-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