PRIZE ESSAY No. 6.
SOCIAL LIFE AT JOHNS HOPKINS UNIVERSITY.
THE new student, who, after leaving his hotel, gets his first sight of Johns Hopkins University, finds a number of large, presentable buildings, containing the general halls, libraries, lecture-rooms, etc., right in the heart of the busy city of Baltimore. And no retirement of moss-grown fronts seems to hide their life from the passers-by, but their doors open upon the pavement with democratic heartiness. Here is no Campus, no belt of lawn and terrace around the buildings, nor rows of "immemorial elms" nor long avenues of approach. Probably the new man is used to such things in the home school or college which he has left to come here, and is struck with the splendid simplicity that greets him. As he enters the office in the main building, he meets the President of the university, who kindly welcomes him, and asks about his section of the country, and his studies and hopes, until he is somewhat at home. He is soon introduced to his professors, and in a few hours has a general course of study blocked out for the session.
Early in the first week of the year a general informal reception is given in Hopkins Hall, for the purpose of getting the new and old men acquainted with one another. In this large hall may be seen students from up and down the world. Strange faces and tongues greet the new-comer. The young Japanese who can barely break a few stubborn Saxon words in our presence may be escorted by his fellow-countryman who is at ease in French, German, or English, and who can meet on common ground with young men from Paris, Heidelberg, Bonn, London, New York, Chicago, San Francisco, New Orleans, or Toronto. The greater part of those assembled are "graduate students,"—graduates either of Johns Hopkins or some other good institution, who have come here to pursue independent courses of study, or work towards the degree of Doctor of Philosophy. Besides these are the matriculates, or undergraduates. The unsophisticated collegian probably imagines that out of this gathering of men, graduates and undergraduates, is to be developed year after year the esprit de corps of the university life. What an effete idea these words convey to us! Our conceptions of university life change at every step. Our old epithets of recognition and description fail, and must be modified.
Here is something original,—a young university that has continued to live through its few years up to the letter and spirit of its ideal. Pioneer as the life is in a certain sense, let us look at it closely. It takes a number of weeks' residence and work here before a mere comparison of the customs of this place with his former associations ceases to confuse the new student.
Nearly all the old college backgrounds are changed or removed. That castle of the student's sovereignty, the dormitory, and its refec-
