There is the good old story you know, also, of the three students who were so poor that they had but one cappa or gown between them, in which they took turns to go to lectures. In the small university towns, where thousands of students gathered together during a part of the year--where means of carrying food were scanty, and food itself not abundant--it is not strange that student fare was often of the most meagre sort. The matter of food was not the only hardship of student life in those days about which we are talking. At that time such a thing as a fire in a lecture-room was unknown, there being no source of warmth or comfort, save, perhaps, straw or rushes upon the floor. The winter in the northern university towns must have been severe, but it is not likely that either in the lecture-room or in his own apartments did the student have any comfort from heat. This was true to such an extent that they often sought the kitchens for comfort. In Germany it was even one of the duties of the head of the college to inspect the college-rooms lest the occupants should have supplied themselves with some source of heat. In some places, however, there was a common hall or combination room in which a fire was built in cold weather. You must remember, also, that glass windows were an exceptional luxury until toward the close of the period under discussion. In Padua the windows of the schools were made of linen. In 1643 a glass window was for the first time introduced into the Theological School at Prague. In 1600 the rooms inhabited by some of the junior fellows at Cambridge were still unprovided with glass windows. Add to these hardships the relative expense of lights, when the average price of candles was nearly two pence per pound, and you will see that the poorest student could not afford to study by artificial light. Some of the senior students may have had bedsteads, but the younger students slept mostly upon the floor. In some places there were cisterns or troughs of lead, or occasionally pitchers and bowls were provided, but usually the student had to resort to the public lavatory in the hall.