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When the Winner Lost/Chapter 7

N the course of the next week I visited the Carlton Chess Club three times, and each time I played in the company of Charles Armand Latisse. He sought me out and seemed to find in my extravagance a kindred spirit much to his liking. After two of the sessions we went to his home to prolong the night of dissipation by games of three-cushion billiards. I found that he was easily my master at this branch of sport, but we always placed a good-sized bet on the result, nevertheless. Since he was generous with odds, I won nearly as many games as I lost.

I found that he kept house with his mother and sister in a rambling mansion on Woodlawn Avenue, of which the greater portion was kept closed permanently. A crew of servants cared for the mother, who was blind and an invalid as the result of a motoring accident several years previously. The daughter I did not meet until the second occasion.

Latisse himself was not a man I would have sought for an intimate. He seemed always cold, in spite of the snapping eyelids and the pretenses he made at friendship. I attributed this to his incessant gambling, which in time will chill the decent qualities of any one. In spite of the open-handed manner in which I accepted his propositions on all bets, he was the sort of opponent with whom one does not care to make a run of three while he is not watching. Whenever he left the room I put up my cue until his return.

On the second night he was leading me eleven to nine in a game I had determined would be the last. I was sleepy and ready to retire. A knock sounded on the door of the billiard room, and he excused himself. I heard a servant's voice delivering some message. I hung up my cue, determining mentally to call the game lost and pay my score when he returned. As my left hand was black with the dust it had scuffed from the green cloth, I rolled up my sleeves and started to wash at the lavatory in the alcove. Due doubtless to the running water, I heard no one enter.

"Mr. Trask?" It was a girl's voice, hesitating, yet vibrant with resolve.

"Eh?" I started back, surprised beyond measure, for though Latisse had mentioned his sister I had not dreamed of seeing her up in the billiard room at five in the morning.

As I looked again I dropped the towel hastily and rolled down my sleeves. Though dressed in one of those middy khaki-skirt-and-boots effects so unbecoming to women generally, Miss Latisse commanded my instant attention. She was an inch or so taller than her brother, and of a straight slimness wholly refreshing after his dissipated slouch. At the second I turned I drew my breath with a gasp, thinking, "She is the most beautiful woman I have seen!" In the succeeding seconds I had to revise this estimate somewhat. Her mouth might be lovely when she smiled; at the moment it held too much of strength and sternness. Her eyes were too cold, also, not with the calculating chill of her brother's eyes, but with extreme reserve. Even the service cap which concealed her hair seemed to partake of the general severity.

"I must ask you to pardon my intrusion, Mr. Trask," she went on hastily, not giving me time for a word, "and also for my odd costume. My name is Elise Latisse, Charlie's sister."

I bowed with what dignity and grace I could summon, without collar, necktie, and coat. "At your service, I am sure."

She advanced to the edge of the billiard table and clasped one of the balls nervously.

"I-I have taken the trouble to look you up." she said, "and so we will dispense with all formalities. In order to speak to you I have forged a message to my brother which will keep him away for several minutes."

I bowed gravely again, not knowing what she could be driving at.

"Do you think the kind of life you and my brother are living is a credit to you?" she burst out. "He is steadily ruining himself." she continued in that quiet calmness of tone that with some women means the deepest emotion, "and it is the influence of men like you that is dragging him down."

"I'm afraid I cannot accept that responsibility," I countered. "I have known your brother only two weeks, and in that time I have not invited him or persuaded him to do anything at all." Though I caught myself watching the finely molded curves of her chin and throat with a strange fascination, I could not afford, in the light of my responsibility, the guardianship of any chap like Charles Armand Latisse.

"Yes, but where have you been together?" she flared, looking me straight in the eyes. "Downtown in some gambling resort, or up here, wagering money at billiards. Oh, you are not the first! No matter what I do to prevent it, he manages to pick up acquaintances, one after another, with whom to do this sort of thing."

I shrugged my shoulders. Inclination suggested strongly that I enlist in whatever scheme she had in mind, but prudence forbade. It well might run counter to the plans of my employers.

"Whatever influence I have with Charles I should probably lose if I tried to help him in any way," I answered. "Men don't take kindly to the interference of outsiders."

I could see that she had come to despise me as a liar as well as a scoundrel who was leading her brother astray, and it hurt almost intolerably, but I was gripping the ends of my resolve not to reveal too much, so said no more.

"Well," she hesitated, "in watching you I thought that perhaps you might help me if you would.You seemed a little—perhaps a trifle above most of Charles' other associates." She turned with a little gesture of despair.

It was not within the boundaries of human nature to allow her to go in this way. For two full years I had not spoken as many words to any woman, and Elise Latisse, in spite of her odd and imperative mannerisms, somehow made me hungry for her approval. Though I did not recognize it at the time, this simply was a manifestation of the attraction any good and beautiful woman possesses for men. Though at her worst probably in the billiard room at that unearthly hour in the morning, I could not endure her contempt.

"Wait!" I said. I was sparring for time, and pretending to hesitate in order to gain a chance to think. "Perhaps I might be able to do something of the kind you desire."

I saw her eyes light up for the first time, and my senses reeled. I mentally "raised back" on my initial estimate of the girl. When she smiled with something of expectancy I knew that Selwyn Trask could not rest until he deserved that smile for himself. She was more than alluring! She was a goddess!

"Yes?" she hinted, and I came to myself to realize that I had presumed.

"Pardon, I was just thinking." I have no excuses to offer for myself, except those that any young fool might summon. In one and one-half minutes I had fallen head over heels in love with a girl I had not seen before, and whose brother I despised!

There seemed to be but one thing to do, and I did it. Stepping quickly to her side, I said rapidly, for I knew my revelation was perhaps the worst thing I could have thought of under the circumstances: "I am not a New Zealander. My name is not Selwyn Trask. I have been a war aviator, but now I am engaged in more important business. Your brother knows nothing of it, and if you tell him what I have told you I will not be able to be of the slightest assistance. If you can keep this to yourself, I will probably be able to—"

"Why, I didn't know you two had met!" I recognized Charles' suspicious, rasping voice behind us, and realized for the first time that I was holding both of Elise's hands.

"Oh, neither did I until a moment ago," I replied, searching my brain for an excuse. "As it happens, we have met before, under rather unusual circumstances. I-I had the pleasure the other day of making Miss Latisse's engine run when it seemed a bit obstinate." I stepped back. "As you left without saying when you would be back, I was just going, when I met Miss Latisse in the hall."

"Since when have you been running an ambulance car?" demanded Charles, turning on the girl.

"I was out Tuesday with Marion Ferris," Elise explained easily. She was a thoroughbred, and I breathed easier.

"Well, I want to know who brought that note?" her brother continued, abandoning his first attack but coming more irritably to the second.

"I don't know. He was short and heavy-set, and seemed to be in a hurry."

Charles growled. "Well, I didn't find any one, and they're not likely to get me out at five in the morning." He checked himself. "You'd better hike for bed!" he advised. "It's rather late for young ladies to be receiving friends."

I could have knocked him down for that, but Elise was fully capable of handling the situation. "I am dressed for the day, not going to bed, like you night owls!" she retorted, flinging up her chin. "Good-morning, Mr. Trask! Come and see me some day soon!" And she had left.

I explained to him that I was willing to call off the last game and pay my bet. This seemed to suit him, so in ten minutes I was ready to be off for my hotel.

"Just a minute, Trask," he said, seeming to get over his grouch for the moment. "I have a live lead which you can follow if you desire. I have seen something of the way you enjoy gambling, and I know that the games down at the Carlton are far too tame for you."

"Yes," I answered, affecting a yawn, although my senses were tingling with eagerness. "Five hundred or a thousand dollars seems like such a petty sum that I can't do my best. I find myself playing carelessly—and, of course, losing constantly."

He nodded, the beady, avaricious look deep in his black eyes. "It's that way, of course," he acquiesced. "As for me," and he dropped his glance in affected modesty, "that sum of money is really important; I can't do what I'm going to propose for you."

"A really live game somewhere?"

"Yes!" He came closer. "I know a place where many of the richest men in the Middle West go to gamble," he whispered. "They play cards, faro, roulette, and all games there for just what you wish. In many of the pastimes the sky is the limit!"

"Really now!" I exclaimed, in a delighted tone. I felt the same crook coming in the middle finger of my right hand that used to exhibit itself when a Boche plane came scudding nearer and nearer to the range of my machine gun. This probably was what I was after! "What is the name of the club?"

Latisse shook his head. "That I cannot tell you " he rejoined still in a whisper. "All is secret on the pain of death. The men who go would not have it known that they gamble. Therefore an elaborate plan is arranged by which every one abides. If you wish to go you must remember that if you exhibit curiosity in the wrong place, or blab a single word of what you have heard or seen, your life is forfeit!"

"A still tongue is one of my greatest assets," I said with a hint of sarcasm. I was thinking of how I had thrown my life into the keeping of this scoundrel's sister merely for a smile.

"It had better be!" he said emphatically. "Do you want to go?"

"Naturally!" I retorted. "You couldn't keep me away now with a loaded gun!"

He smiled in the grim, avaricious fashion I had noted before.

"Well, I will tell you how. To-morrow evening you will walk to the corner of Jackson Boulevard and Michigan Avenue at precisely ten minutes of eight. A taxi will swing up to the curb at the southeast corner on the exact second. Without asking any questions you will board it and stay quiet inside until further orders are given to you."

"Sounds spooky enough to be interesting!" I commented.

"It has to be. You will never know where you were taken, and I advise you to be content with the Carlton if you have any idea you would like to find out! If you have your car followed you never will see the light of day again. Or if you tell any one even indirectly about the place the vengeance of the organization will reach you. Every member is watched closely. This is necessary in order that the whole place should not be taken in some time by the police, like an ordinary joint."

I did my best to convince Latisse that I was thrilled over the prospect of gambling in this manner. Actually I was a trifle excited, though disappointed. It looked as though I had been hired merely to spy upon a company of profligates similar to that famous one which supports the Prince of Monaco in such truly regal fashion. I did not see why such extreme measures were necessary in order to suppress it. If I were to risk my life merely to keep some wealthy old idler from throwing his money to the winds I could not enthuse greatly over the work. Any ham detective would be glad of the assignment at fifty dollars a week. Since I had accepted my salary for doing nothing, however, I was morally bound to go on. I assured Latisse that the next evening would find me trysting with the taxi at Jackson and Michigan, and left, declining the offer of his car for the trip home. After nights like I had been spending I simply had to pump oxygen into my lungs; this I accomplished usually by walking home if the distance was not over three miles.

I just had turned the corner, swinging on at a fast pace, when back in the shadow I heard the light steps of some one running in pursuit. "Mr. Trask!" called a light voice. It was Elise!

I stopped and met her where a post shielded us from the avenue lamps. "What can take you out now?" I asked, delighted to see her, yet wondering.

She waited a second to regain her breath and then looked up at me with unmistakable seriousness. "I hope you will not think me an absolute idiot," she pleaded, "but after what you said I could not help thinking and thinking. I just had to come after you. Charlie hasn't done anything—anything bad, has he?"

"Charlie?" I echoed. "No, Miss Latisse, not so far as I know. Why?"

"Well," she hesitated, "I didn't know but that—— Oh, I really can't say what I thought. Charlie has been so strange at times lately that I have been afraid . When you said that you were on business more important than war I—

"So far as I know now, Miss Latisse," I assured her, "your brother has little or nothing to do with it."

"Really?" She smiled in relief. "Oh, I'm so glad!" For a second she looked at me. "You may not think this is anything but a coincidence, Mr. Trask, but I must say it, since you have been so kind. I—I want to warn you to be careful."

I waited, astonished thoroughly at the turn of her conversation, but sure that she would elaborate.

"It maybe isn't much of anything," she went on with a nervous laugh, "but I'm illogical enough to be afraid of coincidence."

"Enough coincidence makes logic."

"Well," and her eyes narrowed, "the last man whom Charlie had home here to play billiards with went off somewhere and never showed up again. The papers said that foul play was suspected, but nothing ever was heard of him."

"Whew! Do you really imagine there was any connection between the games with your brother and —?"

She started. "They all disappeared after Charlie had ceased to see them!" she said with a hint of defiance in her tone. "I just wished to warn you, Mr. Trask. Though I am afraid for my brother in many ways I know that he had nothing to do with the murder or abduction. I thought possibly that—Oh, no matter!" She turned, thoroughly angry.

"Wait!" I pleaded; but she was walking quickly back toward her home.

title: When the Winner Lost/Chapter 7


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nature is strangely similar wherever we find it. The college undergraduate does not differ widely in characteristics whether we meet him in California or Massachusetts; in Michigan or Mississippi. The deductions which are contained in these essays are drawn from an intimate and an extended association with undergraduate students at the University of Illinois; they might, however, have been written at any other institution where similarly close relationships were possible.

Urbana, Illinois.


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long as we deal with youth we shall have pretty regular violation of rule in college. "How long are we to have student outbreaks, and student irregularities?" our president asked me not long ago. "Can't you ever get the boys educated so that we shall not be longer troubled with these things?" "I could, I think," was my reply, "if I were allowed to work with them long enough. But when they are educated they leave us. A big new crowd of young ones is introduced every year, and the process of education must be begun again."

I remember being asked at one time, with reference to an action taken by the executive body of the University, what caused the members to vote as they did? When I put the question to one of the officers concerned, his reply was that it was a question which no one could intelligently answer. No two men, he said, have in mind the same reason or purpose in coming to any conclusion. I vote for an issue for one reason, my neighbor for another. It is all a matter of personal judgment. The same thing is true, I have no doubt, with reference to the college derelict. The purposes in the mind of half a dozen different individuals who vote to impose a penalty upon an undergraduate who has been guilty of a violation of college rules are probably in no two cases alike. In the main, I take it, however, there is little if any thought


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 in the mind of most men that such discipline is to punish the offender as the state for instance might punish crime. The purpose I have kept before me in whatever I have recommended is, first of all, to correct the offender, to turn him in the right direction, to make it less likely that he will offend in this regard again. The main function of education as I see it is to make good citizens. There is a further one, of course, which discipline subserves, and that is a deterrent one. Offenders are disciplined because it is hoped by that method to call the attention of others to the fact that certain things are objectionable or wrong, and so to reduce the tendency to such irregularities.

There are those whose ideas of right and wrong are so rigid, whose feelings are so strong, that they insist that every one who does wrong should submit: to a definite punishment which will inflict upon him a certain amount of pain and disgrace. Not long ago I received a letter from one of our former students, saying that when he transferred his credits from a neighboring institution to the University of Illinois he had changed two of the grades, and so had received credit for five hours of work to which he was not entitled. He asked to have this error corrected, and said that when he returned next year to finish his college work he wished to register for the five hours stolen and earn his credit honestly. There was a wide range of opinion among our officials as to what action should be taken in his case. The error was one which by no possibility would have been detected had he not admitted it, and it was an error which affected no one but himself, since no one else knew of


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 it. One university officer felt strongly that notwithstanding the fact that the man had confessed and expressed a desire to make good the false credits, here was a case which demanded punishment, a more complete expiation, and he thought that the student should be expelled. I felt very differently. It seemed to me that a young fellow who had the courage to confess a dereliction of this sort and to offer to make such restitution as was possible was well on the way to good citizenship, and should be met half way. In his case the purpose of discipline had been accomplished.

Each institution employs its own methods in the handling of disciplinary matters. If the college is small, the president often is the autocrat who decides the fate of the untoward. Sometimes it is the faculty as a whole which deliberates long and seriously over the cases of delinquents. In my own undergraduate days when a young fellow had been drunk, had danced in a college building, had carried away the campus fence to add fuel to the bonfire in celebration of Hallowe'en, or had backed the cannon into the sluggish campus creek in order to show his disapproval of military drill—when he had done any of these things and was caught, he was brought before the entire faculty, assembled in serious session, and here he was tried. It was a harrowing experience, and not one always likely to bring justice. When an entire faculty deliberates on disciplinary matters, there is likely to be much talking, some wrangling, and uncertain conclusions. The responsibility is too widely scattered, and the student and good order are likely to suffer.


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 In many institutions these matters are left entirely in the hands of the students who through one sort of organization or another sit upon the cases of offenders against good order and college regulations and pass judgment upon them. At other places such matters are handled by a small committee of the faculty, or there may be a combination of these various methods in operation in the same institution. Since I have been a college officer I have had more or less experience with all of these methods.

When I was in college I have no recollection that discipline was often enforced. The institution, just previous to my entrance, had recovered from a rather serious attack of student government in its worst form, and disciplinary affairs were running along pretty much by themselves. There was cribbing, but no one seemed to pay much attention to it. I have no remembrance that any one was ever called to account for dishonesty or in any way punished for it during my whole college course. There were student outbreaks, but if anything was ever done to the individuals concerned, they petitioned the faculty, peace was restored, and the offenders were immediately reinstated in their former positions. Nothing short of a riot ever aroused any comment on the part of the faculty, for with us at that time, as I have said, it was the faculty before whom the culprit appeared, who heard the evidence, and who after much talk and discussion, pronounced the verdict.

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 college is too large for such a purpose, and is too conglomerate and bizarre. A man or a woman may be a very good teacher without having any of the judicial qualities which are required in passing upon cases of discipline. Every extreme of attitude toward the violations of college regulations will be found in any faculty, from the man who would condone any overt act to the one who would guillotine or burn at the stake the perpetrator of the most trifling prank. The time necessary to be consumed by a college faculty in this sort of work, if it is taken at all seriously, is beyond all reason, and in the end offers little likelihood of justice to the student.

It has never seemed to me good policy that the president of an institution should have entire charge of disciplinary matters, not only because the time of the president of any institution is ordinarily taken up with other matters of equal importance, but also because I do not think such matters should ever be wholly in the hands of one man. The cases are frequently so puzzling and so complicated and so hard to unravel that several heads are better than one. In cases where the evidence is not overwhelmingly convincing it is a comfort to feel that one has other men upon whose judgment one can rely and upon whom one can fall back in case of difficulty. Every college president who does not think himself omniscient will feel the same way.

Many institutions throw the burden of deciding all disciplinary cases, such as those concerned with cribbing, and stealing, and drinking, upon a committee of students or a student council. I have talked with a number of college officials the disciplinary


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 affairs of whose institutions are so managed, and they all expressed themselves as well satisfied with the result. One officer who was in general charge of undergraduate affairs in the institution to which he belonged said, in speaking to me, that he should not himself want to assume the responsibility of deciding the complicated matters which arise in connection with student discipline; they seemed to him too difficult to solve, but he was very well satisfied to leave such things with the students who were doing it seriously and satisfactorily. His viewpoint seems to me very much as if a banker might say that his financial affairs were so complicated and tangled and so difficult of intelligent solution that he was more contented to turn them over to his children to be dealt with than to settle them himself.

I have always had an abiding faith in students, and I am quite sure that when they set themselves seriously to the accomplishment of even a difficult task it is likely to be done well; but I have had experience in disciplinary matters and know something of other executive problems which may come before a college officer. There is nothing with which I have had to do officially that requires such careful judgment as disciplinary matters—such diplomacy, such sympathy, such firmness, such freedom from prejudice and bias, such skill in handling all who are concerned with the affair. If the lines between good and evil, between truth and falsity, could always be clearly drawn, if motives and the influences which surround the erring student did not have to be considered, if, in short, we were not dealing with the most subtle and intangible things when we are trying


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 to mete out justice in discipline, I should be willing perhaps to trust these matters to the experience of students. But I know how hard these matters are to decide with fairness, how easy it is to make an error, how difficult, if not impossible, to correct one after it is made, and how much is at stake for the undergraduate concerned.

The greatest handicap in my experience to successful college discipline is the number of rules laid down by the college authorities for the conduct of students. Many college officers feel that when an evil exists or an erroneous custom prevails the only thing necessary is to pass a regulation against the evil or the custom, and the matter is settled. I have found that I can in the long run do far more by suggestion and persuasion than by rule, and do it much more to the satisfaction of the students concerned, for often it is possible to have them feel that they have done it themselves. Generally the more rules an institution has, the more difficulty officers find in maintaining good order, and in keeping the young people within bounds.

It is safe to take for granted that young people of college age know in the main what is right and what is reasonable as to conduct, so that it is not necessary that every sin in the decalogue or that every violation of law under the statute should be named in the college catalog and the penalty for its violation attached. Rules often prevent individual action in specific cases. Every violation of good order should be taken up, looked into, and judged as if it were the only one of its sort. Rules often hamper such judgment. Only a short time ago the members of


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 our own disciplinary committee were discussing the penalty which was about to be recommended for a student who had been somewhat irregular in conduct. "I should be glad to vote for this penalty," one of the members said, "if it did not seem to me inconsistent with what we have previously done in similar cases. The last man we had before us who had been guilty of a similar irregularity received a much more severe penalty."

"Any one who has been on this committee long," a second member answered, "must realize that its chief virtue is that it never pretends to be consistent. It treats men as individuals, and we have never met two individuals alike."

Many college rules are virtually a dead letter because they are difficult or impossible of enforcement, and the existence of such regulations can do nothing less than bring the whole system of college statutes into ridicule and disrepute. If a rule is made, some effort should be made to enforce it; though many people think that laws in themselves carry weight, even if allowed to go unexecuted.

More than this, the very existence of regulations will frequently incite students to insubordination that would not otherwise have been thought of. "I've just discovered," one freshman said to another, "that it's against the rule to smoke in the quadrangle. Now I suppose it will make me sick, but I couldn't let a thing like that go by without having a try at it." I am not arguing against regulations per se; some, of course, are necessary for the proper conduct of any business or institution, but the fewer


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 the better, and then only those which are absolutely necessary.

The best way to manage the student guilty of misconduct is to look after him so personally and so carefully that he may be brought to account just before he has been guilty of the act which would subject him to discipline. The most skilful disciplinary work which I have ever done has been connected with the things that never happened, because they were not allowed to do so.

Granted that the college has made few rules, and that there is some one who keeps himself thoroughly conversant with what is going on, there will still be misconduct, and necessity on the part of college officers to exercise authority. Youth is still young and curious and irresponsible, and is quite as likely to be guided by impulse as by judgment. As I have said, I believe that disciplinary matters in college will be more satisfactorily handled to all concerned if put in charge of a small committee of the faculty composed of from three to five persons chosen because of their knowledge of student life and conditions, and because of their special fitness to form reasonable and sympathetic judgments on the cases that come before them. The members of such a committee should be young or should have once been young with the memory of that time in mind, and their appointment should so far as possible be a permanent one. They should be broad-minded, and above petty prejudices; they should still be interested in the things outside of books that interest normal healthy young people,—such as athletic sports and


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 social pleasures; they should have high moral and scholastic ideals. They should have backbone enough when an unpleasant thing has to be done, and ought to be done, to do it even though it hurts some students and some fathers and mothers. Ordinarily I should not consider it a calamity if neither women nor lawyers were on such a committee. Women are more often than men influenced by their prejudices or their emotions, and lawyers are likely to insist upon a "legal" conviction. Conditions are such that a man should often be allowed to go free who has violated a college regulation, while another man who may not be proved guilty of any actual dereliction may yet clearly be a detriment to the community, and should be sent away.

During the years in which, as chairman of our committee on discipline for men, I have had to do with discipline at the University of Illinois I have had a good many interesting experiences, and have drawn from these experiences some pretty definite conclusions. I have come to realize that a disciplinary officer to be successful must have certain personal traits of character. He must first of all have the confidence of both students and faculty. The faculty must feel that matters given into his hands will be dealt with squarely and without delay. No college instructor wishes to be humiliated by having matters of discipline which he reports either ignored or treated lightly. Neither should he feel that he is compromised, if not every student whom he reports for discipline is found guilty. Some instructors whom I have known are as sensitive upon this topic as aeolian harps. I know more than one who re-


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 fuses to report cases of alleged cribbing, because of the fact: that a student previously reported was not proved guilty by the disciplinary committee. It was not justice they desired but conviction.

No disciplinary officer will get on well unless he has a reputation for playing fair. If the college officer is willing to give the square deal, he will have gone a long way toward solving his official difficulties. He will sometimes have to listen to some long stories, he will have to bury his prejudices against races and individuals, he will, perhaps, often have to go a long way and suffer some inconveniences to discover necessary facts, but, when the college officer was able to show them that he desired to do the fair thing, the college students I have known have for the most part been square, and have been willing to take without complaint or whimpering what was legitimately coming to them for their misdeeds.

The college students I have known will use all sorts of subterfuge to shield a fellow student, but they will usually tell the truth about themselves. There are always two sides to a story, and it is never wise to reach a conclusion until both of these have been heard No matter how damaging or convincing the evidence may be with regard to any question under dispute, it is best to hold one's judgment in abeyance until the accused party has been heard and given a chance to defend himself. Only a few days ago a woman called me on the telephone to settle a dispute with reference to an alleged agreement which she had had with a student. "Should not a student who has rented a room for a semester, and who leaves before the end of his contract, pay for the whole


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 semester?" she asked. "Ordinarily, yes," I replied, "but I should like to talk to the student before answering." When I did so, I found that in reality the woman had violated her contract, but wanted still to hold the student to his.

One of the things that has impressed me most in the pretty wide experience which I have had with college discipline is that no two cases are alike, because no two men are alike. There is always something new coming up—new character, a new viewpoint, new conditions, a new view of temptation and weakness. The work can never become mechanical because of its infinite variety. One might think, if he did not know, that, having seen fifty men during a year on fifty different sorts of wrongdoing, there would be nothing new, and that the next years would be a repetition of the old stories, but it is not true. Every case of discipline which I have had to do with was a special case. I have found, too, that women up for discipline are not at all like men. I have not for years had any direct connection with the discipline of women, that work being done by a committee of women, as I think it best perhaps that it should be. The experience which I did have, however, led me to the conclusion that they are less frank than men, less likely to tell the truth if they have done wrong than men are, because they are more nervous, more temperamental, and have more to lose, as society is now constituted, than men have, if they should be detected in wrongdoing.

I have come to look upon the work of discipline in a somewhat different light than I did during the first few years I had to do with it. At first it took


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 all the courage and force of will that I could summon to recommend discipline of any sort, and especially the dismissal of a student from college. It is no small matter to send a young fellow from college in disgrace. As time has gone on I have realized more clearly the effect of discipline upon the indivdualindividual [sic], and I have seen, too, that the parent quite as often as the child is at fault, and needs the shock which discipline brings. When one sees the fathers he often feels like being more lenient with the sons.

A young fellow who has been detected in a violation of college regulations, whether it be a case of cribbing, or gambling, or stealing, or whatever it may be, almost invariably thinks first of his parents, usually of his mother. I have remarked often, not as a jest, but as a matter of fact, that one parent at least, and often both, of most of the students with whose discipline I have been connected for a good many years has been in the most critical physical, mental, or financial condition,—a condition which the boy thinks will end in a complete breakdown if the parents hear of the son's disgrace. I have often wondered why such critical situations do not more often keep sons within the narrow path.

"It will break my mother's heart," I am told over and over again by boys who think they are uttering the truth, and though this fact is no logical argument if the punishment is deserved, and the good of the University community is to be furthered, I have come to know that it is not true. "If I am sent home," boys say to me, "it will mean that my education is at an end, and that my father will have nothing to do with me further." I have had fathers and


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 “That the Lord might dwell amongst them.” This is the sign to the lost world, that God is with us, the signs of His invisible presence. We are a people to be wondered at. “Here Father am I, and the children that thou hast given.” We are for signs and wonders in Israel from the Lord of hosts, that dwells in Zion—down here, not in heaven.

“He led captivity captive and gave gifts to men. * * * He gave some, apostles; and some, prophets; and some, evangelists; and some, pastors and teachers.” Ephesians 4. 8, and 11. These imply, and include all the gifts, and workings of the Holy Ghost.

Why did he send this power and gifts to men, to his brethren, and to the church? He says for the perfecting of the saints, for the work of the ministry, for the edification of the body of Christ. To make the saints, God’s men, perfect; to lead them in the same Pentecostal power and gifts.

The ministers need it, and they must have the seal of the Holy Ghost, with all these signs, and gifts, to encourage them. They are the visible signs to the world, and seals to them, that God is with them, working together with them, confirming the word, with visible signs.

When the disciples were put into prison and their lives were threatened, on account of the great power with them, in healing, and miracles, they were forbidden to preach in the name of Jesus; for they saw the power came through His name.

They came together, and they knew it was the power of God that caused all their persecution. They knew if they had a form of religion, and denied the power, that they would have no more trouble. But, beloved, they said, “We will be true to God. We will preach the word if we die.” Then they prayed to the Lord, saying, “Lord, behold their threatenings; and grant to thy servants, boldness to preach thy word, by stretching forth thy hand to heal, and grant that signs and wonders may be done in the name of the Holy Child Jesus.”

You see these ministers needed power to give them boldness to stand up for Jesus, to preach all the words of this life.

When they preached they knew they must see the signs in the meeting of the presence of the invisible Christ, who will ‘be present to confirm the word, and their message. Jesus had said, “I will be with you all the way even to the end of the age.”

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 mothers tell me that if their son were dismissed, they would disown him, and though this may sometimes happen, I have never yet known a parent who, when the actual crisis arrived, did not come to the support of his child. A short time ago I thought I had found an exception, but the later details proved that I was mistaken. A father and mother sat in my office and talked to an only son who was about to be dismissed for irregularity of conduct. Both said to him firmly that if he were sent home, he need never appeal to them for help or support; they were through with him for all time. He was finally dismissed, but I was interested to learn very shortly that he was sent to a neighboring state university, and that he was receiving generous monthly allowances from home.

I recall another student dismissed for hazing. His case appealed to me at the time because of the peculiar circumstances at home. His parents were both dead, and an older brother with whom, he had many difficulties, was his guardian. This added trouble the boy thought would estrange them completely. I shall not soon forget his downcast and hopeless face when he came to say good-by to me. A year later he told me that his dismissal from college was the best thing that had ever happened to him. It awakened him to seriousness of life; and more strangely than that it awakened the sympathy of his brother and brought them more closely together than they had ever before been. He came back to the University at the end of his period of suspension, a happy boy and a serious student, and as I am writing these paragraphs, a letter comes to me from him written


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 from a western city where he is now a successful business man, stronger, perhaps, from the experiences through which he has gone.

Another instance is characteristic. When a boy is disciplined, his father is, of course, written. A young fellow this year disciplined, but not dismissed, for some minor divergence from the straight path, showed me a letter which he had just received from his father relative to the notice which the latter had received from me. It was an angry, cruel note, written on the impulse when the chagrined and disappointed parent was smarting under the sting of his son's disgrace. In it he said that he was through with the boy, who if he wanted any further education must himself earn it. He need not come home, he need not ask further for money. The boy was stirred and determined to stay in college; I offered to help him, to lend him money until he could get work, and suggested that I write his father. It was only a few days after I had written until the father came to see me. He was ashamed of his letter, but too proud to take back his statements at once, but before he left me he gave me a sum of money adequate to meet his son's expenses until the close of the year, which I was to lend to him with the statement that it came from a friend who was interested in his welfare, and who wanted to help him out. A little later the two were reconciled, and the story ended happily. My first conclusion, therefore, is that whatever happens to a boy, the folks at home can be counted on to stand by him.

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 moral principle and who is not detected in it, or who, though detected, is allowed to go without penalty, is usually weakened in character by the experience or confirmed in his bad habits. I stumbled upon the fact one day, early in my experience as a disciplinary officer, that a young fellow just entering his junior year was dissipating his energies and squandering his time and money by gambling. When I called him to the office he was very much agitated and begged for "one more chance." It wag the old story of his "first offense." There was the sick mother at home believing in her only son, there was the probable ruin of his college career, there were all the stage effects which I have since come to recognize, and there was the strong assurance that he had learned his lesson, and would give up the habit. Since no other students were concerned, I accepted his word, and dropped the matter. I have since learned that he kept up the practice at irregular intervals through his college course, safe in the feeling that if he were caught again he could work upon my feelings to let him go unpunished. Another case is that of a young man caught in the act of cribbing in an examination. He seemed very penitent, the offense was committed in an environment which made the temptation strong, and he gave his word of honor that such an offense would not be committed by him again. It was not a month before he was again detected, and his only excuse was that since his error had before been condoned, he thought it would be again. The man who escapes punishment, who gets away, does not have his tendencies to error inhibited. There is for him no deterrent.


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 Men ultimately see this fact and admit it. "The best thing you ever did for me," one of our graduates said to me not long ago, "was to send me away from college a year. I thought at the time that it was severe, that it would ruin my chances of finishing my course, that it would break off all friendly relations between myself and my parents, but it braced me up; it gave me the determination to make good; it made a man of me."

I remember one Christmas morning, years ago, when a young freshman and his broken, tearful mother sat at my fireside trying to gather up the fragments of what seemed to them a ruined life and trying to gain courage to face the world. The boy had had very meager resources; he had been hard pressed not only for the comfortable, pleasure-giving things which most boys have, but often even for the necessities of life. Opportunity presented itself, and he had yielded to the temptation to steal from the gymnasium lockers of other students. He had been detected, arrested, lodged in jail, and fined. Now he was out of college and was going home. It was a sad hour we spent together trying to look facts in the face and to plan a sane future, and it seemed, somehow, a pretty hopeless hour. I urged him to go somewhere else and start again, and he promised to try. A few years later I received an invitation to the Commencement exercises of a reputable western college, and within it a card bearing his name. Two years ago he came to see me at home-coming time. He had done well in college, he was married, and he was doing what he could to make the world wiser and better as principal of a reputable high school.


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 The discipline of which I had unhappily at the time been the main cause, he came to thank me for. It had been, he said, the turning point in his life; it had stimulated his will and his ambition to overcome obstacles. He shook hands with me as we parted with tears in his eyes.

Another case is similar. Various articles had been disappearing from the coat rooms at the University and from lodging houses about the campus, and I began to suspect a young sophomore. He fell into a trap that was set for him, admitted his guilt when the evidence was presented to him, and was dismissed from college. He was a fellow of some prominence, and all sorts of efforts were made by his friends to have him reinstated. Public officials, relatives, educators, and religious workers all did what they could to have the penalty set aside, not because the man was not guilty, but because of their personal interest in him; but it did not seem best that this should be done. I lost track of him for a while, and then one day he dropped into my office to tell me that the discipline which had seemed so cruel to him at the time had proved his greatest blessing. It had aroused him to an appreciation of his own moral danger; it had caused him to think as he had never done before, and it had made him determine to get a college education. He had entered another college, had graduated, and is now a successful professional man in a growing city in Illinois.

One can not have to do with discipline long without coming to realize to what lengths the friends of students will go to influence college authorities to set aside penalties which have been imposed. It is not


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 that these friends think the student innocent of the charge against him, it is not that they feel that the penalty imposed is in general too severe; they simply ask for special privilege and special leniency in the cases of their friends. They have worked for the institution; it owes them something for this effort, and they wish the debt paid through the granting of special moral or intellectual indulgences to their friends. Public officials of all sorts, business men, teachers, and even ministers have written me and called upon me to ask for clemency for their friends and sometimes almost to demand it as a right. For the reason that almost every penalty that is imposed will be challenged I have learned that it is wisest in imposing a penalty to make it a conservative one—one mild enough reasonably to be defended and justified, and then to adhere to the conclusion reached. It invariably weakens the authority and the confidence in the judgment of college officials when disciplinary penalties are frequently being set aside.

As a rule the man himself who is disciplined takes his punishment without whining; he accepts a just penalty, admits his error, and generally comes in to say good-by to me and to ask me to write a somewhat detailed explanatory letter to his mother, to give her all the facts and to show her that he is not wholly bad. But parents seldom accept the punishment of their children as just. They have the general attitude of a father who talked to me a year or two ago concerning an attack by students upon one of our local theaters. "When I read the account in one of our local papers of the dreadful things those students did," he said, "I spoke right out. If I had


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 to deal with those students, I should expel every one of them, but when later I saw that my son had been caught, I said, 'Why, poor Victor, he is a good boy. They surely will not punish Victor. He brought every sort of influence to bear upon us, and even tried to persuade his son to falsify as to the facts; but Victor was guilty, and had to go. The disciplining of the parents and friends of students is a far more difficult and trying task than meting out justice to undergraduates, but it comes in as a part of the day's work.

It has never seemed wise to me to convict a student of dishonesty or of any other misdemeanor wholly upon circumstantial evidence, no matter how complete or convincing the evidence may have been. If it has been done we have usually lived to regret it. I should rather let a guilty man go than to convict an innocent one. Not long ago we had reported from one of the courses in civil engineering a case of alleged cribbing. The young fellow accused denied all guilt and did so in such a straightforward way that I was convinced he was telling the truth. He had used in one of his answers, and had used it incorrectly, a table so long and so complicated that it seemed quite impossible that he could have obtained it anywhere excepting by consulting a book. The instructor in the course felt that it was inconceivable that a man before going to a quiz could commit to memory such a long list of figures. There were six columns, twelve items in a column, and seven figures in each item—a total of five hundred and four digits to be remembered in order. We deliberated a long time; the student's previous record had not been good, and


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 it looked as if he had to be guilty. He protested strongly that he had written the table from memory. Finally one member of the committee turned to the boy. "You say you committed this to memory in the belief that you might get it in the examination?" "Yes," he replied, "I can commit almost anything at sight." "Do you think you could repeat the table now?" "I believe so," he said hesitatingly. It was three weeks since he had had the test, but he dropped his head for a moment and then began. "I'll read the figures across," and he did so haltingly but surely, and in the five hundred and four digits he made an error in but two. I think I shall never vote to convict any one on circumstantial evidence again.

I have had so many varying experiences with undergraduates and their escapades and irregularities that I have come often to have a sort of intuition as to what has happened as soon as I talk to the student. Two instances of this will suffice to illustrate my point. In one of the large laboratories in chemistry an instructor became suspicious that certain students were collaborating in their experiments, and were not performing all of them. It was thought that each man was doing a part of them, and that the others were working them up from his data, changing the data very slightly to avoid suspicion. I called the men and talked to each of them alone, as is my custom, before bringing them to the committee. When the committee saw them their explanations were so clear and direct as to when and how they had done their experiments that the unanimous recommendation was that the case against them be dismissed. A night intervened before I could take the recommenda-


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 tion to our Council for confirmation, as is required by our rules, and during this time I had recurring to me constantly the feeling that one of the men at least was guilty. I held up the recommendation long enough to have another interview with him. At this interview I said to him that though the members of our committee had believed his story and thought him innocent, as I had thought over his manner of giving his evidence I was convinced that he was guilty, that without the other man's knowledge, he had had access to his data and had copied his experiment. My frankness seemed to make an appeal to him, and he confessed that my surmises were correct.

One of the merchants near the campus not long ago had a number of checks presented to him which turned out to be forgeries. The custom of taking any one's check is so common with our local merchants that it is usually impossible to remember who passed such checks when finally they are detected. As usual he brought these checks—three of them—to me, to see what I could make of them. They all bore the name of a well known student, but when I compared his writing with that of the signature on the checks, though there was a similarity, there was no doubt that the signatures were forged. It was evident to me, however, that the man who had committed the forgery had been familiar with the student whose signature he had forged, that he knew his signature, the name of his bank, and something of the amount of money he was accustomed to keep on deposit. "Who is your now?" I asked the man whose bank account had been threatened, "and


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 who was your last year?" As soon as he had named his  of the previous year, I was completely convinced that I had found the guilty man. I had in fact had an interview with him that very morning, and I knew something of the financial difficulties he had been in, and I felt strongly the weakness and shiftiness of his character. Before calling him I got from his English teacher his last theme, and I looked up his study list which bore his penmanship and his signature. When I compared these papers with the forged signature I found two or three things which interested me. The color of the ink was identical in all cases, the form of several letters was the same, and the general slant of the letters was similar.

After I had gone over these things in my own mind I called the suspected student and told him the whole story. I presented him with the evidence which I had, laid the forged signatures and the samples of his own writing before him, and said to him quite frankly that I thought he had written the forged checks. He turned quite white as I was talking; when I had finished he dropped his head upon the desk for a moment and then looking me in the eye he said, "I did do it." I presume that in reality I had little or no convincing evidence against him. It was purely a matter of knowing the man and feeling that he was the guilty one. It is a sort of feeling which it would be dangerous to rely upon, and yet it has got me out of a corner many and many a time.

There is much in the experience of a college officer as closely connected with discipline as I am to make one cynical and to cause him to lose faith in human


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 nature; all that is low and unclean and dishonest in students I am daily coming in contact with. Yet I am constantly having experiences that show me that men are still honest and conscientious and manly One busy day a few years ago I received an urgent letter from one of our graduates who had been out only a few months asking me to name a time when I could see him on an important and private matter. The case was urgent, he assured me, and the interview meant much to him. He came in a day or two and told me his story. When entering the University he had transferred from another college. By some curious error the registrar of the college from which he had transferred had entered upon his record credit for a subject which he had never taken. He had let the error go without mentioning it, the subject had been transferred to his University credits, and he had used it toward graduation. The whole mistake had arisen through no direct act of his own, and he had weakly let it go. The deceit had weighed constantly upon his conscience until he could bear it no longer. He was quite willing to relinquish his diploma or to reënter the University and make up the amount which had been falsely credited to him. I thought that perhaps there might be some other solution of the matter and went over his college credits with that hope in mind. I found to my satisfaction that by a slight readjustment of his work the surplus credits could be discarded, and that he still had credits enough honestly earned to meet the requirement for graduation. I sent him home happy, and so far as I know, he and I are the only ones who know all the details of the story.


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 Two years ago I had another experience with a young fellow caught in a really serious college escapade, which strengthened materially my faith in human nature. It was a situation in which the boy knew that if he told the truth he would be permanently dismissed from college. I knew all the details of the case, but this fact he was not aware of. In spite of the penalty which he knew would be inflicted, and ignorant of what I already knew he told our committee as frank and straightforward a story as I have ever heard, and though his father is a man of wide influence in the community in which he lives, the boy accepted his punishment in a thoroughly manly fashion and left me with the most friendly feeling. It gave me the greatest satisfaction a few months ago to be able to write him that because of his truthfulness and because of the manly way in which he had received his punishment, our Council had reconsidered its action in the case and would allow him to return to the University next fall—an action which had been taken in reference to no other similar offender in ten years.

I was walking across the campus one bright spring morning not many years ago when I came upon a young sophomore sitting on the senior bench. "I thought you'd be along soon," he said, "and so I was waiting for you." "What can I do for you, Ralph?" I asked. "Well," he answered, "I was drunk last night, and I had to tell some one; so I thought I'd tell you." The sequel doesn't matter so much, I suppose. I am glad to be convinced daily that there are still honest men in college—men who have courage to tell the truth even when the truth brings public


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 disgrace to them, men who are willing to confess their faults even when such confession means dismissal.

I seldom lose track of the fellows who for one reason or another have been disciplined by the University. Even if their dismissal is a permanent one they write to me, or send me messages, or drift at intervals in a friendly way across my path. I count them among my closest and warmest friends. Only this afternoon one of them called me up to ask a few words of advice and to make a kindly inquiry about my health. There is lying in my basket of unanswered correspondence one of the kindest letters I ever received from a boy whom I was instrumental in sending away from the University.

There is never a Christmas that I do not hear from some of the once derelicts who send me good wishes or the baby's picture. It gives me the greatest pleasure to know that these men are almost without exception doing a man's work in a manly way, and that out of their discipline has come for them a real strength of character.


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I used to lie awake at night and try to devise means of disposing of the money which I should make by writing a book or through my investments in oil stock, one of the philanthropic plans which suggested itself to me most frequently of getting rid of my spoils, was to found a loan fund for needy students by which boys with ambition and no financial backing should be able to borrow money easily to complete a college education. I had been desperately hard up myself as an undergraduate, and I had a more than ordinarily sympathetic feeling for others in the same situation and a desire to mitigate their pain. I know a good deal more about the college borrower, however, than I did twenty years ago, and though I still believe in college loan funds, I am not so sure as I once was that money or an education too easily obtained is always highly valued. I have found that not all of the young fellows in college who are willing to borrow money deserve to be helped, and that many who most deserve help are unwilling to borrow. I have seen the college borrower in a new light. It so happens that my official position has given me an unusual opportunity to observe two classes of men in college who want to be helped out of financial holes: those who have come to me for personal and immediate help because I seem good-natured and easy, and those who come to me as an


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 official of the University, who for some years has had general charge of the University loan funds. I have gained the confidence, also, of not a few soft-hearted friends who have at one time or another yielded to the touch of the indigent undergraduate, and who have told me whether they have lived to regret their momentary and monetary weakness or to rejoice that the chance had been given them to help a needy and a worthy youth. From these two experiences I have accumulated a considerable body of experience and have formulated generalizations.

Our loan funds at the University of Illinois are safeguarded by numerous regulations and restrictions so that it is not possible for an undergraduate who finds himself out of funds in the morning to negotiate a loan from his alma mater before evening. The prospective borrower must fill out an application blank, he must give references, he must, in most cases, offer security and must submit the names of at least two persons who know him and who are acquainted with the individual whose name he offers as security for the repayment of his loan. All this takes time—sometimes it requires a month for all the preliminaries to be gone through, for few people answer letters promptly, and some otherwise good citizens never answer them at all, and so possibly save themselves considerable bother, as do those worthy though unprogressive individuals who refuse to install a telephone. The borrower who has not made his plans sufficiently far ahead of time is sometimes annoyed by what he considers unnecessary red tape and inexcusable delay. A young fellow called on me only a few weeks ago wishing to get help from one


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 of our loan funds. His monthly check had not come, he had an engagement out of town, he needed thirty dollars immediately, and he wanted to catch the afternoon train. When I explained to him that our loan funds were not primarily to relieve such cases of distress as he presented, but even if we should be willing to make a loan to him it would take at least two weeks and possibly a month to get it approved, he was quite disgusted, and went out of my office muttering anathemas against the system.

The undergraduate who borrows money is usually inexperienced in financial matters. He has established nothing that resembles credit, he is ignorant of all such things as interest: and security and discount except as he may have come into contact with the terms while pursuing the study of arithmetic in the grades. He has seldom signed a promissory note before, and he usually signs this first one, unless some one insists otherwise, without reading it. He is told, perhaps, that the note bears five per cent. interest from date and that it will fall due in two years and eight months. This fact, however, is not likely to make any serious impression upon his mind excepting that it seems a sufficiently safe distance in the future to cause him no immediate uneasiness or worry. I have never known more than a half dozen student borrowers who got the date of the maturity of their note so definitely in mind as to be sure of it without a notification from the bursar. It is true that all of our regulations and requirements are down in black and white and are given to every student to be read when he applies for a loan, and though he affirms when he makes application for his loan that


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 he has read these regulations, and though I have no doubt he goes over them, they seldom make any lasting impression upon him.

Most students have the feeling that it should be easier in a college town to borrow money not only from the college itself, but from private individuals, than in any other community. The contrary of this is in fact true, for men with money who live in a college town have had more experiences in lending it and more opportunities to lend it to undergraduates than have other people and have learned something from that experience. Every week almost throughout the college year some student, down in his financial luck, often a man whom I have never seen before on his first registration day, comes cheerfully and confidently into my office and asks, "Could you tell the name of some one in town who would lend me some money?"

"Can you give security?" I inquire. He seldom knows what I mean by the term, but when I explain I find almost invariably that he can not, so that the banks are out of the question. I generally explain to such a man that the place for him to get money is at home where he has friends, where people know him, and where, if he has lived a steady, dependable life, there are no doubt those who would be willing to trust him; but he generally leaves me discontented and disappointed.

I am surprised often, too, at the optimism of many of those who wish to borrow. Fellows who have not been able to save anything in the past are eager to tax the future, gonfidently expecting that what has proved impossible this year will offer no difficulties


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 next. A man came into my office last fall and said that he would like very much to enter college. He, however, had no money and his entrance was dependent entirely upon his ability to borrow a sum sufficient to carry him through the year. He was not young—was in fact, I discovered by inquiry, twenty-eight years of age. He had been out of high school eight years, had had a fair position during all that time, was without responsibilities excepting to take care of himself, but he had not saved a cent; he did not have enough money to pay our matriculation and incidental fees, which are in reality trifling.

I told him that it would be impossible for the University to lend him money, because it now has a tegulation that no loans are available to students until they have been in residence for at least one year, but I went further to show him that if he had only himself to support, and had held a good position for so many years without saving a little money at least, so far as any loan was concerned he was what I should call a pretty poor bet. Any individual or institution would be doing a foolish thing if it lent him money with the idea that it would within any reasonable time be paid back.

The man who does not look ahead before he enters upon any enterprise to determine how he is going to complete what he has undertaken, as well as the undergraduate who enters upon the work of a year in college without having determined upon some way in which he may be able to meet his expenses, is ordinarily a poor risk. If he borrows money he will be quite as unlikely to make definite plans to pay it back and will come up to the time of the maturity of


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 his note with hardly more than enough money to pay the interest. It is the fellow who applies early for his loan, who makes his plans a reasonable time ahead, who usually proves to be the best risk. A man who goes into debt should have in mind at least two reasonable ways for meeting his obligation, so that if one failed the other might prove dependable, just as a boy pursued by an angry bull in a pasture should be able to figure, as he flees to safety, that if he is unable to climb over the fence he may dodge under. He should take into consideration, also, the fact that it is the unexpected usually that happens. The fellow who never had an accident in his life, and who, therefore, considers it unnecessary to carry accident insurance is often the first to slip on the stairway and break a couple of ribs. The man who borrows should take into account the ordinary accidents and unexpected exigencies of life, but it is rarely that he does do so.

The granting of loans from the funds which I have to do with is usually restricted to students of good or excellent scholarship. In presenting to the University the money for establishing one of our, funds, the donor said specifically:

"I do not wish loans to be granted from this fund to-students simply because they are ambitious and needy. I feel that a great University should give special aid only to those men and women who show distinct promise of intellectual power and success." It is true, however, that many an undergraduate while having to work for his living in college seems intellectually commonplace, but if through a loan he is permitted to give all of his time to his work,


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 he shows at once a marked increase in intellectual power. I have not, however, found that the scholastic standing of a student is in any dependable way an index of whether or not he will show promptness in the repayment of a loan. As often as not the dullard is as conscientious in meeting his financial obligations as is the high brow.

One significant fact has shown itself in the collecting of loans due the University. We have three principal loan funds. From one of these the loan is made to the individual student upon his own personal note without endorsement by a second person. Notes drawn upon each of the other two funds require security. No insistence has been made that these last notes be bankable, but only that a second person who has been recommended as honest and reliable sign them. Even when these notes are not paid when due there is seldom an attempt made to collect from the security. In but one instance, so far as I now remember, during the twenty years that the funds have been available has an endorser of a note been required to pay. It is a fact, nevertheless, that the notes that bear an endorsement are met with much greater promptness and regularity than are the other notes. It is not an exaggeration, I believe, to say that the unendorsed notes run twice as long, before they are finally met, as do those which bear an endorsement. The man who gives only his personal note feels safer, knows usually that a collection could with difficulty be forced, and so feels justified in taking his time.

A few years ago a wealthy friend of education offered to present to the University five-hundred dollars a year to be given to such needy students as the


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 University might designate and in such sums as might be determined. This was done for one year, but the effect upon the men themselves was to my mind not a good one; they were not stimulated by it, their self-respect and self-reliance were not strengthened. I therefore wrote the trustee of the fund suggesting that the amount which he should put at our disposal be lent to students, rather than given to them, at a low rate of interest for a reasonable period of time and upon its repayment that it be used to increase the fund available. This was done, and the effect in my opinion has been much more salutary. What we get for nothing we seldom value.

The time set for the repayment of the loans, which I am discussing, is two years following the date of the borrower's regular or expected graduation. It has been interesting if disappointing to me to find that only a very small percentage of the loans are paid within that time; if they were, the University would each year have at its disposal nearly twice as much money available for loans as it now has. The time the notes actually run, I have no doubt, if the matter were investigated, is fully twice as long as that agreed upon. Most of the loans are ultimately paid, for however careless he may be and however long he may delay the liquidation of his debt, the college borrower is innately honest and at least means well.

There are exceptions to this last statement of course, one of which I recall. I met an old college acquaintance of mine a few months ago. He had been graduated twenty-five years or more, and though he had not made any marked success in his profession, yet he was in comfortable circumstances and


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 Then like Peter they could say to those present, “This that you see and hear and feel, it is the promise of the Father, it is the Holy Ghost.”

The Son was pleased with their prayer, and with their faith and courage, and the place was shaken—the building where they were assembled—and they were all filled with the Holy Ghost, and spake the word with boldness.

Beloved, see, this was a greater baptism. They needed it to prepare them for the work they had to do. After this they had greater success. God did mighty signs and wonders at the hands of the apostles; great fear fell on all the church, and on all that heard, and saw, these things. Multitudes of men and women came flocking to Christ, and were added to the Lord.

Multitudes means thousands. They came from Jerusalem, and all the cities round about, bringing their sick folk in beds, and cots; placing them along the streets, that the shadow of Peter passing by might overshadow them. You see that the power went forth from their bodies, like as when Paul laid handkerchiefs on his body, and sent them to the sick, and the devils or disease went out, and they were healed.

Oh! Praise God, I am a witness to these things. We see the same thing today, some of the greatest miracles of healing, and salvation I have ever seen, have been done in the same way, hundreds of miles away. He gave gifts to men.

Read carefully the twelfth chapter of the first epistle to the Corinthians. Paul shows that the church is in possession of all the gifts, power, and calling and work of the Holy Ghost. That they are in the Body of Christ, His Church.

Oh! beloved, we ought to come up to this, in all places in these last days, when the Bride is making herself ready. He says he does not want us to be ignorant concerning spiritual gifts: “Covet earnestly the best gifts,” “Follow after charity,” or love. “Desire spiritual gifts,” for God has set them in the church.

Gifts for the rebellious also. Thank God, the sinner need no longer be rebellious, but fall at His feet, and settle the old account. He says He has a gift for you. Oh, “The Gift of God is Eternal Life,” and then you are God’s man. No longer a stranger or foreigner, but have been brought near by the Blood of Christ. Through him we will have access by one Spirit unto the Father. You are a citizen with the saints, and of the Household of God;

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 without a family depending upon him. He was recalling old friends and old experiences.

"You know the President lent me two hundred and fifty dollars in my junior year," he said. "I suppose the debt's outlawed long ago."

"Haven't you paid it?" I asked him in astonishment.

"No," he replied quite nonchalantly. "He never pushed me, and so I just let it go. He's dead now, anyway."

There was no suggestion in his tone of obligation or gratitude or shame for having treated a friend badly; and the kindly old man who had done him the service had lived a life of sacrifice and died in comparative poverty, no one knowing how much of his savings had gone with the two hundred and fifty dollars which my college acquaintance referred to.

The actual reasons why the college borrower does not pay are usually the reasons of youth, for youth is optimistic, the future always looks bright; to-morrow is to be a more successful day than to-day has been. There is no coefficient of error introduced into his calculations for the future, and he seldom if ever prepares for the worst or for the unexpected.

Some men are thoughtless, careless, and indifferent. Having made an obligation, the fact passes out of their mind entirely until their attention is called to it. Under these circumstances they are quite unlikely to be in any position to meet the obligation because they have not prepared to do so.

Some, naturally, have ill-luck. Their wages when they get to work are lower than they anticipated; illness overtakes them, and a hospital bill, and a doctor's


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 bill have to be paid; unforeseen calamities arise in their immediate families, for which they were not prepared, and for which they were not responsible. All these things must be taken for granted, and expected, but they do not indicate the usual nor the normal condition of affairs.

Other graduates fall into situations at once in which unusual opportunities for investment present themselves. They are thereupon loath to use their money for the payment of a debt which seems to many of them, now that the money has been spent, very much like putting their earnings into a dead horse. "I could have paid the loan a long time ago," one man frankly wrote me, "but I could get money nowhere else at so low a rate of interest, and my investments were bringing me so much more than this that I could hardly be expected to withdraw them just as I was getting a financial start to pay this debt. The University can afford to lose better than I can."

A few men take advantage of any chance to evade payment. I am reminded of one of these whom I had personally helped. He was not eligible for one of our regular loans. He was down financially, had a chance to get a good job in a distant city, but had no money to pay his transportation. I came to the rescue and took his personal note for the thirty-five dollars required to carry him to his destination. When I wrote him a year later suggesting payment of the sum borrowed, he replied that it was at that time inconvenient for him to pay; besides, he added, the debt was uncollectible since he was not of legal age when he signed the note. He was, therefore,


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 he alleged, at liberty to pay when and if he pleased. There are not many like him, thank heaven.

It is a curious coincidence that of the eight men whose loans from one of our funds are longest overdue seven are lawyers. Perhaps their knowledge of the law has helped them in the evasion or the neglect of their obligations. It will at once be said by some one that the explanation of the phenomenon lies in the fact that lawyers are long in getting established, and that these men are not making enough money to meet their obligations, that they must spend what they make in order to keep up a respectable appearance. This is a good explanation, but in this case it is not the correct one. Of the ten lawyers whom I have repeatedly written concerning overdue accounts only one has replied; no one has paid, though all are quite able to pay.

A great many fail to meet their obligations on time because they plan to pay in one sum what they have borrowed. Almost every one who goes out from college could, from the very beginning spare five or ten or fifteen dollars a month from his salary and so gradually reduce his debt; but when it comes to having at hand two hundred or three hundred or five hundred dollars, the situation becomes more complicated if not impossible. There are too many temptations surrounding the man just out of college tending to separate him from his money to make it likely that he will have available at one time the total sum of his indebtedness. If he begins by making monthly payments he will be surprised how quickly the debt will be cancelled without any apparent embarrassment to himself.


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 But the excuses already given explain only a small percentage of the cases where notes are not met at the time of maturity. Far and away the largest number of graduates who fail to meet their notes when they become due give matrimony as the only excuse. Whether the self-supporting student who must borrow while he is in college is after he graduates less experienced in the affairs of the heart or more sentimental than the average, it is a fact that he is the first to gather his family gods under his own roof-tree, and, ignoring or forgetting his former obligations, to take to himself a wife. It has become quite a habit with me now, when a former student does not pay his loan when it becomes due, to suppose that he has married, or knowing that he has married and that his regular monthly payments have ceased, to surmise that his family has increased in size, and my supposition is nearly always correct.

A few years ago I found in the morning mail an appealing letter from a former undergraduate. He had been out of work for some time until all his funds had gone. Now, however, he had found a good job. His only trouble was that he did not have at hand, nor could he get, sufficient money to meet the most simple living expenses until he should obtain his first month's pay. Would I not, remembering our former friendship, let him have twenty-five dollars until pay day, and thus virtually save his life? I sent him a check for the amount asked for, but did not hear from him for months. I wrote him two or three times, but even my letters brought me no response. Then one day when I was in the city I called


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 him up on the telephone and inquired courteously why I had not heard from him. He seemed reluctant at first to give me any definite explanation, assured me that it had been his specific intention to write me that very day, and, finally, when pressed admitted that he married immediately following the receipt of my check and added that I, being married myself, could well understand that the necessity of buying furniture and establishing a home left him no surplus to meet obligations previously incurred. I understood perfectly. Incidentally I have not yet received my money, though I have had a postal card picture of the new baby and a brief line from father indicating that he expected soon to send me a remittance.

A few quotations from those who have assumed later matrimonial obligations will illustrate the excuses I receive for delayed payments: "My wife's hospital bill has added an extra burden during the last year," one man writes; "I am to be married in December," says another, "and do not find myself financially where I expected." "In September after my graduation," moans a third, "I was married, and my salary was reduced to a living wage. I, therefore, find it impossible," ete.

Here are a few more: "To be frank with you, I have had money enough to pay the loan at two different times, but six months ago I took the best girl in the world in wedlock." "If you ever began life on a small salary, with some indebtedness, in a city where the cost of living is high, you would appreciate," etc. "My expenditures are those of a married man with one child."


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 Matrimony seems to be thought an adequate excuse for all sorts of financial delinquencies, since fully seventy-five per cent. of those students who have availed themselves of the advantages of our loan funds in the past, find it the only excuse they have to offer for not meeting their obligations on time. So often is the excuse given that I have recently had inserted in the application blank which students fill out when asking for a loan, this question, "Do you contemplate marrying soon?" In all this that I have related something seems to me wrong. Is it our system, or our teaching, or is it that the student who makes the loan has an inadequate conception of his obligation, or does marriage like war constitute an adequate and legitimate excuse for a man's not meeting his financial obligations promptly?

There is another class of borrower, however, in college whom most undergraduates who have soft hearts and easy purse strings, and whom all college officials are acquainted with. These men are those who do not wish to take advantage of the more formal methods of obtaining help through the regular loan funds established by the institution, but who are only temporarily insolvent and who are expecting checks on the next mail or legacies at the convening of the next term of court. I had a man ask me for a loan once who had an aged grandfather upon whose death he was expecting rather generous returns. I had the strength of character to refuse the request, and though that was years ago, at last reports grandfather was as hale and hearty as ever.

These men seldom want a great deal, but they want it at once to meet the pressing obligation or to catch


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 the waiting car. I think I have not, more than ordinary men, found it difficult to resist their plausible arguments, but my experience with them has been varied and interesting. They are the harder to resist because their plea is so reasonable and their need so urgent. I have done business in one way or another with a good many of them within the last twenty years, and though the most of them have paid, so far as I now remember, only six have strictly kept their agreements. Until a week ago it was only five, but last week a man to whom I had lent thirty dollars, paid me three days before he had agreed to do so and surprised and almost shocked me by adding twenty-five cents for interest.

"Do you know where La Rue is now and what he is doing?" one of my faculty friends asked me the other day.

"He's married and has a good job in Peoria," I replied. "Why do you ask?"

"Well, he borrowed a hundred dollars from me just before he graduated with the understanding that it was to be paid within a few months, and I've not seen hide nor hair of him since. If he were hard up I did not want to press him, but if he is able to pay I thought I might as well have the money as he."

Few weeks go by that I am not approached by students with the request that I endorse a note for them at the bank in order that they may make a short time loan. In my younger and less experienced days I used occasionally to do this when I thought I knew my man, but after I had paid a few of these notes at times which were often annoyingly inconvenient to me, I came to the conclusion that I should under no


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 circumstances endorse a note for a student or any one else for that matter. If I had the money and felt so inclined I might let him have it, and if I did do this it would be with no idea of being able to count on its return at the time he agreed to do it. If he did pay it when he agreed to, it was just like finding it; if he did not I was not surprised. I felt always in such a case as Josh Billings in his beatitude "Blessed are they who expect nothing, for they shall not be disappointed!"

An experience of this sort was mine only a few months ago. A young fellow whom I knew very slightly presented himself at my desk with a promissory note in his hand for forty dollars all filled out and ready for my signature.

"I can't do it, Mack," I said, "I'm sorry, but I've paid my share of that sort of note, and I've sworn off."

"You wouldn't have to pay this one," he assured me.

"That's what they all said," I continued, "and I have no doubt they honestly meant it." He seemed so disappointed and in so difficult a place that I was rather sorry for him. "If I should sign the note," I asked him, "how would you meet it? Where is the money coming from?"

"I have a pretty generous allowance," he explained, "and I am sure I could easily pay ten dollars a month out of it if I could get this money, and I surely do need it very seriously." I hesitated a moment and then said.

"I'll lend you the money myself and take your note for six months. That ought to give you plenty of


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 time." I gave him the money, took his note, ana ne left me. I did not see him again until after the end of the six months and then only because I sent for him. When he came at my call he paid a part of his indebtedness, made no explanation of his delay, promised to pay the rest within a few days, and passed on. That is the last time I have seen him. Well, perhaps it all went in a good cause, for Mack joined the army and fought for his country. My experience with him, however, is typical and characteristic.

Some one who reads this article may say that I am over-pessimistic, that my faith in the honesty and promptness of the undergraduate is weak, and that any inference drawn from the facts and incidents presented herein would tend to discourage any one who might have a tendency to help the needy undergraduate in college. I hope that this is not true. No one can surpass me in the confidence and faith I have in the college man. I think he will meet his obligations, but I think because of his youth and inexperience that he will seldom do so within the time that he first sets for himself; and if he can not do so he will seldom make any explanation or offer any excuse. He argues that if he can not pay, it does no good just to say so.

I believe, on the whole, that those men who have given money to aid needy students more readily to finish their college course have done well—better even sometimes than do those who endow libraries, or who erect fine buildings for educational purposes, because those who aid the self-supporting student are equipping men more quickly, and directly for life. Those, too, who might otherwise be developed into


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 broad-minded, cultivated students, if they have to give all their time to earning a living, are often kept narrow and inefficient by the hard, cruel grind. If I were to come to the aid of the borrower in college I should do so with my eyes open, I should face the actual facts which experience with these things had taught me, and I should surround the granting of these loans with such restrictions as would make them comparatively safe risks.

Of course if the terms upon which loans are granted by the college are so rigid as to make it next to impossible for the needy undergraduate to meet them, the whole purpose of the loan is defeated. If the student must meet the conditions which a bank imposes then, barring the fact that the college loan is usually made at a somewhat lower rate of interest than one must pay at the bank, the borrower might quite as well patronize his local bank. I should not make such loans prohibitive, but I should grant them only after a careful investigation and study of the character and need of the prospective borrower; for after all the main safeguard in making such a loan is the personal character of the individual who is receiving the loan.

I should very seldom lend money to students under the junior year. If the under classman must begin to borrow he is likely so heavily to handicap himself with debt at the very beginning of his college course that he grows discouraged, gives up the task, and never graduates. He is too young usually to realize the meaning of debt. Since such a man seldom graduates, he, therefore, does not fit himself for rapid advancement in any line of work which he may take


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 up, and he finds it difficult to save enough money beyond his living expenses to meet any considerable debt. The man who does not begin to borrow before his junior or his senior year can usually see the end not far away, and he struggles on to the finish. If he does not immediately marry he stands a good chance of shortly paying up his obligation.

I believe in a young man's marrying early, but ordinarily I think he should not do so while he is in debt. It is not so cheap for two to live as one and never has been, and the young fellow who takes a wife faces the probability of doctor bills, of increasing family, and of irregular employment, and these conditions are not conducive to the payment of old debts. For this reason, just stated, I have usually hesitated to recommend a loan to any applicant when it seemed likely that he would marry before his debt was fully paid.

The loan most easily obtained is usually the one least appreciated and least likely to be repaid. I believe it is a good thing for the student who wishes to avail himself of the privileges of a college fund to be required to offer some security. Life insurance is a protection in case of the borrower's death, but any one who has lived twenty years or more should not find it impossible to secure an endorser of his note, a member of his family or a friend, who at least has the reputation for honesty even if he is not to any large exten a property holder. The fact that two names are on a note shows that there is some one who is willing to vouch for the borrower's honesty. There is a certain responsibility upon the student, also, to make good, to meet his obligation, and to justify himself


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 in the eyes of the man who trusted him sufficiently to put his name to a note. I used to feel otherwise, but an experience with hundreds of borrowers has changed my viewpoint entirely.

A student should seldom borrow, during any year, more than half the amount necessary to meet his college expenses. He should have saved something from his work during the summer vacation, and if he can get no help from home, he can always find leisure time which can be profitably utilized in adding to his income and the use of which for this purpose need not interfere either with his pleasure or his studies. A small debt is often an incentive to the man just out of college to work hard and save his money, but a heavy one is likely to take most of the joy out of life, and to discourage the debtor utterly.

Whether loans should be made to students with high scholastic standing only, depends upon whether one is interested mainly in scholarship or in citizenship, and though I should think it unwise to put much money into the intellectual development of the dullard, I should never confine my beneficences to high-grade students only. The average man is for purposes of citizenship quite worth while, and quite worthy of any help which may be bestowed upon him.

I should still like some day to found a loan fund for needy students, but I should not be willing to lend to every one who asks, or even to every one who is in real need. Sometimes the eager borrower is lazy; he is not willing to work as he might to keep himself in funds. Sometimes he is inefficient and lacking in initiative, so that he has not been able to avail himself of opportunities for other sorts of help


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 which were at hand. Sometimes he has not lived within his means and wishes to borrow only that he may live more extravagantly than he should. I should not want to lend to any of these, nor should I make it too easy even for the best of fellows to get a Joan.

It is a good policy for the who is hard up, if he has a definite purpose before him and an average mind and body, to borrow money to get him over the last hard pull of the senior year. I have always been sorry that I did not myself borrow more. Had I done so I could have accomplished more during my last year. But the man who bortows should really be a man who takes his obligations seriously, who meets them promptly, who, when he gives his word, keeps it.