THE CLUBS OF CAMBRIDGE

Summary

Of all groves, downwards from that where Hercules cut his club, none perhaps has been more fruitful in the article in question than those of Alma Mater. Political clubs, clubs literary, hunting and boating clubs, clubs for encouraging agriculture by devouring beef-steaks, clubs to perpetuate the dress of the seventeenth century, archery clubs, private debating clubs, and clubs for ‘natation’ as the French call it, have all in their turns, some for a season, others perpetually, flourished in the University.

The history of societies like these is a task hard to perform, owing to the fleeting nature of its subject and the great difficulty of ascertaining any thing about it except for the last few years. If our grandfathers had their clubs, any records regarding them can only be found by accident, and in default of access to stores of manuscript referring to the last century we must leave to our readers the puzzling problem as to when clubs were first established here, and why.

For the last half century, the youth of our Universities have been continually advancing in manly habits. Instead of boy-bishops of thirteen or non-descripts of sixteen, the students of the present age rarely appear before eighteen at the earliest. A great change in our habits has been the consequence, aided of course by the altered fashions of the world without.