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About Hesperian student / (Lincoln [Neb.]) 1872-1885 | View Entire Issue (March 15, 1886)
THE HESPERIAN. 3 of thing. The number of tickets which accumulate on the librarian's file in a single day is surprising. Our library facilities are every year growing better and our library is becoming what it should be, a work-shop for the students. In addition to the reg ular stand-bys which are regularly thumbed by the historic Freshmen, the excellent collection of current literature is well used and an increasing amount of work is being done in ihe line of literature proper. This indicates that the tendency of the University work is good; let it go on. The spirit of the discussion which any notice of ty ranny on the part of college authorities draws from the college press is assuring to those who' wish to see students govern themselves according to the standard of their own manhood and womanhood. From the most distant colleges the same spirit of manly freedom speaks its contempt and dislike of petty domination. We are not the only ones who are thankful for our freedom from puritanic govern ment. College life is abreast with the times and from east to west its spirit is the same; though in this as in other things,the west is free from many old cus toms that cling like leeches to eastern colleges. Close friendly relations should be established be tween the Universities of the sister states of Kansas and Nebraska. A beginning has been made by the delivery of a lecture down there by our Professor Bes sey, and a little more reciprocacy of such services would be advantageous to both institutions. Ac quaintance between the students ought also to be en couraged, as interchange of ideas and comparison of methods of work are always productive of good. In this connection it might be well to urge as many of our students as are able to attend the inter-state or atorical contest which is to be held at Lawrence, Kan sas, next May. It will be the occasion for a large gathering of college men and women from all over the Northwest arid a visit to the University of Kan sas at such a time will be a profitable one. The ladies of one of the literary societies support a debating club, and The Hesperian can testify that it is a strong and useful organization. Every Friday afternoon the questions that come up in the evening session are thoroughly discussed, the (air participants in the debate being free from embarrassment, as stran gers and gentlemen are rigidly excluded. Aftera short training in the club the more venturesome mem bers essay speeches in public, and these efforts are in nearly every case conspicuous for directness, logic, and a knowledge of the facts that put to shame the majority of the arguments of the gentlemen. The average woman can neither throw a stone nor sharpen a pencil, but she can talk, and a very little discipline makes her an excellent debater. MISCELLANY. FROM JOHNS HOPKINS UNIVERSITY. Baltimore, Md., March 9, '86. Dear Hesperian: Rejuvenation has been a thing much sought after, but the approach to it which reduces a sometime senior again to the condition of a first prep is not wholly agree able. When a man from long acquaintance has come to re gard a certain college campus as in some sort his "native heath" excuse the easternism, "his own stamping ground" I should have said it is painful to legin all over again; to be compelled to stand around ignorant, nervous, to have to ask fool questions of supercillious nabobs whose unimpeachable claim to superiority is that "they have been there before." Yet there are many things that break this fall for one who en ters as a P. G. in the Johns Hopkins University. In the first place there is not the faintest ghost of "college spirit" haunt ing the ten or twelve buildings into which the various depart ments have, snail like, drawn themselves. There is plenty of University spirit but that is a wholly different thing. No col lege organizations rival each other in "stuffing" the new man with "taffy" or other injurious mental pabulum. The Athlet ic Association asks you (through the university postoffice) to join and pay a dollar to the treasurer ("who may be found at such a time and such a place &c"); the German Kneipe asks you (through the postoffice) to call around to see them; the Christian association (not a Y. M. C. A.) also extends a cor dial invitation to all by means of the bulletin board and after a while you may hear of the J. II. U. House of Commons (es pecially if you read the Nation) and learn that graduate stu dents are permitted to join if they want to. To be sure most of these invitations will after a time be re enforced by a personal word or two, but as a rule J. H. U. stu dents seldom come out even in spirit from behind their specta cles, and even should you join any or all of the organizations named you will find very little of the "hurrah" and "come-on boys" spirit which is characteristic of college life. The indi vidual students are self-poised, self-centered, and there is none of the enthusiastic abandon which in other colleges pulls one class or one society against another like phalanx against phalanx. The jolliest company connected with the institution is the "J. H. U. Club." It is modeled after the German Kneipe, and recreation for the members is the only object of its exist ence. A comfortable room with an open fire contains a good assortment of the popular daily, weekly, and monthly publica tions; also a supply of song-books, cigars, and beer. The pre siding genius of the place is a stoop-shouldered African with a wig-like stock of gray hair. Most of the patrons are either Germans or those who have completed their education in Ger many, and so of course a good many are instructors. It is quite interesting on some evening when the room is full, to look, through the clouds of cigar smoke, down the long line of frothy beer mugs, and discern the jolly, semi-portly form of the head of the historical department, and hear the bespecta cled, bushy whiskered professors of the deadest languages that sacrilegious scholarship ever ventured to unearth roaring forth to the tune of Yankee Doodle such lines as these: "The pretty girl that gets a kiss, And goes and tells her mother, . Has done a very foolish thing, And will never get another."