The daily services are conducted by the President, who reads a selection from the Scriptures, followed by prayer. There is also singing by the college choir, which is made up of from twenty to thirty voices, and, as a rule, embraces some fine musical talent.
On Sundays the chapel is always crowded. The students occupy the body of the house, and the galleries are filled by the members of the faculty and their families. Here and there may be seen the gayly-attired form of some fashionable beauty, who numbers among her admirers a score or more of the boys below.
At the close of the daily morning service, which is held at ten minutes past eight o'clock, the students gather in the recitation-rooms, where they "rush" or "flunk," according as they have studied the night before or been "out on a lark."
The various methods of study pursued by the students are amusing enough. Some men pore over their books far into the night and idle away the major portion of the day. Others spend their evenings at the theatre, at their society hall, or in calling on their young lady acquaintances, rising at six o'clock in the morning to study an hour before breakfast. This, the doctors say, produces dyspepsia and other bad results; but the habit once contracted is hard to break.
There are men in every college, of whom Yale has its full number, denominated in student slang as "birds." The "birds" are firm believers in the old Epicurean theory that everything in life is subservient to pleasure. Most of them are the sons of wealthy men, and are "jolly good fellows" as the world goes. They rarely look into a text-book if by any possibility they can shirk that duty, but by "tutoring" and various other devices they manage to maintain a rank sufficiently high to prevent being dropped into a lower class. They occupy the front seats at theatrical performances, and smile sweetly upon such short-skirted damsels of the stage as they can persuade to flirt with them. They are conspicuous at all places of amusement, and are much given to spending an hour or two of an evening at Traeger's, or Moriarty's, two famous resorts where Yale men are wont to congregate to discuss a glass of beer and while away the long winter evenings with song and mirth. After an evening out, the "bird" is apt to reach his room in an hilarious condition. Yet, with all his faults,—and he has many,—he is everybody's friend. He knows and is on good terms with every man in college; his creditors are willing to trust him from one years end to another; and it is said that even the members of the faculty reserve a tiny nook in a warm corner of their hearts for the erring but good-natured member of their flock.
The dormitory life of a student at Yale plays an important part in
