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Rh winter wherever was convenient for them. We know most about the Old Servian State, where the Vlakhs constituted an important element and a rich source of income for the sovereign and the other landlords. By them the larger mountain pastures were made the most of and indeed devastated and disforested by the reckless grazing-off of the new growth, by the searing of the grass to freshen the pasturage, and by the peeling of young beech-trees as a substitute for honey to sweeten milk foods. They provided the State with excellent horses, of small stature but hardy, and good cavalry for the army. They managed also the commerce, for it had to be a caravan trade with pack-horses, because most of the mountains ranges run parallel with the sea and were then impassable for wagons. The Vlakhs themselves traded in wool, skins, and the famous Vlakhish cheese which had to have a definite weight for Ragusa, and even served as a substitute for money. In return they chiefly brought sea-salt. By this trading the Vlakhs acquired knowledge of the world, and became far superior in experience and shrewdness to the boorish Slav peasant. They grazed the mountain pastures (planina) to the height of 5000 ft., from the end of April to the middle of September, and then slowly made their way, often taking two months, to winter on the coasts on account of the mild snowless climate and the salt which splendidly nourishes the sheep. They lived chiefly on milk and cheese. Their chief enemy was the ice when it locked up the grass in early spring. Thousands of sheep then starved and the richest man might become a beggar in a few days. As they had no fixed settlements, they could not easily be enslaved by the landlords, and after payment of the grazing-tax they enjoyed freedom of movement without restraint. They themselves were a heavy burden for the peasantry, especially through their destruction of the cornfields. Thus peasants and herdsmen were in opposition, there was no intermarriage between them, and the State had to regulate the wandering people and to protect the peasants with draconic laws. The Emperor Dushan's law-book of 1349 states: "Where a Vlakh or an Albanian camps in a village district, there another who comes after him shall not camp; if he camps there by force, he shall pay the fighting-fine (100 hyperpyres, that is fifty gold ducats) besides the value of what he has grazed off." Even the Ragusans in Dalmatia, although they were entirely dependent for their trade with the interior on the Vlakh caravans, complained bitterly of the mischief they did when they wintered in Ragusan territories, and finally forbade them to winter there.

All the more must the Avar nomads have oppressed the subjugated Slav peasantry, for here the Avar was master, and the peasant was without rights and protection. The Avar tribes as wandering herdsmen amongst


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 come extant that at the State University atheism ran riot. In my junior year there was a gathering at the seat of the university of the state organization of one of the Protestant churches. A few of the more venturesome delegates, led by deviltry and curiosity, wandered over to visit the university. As they stood on the first floor of the main building awed and fearsomelike because of their surroundings, I heard one of them say, "One can simply feel the spirit of infidelity here as he enters the building." And yet up on the third floor an undergraduate prayer meeting was going on at that moment. Their ideas of the awful life students were living at the state university had about as much foundation and were entitled to about as much credence as what men write about fraternities who have not themselves had a reasonable experience as members. A large part of the opposition to fraternities is the result of jealousy and ignorance.

A young fellow was telling me recently that when he came to college it was with the idea that the Greek-letter fraternity was simply a breeding place for loafing, and extravagance, and immorality When he was asked later to join a fraternity he hesitated, but finally he consented. In his senior year his father came to visit him and found him as president of the Young Men's Chris-

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 tian Association living in the Association dormitory. The old man had by this time become acquainted with the fraternity and was considerably attracted by the fellows in it. When he looked over his son's surroundings in the Association building, concerning which there was no reasonable ground for legitimate complaint, he became thoughtful for a time and then said very seriously, "You know, Jack, I believe you'd be better off down at the fraternity house."

There are boys in the secondary schools, also, who look upon the fraternity as an organization in which they can have the greatest moral and social freedom. The fraternity house is a place where they can study when they like, sit with their hats on and their feet on the mantel, and engage in rough house until the plaster falls. They know the college man only as they see him on the stage in his most exaggerated forms. A freshman in one of our fraternity houses was being called to account not long ago for his rough and boisterous conduct when he seemed quite astonished that any one should object to his breaking up the furniture and acting like a savage.

"Why, I thought that was what a fraternity was for," he ventured quite apologetically. His view is not an unique one.

"I don't believe I want my son to be a fraternity


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 man when he gets to college," the father of a high school senior remarked to me recently, when I was calling at his house.

"Why not?" I asked.

"It's an undemocratic life," he said, "and one very different from what he lives at home or from what he will live after he gets out of college. Besides, there are a good many new dangers likely to be encountered."

"Well, is it," I replied, "and are there? What is he doing now?" He was, as I supposed, out with his chums, the regular group of boys with whom he associated and who formed a regular part of his daily life. He was following the same sort of procedure as he would follow if after he got to college he should join a fraternity, excepting that in the organized one. It need not be less normal and it usually is not less so than the life he lived at home in association with his friends and his home folks.

Fathers write me every fall in an endeavor to find out what fraternities are like, what they stand for, how the men live, what influence the organizations are likely to have on their sons should they join. They drop into the office with their freshman sons to discuss the relative merits of various organizations, and the relative advantage of going in or staying out. The amount of parental ignor-


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 ance that I have a chance to dispel is really remarkable. Boys confused and embarrassed by the strangeness of the new life and the new problems of living see me daily at the opening of each new college year, and I have many a chance to put them right as to college customs, college traditions, and college organizations. I should like in this paper to give college sons and college fathers some intelligent idea of what a Greek-letter fraternity is, and what it does or may do for the boy who goes into it.

I have not yet got quite to the point of advising freshmen to join a fraternity any more than I feel like advising my next door neighbor to buy an electric for his wife or to install a pneumatic cleaner in his house, but I feel sure that there are advantages and benefits likely to accrue to the one who joins, and I am frank in saying to the freshman as he enters college that if I were in his position and were beginning my college course, knowing all that I now know about college fraternities, their weaknesses and their strong points, I think I should want to join one, just as, if one is religious, I think he is foolish not to join a church, and if he is interested in politics, not to ally himself with some political organization. If I had a son in college, I should offer no objection to his joining.

The Greek-letter fraternity in college is of com-


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 paratively recent origin. The oldest fraternity cannot look back quite one hundred years, and a good many of these years were pretty dull so far as educational development was concerned. The most of the Greek-letter fraternities are less than sixty years old. The purpose of their founders was usually self-development, the cultivation of ideals, good scholarship, and good-fellowship. Many of these organizations at first were similar in character to our modern literary societies and encouraged and cultivated debating and public speaking and literary composition. The idea of furnishing a home and of developing home life for its members was at first unthought of and unnecessary. The living conditions in the college in which fraternities were first organized were satisfactory. In many instances students lived in dormitories provided by the college, and it was not necessary for the fraternity to furnish the home life for its members. During the last fifty years conditions have been rapidly changing. Colleges everywhere are providing in the regular curriculum the training for which the fraternity originally stood, and the fraternity in a large number of cases must now look after the housing and feeding of its own members, and so provide its own home life—a duty which the college formerly performed.

There is little that is subtle or unusual in the


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 organization of the modern college fraternity. It has a ritual—simple, dignified, and full of high ideals usually, but the ceremony of initiation when carried on seriously as it now is in most fraternities worth consideration is one which tends to inspire the initiate and to make him thoughtful rather than otherwise. It has its secret work—innocent, harmless, and appealing to the imagination of youth for the most part; but if all the secrets which are a part of the initiation ceremonies of such fraternities were published in the daily press, if all the grips and signs and pass words were forgotten, the fraternity would not be materially affected. These details are not a vital influence either for good or for evil. They simply appeal to the youthful imagination; they throw a certain glamour of mystery and romance about the organization, that makes a strong impression upon youthful minds. Anything that is locked or that is hidden by a curtain always arouses curiosity. It is the same sort of innocent appeal that is made to every young person by the so-called secrets of the fraternity.

A good many fathers look upon a fraternity merely as a lodging house and a boarding club, and though it is both of these it is much more; it is a home. The college student, young, inexperienced, and away from home usually for the first


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 time, lives under peculiar conditions. He wants friends, companionship, and the associations of home; he wants sympathy, encouragement, and direction, and it is these which the fraternity can give him. It is the most natural and normal thing that the young man in college should develop his own peculiar organization for the cultivation of such characteristics of the home as are in college possible. The Greek-letter fraternity is such an organization.

The criticisms that are made upon the fraternity by those who are not members of it or who know little or nothing about it, are that it is undemocratic, that it encouargesencourages [sic] extravagance and immorality. Men argue that in college, especially in an institution supported by the state, no organization should be allowed to exist which it is impossible for any student to belong to should he so desire. I read a letter not long ago from the father of two boys who had graduated from college protesting against fraternities on the ground that, though he did not want his sons to join and could not have afforded to have them do so even if he had desired it, it was unjustifiable that there should be any organization at a state university which was not open to his sons and to every other student. It seems to me as reasonable to argue that if I belong to the Presbyterian church or to


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 the Republican party, I am under obligations to have the most intimate social relations with every member of each one of these organizations, and if I give a dinner party, I must ask each one of them to my house.

The number of intimate, close, personal friends which any one man can have is limited by his time, by his tastes, and by his temperament. He has a right to choose who these shall be, with whom he shall live, and with whom he shall associate, and the fact that he does not find it convenient or desirable or pleasing to choose me does not argue against me or against his democracy. With the marriage laws as they are no one is likely to be able to marry all the attractive girls he knows, nor can any fellow in college develop an intimate friendship with every one else. There is no lack of democracy in such a situation nor any sane reason for thinking a man exclusive because of these limitations.

The charges of immorality and extravagance have little foundation. The extravagances and dissipations of an organization are much more evident than are those of an individual, and much more talked about. For that reason, they are more readily corrected. If they are not corrected, then the college authorities who permit these things to continue are to blame quite as much as


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 are the organizations which are guilty of them. I should be foolish to argue that there are not immoralities in college fraternities, and I am willing to grant that when these exist among the members of such an organization the evil result may be more far reaching than when such irfegularities are seen in an individual, but these things are not inherent in the fraternity any more than they are in our public schools.

It costs more to live in a fraternity house than in the ordinary boarding-house, because men usually live better, live more comfortably, have more privileges. But priviliges bring obligations in this case as in others, so that the undergraduate who joins a fraternity will find himself restricted by this action. When he chooses a certain group of men for his particular friends, for his college family as it were, he shuts himself off naturally from a similar association with other men or at least with many other men. This does not seem to me more deplorable or regrettable than the fact that when my friend, Tom Brown, married Jane Bailey and thereby acquired Jane's mother as a mother-in-law he made it impossible to hold Mrs. Babb in the same relation, though Mrs. Babb was a delightful lady and from my point of view rather more desirable as a parent-in-law than the person Tom acquired. It is a pity, but one cannot under


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 circumstances existing at present, have every attractive, middle-aged woman as a mother-in-law. Well, there are limitations in college, and the man who thinks there should be none must have rather a thin coating of gray on his brain.

The fellow who goes into a fraternity takes the group for better or for worse, just as when one gets into a family he finds that the fortunes and the reputation of the family are his. I know a lot of fellows who have gone ahead with the idea that when they say "I will" to the minister's questions, it applies only to the girl at their side, but they soon wake up to find that it took in the whole family even to the most remote and most disreputable second cousin. It is just like that in a fraternity; the group you elect is yours, good or bad; and having chosen, you must make the best of it.

There are those who feel that this fraternity relationship should be easily broken just as they might feel that our divorce laws are too stringent. They argue that if a member of a fraternity proves himself undesirable, it ought to be a simple matter to get rid of him. I cannot feel so. It seems to me that the relationship is such a close and binding one that only under the most critical circumstances should it be severed. The home relations in the fraternity should be considered sacred relations.


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 It is just as well to keep in mind that a fraternity man is held responsible for what every other man in his chapter does and that the character of the chapter is determined by what the worst man in it does. A very good chapter of one of the oldest and most respected fraternities at the University of Illinois is at present about as unpopular and about as thoroughly disliked as any chapter on the campus, and all because a few of its men are always on hand to recount tales of personal deviltry at the popular loafing places, and are eager to be known as "men of the world," whatever that suggestive phrase may mean. The whole chapter has the name of being loafers and rounders, just because three conceited men have taken courses in public speaking and are able to put their stories across.

I have sometimes thought that I should be better satisfied if the method of picking out the brothers in a fraternity were characterized by a little more sanity. The rushing systems of most fraternities with which I am acquainted are on the whole unlikely to give the freshman a true conception of the real character of the fraternity and its members, as I shall show later. In choosing between the local organization and the national fraternity, I have often advised fellows to join the former if the make-up of the latter organization


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 seemed not likely to be congenial or helpful to the best development of character. A man's fraternity life is lived largely while he is in college, and he should go with the group that will give him the best chance to live a healthy, happy, effective, undergraduate life.

"Why should a boy entering college join a fraternity?" I am asked again and again. "What does he get out of it, and what does it do for him?" As the system is now in most of our colleges, only a limited number of entering students can join such an organization, because the number of such organizations is small and the membership of each must be kept within reasonable limits. The president of a large institution said to me not long ago, "When are you going to stop increasing the number of fraternities? Do you think it is a good thing to have more and more fraternities in college?" My answer then was in the affirmative, and as I have since then given the matter more serious thought, I have not felt like changing my mind. I wish that every boy who comes to college might find an organization suited to his particular needs, and might have done to him and for him the service which a well-organized and well-managed fraternity does for its members.

First of all the fraternity gives the undergraduate friends just as he is needing the most. The


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442 the West Slavs could not graze their herds in connected winter-quarters as in the steppes, because the snow lies deeper and longer in central Europe. Neither had they there, as in Dalmatia, mild coasts rich in salt and free from snow — the best imaginable winter-pasture — and so they had to break up and live scattered in the Slav villages where the peasantry had to store up grain and hay for them during the summer and convert even the villages into suitable cattle-pens. This is pointed to by the very small Slavonic round villages with one single exit, which are common in Bohemia and as far as the Baltic, and which still preserve the character of closable cattle-pens.

Compared with the Slavs, the Avar oppressors were very few in number, and could not therefore always master them. Now and then these became restive, and refused obedience. The Khagan, occupied in many distant places, did not always find leisure to chastise them, and thus many Slav tribes gained their liberty.

There were, however, differences among the Avars themselves, who were only held together by the iron hand of the Khagan. They were but a mixed multitude. Where there was a prospect of rich booty they followed him joyfully, but where no treasure allured them — e.g. in 602 against the poor but warlike Antae — they simply refused obedience and deserted to the Romans. According to "Mauricius" such desertion was a common event, and it helps to explain why the Khagan did not repeat his victorious marches against the Frankish kingdom till the year 596. Avar hordes were indeed very loosely held together, and some fell away and established small States on the old basis of Slav servitude. The dissolution began as early as 603 in consequence of the successful revolution of a part of the north-west Slavs and the formation of a Slav union under Samo. By this the Avar hordes distributed among the Elbe Slavs between Bohemia and the Baltic were permanently cut off from the main horde in Hungary.

After the dissolution of the great Avar State the Avars and the Bulgars themselves remained as a noble class, which finally became Slavised and nationally absorbed in the subjected peasantry. In Dalmatia as late as the tenth century the Avars were still sharply distinguished from the Croats. The mare-milking grand-prince north of the Carpathians in the ninth century may indeed already have become Slav, but by origin he must have been Avar. Strange was the fate of a Bulgar horde which later than 641 fled to Dagobert. The Bavarians


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 thing about which parents usually concern themselves when their sons leave home to enter college is that they will be thrown at once upon their own resources. I think this is a good thing, but independence and isolation are not identical nor equally necessary. The fraternity man does not run his own affairs, but he is associated closely with the fellows of his own age and tastes who are doing the same thing. Not long ago a young fellow came into my office, lonesome, homesick, pretty close to friendless. He had come from a country home a thousand miles away from the college, he had entered the second semester, he knew no one, and he had no one with whom he could talk, no one with whom he might spend his leisure time, and no personal means of recreation. A fraternity man saw him talking to me, picked him up, and took him to dinner. A few days later he came into the office wearing a pledge button. He was happy, contented, interested in his studies, interested in the college because he had found friends and a home. The fraternity had furnished for him the center of a new life.

The fraternity throws at once upon the undergraduate certain responsibilities about the house, and I believe in no small measure prepares him for the duties which he will later have to assume or direct when he has a home of his own. The young


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 fellow freed from the tasks incident to keeping up a house often becomes indifferent to these things and almost unconscious that they have to be performed. It is a good thing for a boy to learn early that no house furnace has yet been designed that will long successfully stoke itself, that floors need to be polished occasionally if they are to look respectable, and that dust and dirt and litter of all sorts must have someone's personal attention if they are to be discouraged or materially abated. I have never been strongly an advocate of the system which permits upperclassmen to order freshmen about just for the sake of showing that they can, or of beating them just to keep one's muscles in shape, but I believe the system is a helpful one which requires each underclassman in a fraternity house to take his share of the responsibility in doing the chores about the house and in seeing that the house is kept in order. It is simply another opportunity to impress upon the undergraduate the obligations of good citizenship. A man appreciates better the size of a yard after he has run the lawn mower over it for a few times; he has more civic pride after he has raked the parking into condition and picked up the loose paper about the premises. He has an altogether different idea of life from what the undergraduate has who lives in a mere boarding-house and who


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 can be made to assume none of the responsibilities. When our towns have a "clean up" day in the spring, I am never surprised to see what a large percentage of fraternity men get out and help, for these men have had a thorough local home training in such matters and have learned to take an interest in them and to appreciate their importance.

One of the first things that a young learns when he gets into a fraternity is that if he would be happy, he must know how to get on with people. The boy who at home has run the household, and I the only child who has never had to yield his rights or his playthings to anyone, the sensitive or the selfish fellow, will be taught a good many things before he has been in a fraternity long. While I was writing this paragraph the mail brought me a letter from a worried father begging me to ask the officers of the fraternity of which his only son was a member to be kind to the boy, to humor his idiosyncrasies, and to say nothing to him unkind concerning his personal peculiarities which I, before he had been in college a week, had discovered were not few. It was a foolish letter for a father to write, and a useless one. The fraternity officers would have paid no attention to such advice had I been silly enough to give it to them; their purposes are to educate. One of the main functions of a


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 fraternity is to mould the undergraduate, to correct his faults, to change his peculiarities, and to help him to become normal and to live comfortably and happily with normal people. It is largely a matter of observation and adjustment, of yielding one's own preferences or prejudices for the comfort or good of others. The fraternity is a helpful agency in the development of this sort of unselfishness. If the young boy whose father wrote me stays in college long enough, he will be pretty sure to learn how to stand in with the various members of his fraternity or how to manage them; he will learn by experience that his sensitiveness and his selfishness and his peculiar manners hinder him and handicap him, and if he has sense he will correct all these personal peculiarities in order that he may acomplishaccomplish [sic] his purposes—in order that he may get on with people.

A little fellow I knew once, an only child, had had no restraint at home. He was ill tempered, bad mannered, profane, and generally disagreeable to every member of his family, all of whom humored him, waited on him, and endured him. It was only when he started to school and saw that these traits of character made him unpopular and disliked, ostracised and isolated him, and so made him unhappy, that he corrected his faults and did for


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 himself that which neither his parents nor his friends had previously been able to do. It is some such service as this that the fraternity performs for the undergraduate.

"College has made a wonderful change in Fred Gates," one of his townsmen said to me not long ago. "Every one notices that he is quieter, more thoughtful, less selfish." "It was his fraternity that did it," I replied, and I knew how difficult a task it had been to accomplish.

In a peculiar way, I think, the fraternity teaches the undergraduate to respect the rights of others. If twenty-five or thirty men are to get on happily in a house there must be some regard on the part of everyone for "mine" and "thine." The carelessness or thoughtlessness of one man may annoy or injure all of the others. The man who sleeps late in the morning or comes noisy into the dormitory at night, who plays the piano when other men want to study, will not live long in a fraternity house before he is called by the umpire. In the use of other men's time, or dress shirts, or theme paper, or tobacco, the fraternity man ultimately learns that the fellow who does not respect the rights or prepertyproperty [sic] of others is not a good member of a fraternity household.

The fraternity teaches the undergraduate a good many things about social conventions which


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 he would be long in learning in the ordinary boarding house. Not every freshman who comes to college, and not every freshman who joins a fraternity has a perfect working knowledge of the conventionalities of life. I have seen the freshman even in a fraternity house reach for a slice of bread with his fork, pass the toothpicks, or fail to "ship his oars," but he did not do it often before some thoughtful brother called his attention to the error. A man may be good fraternity material without having polished manners, but if the fraternity is well organized and well managed, an undergraduate cannot be a member of it long without learning to show more respect for the proper social conventions, without cultivating self-possession and developing poise. I was not long ago with: a friend at dinner at a fraternity house. My friend was a woman of broad experience who had traveled widely all over the world and who had associated with cultivated people everywhere. The young men met her without embarrassment, they talked easily, and their dinner was served in the utmost good taste. She marveled to me at their finesse, and I, who am used to seeing fraternity men do these things so well, have scarcely ceased to marvel myself. They were country boys, many of them, or boys from country towns. Some of them, it is true, had been brought up in the city,


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 but these, in many cases, had had quite as little social experience as the others. There is a certain tradition about it all; it is a kind of ritual handed down from one generation to the next. The freshman learns from the upperclassman and then in turn passes the lesson on to succeeding undergraduates. However it is done, the man who goes into a fraternity of the right sort is sure to learn something of social form, of politeness and courtesy and good manners that will be to him in later life no mean asset.

It has been a criticism upon the fraternity, and it has not been an altogether unjust one, that it has led its members rather more actively into social activities than was good for many of them. If I were arguing on this side of the question, I should not be at a loss to find illustrations to prove my point, but I believe as I go back over my experience that the instances in which the social life and activities of fraternity men were a benefit to them are so far in excess of those in which they were a detriment, that it can safely be held that the social activities into which the modern Greek-letter fraternity introduces its members are, on the whole, an excellent thing. Most of the men who enter our Middle West educational institutions are from very modest homes in many of which the social life is unconventional and in not


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 a few crude. If these men do not get proper social training in college, they are little likely to acquire it after they get out. A member of a good fraternity has an easier entree into the best social life which the college offers than does any other man. In no college with which I am acquainted do the fraternity men usurp the best social life, but the fraternity man always has someone to introduce him, someone to help him plan, someone to push him if he lags back or lacks nerve. We may be emphasizing social life too much in our colleges at the present time, and especially in our coeducational institutions, but be that as it may, a healthy, moderate social life no one in college can afford to omit, and the fraternity furnishes the undergraduate the easiest aproach to it. I heard a well-known successful engineer say at one time that more engineers had failed in getting a job because of soiled collars and badly selected neckties than from any other reason. I should not be inclined to take his statement too seriously, but I am convinced that social associations of the right sort do teach a man many things worth while about dress and manners and social precedureprocedure [sic], and that these lessons will be profitable to him as long as he lives.

The fraternity, in the Middle West at least, leads its members pretty generally into all forms


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 of student activities. In the University of Illinois the extra-curriculum activities of students are fully three-fourths, I believe, in the hands of fraternity men. The fraternities urge their men to get out, keep after them constantly, and help them in every way possible. The man who does not belong to a fraternity has no organization behind him, no one to goad him if he gets lazy, so even when he has a good chance of winning, he often becomes discouraged and drops out. There again in this matter of outside activities there is often a difference of opinion. Some conservative college officers hold that the fewer extra-curriculum activities in which the student engages the better off he is. If the only object of a college education were to teach a man facts, to acquaint him with scientific principles, and to fill him with book knowledge, I should agree with this view fully. I am convinced, however, from my own experience as well as from a long period of observation, that I though study and books are the main thing, the value of a college training lies almost as much in what the undergraduate gets outside of the classroom as in what he gets within it. Association with men, the solving of the practical problems of life, independence, self-reliance, poise, finesse are all developed through outside activities. I believe that the number of activities into which


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 any student may go and the amount of time which he may spend upon such work should be limited by the college, but I believe that most students who stay entirely out of extra-curriculum activities make a mistake, and I think that the fraternity in urging the undergraduate to spend a reasonable amount of time in such work is doing him a service.

The effect of the fraternity upon the studies of the undergraduate has not been until within recent years all that it should be. Interest in scholarship, however, is increasing everywhere among the faternities, and fraternity averages all over the country are coming up. One of the difficulties to be met, and one which has not previously been given the consideration it deserves, lies in the fact that it is not an easy matter to have a high scholastic average among groups of men exceeding twelve in number. Even men of the highest scholastic standing seem to lower their average when they get into groups exceeding a dozen. It has been remarked at the University of Illinois that the members of Tau Beta Pi, one of the best known of the honorary engineering fraternities, very often have a drop in their scholastic standing when they move into the Tau Beta Pi house. Whether this drop in their scholarship may be attributed to the fact that,


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 having proved their worth by their election to an honorary society, they become self-satisfied and relax their industry, or whether it may be explained by the fact that the most of the men have previously lived in houses where there were few students and so find it difficult to work among so many, it is difficult to say; at any rate it is certain that the scholarship in such cases does usually drop. Statistics show this year at the University of Illinois that the scholarship standing of men outside of the fraternities who lived in houses accommodating more than a dozen men was not so good as that of the fraternities whose membership with us averages about thirty. This fact of lower scholarship was seen in the Young Men's Christian Association dormitory, in College Hall, and in practically all the places where a large number of men are housed. It seems evident from these facts that if a man is going out for high scholarship, he will most easily attain this result by living by himself. Only three or four of the twenty-five men ranking highest in the University of Illinois last semester lived in houses containing more than a half-dozen students, and in not a few cases there were no other students in the house.

It can be seen from the facts given also that the fraternity is solving its scholastic problems


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 better than are other groups of men whose difficulties are not so great as those of the fraternity. The fraternity has house rules and fixed study hours, and so far I can see there is a reasonable and serious attempt to enforce these rules. The scholarship average of our fraternities last semester was as high as the average of men living outside of these organizations and, as I have said, considerably higher than that of other men living in large groups. The scholarship of fraternity freshmen was also higher than that of other freshmen. The fraternity man who wants to study learns to do so even if the conditions surrounding him are not ideal. He comes to the point of not being disturbed by a little noise or confusion. Before he gets through college the fraternity man is usually so immune to the effects of having people about him that he could write his theme or solve his problem in mechanics as easily in the trenches of Verdun as in his own room.

From my point of view this is a good thing. It is one of the regrets of my college life that I lived alone and that I learned to study and to work alone. Now I find it next to impossible to do any serious work with people about me. I have powers of concentration, but I can control these powers only when I have complete isolation. This fact is a great handicap. If in college I had lived


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 in a fraternity house instead of living at home with my mother, I am quite sure, that I could have learned to adjust myself to other conditions, and that such adjustment would be to me today a great help.

I ought not to ignore the fact in this connection that there are dangers to young fellows, especially to those who are easily led, or who have no strong definite purpose in coming to college, in living in a fraternity house. There are easy I chairs and open fires, and pleasant companions about. There are inducements to loaf and opportunities to spend money, and temptation on all I sides to take life easy. The fraternity, like every day life, is a test of character. If a man is weak and purposeless, he may have a hard time of it; but df he is weak and purposeless, he has little place mi college at all and little chance anywhere. Fraternity life is no more severe test of his character than any boy finds who goes away from home as a boy should and tries to make for himself a place and a home among other men.

I believe that the greatest service that the fraternity does for the undergraduate is to set before him high ideals of living. It is true, for youth is thoughtless and impulsive, that these principles are not always adhered to; they are frequently ignored or forgotten, but ultimately, I am Presby-


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 terian enough to believe, they sink in, they leave their impression, they have a greater or a less influence upon the moral life of every man who has taken the oath of the organization. One can not hear the ritual read or go through the ceremony of initiation without having a greater regard for truth and honesty and virtue and brotherly love, and this impression one unconsciously carries into the routine of the business of his every day life. As I came back from the biennial congress of my fraternity some time ago, I could not help noticing the impression which the meeting had made upon the undergraduates who were on the train with me. All of them were young, and some of them were careless, and a few were controlled by the passions of youth; but just then they were serious, thoughtful, impressed with the obligations which membership in the fraternity placed upon them, and determined, too, to go home and more conscientiously to live up to the principles for which the fraternity stands. The fraternity had done them all good.

And so I say, as I said at the beginning, if I were an undergraduate in college again, I think I should want to belong to a fraternity; and if I had a son in college, I should be quite contented to have him a member of such an organization.


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With us at the University of Illinois, although the fraternities have been in active operation for thirty years and are constantly increasing in number, there has been no general quarrel or ill-feeling or jealousy between the Greeks and independents. We have tried to look ahead and solve our problems before they became too complex, so that the disagreeble situations which have arisen at some of our neighboring institutions we have fortunately escaped. We are, perhaps, more democratic than are the students of some other colleges. A man seldom loses standing by not having money, and very often gains none by possessing it. We are a friendly group; everyone speaks to everyone else when he meets him on the street. I am often pleased when walking with some companion through the student district in the evening, disguised by the enveloping shadows which soften the differences between youth and middle age, to be greeted on all sides with the salutation, "Hello, boys," or "Good evening, fellows." Not knowing who I am, they speak anyway, and reveal by so doing a friendly cosmopolitan spirit, which, to a westerner like myself, is very gratifying. At the dignified New England


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 institution where I did my graduate work, such a custom would have been unthinkable. No one spoke to his seatmate there without an introduction. I sat by a man in an English course three days a week for two-thirds of a year without his giving me a sign of recognition, only for us to find out later that we came from neighboring towns in Illinois and were really only simulating the conservatism of the environs of Boston. As I said, with us it seems unfriendy not to speak to every one, whether he be Greek or independent, whether he come from southern Asia or northern Scandinavia. One man with us is as good as another, provided he is a gentleman who has some character.

Fortunately for us, I believe, the fraternities have never been politically a unit. From the time when the literary societies were the only real fraternities existing, there have been divisions, two factions, two political parties opposing each other in every contest and at every election. The opposition is seldom unfriendly or bitter, but it is keen and definite. It is comparable to the feeling which exists in this country between Democrats and Republicans, or between a man and his wife, who, though they may have different political views and affiliations, yet live a congenial, peaceable life together. No matter how many intra-


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 fraternity organizations have arisen to bring the fraternities closer together, and to unify fraternity interests, no matter how many Helmets and Klu Kluxes and Yoxans have been organized to draw their material for membership from the fraternities in general, when the fraternity men have come to the polls the party lines have been closely drawn, and the split has come in about the same place that it did twenty years ago. I am sure that this condition of affairs has worked profit to the fraternities, and kept them far more in general favor than they might have been had they all regularly lined up upon the same side of an issue, for the fraternities to win have had to make friends with the independents, and if an independent wished to win, he must get the support of at least one faction of the fraternities. This state of affairs has made it necessary for anyone running for office, and our fraternity men are regularly office seekers, to make friends pretty generally, if he expected election, both among fraternity men and men independent of such organizations. There is little snobbishness, therefore, and little inclination to draw social and organization lines closely. A good illustration of this condition was seen last semester in the politics of our senior class. The president of the class, a well-known and well-liked fraternity man, was elected without opposition.


text:
House Party

 * "The House Party" (1917), an essay by Thomas Arkle Clark
 * A House Party (1887), a novel by Marie Louise de la Ramée
 * A House Party (1901), a short story collection by various authors

title: House Party


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 He was supported on all sides by Greek and independents alike. When it came to the appointment of his committees, instead of selecting a fraternity man for the most important position, as he might very well have done, he chose the strongest and the most influential independent in the institution. The selection was satisfactorv to everyone because it recognized real worth, and put into an important place one of the most respected men in college.

I am, perhaps, for this reason just mentioned, not so well qualified to discuss the relationship between those men who belong to fraternities and those who do not, it may be argued, as someone might be who is familiar with the dissensions that have arisen in various localities or as someone who may have been a part of these disagreements; I am not directly familiar with the petty quarrels that have arisen in too many institutions between the Greeks and the independents, though I have read many of the details in fraternity journals and in the daily newspapers. On the other hand I am not so sure but that I am better qualified than some other man might be who has lived in an atmosphere of dissension and jealously because I know that it is possible for these two classes of undergraduates, conflicting and discordant as they are in some institutions, to get on happily, to recognize each other's merits, to have no ground


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 of disagreement, and in the various political games which are played in the college community to work together harmoniously.

Coming in contact, as I do daily, with all sorts of students and student difficulties, I am most likely to know immediately about all the differences which arise between individual students, between different student organizations, and between Greeks and independents. I am most likely, also, to become entangled unpleasantly in these, and, whether I wish to do so or not, to become a part of them. It often requires a skilful steering between Scylla and Charybdis. I have sometimes been surprised at the relatively small amount of criticism which I, as a college officer, am subjected to because of these relationships. Only this week a rather hot-headed junior said some pretty caustic things to me, because in helping to carry out the details of a quarantine which had been imposed upon a fraternity and a private dormitory, I was somewhat more rigid with the men in the dormitory than I was with the men in the fraternity. His claim was that I trusted the men in the fraternity and put a policeman to watch the comings and goings of the men in the dormitory. I was able to show him that the fraternity was a responsible organization which I had learned to depend upon and which the members themselves


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 took pride in; that when the head of the organization agreed to a line of conduct I was confident that for the good of his organization he would see that it was carried out. The men in the dormitory were not socially or morally inferior, but they were not in any true sense organized; what one man or one group of men would agree to do would seldom affect the rest of the men. There was so little unity, so little concerted action, that I knew it would be quite unsafe to depend upon the fact that they would all abide by any regulation that might be imposed. It was not that the men themselves were different or more entitled to consideration; they lived in a different way, they were controlled by a different organization, and so they must of necessity be managed differently by me. It was not difficult to make my critic see all these things, and to get him to agree that it was quite just that the men in the fraternity should not be treated quite in the same way as the men in the dormitory.

For a good many years we had every fall at the University of Illinois a pretty severe physical contest between the members of the freshman and sophomore classes which involved many hundreds of contestants. Because of their superior experience, even though their numbers were ordinarily inferior, the sophomores usually won. In one


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 instance the tables were turned, and the freshmen came out of the fray victorious. Two exultant freshmen were walking down Green Street discussing the victory and offering each other mutual congratulations. "I don't see how we ever did it," the first one ventured. "Well, I know, kid," the second man explained, emphasizing each syllable by a slap on his companion's back. "It was or-gan-i-za-tion." Whether the freshman was correct or not, it is quite evident to any unprejudiced onlooker that the main difference between the fraternity man and the independent is, as I have said, that one is a part of a coherent organization, and the other is not. Inherently, there is no difference, and it is upon the basis of organization only, and how best to manage men in it, that distinctions should be made. Perhaps this is as good a place as I shall find to say that the theory that all students should be treated alike is as foolish a one as could be promulgated, though I have heard it emphasized since the time when as a child I entered the public schools. The teacher or school official who treated one boy differently from what he treated another was the subject of much comment at home and on the playground, and the subject, also, of biting criticism. The theory would be all right if students were all alike, but since they are not it is the height of folly and


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 verges on imbecility for parents or teachers or college officials to treat any two young people alike in any situation where the conditions are affected by the personality of the individual. Even children can see this if it is put up to them intelligently.

There are those who argue that a member of a fraternity has more show than an independent, that he is given more consideration, that college officers discriminate in his favor. In point of fact, I feel that the opposite of this is true, barring the fact that organization is one of the first elements in attaining success, and that the fraternity man takes advantage of this favorable condition. I have sometimes felt that possibly a college man occasionally lost favor by being a part of an organization, because one has a tendency to blame him for the sins of his fellows. "Does Brown belong to a fraternity?" the chairman of a committee diliberating over a freshman's intellectual future, asked me over the telephone the other day. "I think so," I replied, "but that fact ought not to determine whether or not he is allowed to continue."

Usually I am convinced that the man in an organization is helped. We see it in business, in politics, in the church, in society—why not in college? The independent fights against odds


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 because he fights alone. "I don't want anyone to help me out," I heard an undergraduate say not long ago. "If I get anything or anywhere I want to do it by my own efforts and upon my own merits." But no one is likely to get very far alone, and more and more we are coming to recognize the fact that it is team work that counts. Even the self-made man is not so much in vogue as he once was, because we see what a crude, freakish, incomplete product he often is. It is better to employ organization and "piece work" in turning out a successful man. The fact that a fraternity man is allied with a group of other men who are working for approximately the same thing as he is working for, who are in sympathy with him, who are willing to help him and advise him, does usually give him an advantage over other men. His condition reminds me somewhat of an experience which I had yesterday. I attended a baseball game between our home team and that of a nearby state university. The odds were pretty even, if I may be permitted to use so paradoxical an expression, and more than once our pitcher seemed in a rather tight corner. At each instance of this sort there always came from all sides of the bleachers the encouraging cry "We're all behind you, Red," and I have no doubt it was that friendly fraternal word that helped "Red" to pull himself success-


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 fully out of the holes into which he seemed to be slipping. It is the same sort of help that the fraternity man has behind him that many men count an unfair advantage.

There are few communities in which the intellectual differences, great as they sometimes seem to be, are so slight as they are in a college community, and especially as they are in a college community in the Middle West. The young men who enter such an institution are, for the most part, from middle class homes. Their fathers and mothers have usually attained some business or community distinction in the neighborhood in which they live, but they very seldom have as broad an education as they hope to secure for their children. These young people themselves have been quite similarly educated. The preparation which one receives in a good country high school is not materially different from that which he would get in a good city high school; at least it can be shown that the young fellows who attain intellectual distinction after coming to college are quite as likely to have had their preparation in a small high school as in a larger one. There is little difference, therefore, intellectually, between these boys who come to college, some of whom may join a fraternity, and a larger number of whom will not.

Socially, also, the difference is not so great


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 as one might suppose. It is true there are some pretty wide extremes and some rather striking contrasts, but as I have seen through many years the procession of fathers and mothers that come each autumn with the opening of college and each spring at commencement time, I am convinced that the great mass of our students, in the Middle West at least, come from a quite similar social environment. I have been given a jolt often at commencement week when meeting for the first time the parents of some well-known fraternity hero, as I have been delighted when I have been introduced to the friends of some modest independent. The Greek, as I have known him, has very little on the independent so far as social prestige is concerned.

Nor is the distinction between these two classes of students in any large degree based upon the relative amounts of money which they or their parents have. It is true that ordinarily it requires somewhat more money to live in a fraternity house than to live outside, but the mere fact that a man has money seldom decides whether or not he will become a fraternity man when he enters college. As I write these sentences the names of a score of wealthy boys who were in college this year come to my mind, not one of whom belonged to a fraternity. Some of them did not care to do so, and some of them could not have got in had they


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 wished ever so much to do so; and on the other hand there are in my mind the names of a large number of fellows with scarcely moderate means who were rushed off their feet by a half dozen organizations eager to pledge them. There is little or no difference between them so far as financial standing is concerned. I have in mind two boys, friends from childhood, who came to college two years ago. The parents of one were wealthy, and the parents of the other could with the greatest sacrifice send him to college. They joined the same fraternity, have enjoyed the same privileges, and have attained about the same distinction and popularity.

I realize that there are many people who do not agree with me in these statements which I have been making. On the one hand there are those who look upon fraternity men as made of somewhat more refined and better glazed clay than are other men. These men, if pushed, would be willing to grant that the fraternity man, perhaps, is no grind, that he is more likely to make the loafer's club than Phi Beta Kappa, but when it comes to social prominence and finesse, they are sure that he has it on every other fellow in college. I have heard the occasional fraternity man talks as if he were making a great concession when he associated with an independent, but fortunately such men


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 are not numerous. On the other hand there are independents who look upon fraternity men with complete disfavor. They consider them snobs, loafers, and men of generally loose principles. One of our honorary societies prided itself for years that when it came to the election of members no fraternity man ever got by. It was not until a fraternity man came along who was intellectually so undeniably superior to the other available men that the old custom was abandoned. Since that time candidates are considered upon their merits, whether they are fraternity men or not.

When such an attitude of mind exists as I have just mentioned, all sorts of difficulties are likely to arise. Social differences and political factions develop, and independent fraternities whose sole purpose is to fight fraternities not unlike themselves are organized and begin a campaign of opposition which results in the grossest and most exaggerated statements. The few college clubs which I have known, as well as those which I have heard of, that were organized with the determination to fight fraternities, or not to become fraternities, were the most radical of fraternities as soon as they were organized. The fact that they were known by English names rather than by Greek-letters made not the slightest difference. The procedure resembles very much the ordinary poli-


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 tical campaign, where opposing candidates go the limit in making unsupported accusations against each other.

The newspapers do not help the situation; they exploit eagerly every trivial circumstance or difference which arises between Greeks and independents. They enjoy a fight. The public believes what it reads, and forms its opinions upon false data. With regard to these things as with regard to many similar ones, it is not difficult to prove almost anything if one does not demand too many illustrations. The most worthless loafer I know in college this year is a fellow who is working his way and dependent upon his own resources for every cent he spends. Neither this one instance, nor a half dozen others would prove, however, that the man who works his way through college is a loafer. The most dissipated, extravagant spendthrift with us last semester was an independent, but no one thinks of blaming his conduct upon the fact that he did not join something; no more should we usually blame another man's downfall upon the fact that he did.

It will not be very difficult to conclude that from my viewpoint there seems little that is pertinent to say with reference to the relationships which exist or would exist between fraternity men and those who are not affiliated with such an organi-


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 zation. They are all made of the same sort of dust; socially, intellectually, financially, and morally there are no appreciable differences between them. Their interests are identical; their environment is in no large degree dissimilar; there is no difference excepting that one is a member of an organization and the other not, the only way we can make a real difference is by imagining one and talking about it. It is this talking about it that does the most of the damage and stirs up the useless trouble. A good deal of it comes from silly jealousy.

Many of us found ourselves in a similar situation with reference to the late terrible European war. My father and mother were of English birth as were my older brothers and sisters. All my life my sympathies have been drawn more or less unconsciously, no doubt, toward England. America in my mind was always first, but England was second. I can scarcely see how it could be otherwise. During the last thirty years I have formed many close friends among Germans and men and women of German ancestry. I can very well see that their feelirtg toward the country from which their fathers came is not unlike that which I feel toward England. I could not expect it to be otherwise. We have gotten on together, and our friendship


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 has not weakened because we have been sensible enough not to exaggerate our differences, not to extol one set of friends to the exclusion of another. Each side, no doubt, has its justification, but on the whole it is better to let it go at that and not waste useful time in discussing it. We are not different in our hearts because our ancestors came from different parts of Europe. In a remotely similar way I feel toward fraternity men and those men who do not belong to fraternities. It is only when they insist on recognizing that there are differences and disagreements, and are determined to discuss them and to exaggerate them that these differences and disagreements actually exist. The men themselves are not different in ideals or in purposes.

"How shall I treat my old friends, after I have joined a fraternity?" I am constantly asked by young fellows who somehow get the idea that when they become members of a fraternity they at once sever all diplomatic relationships with every one outside. I presume it is the same sort of question which presents itself to many a young fellow who is about to be married, and who feels that such a ceremony entirely alienates him from all other friends whom he may have previously counted as his own. Neither marriage nor joining a fraternity necessarily changes a man, and if either act is


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 instrumental in causing differences or disagreements to come between friends, something is wrong with the marriage or with the fraternity. The fact that one takes a new obligation does not in any sense absolve him from an old one. The answer to the question as to how a fraternity man should treat his independent friends is a simple one; he should treat them as he always has done; visit them at their houses and invite them to his own; keep up his friendly associations with them in the classroom and out of it, on the street and on the campus. To do otherwise is to prove oneself a snob, and to emphasize differences which do not exist.

If there is ill feeling and jealousy and misunderstanding on any college campus between fraternity men and those who are independent of such organizations, it is largely because men have exaggerated trifles. When we begin to draw social lines, or political lines, or intellectual lines between these two classes of men we are making a mistake; we are no more justified in doing so than we should be in insisting upon similar distinctions being made between those men who live at home and those who live in a boarding-house; between the philanthropists who belong to church and those who do not. We shall wipe out the differences which are said to exist between Greeks and independents, when we refuse to recognize the fact that there are any.


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I have always felt that some of the strangest and most curious phenomena connected with fraternity life and fraternity customs have to do with the processes and procedures of rushing. In trying to explain to the fathers of prospective freshmen just what fraternities are and what customs they follow, I think there is nothing more difficult of elucidation than those details which connect themselves with the preliminaries to bidding a man. I hear the sounds, and look on at the struggles, and detect the same old subterfuges every fall, but I have never yet been quite able to look upon the procedure wholly seriously. I hear the same argument recited to me every year by the freshman who has listened to it in the chapter houses, the whole purpose of which is to dazzle the coveted man and to make him decide at once to take the pledge button.

Perhaps some one may essay to read this paper who is so ignorant of fraternity parlance as not to know what "rushing" means. For his benefit I may say that rushing is that conglomerate process by which the members of a fraternity in theory attempt to study a new man's character, to get acquainted with him, and to let him get acquainted


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 with them, in order that both the fraternity and the freshman may decide intelligently whether or not either wishes to continue the friendship and cement it into brotherhood. To those engaged actively in this process of eating and drinking, of talking and drawing people into talk, of picture shows and joy rides, of vaudeville and house dances, it is really a serious business, verging often upon tragedy; to an unimpassioned and disinterested spectator the results are often serious, but the methods not infrequently suggest farce comedy.

Until within a few days before term time the college town is dead. One walks down silent deserted streets. Sleepy merchants in the University district sit in front of their places of business, yawning and without a customer. The middle of September arrives, and then everything changes. Fraternity officers come to town, fraternity help arrives, yards are cleaned up, houses are set in order, the student district in general takes on a look of life and activity, and some evening after the freshmen have begun to come in, if I chance to walk down fraternity row, or if I am invited out to a fraternity house dinner, I find that the whole community looks and sounds like a carnival in full sway. The air is full of college songs and vaudeville melodies; pianos are pounding out rag time, ukuleles are strumming, and victrolas are giving


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186 the taking of Mérida (June 713), a change appears to have set in. Possibly about that time Mūsā, who had seen for himself what the country was like, and what advantages he had gained, disclosed his intention of changing his tactics. The Muslim troops had hitherto acted as auxiliaries of Achila's party, but at this point Mūsā began to regard the victorious Muslims as fighting on behalf of the Caliph. In any case about this time the Visigoths began to offer a general resistance, which first shewed itself in the revolt of Seville. Mūsā sent his son 'Abd-al-'Azīz to suppress it, and he himself advanced as far as the Sierra de Francia, not without giving orders to Ṭāriḳ, who was at Toledo, to come and join him with an army in the wild mountainous country, which extends thence to the Estrella, passing through the Sierra de Gata and forming a means of communication with Portugal. Of one place, Egitania or Igaeditania (Idanha a Vella), we possess money coined by Roderick, possibly in 712. The king of the Visigoths had established himself there. Finally, the combined forces of the Muslims came up with him near the town of Segoyuela in the province of Salamanca. In the battle (September 713) Roderick was defeated, and probably slain. His corpse was perhaps borne by his followers to Vizeu, for if we believe the chronicle of Alfonso III, written in the ninth century by Sebastian of Salamanca, a tomb was there discovered with the inscription: "Hie requiescit Rudericus, rex Gothorum."

Thus ended the rule of the Visigoths, for Mūsā, after the battle of Segoyuela, marched to Toledo, which had revolted on the departure of Ṭāriḳ, and there proclaimed the Caliph as sovereign, dealing the death-blow to the hopes of Achila and his supporters. Achila was obliged to content himself with the recovery of his estates, which had been confiscated by Roderick, and with his residence at Toledo, where he lived in great pomp. His brother Artavasdes established himself at Cordova and assumed the title of count, which he transmitted to Abū Sa'īd, his descendant. Olmund remained in Seville, and Bishop Oppas held the metropolitan see of Toledo. As for Julian, he shortly afterwards followed Mūsā on his journey to Damascus, the capital of the Caliphate, and subsequently returned to Spain; according to Ibn 'Iyād, the Arab historian, he then established himself in Cordova, where his son, Balacayas, became an apostate, and where his descendants continued to reside. This then is Saavedra's theory.

The end of the Visigothic kingdom of Spain was the natural result of the political divisions and the internal strife which had undermined the State. Since the time of Recared, and even more since that of Chindaswinth, there had been no insuperable difficulty in the amalgamation of the Visigothic and Spanish-Roman elements. In recent times their opposition has been exaggerated; it has been supposed that the imperfect nature of the fusion effected by the kings betrayed itself in national


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 expression to all sorts of vocal efforts from Harry Lauder in Roamin' in the Gloamin' to Tetrazzini in the Mad Scene from Lucia. I do not need this familiar sound of revelry by night to recognize the fact that the rushing season is on.

I have always been interested in the large part which music, or that which passes for music, plays in the rushing program. I have never visited a fraternity house during the period of rushing that I did not come away hoarse from my efforts to carry on a conversation in the face of the storm of music that thundered and roared constantly on. Very few chapters are content with a mere piano played by a single performer. They try duets and trios, they gather round the piano with horns and drums and shout the latest rag time. At one house which I recently visited they had formed an orchestra with two drums that made noise enough utterly to drown any attempts at conversation. I leaned over and shouted at my companion with whom I was trying to carry on a simple conversation until I was red in the face. One organization I visited last fall had borrowed for the season a musical horror that really fascinated me. It combined under one mahogany roof a regular orchestra—piano, violin, flute, and so on. All you had to do was turn a crank and press a button and you were off. The man who operates the musical


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 machinery at the fraternity house during the fall rushing season must come back in good physical condition, or he will be as completely exhausted at the end of the first week as a green freshman after his first scrimmage in football.

"Why do you regularly carry on these wild musical incantations during the rushing season?" I asked a fraternity officer recently.

"It's the custom; every one up and down the street is doing it," was the reply; "and you have no idea, unless you've been through the strain, how it fills in gaps in conversation, and helps to relieve self-consciousness."

I am quite well aware that it not only helps to fill in the gaps in conversations, but that it usually makes conversation impossible. How it aided the fraternity to get at the real character and worth of the fellows they were studying, however, I could not see then, nor can I now. I believe that one of the ways in which fraternities could help themselves on to more intelligent rushing would be to have less music, and more quiet well organized conversation. I believe this because of the real purpose for which the processes of rushing are carried on. The new man is usually very little known. He has been recommended by some one who knew his father, or who had met his sister at a summer resort, or who has some social ax to grind.


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 Usually the one who recommends him most strongly knows least about him directly. It is, or it should be, the purpose of the fraternity in rushing him to find out something about his social and intellectual training, to discover his purposes, his ideals, his initiative, his adaptability. If he is initiated, the members of the chapter will have to live with him for four years, he will be a member of the family; he will help to give the chapter character and reputation, or he will do his part in bringing it to disfavor or disgrace. It is no trifling matter which a fraternity is undertaking when it begins to rush a man, but I have seen fraternity men give more thought and attention in going into the pedigree, history, and winning points of a bull pup they were about to take into their household than they did to the qualities of the young fellow they were about to pledge as a brother.

I think it would be a helpful proceeding for every member of the active chapter to ask himself before he goes into the work of the rushing season just what rushing is for, and govern his conduct accordingly. Years ago, before the University had rid itself of hazing, it was the custom of the unregenerate sophomores to run in any isolated freshmen who might be out alone after night, and force them to take an immediate bath in the Boneyard, a dirty sluggish little stream scarcely more than a ditch


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 that flows through the campus. I was out one night about nine o'clock walking through the student district when I came unexpectedly upon a group of sophomores putting three freshmen through this ceremony. One husky second-year man was standing on the bank of the stream, and as he pushed each freshman into the slimy depths, he called out lustily, "What's the Boneyard for? What in the hell's it for?" As I have sat by each year for the past thirty years and watched the processes of rushing, I have asked myself more than once, with reference to rushing, the same general question that the sophomore asked about the Boneyard, "What is rushing for?"

Perhaps one of the first things which a fraternity should attempt to discover when rushing a man is how long he expects to remain in college. The purposeless man, the man who has not decided what he is coming to college for, who expects to stay for a year or so and then get into some real work, is useless to a fraternity. It is time wasted taking him in. It is that sort that brings down the scholarship average, that fails to pay his house bills, and that gets fraternities generally into disrepute. Many a good man may have to leave college before graduation, but the fellow who comes with the avowed intention of hanging around only for a year or two ought not to be considered.


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 One of the surprising features of rushing is the rapidity which it is carried on and brought to a finish. "How quickly is a young fellow pledged?" an old college mate of mine, whose only son expects to enter the University next fall, asked me at Commencement time. "Within a few minutes, sometimes," I answered in all seriousness. I have seen men wearing a pledge button at inter-scholastic time before they had been in the chapter house over night; I have known men to be approached with a pretty definite proposition of membership while for the first time on the way from the railroad station to their boarding houses. Freshmen come in to see me every fall with some curiously wrought pledge button, to which they have become attached during the night, and it has often all been brought about so suddenly that they want someone to tell them what has happened to them. The rapidity with which membership is offered and accepted is frequently appalling. It is like conversion at a Billy Sunday revival; it comes without warning or seeming deliberation.

There is nothing that urges on this rapid work like competition. In fraternity affairs, as in other business, it is the life of trade. Business may be a little dull as regards Smith and the Beta's; several of the brothers may be indifferent, and one or two stubbornly "not ready to vote," but if one of the


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 officers of the fraternity happens to drop in to my office and finds a Deke asking me for Smith's address and history, Smith's stock picks up immediately in Beta circles, and ten to one he is wearing their pledge button before morning. I have heard one man, pretty wise and experienced in fraternity affairs, offer to bet that he could take almost any man, inconspicuously dressed, moderately good looking, and not too hopelessly unsophisticated, and get him pledged within a week just by introducing him to a few fraternities during rushing season, and starting a little competition. It would be an interesting experiment, and I should not be at all surprised if it worked. If I dared, I could myself tell some entertaining tales of men who were rushed through in order to keep the other fellows from getting them.

Another reason alleged for rapid work in rushing is the fact that the chapter can not bear to lose a man whom it is seriously after. One of the most frequent boasts in chapter letters after the rushing season, is the statement that "We rushed ten and never lost a man." "Why did you bid Savage so quickly?" I asked a fraternity officer not long ago. "You know little about him, and he is not you type of man in any sense." "I know that is true," he replied, "but the Psi U's were after him hard, and we didn't want to lose him." And yet


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 in many cases these men under discussion are of such a character that it would be a credit to any fraternity to lose them.

I have been interested in studying rushing methods to see how strongly undergraduates are influenced by insignificant or trifling details. If a man talks too much or too little, if his ties or his shoes or the intonations of his voice are not just right, he is likely to be thrown into the discard. "Cole is an awfully good man," a senior said to me in speaking of a prominent junior who was not a member of any fraternity. "Yes," I answered; "you fellows rushed him pretty hard when he was a freshman; why did you never bid him?" "Well," was the senior's reply, "most of us were strong for him, and thought him a prince of a fellow, as he is, but Hill simply couldn't stand for the way in which he shakes hands, so we had to let him go." Here was a fraternity that had turned down one of the strongest and most influential men in college—forceful, aggressive, a real leader—just because he did not hold his arm at the approved angle when he was shaking hands. The fellow who confessed to the reason was ashamed of it, as he should have been.

"I am convinced," I heard a gray haired fraternity man say in a public address not long ago, "that fraternity men in rushing freshmen pay


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 altogether too much attention to the cut of the fellow's clothes. If the chapter would scrutinize the men's characters a little more and their clothes a little less, fraternities would advance more rapidly than they are now doing." In illustration of this point is the story of two men who, a few years ago, came to a little college in the Middle West. One was well dressed, smooth, and self-possessed. He was bid at once. The other was a green, awkward country lad, ill-dressed, and inexperienced. He had beeenbeen [sic] recommended to the same chapter as the first man, but when the fellows looked him over they laughed; he was undeniably impossible. A little later, however, as the men came into closer contact with him in class, in spite of his ill-fitting common clothes, he grew on them. He had a charm and a strength of character which made a vital appeal to their good sense. His name was brought up again, and after much opposition it went through. The first man proved to be commonplace; he never disgraced the fraternity, though he never did it any good. The second was adaptable; he learned quickly to break away from his crudities. The chapter looks back upon him and counts him the best president it ever had. Today he is one of the leading ministers in one of the leading Protestant churches of the country, and the head national officer of his fraternity. The


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 overlooking of certain unessentials, and the recognition or real merit, saved to his fraternity one of the best men it has ever had.

Too often, in a coeducational institution at least, in looking a man over, the fraternity judges his fitness too much from the social impression which he is likely to make upon the girls. The fellow who wears the hand-me-downs picked from the stock in father's country store, has little chance with the sporty chap who runs a charge account at Capper and Capper's. The fear that the chapter's social standing might be damaged, or that some one might laugh at them for picking a "rube," has kept man a good fellow from getting a chance to show himself in the right light. It is a good deal easier to teach a young man where to buy his clothes and when to get his hair cut, than it is to teach him moral principles and intellectual alertness. The impression which a pledge makes upon the girls has very little to do with his usefulness and influence in the chapter.

Rushing is not going to be done very successfully if the work is left to one or two members of the chapter. It is true that some one must be in charge to plan the campaign, to direct the details, to invite the new men to the house, but the responsibility of seeing that the men are entertained, that they get acquainted with every member of the


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 chapter, and that they see the chapter at its best, should be upon every member. Often the responsibility is thrown upon two or three members only, they are given very little support, and when it comes to the time for making a decision, half the men are not ready to vote or vote without intelligence, because they have loafed on their duty, have not seen the new men enough to have any opinion of them, and so delay the decision or render it impossible, by having failed to do their part at the right time. Possibly this failure results from a lack of definiteness in planning the business—for it is a business as important as any which the fraternity does. I have seen a good deal of rushing, but for the most part it has seemed to me pretty purposeless and unorganized. Half the members of the chapter often do not meet the men, and the new men in these cases of course do not have a chance to form a definite opinion of even half the chapter. The whole process is largely a scramble. The men are invited to dinner, there is an hour or so of vigorous pounding of the piano, the crowd, or so much of it as has not sneaked away, is rounded up and rushed to the vaudeville or the movies, and following this a few soft drinks at a downtown refectory closes the session. The process is not one calculated to give either party to the pending agreement an intelligent knowledge of the other.


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 After the members of the chapter reach home there is usually a discussion, however, and men who have been seen in this inadequate way are not infrequently elected. I have known cases where men voted for fellows whom they had scarcely seen, if, indeed, they had seen at all. "What does that fellow look like, that we voted in tonight?" I heard an indifferent "rusher" ask last fall; "I don't remember whether he was a blonde or a brunette." And all the information that his companions could give him was that the prospective brother was decidedly a "good looker."

A mistake which many fraternities make in their selection of men seems to me to be seen in the tendency to rush men of one type or from one town or locality. The fraternity, a majority of whose members are athletes, is likely to be a weak one. The fraternity which chooses a majority of its members from a single town or locality is likely to be a narrow one. Such a tendency is sure to develop clannishness and factions. "Our fraternity has been almost broken up this year," a fraternity officer confessed to me, "by our Chicago men. Half of our men come from one high school, and they always hang together and defeat anything which the other men may propose. We might with propriety be called the Hyde Park Club. We should be far better off if we chose our


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 men from a wider range of localities." I have been forced to the conclusions through long experience that any fraternity that allows a majority of its members to be made up of men from any one city, or even from a number of large cities is making a mistake. I have never known a fraternity that followed this practice that did not ultimately regret it.

Experience has led me to the conclusion that when, during rushing season, two or more organizations allow themselves to get into a wrangle over any man who is being rushed, no one of them is likely to lose much if they drop the man altogether. Of all the men I have known during the last score of years who have been mixed up in a rushing misunderstanding, and who have created ill feeling among organizations, I can not think of a half dozen who have been worth the price of admission to the fraternity which finally got them. A new man who allows himself to get into an embarrassing position during rushing season, or who draws into such a situation the organizations which are rushing him, is usually a man lacking force or finesse.

The practice of rushing only immediate or remote relatives of present or former members of the chapter is one which would require a considerable number of pages adequately to discuss. With us it seems to have the greatest vogue among


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 those fraternities whose history is the oldest. "My father, or my Uncle William, was a Beta Psi," seems to many a young fellow an adequate reason why he should be likewise. I have no prejudices in this matter, but I believe I could go over the records of the chapters at the University of Illinois and easily establish the fact that those which have followed this practice of nepotism have more frequently had cause to regret it than otherwise. An energetic father is with no assurance followed by a hardworking, energetic son; brothers are as unlike often as if they hailed from different planets. "Puny's brother is coming next fall," a senior informed me at inter-scholastic time. "Puny," besides being what his name indicated, was a nervous, impulsive, tricky sinner, who would slip from your grasp like an eel. He was imaginative, talkative, irresponsible. He studied only when he had to, and went to class with the most regular irregularity. His brother was a husky athlete, studious, dependable, regular, and steady as clock work. He had nothing to say; I was scarcely able by the most subtle means to pry a dozen words out of him during the fifteen minutes he was in my office. The boys were alike in nothing I could discover, excepting that each had black eyes.

"We look them over, but we don't take them unless they measure up pretty well," one man ex-


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 pressed it, and that seems to me the more sensible procedure to follow. There are few things, however, in fraternity affairs that cause more trouble and more heartaches. The chapter that follows the practice of bidding relatives of its former members frequently takes in a weak brother, and the chapter that does not do so, often alienates some of its best alumni. It is a loyal alumnus who can see his son or his wife's brother turned down by his college fraternity, and still keep up his annual payments to the house fund. I could easily furnish a long list of those who have not been able to stand the test.

There are fraternities, I am sorry to say, though I do not know many of them, who, like some political organizations, rather than lose a man, will employ methods in rushing which are neither honorable nor creditable. I think I need hardly discuss such details here. The organization that is not honest and above board in its methods that descends to that which is low and coarse, that wins its members through the telling of risqué stories, or through "showing them the town" is not worthy of the name of fraternity, and the freshman who is beguiled and attracted by such things is no asset to the organization that wins him.

A good many people who deplore the evils of rushing as it is now carried on in many of our


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 institutions have the feeling that we could modify, if not entirely do away with these evils, if the faculties or the local fraternity conferences should pass regulations controlling the methods of rushing. I know a great many people who have the feeling that if an evil exists, all that is necessary is to enact a law or pass a regulation prohibiting it, and the matter is settled. My only knowledge of how these matters are regulated by rules comes from my observation of the results which have been attained at the University of Illinois by the young women of the sororities, who have had very definite regulations for a number of years. These regulations have been changed at intervals, as it was found how inadequate or impossible they were or how easily they might be evaded. From my observation of how the girls get on, I am not convinced that by their regulations they have as yet solved the diffiulties of rushing any more satisfactorily than have the fraternities without rules. I am confident, however, that if the representatives of local fraternity conferences could first come to the point of trusting each other, and would then formulate a few simple, sensible regulations which all the fraternities would agree to, and which all would abide by conditions might be considerably improved. Most of the rules which I have seen are


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 too complicated and offer no easy and adequate means of enforcement.

The prohibiting of rushing during the first semester would not solve the problem. Men would always violate the spirit of such a regulation. The normal time for men to get acquainted and form friendships is when men first meet, not six months afterwards. The pledging of men before they enter college I think ought not to be permitted. The limit of a few days, at least, within which time men might not be bid would I think help matters, and I feel sure we shall come to the time when all fraternities will abandon the "sweat box" system of bidding a man still employed by many organizations, and instead of pushing him into a corner, gagging him, and forcing the pledge button on him whether he is eager for it or riot, the proper officer of the fraternity will write him a courteous, dignified note, and will give him an adequate time to come to the decision which, for every college man who must decide whether he will join a fraternity or not, is one of the most important decisions he is called upon during his freshman year to make.

Having said some things with reference to rushing, and the members of the chapter itself, there is much advice and many suggestions that I might give to the rushee. The man for whom these snares are being laid, for whom the wary lie in


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 wait, is more often than otherwise ignorant of the ways of college, and more completely ignorant still of the ways of the fraternity. He is most freqently in dire need of advice, though he may not be eager to accept it. He is often as completely confused as is the country boy who finds himself for the first time alone in a great city. Experienced undergraduates know all this and take advantage of it in the tactics they use in making an impression upon the man they are rushing. Every year I see dozens of boys who are taken off their feet by the suddenness with which all these new experiences come to them, and by their inability at once to decide just what they should do. I could wish that it were all a little more deliberate.

First of all I should say that the man who is being rushed, should not allow himself to be put, at the outset, under obligation to any fraternity. Fellows often ask the new men in whom they are interested to come to the fraternity house and live for the first few days while they are getting settled. The boy who accepts such an invitation is foolish, even though he hopes to become a member of the fraternity which has invited him. He makes it difficult for other fraternities who may want to get acquainted with him, and he makes it very embarrassing for himself, should he later decide that he does not care to become a member of the organiza-


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 tion whose hospitality he has accepted. He may feel inexpressibly chagrined, also, if the members of the fraternity ultimately decide that they do not want him, and are in need of the room which he is occupying. He need not feel, however, that he is placing himself under any undue obligation when he accepts invitations to meals, for that is a regular part of the conventional program by which fraternities get acquainted with new men, and if he joins he will later be given a chance to help foot the bills for his own entertainment. He will be wise, even if he has certain prejudices in favor of a definite organization, not to make too many dates even with it. The easily won man is frequently not desired; it is fatal to his chances of membership for him to reveal the fact that he would like to become a member. It is better not to make too many social obligations until he is on the ground. No matter how well pleased he may be with an individual or a group of individuals he should scatter his dates, for if he gives himself a chance, he may meet others whom he likes better, and by seeing the men of two or three organizations he has a better perspective by which to judge of their relative merits. The facts are, also, that even the brightest freshman needs to reserve a few hours for study at the beginning of the semester.

The man who is being rushed should use his head.


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 If the rushing is being done well, he may observe, if he keeps his eyes open, that every member of the chapter has had some direct contact with him during a single evening—has asked him a question, or engaged him in conversation, or hung over his chair as he was expressing some opinion. If he is wise, he will not stay in one part of the room all evening, and allow the passing show to file by him; he will himself study the individuals who may wish later to have him as a brother as carefully as they are studying him, and so far as it is possible, he will get their names, hold to some detail about each one, and form an estimate of his character. If he gets into the game in this way, his self-consciousness will very quickly wear off, and he will be gathering valuable facts upon which later to base a judgment. He should try to make a study of their character as they are probing into his.

It has always interested me to see how quickly the rushers play up to the lead of the rushee. If he expresses an interest in football, the brothers who are on the squad gather round and show themselves; if he shows a religious turn, some one immediately offers to take him to church the next Sunday; if he seems interested in scholastic attainments, the one "Tau Bete" or "Phi Bete" in the house takes him on. Ever word that he drops is utilized as an index to his character. If there is