COLLEGE BOYS PAST AND PRESENT. I met my old friend Prof. 8., now of P. college, the other day. He had grown old with the years since last I saw him, and whit ened beard and hair and a little more stoop to the shoulders told the usual story of time’s sure finger traces. As we bowled along upon the railway train that was taking us to New York we talked of the past and present of colleges and college boys. ‘ ‘ Oh yes, ’ ’ said the professor, ‘ ‘ we had our hazing times in those days. We were by no means ‘ blasted angels,’ as my friend Hill used to say. Boys nowadays have no new inventions in this line, and have shown no new meanness. Boys at college are al ways sure to exhibit the rougher side if they have one. They have a new code of moral rules, I sometimes think, and if they have been pretty closely kept under by parental hands at home are very likely to make up> for lost opportunities when they become their own guardians at college.” ‘‘How is it,” I asked; ‘‘did the boys of your time have the same objects in going to college as now ?” “No, the average purpose was different from what it is now. Men went there more for business, more for a positive purpose. Let me explain: First, their numbers were much fewer than now. The average boy in country or city never thought of college. It was only the exceptional boy, the one who had such a will to learn that he could not afford to stay at home, who found the courage to venture forth upon a college career. Such a boy in the country at once became a marked personage. His neighbors looked upon him with pride and some little awe. His opinions were listened to with respect even when he presumed to talk the ology with the village clergyman. Then, further, few sous of rich men went in those days in comparison with now, for there were but few rich men. Most of the boys who were in college with me paid their own way. They got along almost any way to get through. We used to have some queer doings, of course. Our boys oftentimes boarded themselves, and kept their own rooms or pretended to keep them on a bachelor plan. Some of them lived like barbarians; one fellow in our college boasted that he never made his bed during his four years at college. Not a very civilized way of getting on, and one that produced rough speci mens and such as were not well fitted for parlor society. But these same rough young men somehow developed a certain self- The Free Lance, [November,
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