then.  We had often noticed that many of the students wore a colored silk band or ribbon diagonally across their breasts.  It transpired that this signifies that the wearer has fought three duels in which a decision was reached—­duels in which he either whipped or was whipped—­for drawn battles do not count. [1] After a student has received his ribbon, he is “free”; he can cease from fighting, without reproach—­except some one insult him; his president cannot appoint him to fight; he can volunteer if he wants to, or remain quiescent if he prefers to do so.  Statistics show that he does not prefer to remain quiescent.  They show that the duel has a singular fascination about it somewhere, for these free men, so far from resting upon the privilege of the badge, are always volunteering.  A corps student told me it was of record that Prince Bismarck fought thirty-two of these duels in a single summer term when he was in college.  So he fought twenty-nine after his badge had given him the right to retire from the field.

1.  From my diary.—­Dined in a hotel a few miles up the Neckar,
    in a room whose walls were hung all over with framed
    portrait-groups of the Five Corps; some were recent,
    but many antedated photography, and were pictured in
    lithography—­the dates ranged back to forty or fifty
    years ago.  Nearly every individual wore the ribbon across
    his breast.  In one portrait-group representing (as each
    of these pictures did) an entire Corps, I took pains
    to count the ribbons:  there were twenty-seven members,
    and twenty-one of them wore that significant badge.

The statistics may be found to possess interest in several particulars.  Two days in every week are devoted to dueling.  The rule is rigid that there must be three duels on each of these days; there are generally more, but there cannot be fewer.  There were six the day I was present; sometimes there are seven or eight.  It is insisted that eight duels a week—­four for each of the two days—­is too low an average to draw a calculation from, but I will reckon from that basis, preferring an understatement to an overstatement of the case.  This requires about four hundred and eighty or five hundred duelists a year—­for in summer the college term is about three and a half months, and in winter it is four months and sometimes longer.  Of the seven hundred and fifty students in the university at the time I am writing of, only eighty belonged to the five corps, and it is only these corps that do the dueling; occasionally other students borrow the arms and battleground of the five corps in order to settle a quarrel, but this does not happen every dueling-day. [2] Consequently eighty youths furnish the material for some two hundred and fifty duels a year.  This average gives six fights a year to each of the eighty.  This large work could not be accomplished if the badge-holders stood upon their privilege and ceased to volunteer.