Three men on the bummelJerome, Jerome K. (Jerome Klapka)
General
Three men on the bummel
Jerome, Jerome K. (Jerome Klapka)
Bicycle touring -- Fiction; Black Forest (Germany) -- Fiction; British -- Germany -- Fiction; Humorous stories
As the object of each student is to go away from the University bearing
as many scars as possible, I doubt if any particular pains are taken to
guard, even to the small extent such method of fighting can allow. The
real victor is he who comes out with the greatest number of wounds; he
who then, stitched and patched almost to unrecognition as a human being,
can promenade for the next month, the envy of the German youth, the
admiration of the German maiden. He who obtains only a few unimportant
wounds retires sulky and disappointed.
But the actual fighting is only the beginning of the fun. The second act
of the spectacle takes place in the dressing-room. The doctors are
generally mere medical students--young fellows who, having taken their
degree, are anxious for practice. Truth compels me to say that those
with whom I came in contact were coarse-looking men who seemed rather to
relish their work. Perhaps they are not to be blamed for this. It is
part of the system that as much further punishment as possible must be
inflicted by the doctor, and the ideal medical man might hardly care for
such job. How the student bears the dressing of his wounds is as
important as how he receives them. Every operation has to be performed
as brutally as may be, and his companions carefully watch him during the
process to see that he goes through it with an appearance of peace and
enjoyment. A clean-cut wound that gapes wide is most desired by all
parties. On purpose it is sewn up clumsily, with the hope that by this
means the scar will last a lifetime. Such a wound, judiciously mauled
and interfered with during the week afterwards, can generally be reckoned
on to secure its fortunate possessor a wife with a dowry of five figures
at the least.
These are the general bi-weekly Mensurs, of which the average student
fights some dozen a year. There are others to which visitors are not
admitted. When a student is considered to have disgraced himself by some
slight involuntary movement of the head or body while fighting, then he
can only regain his position by standing up to the best swordsman in his
Korps. He demands and is accorded, not a contest, but a punishment. His
opponent then proceeds to inflict as many and as bloody wounds as can be
taken. The object of the victim is to show his comrades that he can
stand still while his head is half sliced from his skull.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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