watched their practice told me that they lost form from 
 day to day. Their downfall was doubtless aided by the 
 fact that instead of training at Brighton or elsewhere on 
 the coast, they trained in the Thames valley and at 
 Oxford. 
 
 The experience of the Cornell crew, of which I got 
 full and frank information while crossing the Atlantic 
 with them after the race, was along the same lines. Be- 
 fore leaving Ithaca, they rowed over the equivalent of 
 the Henley course in time that was well under seven 
 minutes, and not far from the Henley record of six 
 minutes, fifty-one seconds. At Henley they rowed their 
 first trial in seven minutes and three seconds, if my mem- 
 ory serves, and in consequence were generally expected 
 to win. From that day they grew worse and worse. Cer- 
 tain of the eight went stale and had to be substituted. In 
 the race the crew, like the earlier Harvard crew, went to 
 pieces when they were called on for a spurt — the test of 
 nerve force in reserve — and were beaten in wretchedly 
 slow time. They had gone hopelessly stale on work 
 which would have been none too much in America. 
 
 The experience of the Yale crew in the year after was 
 similar to that of Harvard and Cornell. The crew 
 went to pieces and lost the race for the lack of precisely 
 that burst of energy for which American athletes, and 
 Yale in particular, are remarkable. 
 
 Meantime one or two American athletes training at 
 Oxford had been gathering experience, which, humble 
 317 
 
APPENDIX 
 
 though it was, had the merit of being thorough. Mr. J. 
 L. Bremer, who will be remembered in America as mak- 
 ing a new world's record over the low hurdles, steadily- 
 lost suppleness and energy at Oxford, so that he was 
 beaten in the quarter mile in time distinctly inferior to 
 his best in America. Clearly, the effect of the English 
 climate is to relax the nervous system and thereby to 
 reduce the athlete's power both of sprinting per se and 
 of spurting at the finish of the race. My own experi- 
 ence in English training confirmed the conclusion, and 
 pointed to an interesting extension of it. I was forced 
 to conclude that the first few weeks in England are 
 more than likely to undo an athlete, and especially for 
 sprinting ; and even if he stays long enough to find him- 
 self again, his ability to sprint is likely to be lessened. 
 In the long run, on the other hand, the English climate 
 produces staying power in almost the same proportion 
 as it destroys speed. 
 
 When the joint team of track athletes from Yale 
 and Harvard went to England in 1899, the powers that 
 were took advantage of past experiences, and instead 
 of going to the Thames valley to train, they went to 
 Brighton ; and instead of doing most of their training in 
 England, they gave themselves only the few days ne- 
 cessary to get their shore legs and become acquainted 
 with the Queen's Club track. As a result, the team was 
 in general up to its normal form, or above it, and, except 
 for the fact that one of the men was ill, would have won. 
 
 The experience of the English athletes who came to 
 318 
 
APPENDIX 
 
 America in 1895 points to a similar conclusion. Though 
 the heat was intense and oppressive and most of the 
 visitors were positively sick, one of the sprinters, in spite 
 of severe illness, was far above his previous best, while 
 all of the distance men went quite to pieces. Thus our 
 climate would seem to reduce the staying power of the 
 English athletes, and perhaps to increase the speed of 
 sprinters. 
 
 It appears on the whole probable that in these inter- 
 national contests the visiting athlete had best do as much 
 as possible of his training at home, and it follows that 
 the visiting team is at a distinct and inevitable disad- 
 vantage. 
 
 HI. AN OXFORD FINAL HONOR SCHOOL 
 
 The scope and content of an English honor school is 
 well illustrated in the following passage from the Oxford 
 examination statutes, which treats of the final school in 
 English literature. The system will be seen to be very 
 different from a system under which a student may 
 receive honors in ignorance of all but a single move- 
 ment in English literature. 
 
 § 10. Of the Honour School of English Language 
 and Literature. 
 
 1. The Examination in the School of English Lan- 
 guage and Literature shall always include authors or 
 portions of authors belonging to the different periods of 
 319 
 
APPENDIX 
 
 English literature, together with the history of the Eng- 
 lish language and the history of English literature. 
 
 The Examination shall also include Special Subjects 
 falling within or usually studied in connexion with the 
 English language and literature. 
 
 2. Every Candidate shall be expected to have studied 
 the authors or portions of authors which he offers (1) 
 with reference to the forms of the language, (2) as 
 examples of literature, and (3) in their relation to the 
 history and thought of the period to which they be- 
 long. 
 
 He shall also be expected to show a competent know- 
 ledge (1) of the chief periods of the English language, 
 including Old English (Anglo-Saxon), and (2) of the 
 relation of English to the languages with which it is 
 etymologically connected, and (3) of the history of Eng- 
 lish literature, and (4) of the history, especially the 
 social history, of England during the period of English 
 literature which he offers. 
 
 3. The Examination in Special Subjects may be 
 omitted by Candidates who do not aim at a place in the 
 First or Second Class. 
 
 4. No Candidate shall be admitted to examination 
 in the Final Honour School of English Language and 
 Literature, unless he has either obtained Honours in 
 some Final Honour School or has passed the First Pub- 
 lic Examination \i. e. Moderation], 
 
 5. The Examination shall be under the supervision of 
 a Board of Studies. 
 
 320 
 
APPENDIX 
 
 6. It shall be the duty of the Board of Studies in 
 framing regulations, and also of the Examiners in the 
 conduct of the Examination, to see that as far as pos- 
 sible equal weight is given to language and litera- 
 ture : provided always that Candidates who offer Special 
 Subjects shall be at liberty to choose subjects con- 
 nected either with language or with literature or with 
 both. 
 
 7. The Board of Studies shall by notice from time to 
 time make regulations respecting the Examination ; and 
 shall have power — 
 
 (1) To prescribe authors or portions of authors. 
 
 (2) To specify one or more related languages or 
 dialects to be offered either as a necessary or as an 
 optional part of the Examination. 
 
 (3) To name periods of the history of English liter- 
 ature, and to fix their limits. 
 
 (4) To issue lists of Special Subjects in connexion 
 either with language or with literature or with both, pre- 
 scribing books or authorities where they think it desira- 
 ble. 
 
 (5) To prescribe or recommend authors or portions 
 of authors in languages other than English, to be studied 
 in connexion with Special Subjects to which they are 
 intimately related. , 
 
 (6) To determine whether Candidates who aim at a 
 place in the First or Second Class shall be required to 
 offer more than one Special Subject. 
 
 321 
 
APPENDIX 
 
 (ii) Regulations of the Board of Studies for the 
 
 Examinations in 1901 and 1902. 
 The subjects of examination in this School are — 
 I. Portions of English Authors. 
 II. The History of the English Language. 
 
 III. The History of English Literature. 
 
 IV. (In the case of those Candidates who aim at a 
 place in the First or Second Class) a Special Subject of 
 Language or Literature. 
 
 I. English Authors. 
 
 Candidates will be examined in the following texts : — 
 
 Beowulf. 
 
 The texts printed in Sweet's Anglo-Saxon Reader. 
 
 King Horn. 
 
 Havelok. 
 
 Laurence Minot. 
 
 Sir Gawain and the Green Knight. 
 
 Chaucer's Canterbury Tales, the Prologue and the 
 following Tales : — 
 
 The Knight's, The Man of Law's, The Prior- 
 ess's, Sir Thopas, The Monk's, The Nun's 
 Priest's, The Pardoner's, The Clerk's, The 
 Squire's, The Second Nun's, The Canon's Yeo- 
 man's. 
 
 Piers Plowman, the, Prologue and first seven 
 passus (text B). 
 
 Shakespeare, with a special study of the following 
 Plays : Midsummer Night's Dream, King John, 
 
 322 
 
APPENDIX 
 
 Much Ado about Nothing, Macbeth, Cymbe* 
 line. 
 Milton, with a special study of Paradise Lost. 
 
 These texts are to be studied (1) with reference to the 
 forms of the language ; (2) as examples of literature ; 
 and (3) in their relation to the history and thought of 
 the period to which they belong. 
 
 After Milton no special texts are prescribed, but Can- 
 didates are expected to show an adequate knowledge of 
 the chief authors. 
 
 II. History of the English Language. 
 Candidates will be examined in the Philology and 
 
 History of the Language, in Gothic (the Gospel of St. 
 Mark), and in Translation from Old English and Middle 
 English authors not specially offered. 
 
 III. History of English Literature. 
 
 The Examination in the History of English Litera- 
 ture will not be limited to the prescribed texts. It will 
 include the history of criticism and of style in prose and 
 verse ; for these subjects, Candidates are recommended 
 to consult the following works : — 
 
 Sidney, Apology for Poetry. 
 
 Daniel, Defence of Rhyme. 
 
 Dryden, Essay of Dramatic Poesy, and Preface 
 to Fables. 
 
 Addison, Papers on Milton in the Spectator, 
 
 Pope, Essay on Criticism. 
 
 323 
 
APPENDIX 
 
 Johnson, Preface to Shakespeare and Lives of the 
 
 Poets. 
 Wordsworth, Prefaces, etc., to Lyrical Ballads. 
 Coleridge, Biographia Literaria. 
 IV. Special Subjects. 
 
 Candidates who aim at a place in the First or Second 
 Class will be expected to offer a Special Subject, which 
 may be chosen from the following list : — 
 
 1. Old English Language and Literature to 1150 
 A. D. 
 
 2. Middle English Language and Literature, 1150- 
 1400 A. D. 
 
 3. Old French Philology, with special reference to 
 Anglo-Norman French, together with a special study of 
 the following texts : — 
 
 Computus of Philippe de Thaun, Voyage of St. 
 Brandan, The Song of Dermot and the Earl, 
 Les contes moralises de Nicole Bozon. 
 
 4. Scandinavian Philology, with special reference 
 to Icelandic, together with a special study of the fol- 
 lowing texts : — 
 
 Gylfaginning, Laxdsela Saga, Gunnlaugssaga 
 Ormstungu. 
 
 5. Elizabethan literature, 1558-1637 A. d. 
 
 6. English literature, 1637-1700 A. d. 
 
 7. English literature, 1700-1745 A. d. 
 
 8. Wordsworth and his contemporaries, 1797- 
 1850 A. d. 
 
 9. History of Scottish poetry to 1600 a. d. 
 
 324 
 
APPENDIX 
 
 Candidates who desire to offer any other subject or 
 period as a Special Subject must obtain the leave of the 
 Board of Studies a year before the Examination. 
 
 Candidates who offer a period of English Literature 
 will be expected to show a competent knowledge of the 
 History, especially the Social History, of England dur- 
 ing such period. 
 
 The following scheme of papers is contemplated : — 
 
 1. Beowulf and other Old English texts. 
 
 2. King Horn, Havelok, Minot, Sir Gawain. 
 
 3. Chaucer and Piers Plowman. 
 
 4. Shakespeare. 
 
 5. Milton. 
 
 6. History of the language. 
 
 7. Gothic — O. E. and M. E. translations. 
 
 8. -> History of the Literature, including questions 
 
 9. ) on the history of criticism. Two papers, (1) 
 
 to 1700, (2) after 1700. 
 10. Special Subjects. 
 
 325 
 
Electrotyped and printed by H. O. Houghton £r» Co. 
 Cambridge, Mass., U. S. A. 
 
 
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