Occasionally, a name was followed simply by the remark, “II days, for disturbing the peace,” and without comment upon the justice or injustice of the sentence.

In one place was a hilarious picture of a student of the green cap corps with a bottle of champagne in each hand; and below was the legend:  “These make an evil fate endurable.”

There were two prison cells, and neither had space left on walls or ceiling for another name or portrait or picture.  The inside surfaces of the two doors were completely covered with CARTES de VISITE of former prisoners, ingeniously let into the wood and protected from dirt and injury by glass.

I very much wanted one of the sorry old tables which the prisoners had spent so many years in ornamenting with their pocket-knives, but red tape was in the way.  The custodian could not sell one without an order from a superior; and that superior would have to get it from his superior; and this one would have to get it from a higher one—­and so on up and up until the faculty should sit on the matter and deliver final judgment.  The system was right, and nobody could find fault with it; but it did not seem justifiable to bother so many people, so I proceeded no further.  It might have cost me more than I could afford, anyway; for one of those prison tables, which was at the time in a private museum in Heidelberg, was afterward sold at auction for two hundred and fifty dollars.  It was not worth more than a dollar, or possibly a dollar and half, before the captive students began their work on it.  Persons who saw it at the auction said it was so curiously and wonderfully carved that it was worth the money that was paid for it.

Among them many who have tasted the college prison’s dreary hospitality was a lively young fellow from one of the Southern states of America, whose first year’s experience of German university life was rather peculiar.  The day he arrived in Heidelberg he enrolled his name on the college books, and was so elated with the fact that his dearest hope had found fruition and he was actually a student of the old and renowned university, that he set to work that very night to celebrate the event by a grand lark in company with some other students.  In the course of his lark he managed to make a wide breach in one of the university’s most stringent laws.  Sequel:  before noon, next day, he was in the college prison—­booked for three months.  The twelve long weeks dragged slowly by, and the day of deliverance came at last.  A great crowd of sympathizing fellow-students received him with a rousing demonstration as he came forth, and of course there was another grand lark—­in the course of which he managed to make a wide breach of the city’s most stringent laws.  Sequel:  before noon, next day, he was safe in the city lockup—­booked for three months.  This second tedious captivity drew to an end in the course of time, and again a great crowd of sympathizing fellow students gave him a rousing reception as he came forth; but his delight in his freedom was so boundless that he could not proceed soberly and calmly, but must go hopping and skipping and jumping down the sleety street from sheer excess of joy.  Sequel:  he slipped and broke his leg, and actually lay in the hospital during the next three months!