"But don't think we despise what may be called your national beverage;
for that also, comes a time. When in the long evenings we sit behind
our books, and the anticipation of the examination stands like a
spectre at the door, and bars it to our egress, then, praised be tea!
and its black brother, coffee; it is then they who must cheer us, when
the spirit of life threatens to faint, quiver, and expire. But excuse
me, I must now unto the college, which I cannot to-day very well
_schwänzen_. So fare ye well!"
And thus we parted.
N. B.--The expression Ein Kolleg schwänzen--to tail a lecture--means,
to put off its attendance. The term is derived from an earlier meaning
of the word _schwänzen_, for which the term _durch-brennen_, to burn
through, is now used, and is equivalent to the English phrase,
"to give leg-bail to your creditors." In the persiflage on the
_Burschen-comment_, entitled "_Dissertatio de Quomodone, etc_.," by
Martial Schluck, from which we have before quoted, it is said, "an
honourable Bursche has the right not to pay his debts; that is, he
may _schwänzen_ and _squiscion_ himself, make a _squis_ in his
shoes,--meaning that he may sacrifice his tail like a fox, who will
rather lose his tail than his life; and thus will the student rather
leave behind him his trunk and cloak-bag, than wait to be clapped into
prison."
When a student attends a lecture which ought to be paid for, but does
not pay for it, he is said to "hospitiren;" and he is allowed twice or
three times to hospitiren. If, however, he does this for a whole
semester, in order to devote the price of the lecture to some other
object, the students call this "to shoot a lecture." The description of
this term, is also thus explained by Schluck. "The student has the
right to seize upon other people's property, that is, to shoot, to
prefer, to lay the charge upon another. This is a new mode of putting
oneself into possession of something; that is, to commit a theft of a
life-and-soulless thing, and call it only a half-theft. Shooting
distinguishes itself essentially from stealing. First, by the student
privately conveying it away at once; and secondly, by giving the owner
of the property notice of what he had done, after it is done. This mode
of taking possession is not so much according to our customs as those
of the Lacedæmonians, which brought no shame to any one by the statutes
of Lycurgus, but rather honour and fame, to him who unobserved and in a
clever style carried off any thing."
The principal objects of _conveyance_, are pipes, sticks, spurs,
chore-tassels for the embellishment of pipes, riding-whips, and money
to the amount of a _doubel_. What is more than that must be merely
taken in loan, if it be there to take.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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