The daily morning journal and courier., 1898-04-16
WITH SWEDEN'S STUDENTS
LITE AT UPS.4LA UNIVERSITY AND
 ITS DIVERSIONS.

OId-Their Drinking and Wildcats Habits. On the edge of the vast upland plain, some seventy miles north of the Swed- ish capital there is the little town of Upsala and it's university. Young men, wearing wide-crowned white caps with yellow-blue cockades, wander along the river shores and dream under the venerable tree giants that stand guard around the cathedral They are the hope of Sweden, remaining there to the number of 2000 each year to study. The American who spends a day or two in Upsala to catch a glimpse of Swedish university life will come away with a mystifying feeling of strangeness. It is all so different from what he has seen in his own country and the life of the students seems so untrammelled that the visitor may feel inclined to think that enjoyment, not studies, is the basis of it's existence.
 The visitor will look in vain for a campus. There is no cannon rooted in the ground, no coveted fence, no hub, in the word, round which the entire life of the institution seems to turn. Dor mitories there are none. The student makes claim to manhood when he has taken his illusions and his slender mustache to Upsala, and, like man, he lives where he chooses.
 Consequently, the 2,000 students are scattered all around the town, and there is hardly a family, from the Archbishop's down to the humble arti- sans, that cannot boast of one or more boarders.
 Neither will it pay for the visitor to look for distinctions equivalent to those that separate the freshmen, sophomores, juniors and seniors of his own Harvard, Yale, or Princeton. ''We are all students here, not more, not less" his host will tell with some pride. The boy who is Haunting his student S cap for the first time has practically the same rights and privileges, social and academical, as the man who is ready to receive his doctors degree. Common studies will naturally tend to create acquaintances and friendships, but, as a rule the "theologian," the medic" the "jurist," and the "philoso- pher'-these are four "faculties'' or departments of learning of the univers- ity-will mingle freely and indiscrimin- ately. But once in a while the strang- CT will hear his host say of some other student:
 T don't know much of him. We be- long to different nations.'
 Or perhaps he will say:
 .'We do not belong to the same coter- ies at all.''
 Then he indicates the two lines along which the corps of students is grouped. Once upon time, some thousand years ago, Sweden was split up in a number of small kingdoms, looking upon them ---selves as separate "nations,' and diff fering in dialect, dress, habits, and laws. The man from Upland was a foreigner" when he entered the neigh boring Westmandland, and the war rior from Soedermanland fought many bloody battle with his brothers, the Oestgoeta, who dwelt across his forest marked southern border Time accom- p1ished the same results in Sweden as in England. Part after part was sub- dued and joined to the greatest whole the real nation. The kingdoms be- came Landscapes" ruled by earls, and later by royal governors or chieftains To-day the landscape has ceased to ex- ist, even for administrative purposes Slowly but inevitably the differentiat- ing Characteristics have been toned down or entirely wiped out Yet the old distinctions continue to live in the minds of the people, and the nations of old are still the prototypes of the nations of the two great universities at Upsala and Lund.
 Students from the same "1andscape' are joined into a club or society. Eact one of these societies, of which Up ~sala has thirteen, forms nation. New v generations of students follow eacf other in never-ending succession, but the nation lives on, the same to-day as yesterday. Each nation is governed by "curator,' or president, elected by the members, mostly from among the younger professors. Common suffrage forms the basis of government, and tht majority rules. Such a firm footing has this division into nations obtained tha1 it is officially recognized in the laws and rules governing the university ant the new student has to register himself with one of the nations, whether ht wants to or not.
 Every nation possesses a well-equip ped clubhouse, with a stage Frequent 1y used for amateur performances), z large assembly room smaller cluF rooms, billiard room, reading rooms library, Sc. Most of them are housed in buildings of their own, magnificent structures that add greatly to the ar. chitectura1 beauty of the little tow1 and which represent the unstinted con. tributions of many generations of stu. dents. There S much friendly rivalry between the different nations, but in. stances of hostility or animosity art rare.
 While the nation represents the of ficial and inherited connections of tht student, his individual predilections and affinities and their proper expres sion in his choice of coterie-or rather coteres, for most students belong tt more than one. There are as unstable as the nations are constant. They grow up like mushrooms. vanish like May flies and shift like the colors in tht Kaleidoscope. There are coteries of al sorts-learned, foppish, aristocratic, ra tionalistic, pietistic, gay, dull and indif