George Ticknor, Life, letters and journals of George Ticknor
George Hillard, Ed.

[82] lectures, and go frequently into the streets, I had no idea of the accuracy with which it is measured and sold by the professors. Every clock that strikes is the signal for four or five lectures to begin and four or five others to close. In the intervals you may go into the streets and find they are silent and empty; but the bell has hardly told the hour before they are filled with students, with their portfolios under their arms, hastening from the feet of one Gamaliel to those of another,— generally running in order to save time, and often without a hat, which is always in the way in the lecture-room. As soon as they reach the room, they take their places and prepare their pens and paper. The professor comes in almost immediately, and from that time till he goes out, the sound of his disciples taking notes does not for an instant cease. The diligence and success with which they do this are very remarkable. One who is accustomed to the exercise, and skilful in it, will not only take down every idea of the professor, but nearly every word; and, in this land of poverty, lectures are thus made to serve as a kind of Lancastrian education in the high branches of letters and science.

About two minutes before the hour is completed, the students begin to be uneasy for fear they shall lose the commencement of the next lecture they are to attend; and if the professor still goes on to the very limit of his time, they make a noise of some kind to intimate that he is intruding on his successor, and the hint is seldom unsuccessful. Eichhorn, who has a great deal of enthusiasm when he finds himself in the midst of an interesting topic, sometimes asks, with irresistible good-nature, for ‘another moment,—only a moment,’ and is never refused, though if he trespasses much beyond his time, a loud scraping compels him to conclude, which he commonly does with a joke. The lecture-room is then emptied, the streets again filled, to repeat the same process in other halls.

Just so it is in the private instruction I receive. At eight o'clock I go to Benecke, and though in three months and a half I have never missed a lesson or been five minutes tardy, I have seldom failed to find him waiting for me. At the striking of nine, I must make all haste away, for the next hour is as strictly given to somebody else. At five P. M., I go to Schultze for my Greek lesson. As I go up stairs he can hear me, and, five times out of six, I find him looking out the place where I am to recite. The clock strikes six, and he shuts up the book. From the accuracy with which time is measured, what in all other languages is called a lesson is called in German ‘an hour.’ You are never asked if you take lessons of such a person, but whether you take ‘hours’ of him. . . . .