s, each one with its distinctive
cap and colours, and, quite as important, its own particular beer hall,
into which no other student wearing his colours may come.

The chief work of these student companies is to fight among themselves,
or with some rival Korps or Schaft, the celebrated German Mensur.

The Mensur has been described so often and so thoroughly that I do not
intend to bore my readers with any detailed account of it. I merely come
forward as an impressionist, and I write purposely the impression of my
first Mensur, because I believe that first impressions are more true and
useful than opinions blunted by intercourse, or shaped by influence.

A Frenchman or a Spaniard will seek to persuade you that the bull-ring is
an institution got up chiefly for the benefit of the bull. The horse
which you imagined to be screaming with pain was only laughing at the
comical appearance presented by its own inside. Your French or Spanish
friend contrasts its glorious and exciting death in the ring with the
cold-blooded brutality of the knacker's yard. If you do not keep a tight
hold of your head, you come away with the desire to start an agitation
for the inception of the bull-ring in England as an aid to chivalry. No
doubt Torquemada was convinced of the humanity of the Inquisition. To a
stout gentleman, suffering, perhaps, from cramp or rheumatism, an hour or
so on the rack was really a physical benefit. He would rise feeling more
free in his joints--more elastic, as one might say, than he had felt for
years. English huntsmen regard the fox as an animal to be envied. A
day's excellent sport is provided for him free of charge, during which he
is the centre of attraction.

Use blinds one to everything one does not wish to see. Every third
German gentleman you meet in the street still bears, and will bear to his
grave, marks of the twenty to a hundred duels he has fought in his
student days. The German children play at the Mensur in the nursery,
rehearse it in the gymnasium. The Germans have come to persuade
themselves there is no brutality in it--nothing offensive, nothing
degrading. Their argument is that it schools the German youth to
coolness and courage. If this could be proved, the argument,
particularly in a country where every man is a soldier, would be
sufficiently one-sided. But is the virtue of the prize-fighter the
virtue of the soldier? One doubts it. Nerve and dash are surely of more
service i