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

Yes, without doubt, idle students are not the rule.  Out of eight hundred in the town, I knew the faces of only about fifty; but these I saw everywhere, and daily.  They walked about the streets and the wooded hills, they drove in cabs, they boated on the river, they sipped beer and coffee, afternoons, in the Schloss gardens.  A good many of them wore colored caps of the corps.  They were finely and fashionably dressed, their manners were quite superb, and they led an easy, careless, comfortable life.  If a dozen of them sat together and a lady or a gentleman passed whom one of them knew and saluted, they all rose to their feet and took off their caps.  The members of a corps always received a fellow-member in this way, too; but they paid no attention to members of other corps; they did not seem to see them.  This was not a discourtesy; it was only a part of the elaborate and rigid corps etiquette.

There seems to be no chilly distance existing between the German students and the professor; but, on the contrary, a companionable intercourse, the opposite of chilliness and reserve.  When the professor enters a beer-hall in the evening where students are gathered together, these rise up and take off their caps, and invite the old gentleman to sit with them and partake.  He accepts, and the pleasant talk and the beer flow for an hour or two, and by and by the professor, properly charged and comfortable, gives a cordial good night, while the students stand bowing and uncovered; and then he moves on his happy way homeward with all his vast cargo of learning afloat in his hold.  Nobody finds fault or feels outraged; no harm has been done.

It seemed to be a part of corps etiquette to keep a dog or so, too.  I mean a corps dog—­the common property of the organization, like the corps steward or head servant; then there are other dogs, owned by individuals.