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,