American Adventures: A Second Trip 'Abroad at home'Street, Julian
General
American Adventures: A Second Trip 'Abroad at home'
Street, Julian
Southern States -- Description and travel; Southern States -- Social life and customs
The clean, lovely manuscript in Jefferson's handwriting, of the first
Anglo-Saxon grammar written in the United States, is to be seen in the
university library; Jefferson was Vice-President of the United States
when he wrote it; he put Anglo-Saxon in the first curriculum of the
university, and it has been taught there ever since. In a note which is
a part of the manuscript, he advocates the study of Anglo-Saxon as an
introduction to modern English on the ground that though about half the
words in our present language are derived from Latin and Greek, these
being the scholarly words, the other half, the words we use most often,
are Anglo-Saxon.
Before the war it was not uncommon for students at the university to
have their negro body servants with them, and it has occasionally
happened since that some young sprig of southern aristocracy has come
to college thus attended.
Perhaps the most striking and characteristic feature of student life
to-day, from the point of view of the stray visitor, is the formal
attitude of students toward one another. There is no easy-going
casualness between them, no calling back and forth, no "hello," by way
of greeting. They pass each other on the walks either without speaking
(men have been punished at the university by being ignored by the entire
student body), or if they do greet each other the customary salutation
is "How are you, sir?" or "How are you, gentlemen?" First-year men are
expected to wear hats, and not to speak to upper classmen until they
have been spoken to; and, though there is no hazing at the university,
woe betide them if they do not heed these rules.
In the early days of the university there was an effort to exercise
restraint over students, to make them account for their goings and
comings, and to prevent their going to taverns or betting upon horse
races. Also they were obliged to wear a uniform. The severity was so
great that they appealed to Jefferson, who sided with them. He, however,
died in the same year, and friction prevailed for perhaps a decade
longer, with many student disorders, culminating in the shooting of a
professor by a student. In 1840 the students were at last granted full
freedom, and two years later the honor system was adopted.
During the university's first years young men from the far South, where
dueling was especially prevalent, did not come in large numbers to the
University of Virginia, but went, as a rule, to the northern colleges,
but about the middle of the century, as feeling between North and South
over taxation, States' Rights and slavery became more acute, these men
began to flock to the college at Charlottesville. Between 1850 and 1860
the university almost doubled in size, and at about the same time there
developed a good deal of dueling between students.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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