In small university towns--and it must be remembered that there are twenty-two universities in Germany--the students play a great part in the social life of the place. German ladies have often told me that the balls they looked forward to with most delight as girls were those given by students, when one "corps" would take rooms and pay for music, wine, and lights. For supper, tickets are issued on such occasions, which the guests pay themselves. The small German universities seem full of the students in term time, especially in those places where people congregate for pleasure and not for work. Even in a town as big as Leipsic they are seen a good deal, filling the pavement, occupying the restaurants, going in gangs to the play. But in Berlin the German student of tradition, the beer person, the duellist, the rollicking lad with his big dog, is lost. He is there, you are told, but if you keep to the highway you never see him; and, to tell the truth, in Germany you miss him. He stands for youth and high spirits and that world of ancient custom most of us would be loth to lose. In Berlin, if you go to the _Universität_ when the working day begins, you see a crowd of serious, well-mannered young men, most of them carrying books and papers. They are swarming like bees to the various lecture-rooms; they are as quiet as the elderly professors who appear amongst them. They have no corps caps, no dogs, no scars on their scholarly faces. By their figures you judge that they are not Beer Persons. They have worked hard for twelve years in the gymnasiums of Germany, they have no idle habits, no interests so keen as their interest in this business of preparing for the future. They are the men of next year's Germany, and will carry on their country's reputation in the world for efficiency and scholarship. CHAPTER VII RIEHL ON WOMEN