The students mostly joined one or other of a large number of secret societies, mainly social and never scholastic, which had, almost without exception, originated at Union, spreading to other universities by migration or initiation of their members.  The distinction most sought for by ambitious students, the marshalship of the “commencement” ceremonies,—­i.e. the conferring of degrees, speech-making, etc., of the graduating class,—­was an elective office and voted for by all the members of the class, so that, for this position of a day, scholarship was only of secondary importance, the personal popularity of the candidates determining the election.  The societies grouped themselves in two parties, the most popular man in each party was its candidate, and the canvassing ran more or less actively through the senior year, occupying largely the attention of the students.  These societies were in general boyish imitations of the Freemasons, though the most eminent, the Phi Beta Kappa, was an old and dignified institution, having been founded in 1776, at William and Mary College, whence it soon spread to Harvard and Yale, eventually establishing itself in most of the principal colleges of the country; at Union, under the control of the faculty, it became the high literary distinction of the class, only the third of the class with the highest collective record being admitted at graduation.  Each of the societies had its secrets, its secret meetings, its grip and passwords, and it always seemed to me, though I was early initiated into one which had a distinguished record and literary reputation, that it was a folly and a waste of the energies of the students.  Opposed to them all was an anti-secret society, and this, like the others, was known by the initials of the secret name, which was supposed to be Greek and to indicate, mysteriously, the character of the society.  Students at the earliest date, generally in the first weeks of attendance, were thoroughly canvassed by the members of these societies, and invited, in accordance with their characters, to enter one or the other, those of a studious tendency finding most favor with that to which I was invited, and which consisted mostly of poor and studious men, others according to their social standing or wealth, or even their tendency to a wild life.

Besides this we had a house of representatives for the juniors and a senate for the seniors, over which two of the senior professors presided, knowing the rules of the respective branches of Congress, and requiring their observance in the debates, which echoed the grave political questions of the day.  There was no lecturing system, and there was no such thing known as coaching; and the recitations consisted, like those in the juvenile schools, in answering questions taken from the lesson in standard textbooks, and called out no special abilities in the students which could distinguish the men of mark from the merest bookworms.  There were men who never read the lesson and depended