Of course no one had an answer ready; yet personally while I do not "_hasse_" England nor the things which are English, I vastly prefer, let us say Nassau Hall at Princeton, to anything which that glorious campus holds, not even excepting the graduate college with its massive and impressive Cleveland Memorial Tower.
The Herr Director shook his head many a time at the external glory of our universities and even more at the comfort and luxuries of the dormitories and fraternity houses. We were the guests of one fraternity at dinner. About twenty young men were living under one roof, having chosen each other by some mysterious, selective process, and I was tempted to think that it was their negative rather than their positive qualities which drew them together. We were shown the house from cellar to garret, much to the dismay of the Herr Director who does not like climbing stairs, but to the joy of the Frau Directorin who, woman-like, not only loves to peep into closets, and see pretty rooms, but having discovered the American standard for feminine grace, wanted to lose some of her "meat" as she expressed it in her quaint English.
Each of these young men occupied a suite of three rooms. The hangings were heavy and not in the best taste, the chairs all invited to leisure, and the most conspicuous piece of furniture was a smoking set with a big brass tobacco bowl in the center; while innumerable pipes hung from a gaudily painted rack. In keeping with the furniture were the pictures which were decently vulgar, and of books there were no more than necessary.
The Herr Director was asked regarding student life in Germany, and he contrasted their surroundings with his own cold, inhospitable _Gymnasium_, the relentless examinations, and the freer but responsible life in his university. He described the rooms of the present Emperor of Germany when he was a student at the University of Bonn, remarking that they looked like barracks in comparison with these. "How can you study in such luxurious rooms?" he asked, and naïvely and frankly came the answer: "We don't."
On the whole, the Herr Director liked the looks of the boys he saw, and the Frau Directorin quite fell in love with them. They were so frank, so clean looking, and what above all amazed them most, so altruistic in their outlook upon life; they looked so healthy and well groomed and were so altogether wholesome. But that boys could graduate from colleges and not have studied--that was beyond their comprehension.