PRIZE ESSAY No. 4.
SOCIAL LIFE AT THE UNIVERSITY OF VIRGINIA.
I SUPPOSE I can best give you an idea of university life here by taking an imaginary student through the many trials and tribulations that await a young man who has never left home before.
The time, then, is the latter part of September. I am an "old man," and am supposed to be at the dépôt, which is about half a mile from the university. As the train pulls up, I see a young man get off, stretch himself, look around with a vacant air, as if he wonders where that plague-take-it university is, anyway, and whether this beastly town affords any means of conveying himself and baggage out there, or whether he will have to "foot it." I step up and ask if he wishes to go to the university. A bright smile suffuses his face, and he replies, with a cordiality only begotten by a kind inquiry when one is a stranger in a strange land, "Yes. Can you tell me the best way to get there?"
"I am going up now, and, if you want to, you can have your baggage sent up, and I shall be very glad to show you up myself."
He thanks me, but fears he is giving me too much trouble. I make him easy on this point, and, after confiding his baggage to a trustworthy drayman, we start on our way. By the time we reach the college I have learned his name and a good deal about him, and have, in return, stuffed him with tales of the university, until he is wild to be a full-fledged student. If he has not, by letter to the proctor, bespoken a room beforehand, I take him to that functionary's office, and, through the knowledge acquired from past experience, manage to secure him one of the best rooms to be had,—either on the Lawn, in House F, or on Monroe Hill. I take him up to his room, which we find furnished in the following Spartan style: one bedstead, one small deal table, two chairs, and a looking-glass that gives back two faces, very much distorted, to the gazer.
I immediately order the man in charge to put the mattresses, etc., on the bed, and when that has been done the student has all the comfort he may expect at the hands of the boarding-house-keeper, who furnishes the room in this style and gives board for eighteen dollars a month, or about four dollars and a half a week.
But none of the students leave their rooms in this condition. For as soon as they once more get possession of their trunks, and have procured a wash and a change of linen, off they go down to the post-
