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 that our fraternities have more political and social unity than they formerly had. Political lines are still sharply drawn, and it seldom matters if two rival fraternities each do have members in the same intra-fraternity organizations; that fact does not keep the fraternities from lining up with the special interests which have attracted them for the last decade. A few evenings ago I was taking dinner with a fraternity which has for years been the political enemy of a second one with whom I had dined the previous evening. A junior in each belonged to the same extra-fraternity organization. It was interesting to me to see that although these two juniors were apparently warm friends, the general feeling of antagonism of those two fraternities as groups was as strongly marked as it had been ten years ago and before the intra-fraternity group had been thought of. In truth I am not at all convinced that this fact is to be deplored, and that complete unity would be an unmixed good. I believe that a healthy rivalry is a help, and that it would be a bad thing utterly to eliminate fraternity divisions. If the time should come when, in any institution, all the fraternity men should be on one side of a question, and all the "barbs" on the other, I should fear for the future and the influence of fraternities in that institution. A certain amount of disagreement and a certain difference of action is likely to continue and is


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 really necessary, I believe, in order that fraternities may have their best and safest development. These outside organizations really do not bring about this general unity of feeling which they claim to attain, and if they did I am convinced would not have accomplished the worthy end that they think.

These extra-fraternity organizations are not infrequently careless as to their finances. The period of membership is seldom for more than a year or two, the officers of the organization are usually burdened with other duties, and the extra financial tax is sometime difficult to bear. The reason is evident, in a middle west institution at least! The average young fellow who comes from a home of moderate means has an allowance only sufficient adequately to cover his normal expenses. If he belongs to one or more organizations outside of his fraternity, this fact will considerably increase his expenses. There are pins to be bought and initiation fees to be paid and smokers and feeds and dances to be provided for. Cabs and cigars and flowers and candy which are incident to these gatherings run the bills up quickly, and it is not strange that the boy gets behind with his chapter account and that the extra-fraternity bills are frequently delayed or entirely forgotten. I am constantly having complaints from merchants all over town that the bills of these organi-

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Rh beneficence and hospitality of, the prime-minister of , and the of India , and the Adi Parva, or first chapter of the Mahabarat, translated into Bengali by Kasi Das.

The nine thanas of this district contain in all 285 Hindi schools, of which two villages contain seven each, two contain four each, two contain three each, twelve contain two each, and two hundred and thirty-three contain one each.

The number of teachers is the same as the number of schools, and their average age is 36 years. One of them is a Musalman, and the rest are Hindus. The following are the castes of the Hindu teachers and the number of each:—

From this list it is evident that vernacular instruction is almost wholly in the hands of the Kayastha or writer caste, and that the institutions of the country are still in this respect in almost unabated force. There are no brahman-teachers, and only two of a caste considered superior to the Kayastha or writer caste, viz., the Magadha caste, which gave its name to the country when it was under Bauddha rule.

There are no teachers who give gratuitous instruction. The teachers are thus remunerated:—


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the persuasion of Mr. Peck, and fascinated with the charms of Georgiana, Carlton had prolonged his stay two months with his old school-fellow. During the latter part of the time he had been almost as one of the family. If Miss Peck was invited out, Mr. Carlton was, as a matter of course. She seldom rode out, unless with him. If Mr. Peck was absent, he took the head of the table; and, to the delight of the young lady, he had on several occasions taken part in the family worship. "I am glad," said Mr. Peck, one evening while at the tea table, "I am glad, Mr. Carlton, that my neighbour Jones has invited you to visit him at his farm. He is a good neighbour, but a very ungodly man; I want that you should see his people, and then, when you return to the North, you can tell how much better a Christian's slaves are situated than one who does nothing for the cause of Christ." "I hope, Mr. Carlton," said Georgiana, "that you will spend the Sabbath with him, and have a religious interview with the negroes." "Yes," replied the parson, "that's well thought of, Georgy." "Well, I think I will go up on Thursday next, and stay till Monday," said Carlton; "and I shall act upon your suggestion, Miss Peck," continued he; "and try to

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 zations are not regularly met, and I have no doubt that if I were privileged to examine the books at the various chapter houses I should find that in many cases the house accounts of these members are sadly in arrears. The boy who "joins" easily generally feels that by some Midas necromancy he will have more money next month than this and he spends accordingly. Only this fall I called up the treasurer of an organization which had been reported to me as impossible to get money from and his explanation of the situation was "It costs more to run the bunch than it is worth. I'll agree to get the fellows together and pay the bill, but we're going out of business." As I have been engaged in the writing of this article I have been interviewed by representatives of a dozen business firms—liverymen, managers of orchestras, dance hall managers, florists—all who have bills against officers or individuals of these organizations. When I see the men concerned they say, "Well, we have so many bills this year that we simply haven't the money, and the fellows want to put off payment until next fall." All this in the vain hope that next fall they will have more money and more than twenty-four hours a day.

I do not wish to be understood as opposed to these organizations; I simply do not look upon them as so unreservedly good as they are frequently made out to be in chapter letters to fra-


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 ternity journals and in reports of chapters to fraternity congresses. I recognize the fact, as I have said, that they may have a distinctly broadening effect in that they may bring the members in contact with interests and individuals which they might not otherwise know, but these benefits are not without dangers. It is not impossible to meet the obligations entailed by membership in such an outside organization and at the same time be entirely loyal to one's fraternity obligations. My observation, however, leads me to the conclusion that the fellows I have known frequently are of little value to their fraternity because they have so many of these obligations outside.

Naturally, too, the character of the organization will materially affect the result. I believe that the fraternity man who goes into organizations other than his fraternity will be benefited most by affiliation with those which select their membership from the general student body rather than by confining his interests strictly to intra-fraternity groups. As fraternity men we cannot afford to be considered exclusive, undemocratic, unsympathetic with general student interests and general student thought. Our associations outside the fraternity, therefore, will be quite as helpful to us and to fraternity interests in general if we cultivate our friendships with men who have no fraternity alliances as well as with those who


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 are so connected. The exclusive fraternity man if he would broaden his associations would be surprised to find how slight the difference is between the two classes of men, if, indeed, there is any difference at all. For this same general reason I have argued in my own case as a member of a college faculty that it was better for me to become a member of a few organizations composed largely of business men and men whose interests are outside of academic life rather than to confine my energies entirely to organizations of faculty men. The fraternity man who knows and associates only with members of the fraternities is likely to be narrow and bigoted, and to have the wrong perspective as to college men in general. He is likely to get the idea that the only men in college, or in the world perhaps, are fraternity men, and that the only fraternity men are those with whom he is personally and intimately acquainted.

In this discussion I have meant to exclude from consideration those organizations of undergraduates whose main object is alleged to be educational rather than social, such as department clubs, dramatic clubs, musical clubs, and clubs or fraternities interested in a special subject or line of work, though many of these are educational in name only, and are of use only as time killers. It is the distinctly social organization which I have had in mind whose only averred object is to pro-


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 mote good-fellowship, to furnish the members an opportunity to buy another pin, and to encourage regular getting together. I have a dozen organizations in mind at the University of Illinois which have no more serious purposes than these.

Besides the dangers, then, which I have detailed there comes with such organizations the danger of a lack of serious purpose. "What is the object of your organization?" I asked a group of young men only a few, weeks ago. "Well, I can't say," their spokesman answered. "We meet every two weeks to smoke, we have a feed every once in a while, we give two dances a year, to get the fellows acquainted." He said this with an assurance that would carry the conviction that young fellows always gave dances with the avowed intention of getting acquainted with each other rather than of paying attention to the young ladies they brought with them. There was nothing serious or worth while that this organization had in mind to accomplish, and so it had degenerated into a smoke fest; there was drinking at initiations and at other times; usually some one got too much; and frequently the talk grew careless. The organization helped no one, injured some, and wasted the time of all.

"Tell us something to do, Dean," an official of an organization composed of upperclass fraternity men said to me only a few days ago. "We have


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 our meetings, but we do nothing but sit around." Unless it has a definite object which keeps men interested and gives them something to do, the extra-fraternity organization is not only useless but positively harmful. A group of energetic young fellows will not long remain passive. If as an organized body meeting regularly they are not engaged in something active, healthy, and helpful, they will before long drop into the things that are positively harmful and disreputable. If their brains are not busy, their hands must be busy manipulating some sort of gustatory or bibulous contraband or holding the poker deck. IntancesInstances [sic] and illustrations more than sufficient to justify these statements, but too personal to cite here, come to mind as I write these sentences. The possibilities of the evils which I have suggested multiply and are almost certain to occur when, as in some instances, the membership in such organizations is kept secret. Not having the incentive which publicity gives to such matters there is ultimately the tempation to do nothing or to do those things which might not safely or honestly be done in the light of day. With the membership of an organization secret or even uncertain there is the impossibility to fix responsibility, and the organization may easily become a menace. On the whole the fight that has been waged and is now being waged all over the country against Theta


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 Nu Epsilon and similar organizations is based largely upon the fact that the meeting place and membership of the organization is kept secret for a part or all of the period that the undergraduate is in college. The fact that things may be done under the cover of secrecy leads many a young fellow into indiscretions and foolish escapades which he would otherwise escape. It makes it impossible for authorities to place responsibility where it belongs and tends to encourage license. It is for this reason that most institutions have come to the point of forbidding organizations whose membership is not revealed, and the action of fraternities against such organizations is based very largely upon the same considerations.

The initiation ceremonies of these organizations under consideration are often one of their most objectionable features. Having few traditions and in many cases a ritual hardly worthy of the name, they depend upon impromptu suggestions, and the initiation often degenerates into horse play and a sort of "slap stick" vaudeville. The public or semi-public exhibitions through which they put their initiates tend to bring all fraternities into disrepute in the minds of the general public, who do not discriminate in any way between the methods employed by the various organizations which have the name of fraternity, whether it is the Red-headed man's Club or one of the "Big


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 Three." Having nothing definitely written to constitute a dignified and effective initiation ceremony these initiations are likely to be vulgar and brutal, undignified and bibulous. No organization with a serious or worthy purpose is likely to send its men, dressed like court fools, to trundle doll baby carriages about the campus as a part of their initiation ceremonies or to hunt for a dead rat lying in a fence corner five miles in the country. Such proceedings are discreditable to all fraternities, and fraternity men ought not to allow their brothers to submit to such tomfoolery. The man who has himself never belonged to a fraternity and who is fighting such organizations will be made with difficulty to understand and to approve of such idiocies.

At the University of Illinois no organizations have offended more in the direction of rough house and horse play than the so-called honorary fraternities in engineering and agriculture. The strongest advocates of the practice of beating up the initiate and wearing him out physically and mentally before initiating him are for the most part those men who are least acquainted with any beautiful ritualistic ceremony, and who think the only real way to make an impression upon a man is to beat him to a pulp with a ball bat. They labor under the misconception that the only way to make the initiate love and respect you is to inflict upon


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 him humiliation and physical pain. There is, however, among these organizations, as there should be, a growing sentiment against these relics of barbarism, the only reason for continuing them being the illogical and inane excuse that "we always have done it."

My conclusions, therefore, drawn from pretty wide experience are that fraternity men join too many things and that extra-fraternity organizations are not an unmixed good. I do not believe that they should be black-listed, but I believe that the entrance of men and especially of fraternity men into such organizations should be given more serious consideration than has heretofore been done, especially in large institutions where the number of these organizations is likely to be considerable. Fraternity men should not take on the obligations of outside organizations without thought and consideration as to the obligations involved. Nor should they be allowed by those in charge of the fraternity to go into so many as will injure their college work or their usefulness and effectiveness in the fraternity. Joining these organizations often involves, too, an expense which many fellows can not afford, it imposes added obligation which may not easily be carried, and it frequently turns a man's energies to those things which are not only not helpful but which are positively detrimental. These organizations are


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 best which bring fellows together for a definite purpose, and I am quite willing to grant that this purpose need not be purely intellectual. That organization is best which permits the widest range in its selection of men and which does not confine its selection to a limited class of fraternity men. And with all these limitations I think the fraternity man should be a conservative rather than a chronic "joiner."


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The institution with which I am connected is located in a rural community between two cities, including those persons connected with the college itself, aggregating perhaps 25,000 inhabitants. The cities support two high grade high schools with excellent equipment. There are a good many well-to-do people in the community, and there is no lack of educated, intelligent fathers and mothers, regular citizens of the place, who have high intellectual ideals for themselves and for their children. It is a community for which I have the highest respect, and one in which for more than half of my life I have found it very pleasant to live.

Because of the excellent educational facilities, secondary and collegiate, which are furnished, there are a considerable number of transient dwellers in the two towns, who come from the remotest parts of the state and sometimes from the remotest parts of the world for the purpose of educating their children. Among this number are farmers, tired and retired, widows with only sons, prosperous merchants who have grown weary of the busy and exacting life they have been living and are seeking relaxation; anxious parents who have but one child to look after, or tender ones who have


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 married off or otherwise settled the older members of the family, and who have moved into the college community to look after the youngest son. There are retired ministers and well-to-do widows, and business men with families who make an attempt to break into the active business affairs of one or the other of the two cities. It is on the whole an unusual and an intelligent community, with a large per cent of young people.

The two high schools are, therefore, well attended, and an unusually large percentage of those who graduate from these schools each June present themselves the next September for matriculation in one college or another of the University. Since there has always been the most intimate and cordial relations between the "Town and Gown," many of these students have been well known during their high school course by the members of the various Greek-letter fraternities, and upon their entrance into the University come up for discussion and consideration as prospective members of these organizations.

If these conditions were unique, it might be unnecessary to discuss them here, but this is, however, not the case. Many of the larger institutions of the country are similarly situated, and so very likely must meet problems similar to those which we encounter at the University of Illinois. Indiana, Purdue, Michigan, Kansas, Iowa, Cali-


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 fornia, Washington, Missouri, and even Ohio and Cornell, with a score of smaller institutions, are situated as regards the local environment much the same as we are, and no doubt each furnishes countless illustrations of the situations which I am going to present.

The peculiar environment of students who get their training in the high schools of a college town, in an unusual degree affects their fitness for consideration for membership in a college fraternity, and their influence and usefulness in such a fraternity, should they ultimately gain admission to one. As to whether or not I consider students better or worse material for fraternity membership than are those students who enter college from without the college community, will appear later in this discussion. Since my experience and my official relations in the University have been for fifteen years almost entirely with men, I shall confine my remarks and my illustrations in this paper to them, rather than to both men and women.

No one, who is observing, and who has lived long in a college community can fail to be impressed with the large extent to which the moral and social habits, the dress, and in fact, the whole life of the college student are reflected in the life of the high school student. The high school student and his parents would, perhaps, be loath to admit it, but


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 the fact remains, nevertheless. This tendency may be seen in all high schools, but to nothing like the extent that is apparent in the college town. In our town the development of high school athletics, the formation of high school fraternities and fraternities masquerading under the name of clubs, the giving of class functions, and the general imitation of all the social and physical diversions of the college man are annually seen in the life of the high school student. Sophomore parties, junior promenades, and senior balls are not at all uncommon in the high schools of a college town. In many cases the graduate of such a school when he comes to college has little to learn of social diversion if not of social dissipation. He has learned most of the social tricks usually attributed to the college man. Too often the habits of life for the acquiring of which he has used the college student as a model are not the habits which will help him most, nor are they the ones which are most common among the better class of students; they are on the contrary those practices which are often most hurtful, which stand out most boldly, and for which college students are most commonly criticized because of their effect upon the pursuit of their college work. A college town because of the multiplicity of its social and athletic attractions has in many instances shown itself a poor place to train a high school student for fraternity


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 membership. The high school sport in a college town is the last word in sartorial and social finesse, and the last man to settle down when he goes to college in his own town.

Because they have lived in an atmosphere of college customs, have mingled with college students and fluttered about the outskirts of college functions, these high school students often find little that is new or interesting when they change their base of operations from the high school to the college. They are blase to the excitements and interests of college. They form a large percentage of those nomads in college who are always wandering about looking for something they can never find. They soon tire of college work; they get a job; or the college authorities tire of them. A young fellow came into my office only a few days ago to go through the process of formally withdrawing from college. "Why are you going, Fred?" I asked. "Oh, I can't find what I want," was the reply. It wasn't, of course, complimentary to our curriculum, but I knew that the real reason was that he had been sated with a certain pseudo college atmosphere before he entered. There was nothing new to him, nothing interesting, nothing to arouse his curiosity; he had seen it all years before he became a real part of it. He did not know it, but what he was really wanting was to get away from home, and to see college


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 customs different from those upon which he had been brought up.

The college boy who lives in town occupies a peculiar social position. He can not break away from his old friends—in fact he often ought not to do so—and he has little desire to do so. He is still a member of his old local social clans, and he is usually eager to break into those of the col—lege. Not all of his old friends are in college, and, having little to do in the evenings, they offer him the allurements of the old pleasures which he enjoyed with them when in the high school. All this time, too, the organizations of the college are calling for him and it is no wonder that he is confused. Too frequently he tries to be loyal to the old ties and to take on the new—a task quite as difficult, as satisfactorily at the same time to serve God and Mammon—and naturally he succeeds badly at both. Sometimes he clings tenaciously to the old life—which ordinarily means the old girl—and so misses one of the most helpful experiences of college life. Over and over again I have seen the college boy who lives in town sticking so closely to his high school associates, absorbed so completely in the interests of the town, that he knew as little of the college life as if he were living a hundred miles away from it. The hour in the classroom and the chance acquaintance which he might pick up in the street car on the


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 way home were in the main the opportunities which he had for acquainting himself with college life. He left college a veritable stranger to its real home life and with only a few facts as the result of his four years of college training. Occasionally a boy living in the college town sees the wonderful opportunity which college life offers for the de—velopment of a new life, and makes the struggle which is required to break away from the old environment, and to establish himself in the new. He becomes a real part of the college life, and lives in it as other students do.

The boy who lives at home while he is going to college has another and quite as serious a difficulty with which to contend, and that is the influence of home. Most parents are so gratified at having their sons at home that they entirely overlook the tendency of such a condition to rob the boy of initiative and independence. I am sure I do not underestimate the protective value of the home influence at the period of a young fellow's life when he is in the high school. I think on the whole, however, that the average boy who lives at home while he is going to college loses in independence and self-reliance and initiative by so doing. I have no recollection of any young fellow who was strengthened, or stimulated in college or saved from loafing, or from other bad habits by having either or both of his parents with him. The mother


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 who moves to a college town simply to look after her son is usually not doing him a real service. She may give herself satisfaction and him pleasure, but the result is usually of no real advantage to either. It is often a matter of convenience or necessity or economy that a son lives at home while going to college, and when this condition exists, it should be accepted and made the best of; but my experience has been that it is more often a handicap than otherwise to the boy in that it prevents him from looking after himself, from making his own decisions, from solving his own problems, from correcting his own mistakes. When he is at home he learns to depend on mother to call him up in the morning, and father to call him down at night, and he knows as he did in the high school that if he is going wrong some one will detect it, and call his attention to the fact. If any trouble arises in the college, father or mother—usually mother—is right on the job to probe into the difficulty, and to correct it before son has had a chance to know that he is in trouble or has had an opportunity to grow stronger by getting himself out.

All these things that I have discussed are of importance to the fraternity which is considering for membership the young fellow who lives at home. At first thought many of them may seem trifling, but they influence the character of these


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 young men and connect themselves strongly with their influence and effectiveness when they become active members of the fraternity. On the whole, I believe the records of the university will show that a pretty large percentage of the young men living at home who have joined a fraternity have been poor students, and that relatively few of them have graduated. Of those men who have graduated there have been a few who have had conspicuously high grades, but of these I can count on the fingers of one hand all that have been of any material help or advantage to their chapters. The reason is not difficult to find.

The organization of the modern fraternity as I have before said, is the organization of a home, with all the obligations upon each member that such an organization implies. It is an organization which demands allegiance and regular help from every one in it, and this allegiance is not one that can profitably be divided. The married man, the man who lives at home, the member of the faculty who may still keep his active membership in the fraternity, are in a class by themselves and can scarcely hold quite the same relationship to the fraternity that the other members do. It may be asked what the fraternity has to offer to these other men and to the man who lives in town. In reply I should say that it furnishes him a circle of friends, it helps to connect him more closely with


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 the college and college interests, and it frequently gives him social prestige and political prominence which he could not otherwise easily secure. In short is brings to him all the advantages of an organization as opposed to single-handed and unaided effort. It is therefore likely to be of more advantage to such a man to join a fraternity than it is to be to the fraternity which he joins.

The fraternity man who lives at home is likely to be constantly between the Scylla of home and the Charybdis of the fraternity—and between these two he will have a hard time not to go upon the rocks. If he is honest and sincerely desires to do his duty to each, he will often find himself between two conflicting duties—his mother will demand that he mow the front lawn while the president of the fraternity will as vigorously insist that he help wax the floor for the house party; his parents will complain that he is never at home, and the fraternity officers will regularly criticize him for never being at the chapter house. Unless he has unusual strength of character he is likely to be thought a poor son and an unreliable brother. A sensitive conscientious boy often sees the difficulty of successfully serving the home and the fraternity, and either gives up the struggle or gradually draws away from the fraternity, excepting when forced by necessity to visit it. Such a student generally helps to bring up the fraternity


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 scholarship average, but he ordinarily does little or nothing in helping to exercise moral control or to further a strong internal management. "How is Gray getting on?" I asked a fraterntiy man only a few days ago with reference to a freshman pledge. "We don't know much about Gray," was the reply. "We see very little of him at the house, and we don't seem to be able to get him interested in fraternity matters." Gray was a man who wanted to be a student, and when I talked with him I found that he had decided that he could not at the same time successfully keep up his obligations to the home and to the fraternity, so he had followed the lines of least resistance and had cut the fraternity.

If on the other hand the town member is a little tricky he soon learns to play the home against the fraternity—or vice versa. When his grades are reported low, or his attendance is lax his fraternity president explains that they see very little of him at the fraternity house for he does most of his studying at home. When in a casual conversation with father I suggest a little more assiduous attention to the books, I am told the boy does most of his studying at the fraternity and that he is seldom in evidence at home. The fraternity blames the home folks, and the home folks blame the fraternity, and between the two the freshman evades responsibility, and soon flunks out of col-


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 lege. It is largely the divided interest which brings about the result. He has two places to study, two sets of social interests, two homes, and he is loyal to neither.

"How are your town boys coming on?" I asked, a few days ago, an officer of one of our fraternities which has made a practice of pledging a rather large number of the local high school boys. "Wretchedly," he answered pessimistically. "We've never had one that was worth the struggle we made to get him." I could pick out a few illustrious exceptions during the last ten years, but as I went over in my mind the men coming from the local high schools who had been connected with his fraternity, I was forced to agree that in his statements he was on the whole pretty safely within the limits of truth. The too frequent result is that the active brothers who live in town either loaf between home and the fraternity, and so develop into lazy indifferent students who soon withdraw on their own initiative or at the suggestion of the college authorities, or they develop into serious students who stay close at home and do their work, neglecting pretty completely their obligations to the chapter. In neither case are they of much real advantage to the growth and development: of the fraternity excepting in so far as the organization is able to shine from the reflected glory of the good student's scholastic


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 and political attainments. I have in mind now one of our most active students in scholarship and student activities who has in reality done little or nothing toward the development of his fraternity. He could not; for he lives at home and every minute of his time is taken up with his various student activities, his studies, or his home duties which are numerous. The fraternity has helped his social standing and furthered his political ambitions, while he has in return raised the scholastic average of the fraternity. In actual fact, however, neither has in any vital way influenced or helped to develop the other.

To refuse to consider these local candidates for fraternity membership is of course not likely to be thought of. Their social standing and the inter-relationships which exist between them and the present or former members of the various fraternities as well as their own personal attractiveness would preclude such an action even though the general thesis be granted that such men have in the past been of little real use to the fraternity. Their families often have high social standing and do much for the social interests of the fraternities. There is a remedy, however, which a few of our fraternities have been trying and which I think is in most cases a possible and a feasible solution of the difficulty; this is that the local man be required to live in the fraternity house as


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 are the other men. The fraternities that have tried this method have found it satisfactory. The objection to the added expense which may be urged by some parents is in few cases a tenable one, since few parents of the young men who become fraternity members would be in any degree embarrassed by the relatively small added expense of such a requirement. Such a student could be given a regular allowance and be made to live upon it. He would be near home, and since he would be free from its duties he yet would have a chance to develop all the initiative and self-reliance of a fellow away from hime. He would be a real part of the fraternity, and would soon assume the responsibilities which devolve upon the other men. As the situation now is, in a majority of cases the young fellow who lives in town takes little more active interest in the real running of his fraternity than he would in the operation of any other boarding house in which he might be taking an occasional meal. He comes around at intervals, learns to call the brothers by their nick names, takes an active part in the dances, but so far as bearing his share of the real burdens is concerned, he very seldom does.

Of the two classes of members who live in town which I have mentioned the shifty lethargic brother and the hard-working student who stays at home and sidesteps the regular visit to the


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 chapter house, the former is of course much the less desirable, for though the stay-at-home may be of little or no service in helping along the business of managing and directing the internal affairs of the chapter, such influence and attainments as he has count toward the betterment of the organization and add to its prestige. The other type of man is a distinct injury; he is a good fellow who never gets the fraternity anywhere.

If the taking of town men into the house does not in all cases seem feasible or possible an alternative suggests itself. The man who can not come into the house and so assume his share of the fraternity's responsibilities, should be required positively to demonstrate his scholastic ability before he is initiated even if his initiation has to be deferred to the sophomore year. The boy who lives at home is, because of this fact, not likely to serve the fraternity or be influenced by it in anything like the same degree as does the boy who lives in the chapter house. For that very reason he should be made to demonstrate his claim to some superior ability before he is taken into the chapter, and the easiest way for him to do this is by getting at least an average if not a high scholastic standing.

The brother who lives in town is not infrequently, because of the very reason which brings his parent or his parents to town with him, a petted indulged son. The plan of making such a


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 boy move into the chapter house, in the few instances in which it has been tried with us, has worked admirably and has developed in these young fellows more self-reliance, and has encouraged them to more systematic and regular habits of study. I believe that if fraternities would insist either that these local pledges should become at once a part of the chapter house family or if this is not feasible, before initiation they should demonstrate their ability to do first rate college work in all the subjects for which they are registered, most of the difficulties which fraternities are constantly encountering with the brother who lives in town would be solved, and the body of fratres in urbe might become as strong as we all wish it were.


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kept around him four servants besides Currer, of whom we have made mention: of these, Sam was considered the first. If a dinner-party was in contemplation, or any company to be invited to the parson's, after all the arrangements had been talked over by the minister and his daughter, Sam was sure to be consulted upon the subject by "Miss Georgy," as Miss Peck was called by the servants. If furniture, crockery, or anything else was to be purchased, Sam felt that he had been slighted if his opinion had not been asked. As to the marketing, he did it all. At the servants' table in the kitchen, he sat at the head, and was master of ceremonies. A single look from him was enough to silence any conversation or noise in the kitchen, or any other part of the premises. There is, in the Southern States, a great amount of prejudice against colour amongst the negroes themselves. The nearer the negro or mulatto approaches to the white, the more he seems to feel his superiority over those of a darker hue. This is, no doubt, the result of the prejudice that exists on the part of the whites towards both mulattoes and blacks. Sam was originally from Kentucky, and through the instrumentality of one of his young masters whom he had to take to school'

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I suppose if we could get at it in any intelligible way we should find that the general opinion is that college activities are bad for a man' studies,man's studies, [sic] and that the young fellow in college who goes out for athletics or who gets on the glee club or the college paper is to that extent injuring his college work. In the same way, perhaps, since I do not myself play golf, I have never been quite able to understand how my physician, who is reasonably prosperous, can find the time to spend the most of an afternoon every few days chasing those silly white balls across a forty acre field. I should naturally expect his business to go to ruin, but it does not. Volumes of newspaper humor have been based upon the fact that the college athlete, especially the football man, is a poor student. We have all laughed blatantly at the worn joke of the college man who could pass nothing successfully but the ball. When a college man, who is in no way connected with college activities, fails very little is made of his delinquency. A personal warning, a note home to father, or the severing of his connection for a brief period, settles his case for the time being; and it is unknown or forgotten by the public. When an athlete or a man in other college activities slips up it is different. His failure is heralded from Dan to Beersheba, and may


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 even be made the subject of an associated press dispatch. We all read, look wise, and say piously that athletics is becoming the curse of our colleges.

Many college instructors honestly believe that students are injured intellectually by engaging in outside activities, and not only advise their students not to go into them, but are really prejudiced against the fellows who do not follow their advice. "Are you still on the Siren board?" I asked a senior last spring. "Yes," was his reply, "but it would not be safe to let the Dean know it. If he found out, I am sure I should flunk his course." I was quite convinced that there was more truth than poetry in what he was saying, for I have known many instructors who found it difficult to "see" the man who was in any way prominent in college activities.

My observation over a period of several years at the University of Illinois of the men engaged in all varieties of college activities does not warrant this general belief, however. With us the average of scholarship of the men engaged in practically every form of college activity is higher than that of the men not engaged. This has been true of the men in football, in baseball, in track, on the college papers, in the literary societies, and in the various lines of undergraduate activity. It should not be forgotten, of course, that the


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 University requires a scholarship qualification of all the men who represent it in any of these activities, but that qualification requires only that a man carry all of his work or at most that he carry it with an average grade of eighty per cent while the general average of men is about eighty-two per cent and the general average of those men engaged in college activities somewhat higher than that.

There are adequate explanations of why men engaged in college activities should maintain a higher scholastic average than other men. Knowing that they can not continue in these activities unless they keep up their work, they put forth sufficient effort to stay well within the line of safety. If they enjoy the college activity, they would rather work than to give it up; just as when I used to make my pupils in the graded schools rewrite their work if it was untidy, I found that they would rather do it neatly the first time than suffer the pain and inconvenience of doing it the second. There are other reasons, no doubt, why men engaged in outside activities are able to maintain a better than average standing. Having their time pretty well taken up they learn to employ it to advantage. They have no opportunity to become loafers; they develop concentration; they know usually how to make the most of a minute. Of


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 them it can be said that the more they do, the more they can do.

It may usually truthfully be said that the men with the very highest scholastic standing in college are seldom found in college activities, though it is possible every year to point to the names of Phi Beta Kappa, and Tau Beta Pi, and Sigma Xi men who are at the same time leaders in college affairs. The reason that there are not more of these is because ordinarily if one would be a superior student or stand among the very highest ten per cent or five per cent of his class he must give himself unreservedly to scholastic matters. Last year, however, at the University of Illinois the valedictorian of the graduating class and some others of the honor men in scholastic lines were all found in outside activities. This was true in football, in track, in debating and in the college publications, We are just about as likely to find honor men in college activities as we are to find flunkers.

There are some dangers, of course. It is the man who is so carried away by outside interests as to neglect or ignore his college work and so to make a disgraceful failure, who brings discredit upon all those who go into college activities. One such conspicuous example will do more to confirm the opponents of college activities in their opinions than a dozen good students can offset. When the editor of the Illio or the President of the


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 Athletic Association or the business manager of the Illini goes to pieces scholastically he not only injures his own interests, but he injures the cause of all students who shall later try for such positions. Those who argue against college activities will forget the scores of men who have done their college work well while carrying on legitimate outside work, and will remember only the two or three who failed to do so.

Some men overestimate the importance of college activities. They do not realize that however worthy such interests may be they must always be secondary to the real work of college. "I would rather be editor of the Illini than get my degree," a junior said to me only a short time ago. "I don't care particularly for my college work," another man confessed. "I really want to make the baseball team, and I am willing to do what work I must to accomplish this." Neither of these men had the right point of view. They were mistaking the real purpose of college activities and missing the main object of college training. A man might as well go into the drygoods business without the thought of earning anything but merely for the purpose of meeting a few attractive girls.

The custom now in most colleges, at least in most colleges of any size, is to award positions in college activities only after a somewhat prolonged competition, the position to go in the end to the


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 man who seems best fitted to fill it. The method seems to me to be a good one, and as regards athletic teams where physical skill is the main feature, I am sure that usually the sooner the student enters into the competition the better it is for him. In such competitions as those which are engaged in by the students who are trying out for positions on the college papers, or who desire to be appointed to the position of manager of any one of the athletic teams, and in any situation where the man's appointment is likely to be influenced by the amount of time he has put in, I have frequently thought that it might be better if the competition were not opened until the beginning of the sophomore year. If a boy begins such a competition in his freshman year, he will find often a very strong temptation to slight his college work in order that he may show up well in the competition, and even though he may carry his work, he will have developed rather loose superficial habits of study from which he may suffer later. A case in point is that of a young fellow prominent in college activities who in his senior year went completely to pieces scholastically. The only explanation of his lapse is that he devoted himself so early and so completely to his outside interests that he never learned to study or to do really first class work. He came to his senior year with the development of a freshman and so


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 could not do satisfactorily the work expected of him.

Another of the dangers which are attendant upon the going into college activities is the temptation which comes to not a few active students to attempt more outside work than it is possible or wise for one man to do. If the captain of the track team essays at the same time to be editor of the Agriculturist or the President of the Young Men's Christian Association assumes the additional obligations of baseball manager, both interests which each man represents will be likely to suffer and the men's grades will start rapidly toward the zero mark. College authorities are coming gradually to see that no matter how beneficial extra curriculum activities may be to the individual, it is the wisest policy to limit the number of activities into which any individual student may go. It will not be long, I believe, until this "point" system will be generally adopted by colleges so that the possibility of a student's injuring his work by too much attention to other things than his studies will be reduced to a minimum. Although as I said at the outset, I am a believer in college activities and am convinced that when entered into sanely they tend to develop good students with better than average grades, I should not want to ignore the dangers which lie in an unwise or a too active participation in outside


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 affairs, and these dangers I have attempted to touch upon in the preceding paragraphs.

Under ordinary circumstances as they exist in college the fraternity man is more likely than other men to get into college activities and to control student affairs. At the University of Illinois about twenty-five per cent of the undergraduate men constitute the membership of the social fraternities, a large per cent of these being members of national Greek-letter societies. Sixty-five per cent of all men in student activities come from these fraternities. This means that there are proportionately more than seven fraternity men in college activities to one man not so connected. So far there has been no feeling that fraternity men are exercising undue control over affairs and no especial likelihood that there will be such feeling. Nor has there been any thought that the men belonging to a fraternity have been given preference unjustly or undeservedly by those who select the students who are to have charge of college affairs. It is simply that the fraternity men work harder for these places and are usually better prepared to fill them than are other men. There is a reason for this.

In the first place the fraternities are attracted more strongly to men who have done something in the high school to bring them into public prominence and to make them known before they come


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 the convent of about seventeen, who had been troubled with a whitloe in her middle finger, by it constantly into the abbess's cast poultices, &c.—had gained such an interest, that overlooking a sciatical old nun, who might have been set up for ever by the hot baths of Bourbon, Margarita, the little novice, was elected as the companion of the journey.

An old calesh, belonging to the abbesse, lined with green frize, was ordered to be drawn out into the sun—the gardener of the convent being chosen muleteer, led out the two old mules to clip the hair from the rump-ends of their tails, whilst a couple of lay-sisters were busied, the one in darning the lining, and the other in sewing on the shreds of yellow bind


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 to college. Sometimes it may seem that they are attracted too much by these things. Even in the better fraternities which have an eye out for a man's scholastic standing, other things being equal, the fellow who has made a name for himself in athletics, in debating, on the high school paper, in dramatics, or in any of the various class activities has a better chance of being rushed and finally bid than has the man with no such high school record behind him. Though with us the man who goes through the first semester of his freshman year without being pledged to a fraternity has relatively little chance of making such an organization later, yet there are few men who come to the front in college activities early in their college course who do not have a chance to join one or more organizations even if their ability is not shown until the end of the sophomote year. The case of one of our prominent track men will illustrate the situation. He was an "unknown" when he came to college but developed rapidly during his freshman year. At the end of his first year he was bid by a local organization but refused; during the first semester of his sophomore year he had a chance to join two national organizations but declined, and at the end of his sophomore year accepted the invitation of a third fraternity. His athletic successes kept him before the student public and made his seem a desirable man.


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 In addition to the fact that men are sought out by fraternities because of their reputation in extra-curriculum activities, most fraternities encourage their men to go out for something, or even compel them to do so. With equal ability only the fraternity man has a greater chance of success than do other men. He has behind him the enthusiasm and the support of an entire group of men; if he needs advice there is someone to give it to him, and if he becomes discouraged and begins to lag in the race there is always the fraternity brother to prod him back into the line and to insist that he stick. I have seen many a capable fellow who was not connected with an organization and who had every chance of winning a competition drop out because he had no one to urge him to keep in, no one to get behind him and push. There was with him fighting alone no possibility of team work. The winning of honors in undergraduate activities is seldom a matter of "pull"—it ought, of course, never to be—it is largely a matter of using one's head and sticking to the game. The fraternity man is made to stick and so most frequently wins out. There is frequently in the case of fraternity men such a pressure brought to bear upon them to keep them in college activities that occasionally I am forced to show men that after all their college work is their first consideration, and if something must be slighted


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 it should be the outside work and not the studies. When a boy comes to the point of thinking that his extra-curriculum activities are of more importance to him than his studies he has adopted the wrong viewpoint.

There is too often in the cases of all college men who go in to these activities a desire to make money, and sometimes a desire to make money at the expense of the activity concerned or to its detriment. The man goes out for the job for what there is in it, not for what he can get out of it exclusive of the money remuneration. I believe that the work done in many college activities entitles the student to remuneration, but I do not know one in which the money is the main thing or should so be considered. The money which a student may earn in any one of the journalistic jobs about college for instance, in my mind is one of the least benefits which may accrue from the holding of such a position. When students in college activities become too grasping for the shekels they have missed the real advantages which should come from these enterprises.

I have been in favor of student activities because I believe that notwithstanding the dangers to which I have referred they are in a vast majority of cases helpful to the student. It can easily be shown that the fraternity men who are engaged in the general activities of college are in only ex-


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 ceptional cases the men who pull down the scholastic average. The real facts are that they help to raise the average; it is the loafer and the fusser who pulls it down. There is one college activity at least which can not be said to be helpful to a man's scholarship, and that is the sentimentally social one. The freshman who takes on a steady girl might almost as well begin looking for a job. He at least has little chance of helping to raise the fraternity average. The fellow who spends his evenings at the sorority houses polishing the furniture, or who early in his college course develops a "case" is almost invariably an unsuccessful student. The "merry, merry ring time," is for him usually not far from the time when he gets out of college either by request or through a waning of interest in his studies.

The successful man in any profession or line of work must have a knowledge of human nature, he must be able to adjust himself to all sorts and conditions of men. His success will depend quite as much often upon his knowledge of men as upon his knowledge of his profession. The young fellow who enters sanely into college activities develops resourcefulness, widens his acquaintance, and cultivates self-reliance. A friend of mine, a successful attorney and a prominent politician, said to me at one time that he got more real training while conducting his campaign at the Univer-


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 sity of Michigan for the presidency of the athletic association than he did later when he ran in his home district for the state legislature. There is a training, also, in restraint which is beneficial. The man in college activities has less time to waste than other men. If he keeps his work up as he must if he continue in these activities, he therefore has less time to loaf, less time to squander in silly or harmful ways, and so comes out of these activities with more concentration, more self-dependence, and a stronger character.


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Excepting in the case of freshmen, I believe that the fraternity has had little if any effect until recently with us upon a young man's scholarship. It has seldom raised it above what it would have been had he not joined a fraternity, and I do not know of many cases in which the fraternity was responsible for a lowered scholarship. In many cases the fraternity was little interested in scholarship; it chose its men for other qualities. The young fellow going into a fraternity carries with him his own ideals and personality and these do not materially change simply because he changes his lodging place. The fraternity man may develop but the fraternity seldom entirely makes over its men. They may be brow-beaten or encouraged in some degree, they may weaken in enthusiasm, but the total effect is gradual and is not great. The greatest influence will come through the traditions of the chapter, and through the example of the upperclassmen.

I am reminded of a young friend whom I had twenty or more years ago who had procrastination down to a science and whose conception of how much indebtedness his monthly salary would liquidate was exaggerated beyond any sort of realization. He was convinced that no matter how many duties he postponed until the future there would


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 be ample time for their accomplishment, and he approached the end of the month with the optimistic assurance that his salary of one hundred dollars would wipe out a debt twice that size. Sometimes when he saw the downfall of these false hopes he used to have a melancholy half hour, but there was for him always a solution in which he had complete faith. It was this. He was engaged to be married to a sweet young girl, and he looked forward to that union as a sort of new financial and temporal birth for him. "I'll be a different man then," he used to say. "She will change me completely." He has been married for many years, but his work still piles up beyond anything that mortal man could accomplish, and he still goes hopelessly into debt. Marriage has not changed him temperamentally any more than it is likely to change you and me, and what change it has made has been by slow degrees.

No more, ordinarily does a fraternity suddenly change the college man who goes into it; and the man who bases his hopes of mental and moral reform upon the fraternity is likely to be disappointed. It is likely only more strongly to confirm him in habits which he had previously formed. True, he is younger than the man who marries, and so, perhaps, more susceptible to environment and suggestion, but even he turns out of the old rut with difficulty. If he has previously


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 developed concentration, if he has liked books, if he has really studied seriously before coming to college, he is not likely to be different in college. There is a distinct difference between the man who has obtained high grades through serious study and the one who has reached the same result through cleverness or quickness of wit without application. The young fellow who depends upon quickness of wit alone to get him through college will ordinarily not get far without disaster, and too frequently when such a man joins a fraternity the failures in scholarship which he may make are laid at the door of the fraternity. The hope of the fraternity lies in the character of the man it chooses, and in the ideals of scholarship which it requires of the men whom it pledges. Unless they have high ideals of scholarship as pledges, they are little likely to acquire them after they enter the fraternity. If the fraternity is to improve its scholastic average it must look to the scholastic character of its freshmen before they are pledged. A freshman's scholastic standing should be as closely scrutinized as his social and moral and athletic standing.

If I have read the early history of fraternities rightly they were organized for bringing kindred spirits together, for strengthening bonds of ship, but most of all for the development of the best things for which college stands and among


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 these primarily for the development of character and—of scholarship. The early fraternity men were first Of all good students with high moral ideals. We speak now of the Greek-letter fraternities and similar organizations as "social" fraternities, and more and more as time went on this social feature seems to have been emphasized until within the last twenty years at least, most other elements in a fraternity man's life and character were forgotten. The man's social standing—meaning by that that his financial rating and his ability to dress well and to utter polite inanities mellifluously—was the main thing taken into consideration when he was being considered for admission to a fraternity. Second to his social standing his ability to enter successfully into the various activities of student life, especially his skill in athletics, was the main factor in deciding his choice. The good athlete could often get by with a pretty thin veneer of social polish. If his scholastic standing or his ability to do high grade college work was ever taken into account it was not done seriously. He was expected to pass enough work to keep him in college, of course, but further than this, his scholarship was not made a matter of much discussion.

Within the last few years the conditions have been changing. The opposition which has arisen in various quarters against fraternities has caused


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 a gradual change of view point respecting these matters of scholarship. There has been a revival all over the country, of the former interest in the scholastic standing of fraternity men. There has been a general discussion of the subject at fraternity congresses and conventions, and fraternity journals, almost without exception, have been active in stimulating interest in scholarship and in formulating plans for its encouragement. Only a few of the most conservative and self-satisfied organizations have kept out of the movement, and they will come in soon or be dis credited. It has now come to be a pretty well recognized principle that the college fraternity has little cause for being unless it is willing to do its share in promoting the interests for which colleges exist. If it has no desire to make scholars, it has little hope of winning the approval of the general public which it desires. We should get on faster, however, if more thought were given to a man's scholastic ability before he enters the fraternity, and less energy wasted in making it good after he gets in. The fraterity can discover if it wants to do so whether or not the men it wishes to pledge were good students in the high school or otherwise.

Different fraternities and different institutions have employed different means for improving the scholarship of members. Interfraternity associa-


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 tions have taken the matter up, scholarship committees have been appointed by individual chapters to apply the goad to the brother who is lagging intellectually, general secretaries have been sent out by grand officers, letters have been written, prizes have been offered, and in every way conceivable an attempt has been made to stimulate an interest in scholarship. The fraternity that is not now interested in the improvement of its scholarship is dead to progress.

For years at the institution at which I have done my work we have been trying to impress upon the fraternities the necessity of bringing up their college work, and of pledging only such men as are likely to make a decent scholastic record. We have been successful to a gratifying extent, and now, from a difference at the outset of several per cent there is practically no difference between the grades of men who belong to fraternities and the grades of those who do not. We require in October and December of the first semester, and in March of the second semester, a scholarship report on all freshmen and special students and on all other students whose work is less than five points above passing. These reports are made first to the office of the Dean of the College in which the student is registered, and the records of all undergraduate men are within a day or two forwarded to my office. As soon as the reports are


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 in, some officer of the fraternity has a conference with me or my assistant with reference to members of the chapter whose scholarship is unsatisfactory, and we make such suggestions as we can for the improvement of the work of these students. Often I see the students. Students whose work is down in more than one subject are called to the office of the Dean of the College in which they are registered. Other students are simply notified by mail of their low standing.

Since these scholarship reports have been inaugurated, two things have contributed very materially in helping to raise the scholarship of fraternities. The first was the publishing in the college papers of the relative scholastic standings of the various organizations about the campus. At first those organizations whose standing was particularly low rather resented the publicity which was given to them by this method, and protested that it was unfair thus to advertise them. I have frequently had these men come to me at the opening of college and ask that the publication of the grades which have been averaged during the summer be deferred until after the rushing season was over, alleging that a low scholastic standing would serve as a severe handicap in their pledging the best men. It has been our experience, however, that having made a bad intellectual mess of it, the best thing in the long run for these organizations


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 to do is to face the facts and make the best of them. If they suffer this time, they are likely to be more careful next. It was, moreover, quite easy to point out that no one should complain if the facts are honestly given.

The president of one organization which for years had been fighting for bottom place and which is now struggling with equal vigor to stand at the top, said to me that following the first publication of these relative standings, the members of his fraternity were actually ridiculed into an effort to raise their scholarship. An alumnus never came to town without calling their attention to the disgrace of being at the bottom; a member could scarcely board the street car without being pointed out as belonging to the fraternity with the notorious scholastic standing; even the girls "kidded" them, and the humorous column of the college daily made them the subject of metrical innuendo. It was more than they could stand, and so they began to pull themselves together. To a greater or less extent this same result has been true of the other organizations whose standing was poor.

The second thing which helped the fraternities to raise their scholastic standing with us was a regulation proposed by the local Interfraternity association and approved by the University, forbidding the initiation of any student into a frater-


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 nity or club until he had carried successfully at least eleven hours of college work. Men might be pledged whenever the fraternity wished, but they might not be initiated until they had complied with the rule. The effect of this regulation was first to stimulate the pride of the pledge who, even if he were innately lazy would sometimes rather study than suffer the humiliation of having his pledge button taken away from him or the time of his initiation deferred because he had not carried his work. The fraternity, too, was roused in most cases to more than ordinary interest, and when it seemed likely that a pledge was in danger, stimulated him by one means or another until he could be made to bring his work up. As a result, the general scholastic average was considerably raised.

Much rivalry was soon aroused, and organizations; began to resort to various devices legitimate and otherwise in order that their scholastic standing might not be lowered. If a man could not be made to raise his scholarship in a certain subject by legitimate means an attempt was made to persuade the Dean to allow him to withdraw from it. If this could not be brought about, then the student sometimes dropped the course without permission or absented himself from the final examination and so had no grade at all to form a part of the general average. In order to meet these two subterfuges we have for some time in


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 making up the averages assigned a grade of sixty to all courses which the student dropped without permission at the time of the final examination. Sometimes when a fraternity has been particularly desirous of keeping up its scholastic standing, its officers have forced members who were likely to bring down the average and who had no hope of pulling up to withdraw before the end of the semester. It is not now with us an uncommon practice for fraternities to withdraw the pledge button from students whose scholastic standing is low and who show neither ability nor desire to raise it. The methods employed and the motives which the various fraternities have employed for raising their scholastic standing may not always be as commendable nor as high as we could desire, but we should not, perhaps, be over critical. The methods employed to get people into the early Christian Church and for keeping them there, if we may believe history, were not all that might be wished for.

Whatever the reason or the method employed to gain the result, fraternities are undoubtably coming to have a greater interest in scholarship than they once had, and for this I rejoice. Since fraternities take only what they consider the pick of the secondary schools, there is every reason to expect them not only to maintain a scholastic average equal to the general college average, but


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 to be considerably above it. Unfortunately this choice of the best men means too often the men with the best social standing and not the men with the best scholastic standing. The fraternity in the past has had too yo many fellows whose only object in coming to college was to get out of work, or to make an athletic team, or to play golf, or to be lead about by a bull dog. I asked a young fraternity man not long ago why he had come away from home to college, and he admitted very frankly that he thought he would not have to work so hard in college as he would have to do if he remained in his father's factory, so he chose college. In his case, however, the surcease from labor was only a brief one.

The fraternity has initiated too many men, also, who are hilariously content when they merely pass a course or do indifferently well in it. They are satisfied with being intellectually commonplace. "I do not see why father kicks," the son of a former Phi Beta Kappa man said to me not long ago. "I failed only one course last semester, and considering all the work I did outside, I think I got by pretty well." He was really elated with three grades which were merely passing, and his highest grade was only five points above the passing point. Students repeatedly say to me, "I want to pass all the work I take up, of course, but I have no desire to get high grades; I have no use for a grind";


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 which the teeth of time had unravelledthe under-gardener dress'd the muleteer's hat in hot-wine-leesand a taylor sat musically at it, in a shed overagainst the convent, in assorting four dozen of bells for the harness, whistling to each bell as he tied it on with a thong

—The carpenter and the smith of Andoüillets held a council of wheels; and by seven, the morning after, all look'd spruce, and was ready at the gate of the convent for the hot-baths of Bourbon—two rows of the unfortunate stood ready there an hour before.

The abbess of Andoüillets, supported by Margarita the novice, advanced slowly to the calesh, both clad in white,


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 and they say it with certain pride and self congratulation, as if there were virtue in being commonplace. A lawyer, or a doctor, or a merchant who had no more ambition than this to excel in his special line of work would be looked upon as a joke or regarded as unbalanced. Every one ought to have an ambition to be at the top or at least some place near the top in any line of business which he takes up. The student, however, too often feels indifference toward excellence in scholarship or actual humiliation at the thought of doing well. It is the wrong view point, and it is one which fraternities are coming rapidly to see they can not accept.

The reason offered most often by fraternity men for their low scholarship: is that students in a fraternity have more outside interests, more things which must be done, and so less time for their studies than have other students. They, point to the fact that it is the fraternity men who are in athletics, and dramatics, and student journalism, and in student activities generally, and on this score justify their low standing. An examination of the records of the men at the University of Illinois, however, will show as I have said elsewhere, that the students who are engaged in university activities, whether they be fraternity men or not maintain a scholastic standing considerably higher than the average. The young man who was this


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 year at the University awarded the gold medal for having the highest general standing in college activities and in scholarship was a fraternity man as were all of his competitors for this honor. It is those who have little energy in any worthy direction who are indifferent to excellence in scholarship and who think lightly of attainments along scholastic lines.

Fraternity men say sometimes in justification of carelessness or indifference regarding their work, or in explanation of unsatisfactory results at the end of a semester that they are in college for what they can get out of it; they want an all around training, and they do not care particularly for grades. They fail to recognize that the amount they get out of a course is measured—not accurately perhaps and not always quite fairly—but still reasonably measured by the marks they receive at the end of the course. A merchant might quite as reasonably say that he is in business for what he can get out of it, but that he of course does not care for the amount of money he is making. The success of his mercantile undertaking is measured no more accurately by the profits which he makes than is the success of the student by the grades that he makes.

Good scholarship is then the main justification which can be offered to the state or to the individual or to the organization which expends money


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 to furnish educational opportunities for young people. Unless fraternities can develop an interest in good students and a high grade of scholarship, unless in choosing men they begin to pay more attention than they have previously done to the man's possibilities as an average student at least, if not as a high grade student, the fraternity ultimately will fail.


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Shakspeare

" will, no doubt, be well pleased with neighbour Jones," said Mr. Peck, as Carlton stepped into the chaise to pay his promised visit to the "ungodly man." "Don't forget to have a religious interview with the negroes," remarked Georgiana, as she gave the last nod to her young convert. "I will do my best," returned Carlton, as the vehicle left the door. As might have been expected, Carlton met with a cordial reception at the hands of the proprietor of the Grove Farm. The servants in the "Great House" were well dressed, and appeared as if they did not want for food. Jones knew that Carlton was from the North, and a non-slaveholder, and therefore did everything in his power to make a favourable impression on his mind. "My negroes are well clothed, well fed, and not over worked," said the slaveholder to his visitor, after the latter had been with him nearly a week. "As far as I can see, your slaves appear to good advantage," replied Carlton. "But," continued he, "if it is a fair question, do you have preaching among your slaves on Sunday, Mr. Jones?" "No, no," returned he, "I think that's all nonsense; my negroes do their own preaching." "So you do permit them to have meetings." "Yes, when they wish. There's some very intelligent and clever chaps among them."

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There has been for some time, perhaps, a pretty general feeling that Greek-letter fraternities are more or less on trial to prove their worth and their efficiency. The general public has heard much in the last few years concerning high school fraternities and college fraternities, and much that it has heard is discreditable to them. There have been heated discussions in home circles and school boards, in school faculties and state legislatures, and the public, knowing little, has believed the worst, and has put all fraternities into the same disreputable class. The fraternities have been judged by the worst and the most foolish things that have been published about them. It has seemed to me that the alumni of college fraternities, scattered as they are throughout the whole country, may do more than any one else by sane influence, and sane advice, and sane conduct, to lift fraternities to a high plane, to correct the faults which even their warmest friends are willing to admit still exist, and to present to those who are outside of these organizations a fair exposition of what the college fraternity really stands for, and what it is doing.

The experience in college of these men who have gone out from the fraternity should give them an intimate knowledge of undergraduate life, and it


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 should give them, too, a knowledge of the needs of undergraduates, their habits, their weaknesses, and the methods of influencing them. If the fraternity has faults no one is in a better position than the alumni to correct them, and no one is in a better position than are these men to set the fraternity right before outsiders, for having been out in the world a while they know what the world thinks and says of fraternities and ought to be able to meet the varied objections that are made to them.

"I don't like your fraternities," one of our old graduates said to me not long ago. "When I was in college we had only the literary societies, and they taught a man something, and developed a really democratic spirit." Now I know very well, because I had belonged to the same literary society that he had been a member of, at a time when fraternities were not allowed in the University of Illinois, that the literary societies here, as is the case in many other places now, were quite exclusive, were not democratic, and that they controlled college politics with an absolute completeness that would never be attempted by the modern fraternity. My friend did not know the college fraternity, which is in fact very similar in many respects to the literary society as he knew it, and he had forgotten the character of the organization


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 to which he had belonged. It is this sort of error which old fraternity men may very easily correct.

My own college experience has been gathered very largleylargely [sic] at the University of Illinois and my illustrations will, therefore, be chosen in most part from that experience. I think it is safe to assume, however, that the majority of the larger institutions of the country, especially the great state universities, are similar as to fraternity conditions and that my own experience is in the main not different from that which I should find were I located in some other institution. At the University of Illinois, then, I find that our alumni have exerted both a helpful and a harmful influence. Many of them use every opportunity to aid the fraternity to develop in the best way, and others have been the most objectionable influence with which we have had to contend both in their effect upon the conduct of local chapters and in the general influence which they exert among men who have little first hand knowledge of fraternities.

In the giving of financial aid our alumni have always been active. It is true that a few are willing to ride without paying their fare, or to enjoy the prestige and the privileges of a good house without helping to build it. Some still owe their board bills, though they find ample opportunity to criticize the present management of their organization when they visit it, and some have


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 made promises of help which have resulted only in worthless slips of paper; but on the whole the alumni have shown the keenest financial interest in the local chapter and have been generous beyond what might have been expected in giving money. They have helped whenever the local chapters have got into financial corners, and this help came at a time when it was most needed.

We have, at the University of Illinois, between thirty-five and forty fraternal organizations, the most of them members of national fraternities. These chapters are all organized in about the same general way and carry an average membership of perhaps thirty. The two oldest of these organizations have been in existence for thirty-three years during ten years of which they were sub rosa, and they have a body of prominent and influential alumni. A number of our chapters have been organized for twenty years or more, and the majority have been running for ten or fifteen years. A few are of recent origin, and so have a small list of alumni, but for the most part the body of alumni of each chapter is considerable and its standing throughout the communities in which the members live is excellent. Eleven of our chapters own comfortable and well-furnished houses. The plans for the erection of these houses were in each case devised by interested alumni, the money for their erection has come in large part from the


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 alumni, and the management and control of these investments is in each case, I believe, now in the hands of a corporation composed largely of alumni. The building of these houses has drawn heavily upon the time and resources of a large number of men and shows a thoroughly commendable interest on their part. A number of the other chapters through the generosity of the old members are also in a fair way soon to have houses of their own. In many other ways the alumni regularly contribute liberally to the financial support of the chapters, so that in this regard the fraternities have very little of which they may legitimately complain.

I can not commend too highly the unselfish efforts which many of these men have put forth in their desire to erect chapter houses for their fraternities. Few of our alumni are wealthy and those few are quite as often as not unwilling to give liberally. It is the rank and file, the men of moderate means or men with small salaries who have given the money. Professional men just starting—lawyers, doctors, business men—have been willing to devote their time generously to these enterprises with no possibility of personal gain. In fact the contrary has often been the result, for the man who stands at the head of these house-building schemes is in no sense likely to increase his popularity with those who have been


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 persuaded to help champion the project. Our success in building houses for our fraternities, however, shows that many of our alumni have been generous and unselfish in the matter of giving money.

But notwithstanding the importance of money in the management and the progress of the affairs of an individual or an organization, I have never felt that the whole duty of a parent was done when he furnished his young son with generous sums of money, or that a fraternity alumnus had discharged all of his fraternity obligations when he responded graciously to a call for contributions to the house fund or sent in a check to be used in defraying the expenses of the annual dance. The fraternity often and usually needs financial support, but it needs something more than this, if it is to get on. The active chapter of any fraternity should be able to look to its alumni for direction and advice and example in those things in which the older men have had the wider experience. The alumni should give character and stability to the chapter; they determine its family history and its standing in the wider sense of the word. In college, for example, that fraternity is often considered the most fortunate which can show in the college annual the longest list of prominent fratres in facultate or the most impressive list of brothers who live in the college community, or whose names


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 can be found in Who's Who. At rushing time at least the alumni are often made one of the strongest parts of the argument. They are brought in if possible as show pieces, and the photographs of those who may have attained any degree of prominence are proudly exhibited. The fraternity who can show that one of its alumni is or has been in the presidential chair usually feels that its cause is won. The actual importance and worth of such members is sometimes small indeed.

It may be argued with convincingness by freshmen and by others who know little or nothing at first hand about it, that the alumni on the faculty, because of their sympathy with young men, their knowledge of the conditions surrounding college life, their wide experience in fraternity matters, and their specific interest in the local chapter, will be helpful and an uplifting influence. It ought to be true, but in too many instances it is not. A sensible faculty member who is willing to take a little time and to use a little tact could easily reorganize a chapter if he would do so, and yet make the members think that they had done it themselves. It is not difficult to find conspicuous examples of faculty men some of them prominent and all of them busy who by persistent and diplomatically directed efforts have succeeded in changing for the better the whole character and standing of their fraternities. I have in mind now two


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 well-known men in this University—one the head of an important department and the other one of our most prominent executive officers—each of whom has revolutionized his fraternity. From one of these I received only yesterday a letter saying, "Tell me about the boys. Do any of them need prodding up or encouragement?" He knows the ins and outs of his fraternity like a book; he is acquainted with the weak brother, and he can lay his finger on the man who will take responsibility and who will accomplish what needs to be done. He gets all this with skill, and gentle diplomacy, and without the expenditure of a great amount of time. He is a busy man who drops in upon the boys for a moment and out again, and who says the right word when, to and whom, it needs to be said. He is helping this fraternity and he is helping all other fraternities, and is the sort of alumnus whom I am glad to encourage. The other man has accomplished a similar result, and from the bottom of the list scholastically he has helped to bring his fraternity into the list of the ten highest in college. He knows all the men personally, he has won their confidence, and his advice is asked and followed on all occasions. Much more could have been accomplished and that more easily, if these men could have had the coöperation of the other alumni on the faculty who, in many cases, had more leisure and who were under quite


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 as much obligation to help as were the men who actually did the job.

Unfortunately, however, my experience has been that more than half of the fraternity alumni in a university take little or no interest in the personnel or progress of their fraternity, and would not even recognize their fraternity brothers if they should meet them on the street. They have their names printed at the head of the list published in the college year book, or it is engraved upon the program of the formal annual dance, but if they were suddenly ushered into the chapter house, they would not know Smith from Knappenberger, or the president of the chapter from the freshman who is being rushed, and they feel as lonesome and out of place as a blind man at a ballet. Every once in a while I fall in with these "brothers" who are invited out once a year or once in two years, perhaps, to meet the members of the chapter, and I watch with interest their struggles to get on, their embarrassment at knowing no one, their relief when the meal is over and they can get by themselves and discuss the present economic situation of the European war. I know a number of fraternities who count among their faculty members several men of prominence not one of whom could name three undergraduate members of the fraternity, and who do not in any way make an effort to help their organizations.


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 I know dozens of members of our faculty who could easily find the time if they wished to get acquainted with the members of their fraternity, and to help brace up the chapter if only by their occasional presence, who know little more about the organization than the location of the chapter house. As to the real life and character of the boys they know nothing, and so the positive influence which they might exert for the betterment of the organization is lost.

The excuses given by faculty men for their lack of interest in their fraternities or lack of attention to them is most often that they do not have the time, but those who do find the time are often the ones who have most to do and who do most. Others allege that there is a certain embarrassment likely to follow any familiar acquaintance with individual students, and they wish to keep themselves free from these entanglements. If such an embarrassing situation does arise when a member of the faculty shows a little personal interest in the members of his fraternity it is more likely to be the fault of the faculty man than of the student. In all the years that I have been associated with students I have never known a member of the faculty to be criticized for showing too much interest in any individual student whether he were a fraternity brother or otherwise. The faculty brother is most favorably situated to


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 give help to the local chapter and ought to do so far more frequently than he does.

The same things might be said with reference to the alumni who are not connected with the faculty but who live in the college town. The undergraduate looks perhaps with more favor upon the opinions and advice of the successful business man than he is likely to do upon that given by a member of the faculty who is, of course, in his eyes a mere theorist. A steady, sensible business man is a tower of strength to any fraternity if he will show interest. No old members of the fraternity are so favorably situated as are these two classes of alumni for directly influencing the chapters, and yet a distressingly large percentage of them assume no responsibility and show no interest.

The alumnus returning after a separation of time or distance is also to be considered. At every institution, I have no doubt, there are specific times of the year when a definite effort is made by fraternities to get the alumni back in force. It may be at commencement time, or at college anniversaries, or reunions, or at the celebrations of various college events. With us it is at the annual Home-coming, though any other event would serve the same purpose and might bring the same complications. The officers of the chapters send out letters of invitation to all the old members, a few of the local alumni—good fellows and unmarried


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 usually—essay to help in the round-up, the attraction of a football game proves too much for the old timers, and they come back en masse. Such a return is full of possibilities. The freshman has heard of all these old heroes, and he wants to meet them. To many of them have come a measure of success and reputation, and the effect of their presence and the force of their words count for much in the life of the chapter. The effect of mingling with these men if they are healthy and sane and have the real good of the chapter in mind cannot be overestimated. But experience has shown that this is not always the case, and such a return is often a matter of concern to college authorities and to serious minded fraternity officers, for the returning alumnus, even though he has reached middle age, frequently forgets that he should have outgrown the follies of the freshman and too often feels that he must cast himself in the rôle of a sporty undergrad. The things he would not dream of doing in his own town and in his own house he falls into with eagerness in the chapter house. Instead of being looked on as influence for good and welcomed as a help in the building up of proper fraternity ideals, an effort is often made to conceal his escapades and the freshmen must sometimes be sent out of the house in order that they may not be a witness to his indiscretions. He does not see that whether he has