STUDTINGf IN GERMANY. 349 



pared with the steady drill of the gymnasium and real-school, and he 

 must compete with students who not only seem proof against poor 

 ventilation and poor food, but are used to hard labor and short vaca- 

 tions, and he must do it in a foreign tongue. All gymnasium students 

 must do work during the short summer vacation, requiring not less 

 than one hour, and not more than two hours, daily. The course of 

 the gymnasium lasts nine years. During the first seven years, there 

 are ten hours per week of recitation in Latin, and, throughout the last 

 seven years, six hours per week of Greek. The number of hours of 

 recitation per week can not exceed thirty-two, and it can not be less 

 than twenty-seven. There are no Saturday holidays, so that the time 

 spent in recitation at school averages five hours a day. The law per- 

 mits but ten weeks of vacation in the year: four weeks beginning 

 on the third Saturday in July, two weeks at Christmas, two at Easter, 

 one at Whitsuntide, and one at the end of the summer semester. The 

 morning session begins at eight o'clock, and lasts until twelve, when 

 there is a recess of one hour. Lessons are then continued until six 

 o'clock. This is the plan every day, save Saturday and "Wednesday, 

 when the afternoon session is omitted. Compared with the work of 

 an American high- school, this is stupendous, and it must tend to en- 

 danger the health of any pupil. 



A symptom of overwork among German boys is short-sightedness 

 and other diseases of the eye ; this is so general that most travelers 

 note it as a national characteristic. Not only do the majority of men 

 who have studied wear glasses, but it is safe to say that a third of the 

 school-boys wear them. This is said to be due to the intricacies of 

 the German type ; but poor ventilation, close application, and bad 

 lighting can not fail also to weaken the eyes, and the American boy 

 escapes none of the primitiveness of German home and school life. 



Another loss which our typical boy suffers is in his Americanism. 

 I am not fully prepared to say that in many respects this loss is not a 

 gain, if you consider the boy as a sort of ideal abstraction ; but, as re- 

 gards his patriotism, his working power as a force in the community 

 where he is to live, and his success in life, it is an actual loss. Imper- 

 ceptibly he comes to regard the peasant, the servant, the hand-worker, 

 as an inferior being. The sight of women helping dogs draw carts, 

 or sawing wood in the streets, soon fails to shock him. In the larger 

 sense he ceases to be a democrat ; the grown man resists the forces 

 which inevitably stamp the school-boy. And in the narrower sense, 

 touching manners, personal habits, and speech, the boy is more mark- 

 edly affected, and in ways which at home may lay him open to the 

 charge of snobbery or pedantry. Although the rules of the gymna- 

 sium forbid beer-drinking and smoking, and teachers are responsible 

 for the observance of these rules, the very atmosphere of a German 

 town is so redolent of beer and smoke that the boy acquires a laxness 

 regarding these habits which makes him out of place, and puts him at 



