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 some brother who is feared will mar the favorable impression which has been made or is being made on him, he is kept in the background, or sent down town on an errand. And when it comes to the time of bidding him, the brothers are most carefully selected who, it is thought, will impress him most strongly. He should, himself, then keep this all in mind, and so far as possible make as careful a study of the members of the chapter as they are making of him.

Nothing is so unwise as to talk too much, unless it be to talk too little; the happy medium is the summum bonum of the freshmen's desires. Worse by far, however, than too fluent or too meager speech, is the awful error of showing eagerness or interest. "I like you fellows better than any others I have met," I heard a freshman confess last fall to a senior as he was bidding him good night after an evening at the fraternity house. I turned cold with horror at the confession. It was precisely the way the senior wished him to feel, but it was the baldest sort of bone-head work for the freshman to admit it. It almost cost him his invitation to join the organization. It was to the senior as it might have been if the young woman whom he was expecting to invite to the Junior Promenade had expressed to him, before he asked her, the happiness which she would feel in accompanying him


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 there. It is interesting what strange conventions grow up about us.

The boy who has been asked to join a fraternity may safely take a reasonable time in making his decision. Most fraternities give the rushee the opposite idea, but there is little to it. If a fraternity wants a man whom they have asked, they will give him such time as he needs to make up his mind what he wants to do. "We never hold a bid open" is the conventional bunk which most fraternities use to force a man to an immediate decision.

"I don't know what to do," a freshman said to me last fall. "I must give my answer by six tonight to the fellows who have asked me. I want to join a fraternity, but I'm not yet sure that this is the right one for me. If I don't join this one, I may never get another chance. What shall I do?"

"Be a good sport," I answered, "and take a risk. If you are not prepared to give them an answer at six, they'll give you another week if you insist on it." He insisted and got it. I have seldom known an organization to turn a man down when he called that sort of bluff. I asked a junior fraternity man yesterday what special advice he would give a freshman being rushed, and he answered smiling, "Well, if it's any other fraternity than ours, I'd say to him to look them over pretty carefully, and

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 to take all the time he wants in making up his mind."

A freshman ought not to join a fraternity or any other organization just because he is asked, any more than he should be willing to marry every girl who seems pleased with him. Men say that if they do not join when they are asked, they may never be asked again. What of it? It is infinitely better not to live an organization life at all than to be forced to live one that is not pleasing. If the men with whom you associate yourself are not congenial, if their intellectual and moral ideals are not the same as your own, it is better not to join at all than to form such an affiliation. "I really should like to be a good student," a freshman said to me while we were discussing a group of men which had invited him to become a member. "Do you think I could be and join this organization?" "Pretty small chance," I had to reply. Three months later he came to me and thanked me for my frankness. He had waited and got in with the right crowd, and was happy.

I have never known a fraternity that did not put itself at the head of the list in the college in which I it is established. When the various organizations are metaphorically put upon the witness stand to explain their failures and weaknesses and possible low standing, they do it with the utmost facility.


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Rh weakness, that the two racial elements lacked cohesion, and therefore they could not make head against the foreign invaders. But our information proves that they were much more closely united than has generally been supposed. Moreover, the most fruitful cause of antagonism between Visigoths and Romans — the distribution of lands, houses, and slaves — was not as widely enforced in the Peninsula as in Gaul, where, nevertheless, it did not prevent the fusion of the two elements. Concerning the way in which this distribution was made in the territories ceded by Honorius to the Visigoths, by the application of the law of tenancy (de metatis), contained in the code of Theodosius, we now possess exact information shewing that the distribution did not apply to all the Gallo-Roman possessores. With regard to Spain, we know for a fact that the Sueves applied this law, and we have good reason to suppose that, touching the arable land and part of the forests, the Visigoths did the same, after the conquests of Euric, in the districts which they acquired. We have various data in support of this; amongst others, the fact that the laws of consortes remained in force. It is also probable that they made distribution of the houses, the slaves engaged to cultivate the fields, and the agricultural implements; but, in any case, the private property of the Spanish-Romans seems to have suffered less than that of their neighbours in Gaul.

Moreover — notwithstanding the statement apparently contained in the military law of Wamba — the fact that, up to the time of Roderick, the Visigoths were constantly engaged in warfare, seems to confute the accusation of effeminacy and military decadence which has been brought against them. The Arabs before they came to Spain had been victorious in other countries where these conditions did not prevail. The fact that they were able to effect the conquest of the Peninsula in the comparatively short space of seven years is due — apart from the prowess of the Muslims — to the political disagreements of the Visigoths, to the indifference of the enslaved classes who found it profitable to submit to the victorious Arabs, to the support of the Jews — the only element really estranged from the bulk of the nation by persecution — and lastly, to the selfishness of some of the nobles — one more proof of the political unsoundness of the State — who preferred their personal advantage to concerted action on behalf of a monarch. The internal history, the history of the Visigothic kingdom, is one long struggle between the nobility and the monarchy. The kings were supported by the clergy in their efforts to consolidate the royal power and transmit it from father to son, while the nobles strove to keep it elective, and held themselves free to depose the elected king by violence. Nevertheless, the kings gained a certain strength, especially those endowed with great personal qualities, such as Leovigild, Chindaswinth, Receswinth, and Wamba. The Visigothic king was an absolute monarch, at times despotic, notwithstanding the principle of submission to the law which, from the contemporary works on


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 They remind me of a student I once knew in mathematics whose instructor, in commenting upon his frequent absence from the class exercises, remarked that the boy had presented an excuse seventeen times, and that they were all good and all different. I have never seen a fraternity unable to give an excellent reason for its coming short of its possibilities in any detail—social, moral, or intellectual. I suppose their is nothing strange about such a situation, however. It is a characteristic of youth. As I remember being called up before father when a boy to explain my derelictions, I do not recall that I ever lacked a first rate excuse.

In view of this youthful genius for explaining, it is just as well for the freshman to take with a little seasoning the arguments which every fraternity bidding for his membership will lay before him to convince him of its superior claims to his favor. The first and the most frequently used of these arguments is "national standing." Which are the five fraternities having the best national standing in this country? I don't know, and I am not at all sure that you do. In order to answer such a question we should have to determine the various points to be taken into consideration. Are these age, or location, or number of chapters, or exclusiveness, or the number of prominent alumni, or what? I can not say. The question is about as easily


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 answered as one which was presented in one of the Kansas City high schools to a young freshman with whom I am acquainted. He was asked to name the five greatest educators in the country, and gave as his list, Woodrow Wilson, our athletic coach, the Commissioner of Education of the State of New York, the man who asked him the question, and myself. He may have been somewhat influenced in his choice by his interest in athletics, the Democratic party, and the Presbyterian Church, but I am not sure but that his list is as good a one as the average fraternity man would make if asked to name the first five fraternities of the country. If a young fellow can go into a fraternity which has excellent national standing, whatever that may mean, and which has other desirable qualities, also, he is certainly wise in so doing. The fundamental thing for him to decide is whether the group of fellows who make up the active chapter of the organization which desires him as a member is such a group as he would be happy to live with during the four years of his college course, and be helped by living with. If he can answer this question in the affirmative, then he can later go into the subject of local influence and national standing. The national standing business counts for very little, if the make up of the local chapter is objectionable. If called upon to make a list of the


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 best five fraternities in college, it is not at all likely that any two men would make the same list. The freshman need pay very little attention to the "national standing" argument.

Leaving out the point just mentioned which almost every fraternity emphasizes heavily, there is always a number of other details which each organization considers as fine rushing stuff. College activities of all sorts are made a great deal of. The fraternity that has the baseball captain or the captain of the football team among its members usually lays it over every one else when it comes to showing the importance of activities; but every sort of activity is dragged out and made to pass for its full value. The importance of a corporal in the regiment, or of a cub reporter on the college daily, is exaggerated beyond all reason when being used as a rushing asset. Scholarship, social prestige, moral standing, are all thrown into the balance, and made to weigh as heavily as possible. If a fraternity happens to lack any one of these, the fact is passed over entirely, or made to seem of little value. The freshman should not put too much confidence in the statements with reference to any of these points, as they are being presented to him at the time of rushing. They are all important, but their importance is mot infrequently exaggerated when the rushers are presenting them.


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 The rushee will be a wise boy if he keeps in mind the fact that if he joins a fraternity he is to live during his entire college course with the men who make up the membership. They are to be his friends, his daily and hourly companions; they are to be present at practically every social function he attends, he will take them home with him and introduce them to his mother and to his sisters, and gradually he is himself to be influenced by their characters and to become like them. It is not a picnic he is being invited to join himself to; it is a college family that he is becoming a part of. "Do you know why I did not accept the Gamma Psi bid?" a young fellow asked me not long ago. "I meant to do so when they asked me, but as I thought it over, I couldn't quite see some of those men fitting in at home with mother. They aren't her sort." He was a sensible man, and so will others be who stop long enough to give serious thought to this phase of the question.

Going into an organization is not wholly a matter of sentiment; it is quite as much a matter of business. I know young men who marry because they A are in love, and who give no thought as to how the increasing bills are to be paid. So men often join a fraternity because they like the crowd and never stop to ask themselves how much it is going to cost. Before assuming any obligation it is the


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 wisest plan to have a definite understanding as to just what is involved. The freshman is not over curious who wants to see the rooms in which he is to live and to work, if he becomes a member of a fraternity. He is showing admirable good sense if he finds out what his living expenses are to be, and how many "extras," as they say in Europe, he will be called upon to stand for. Both he and his father have a right to know this, and they may calculate with complete assurance that it will not be less than the members of the fraternity allege.

There are a few things which it is safest to avoid. There is a possibility of being too wise, of knowing too much of fraternity conditions, of playing one organization against the other, and of finally losing out. The high school fraternity boy who comes to college is not infrequently this sort. He has had a fraternity experience, he thinks, and you cannot show him anything. He is in reality the greenest and the most transparent of them all. The wisest freshman is quiet, observant, dignified. He appreciates what courtesies are offered him, and says so, but he does not show himself boastful, or smart, or self-satisfied. He keeps himself in hand, and he knows his own mind. The man who vacillates is making a mistake, and laying up for himself a heritage of unhappiness. If on Monday morning he makes up his mind that the Phi Gam's


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The Tempest, IV. i

O'erstunk their feet.

Pro. This was well done, my bird.

Thy shape invisible retain thou still:

The trumpery in my house, go bring it hither,

For stale to catch these thieves.

Ari. I go, I go.

Pro. A devil, a born devil, on whose nature

Nurture can never stick; on whom my pains,

Humanely taken, all, all lost, quite lost;

And as with age his body uglier grows,

So his mind cankers. I will plague them all,

Even to roaring.

Come, hang them on this line.

Cal. Pray you, tread softly, that the blind mole may not

Hear a foot fall: we now are near his cell.

Ste. Monster, your fairy, which you say is a

harmless fairy, has done little better than played

the Jack with us.

Trin. Monster, I do smell all horse-piss; at

which my nose is in great indignation.

Ste. So is mine.—Do you hear, monster? If I

should take a displeasure against you, look you,—

Trin. Thou wert but a lost monster.

Cal. Good my lord, give me thy favour still:

Be patient, for the prize I'll bring thee to

Shall hoodwink this mischance: therefore speak softly;

 187 stale: decoy

193 line: lime-tree

198 Jack: knave

206 hoodwink: blind you to

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 are the only fellows, and Monday night concludes that he just must be a Sigma Chi or be forever unhappy, by Tuesday noon he has probably become strong for the Phi Psi's, and by the end of the week he does not know whether he is afoot or horse back, and no one wants him. The comfort of it all, however, is that when a man consults his own best judgment, thinks the thing out, and comes finally to a decision, he is usually contented and happy for all time. There are few freshmen who get the button on, no matter what hieroglyphics it bears, who would have it different. He sees few faults in the brothers, he begins at once to make heroes out of them, and from the outset is confident that he is in the "only fraternity."

I have always felt that when a man had made up his mind to accept the invitation of a fraternity and still has other social obligations unfulfilled, there are certain conventions which he ought to respect. With us, often when Brown is pledged and still has dates with other organizations which he has not yet met, it is the custom for some member of the fraternity instead of Brown himself, to call up these organizations over the telephone, and announce the fact of his having been pledged, and ask that his social obligations with them be cancelled. I do not know how common such a practice is, but whether common or otherwise, it has always


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 struck me as bad manners. It may be less embarrassing to Brown to have some one else explain his situation, but I think he could get no better social experience than with one of his new friends to go around to the various fraternity houses and make his own explanations, and himself ask to be allowed to break the engagement which he had made. He will by so doing increase his own self-respect, and if he does the business courteously, he will win the lasting regard of the other fraternity men who were interested in him. He can hardly square himself in a gentlemanly way by doing less.

If the man who is being rushed thinks that those who are rushing him are having a more hilarious time than himself he is mistaken. It is a nerve racking process for all concerned, from the man who plays the piano or leads the conversation to the freshman who must always be prepared at any time to be thrown into the discard and to give no indication that he cares.


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The young fellow who has just been through a strenuous rushing season and who has accepted the pledge button of a fraternity which satisfies him and measures up to the ideals which he has cherished with reference to such an organization, like a young lover who has just become engaged to the girl of his choice, usually feels that the worst is over and that the future will see only smooth sailing, congenial associations without disagreement and without friction. The very opposite of this is too often true, for the freshman is quite likely to find the period intervening between his pledging and his initiation a time of trial and discouragement, a time of uncertainty and of difficult adjustment to new conditions.

During the rushing season he has seen only the most attractive features of fraternity life; every member of the chapter has presented his best side, his most engaging manners, his strongest personal assets. Before his pledging he has been made to see his prospective brothers as beings far above and beyond ordinary men; they are to him more like young gods than commonplace mortals. "I have never met a bunch of fellows who seemed to me so altogether admirable and perfect," a young


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 pledge remarked not long ago. "There is not one of them that I should have different if I could." But he waked up very shortly, as every neophyte must if he is mentally alert, to the fact that he was not associating with gods but with men—men full of impulses good and bad, possessed of prejudices and harrassed by selfish passions and desires as other mortals are. It was with these men with whom he had to live and it was to their idiosyncrasies and varied personalities that he had to adjust himself. The task is not an easy one, and it is not strange that the new man, suddenly and rudely disillusioned, should often fall into a morass of uncertainty and discouragement.

"Do all pledges have their faith tried and grow discouraged?" a despondent freshman asked me only a short time ago. "Things are made to seem so rosy at first, and then we wake up to find that we are part of an organization made up of fellows just like ordinary men."

"I presume it is a common experience," I answered, "and it is just as well so, for the work of the world is done by ordinary men associating with men equally ordinary. The sooner we learn to adjust ourselves to the peculiarities 'of all sorts and conditions of men' the better."

One could not go far in a discussion like this without saying something concerning the practice


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 of lifting pledges—a practice which is still not uncommon and which is not confined to any college or to any educational community. It is a possible temptation at the outset for a man to feel that having made a choice he might possibly have made a better one if he had waited, or that even now, if he had the courage to do so, he might give up one and take another. Such a feeling though common and human, perhaps, is weak. It shows indecision; it breeds unhappiness and discontent.

In the early history of the fraternity the lifting of pledges was not an uncommon nor an unpopular practice. Chapters went even further than that and lifted whole groups of men. It was not unheard of for a man to join one fraternity without going through the ceremony of being released from another. It was a sort of fraternity mormonism or bigamy which was extant at the time. It was a practice which was not conducive to general good feeling among Greeks, and one which has come to be looked upon with pretty general disfavor. He is a pretty brave man if not a nervy one who can bring himself today to defend the practice even in the most seemingly justifiable cases.

The cause of lifting may be laid in the main, perhaps, to the rapidity with which rushing is done in many institutions and to the fear of the rushee


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 that if he refuses the first bid that comes to him he may not get another. He seizes the bird at hand, doubtful of being able to grasp the more attractive ones in the bush. If the rushee were not pushed so hard, if he were given more time to deliberate, if the whole matter of fraternity membership were not sprung upon him suddenly and forcibly, he would be more likely to come to a settled and final judgment than he now is. At present he is made to decide before he knows what he actually wants, and he does not realize that if he gets what he does not want it would be better not to have anything at all.

Indecision on the part of fraternity men themselves is another prime cause of lifting. A fraternity may have been indifferently rushing a man or perhaps may only have been considering the possibility of doing so. When they see that while they have been dallying another organization has pledged him, their interest and his worth are immediately exaggerated beyond all reason, and they soemtimessometimes [sic] feel that they must under such a circumstance have him at any cost. I have in mind now a man who was being lukewarmly considered by three organizations. No one of them was particularly enthusiastic or interested in him. One of the three without much elation brought itself to the point of bidding him; immediately the


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 other two developed a frenzy of interest and the man was ultimately persuaded to break his first, pledge and assume a second. No self-respecting fraternity will tamper with a man who is already pledged. The excuses for doing so which are sometimes offered by men who otherwise seem reasonable and sane are on the whole flimsy. The strongest of these is, perhaps, based upon the argument of "national standing," and practically every fraternity which I have known has been able by one specious argument or another to establish the fact that its national standing was quite superior to the standing of every other similar organization with which it was associated. I was speaking just the other day to a fraternity man with reference to a freshman who had just been pledged to an organization whose standing so far as I can judge is as good as that of the one I belong to or the one he belongs to.

"What a darned shame," he exclaimed, "I'm sorry he couldn't have got into a good fraternity," which in his mind meant his own. This idea in a man's mind that his own fraternity is superior to any other and that his own fraternity is superior to any other and that the fellow who does not join it makes a grave mistake,—is about the only reason which justifies him in his own mind in lifting a pledge to another fraternity. His assumption is


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 usually a false one, and even if it were not, it would in no sense excuse his persuading a student to break his pledge.

"We couldn't see a good man join a fraternity like that," a fraternity officer suggested in an attempt to justify his action in lifting a pledge.

"Why?" I asked.

"They have no standing," was his reply.

But the facts were they were cleaner fellows, better students, more active in the college community, and better respected than the organization which was guilty of the lifting.

There is the reason alleged, also, that the man concerned will be happier with one group than with another, and that any means are justifiable which will rescue him from an environment that in the end will mean to him misery and maladjustment. I am reminded in this instance of a friend of mine who made an usually happy marriage and who has lived a life of rare contentment.

"I was a lucky man in getting Mary," he admitted to me, "but I can't quite see how one is going to be sure about the outcome of such a union until he tries it." And so I say about the fraternity; the organization that is willing to descend to a disreputable act in order to save a man from unhappiness has no convincing evidence that the man so rescued would have been unhappy, and, besides,


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 the thing is up to the man anyway, and the average man would be happy and find it possible to adjust himself to the living conditions in any one of a score of organizations. It is about as foolish for a man to think that his fraternity is the only one in the world suited to a particular freshman as it is to believe that he is the only man in the world who could make a definite girl happy.

There is the point of view of the fraternity, also, that because of their relationships and because of the localities from which they come certain men are in a way the property of one fraternity more than of another if that fraternity chooses to claim its rights. "We have always taken the men from Rockford," or "His cousin was a member of our fraternity at Wisconsin," are sometimes considered quite good and sufficient reasons for any sort of procedure in the acquiring of pledges.

The character of the men who will allow themselves to be lifted in my experience is seldom such as to make them of any real worth to an organization. As I look back over my relationship with such men I can think of but one man who was worth the price of admission to the organization which lifted him. They have been, with this exception, selfish or vacillating, or easily led,—men without judgment who did not know their own minds, who had no power of leadership. They were not


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 worth quarreling over; they did not warrant the tarnishing of fraternity honor in order that they might be acquired.

And there is no doubt in the minds of serious thinking men today that the fraternity which lifts men or allows them to be lifted for any cause is lowering its dignity, is in doing this less entitled to respect that it would otherwise be, and cannot in the eyes of sensible people justify its action. Lifting clinchs one of the strongest arguments against fraternities and strikes a knockout blow at fraternity progress. The fraternity that has any standing does not need to do it, and the fraternity that has none should not be allowed to do it. The pledge who allows himself to be lifted has by that act shown a weakness of character which should bar him from initiation.

Fraternities will continue to make mistakes in pledging men, but in most cases these mistakes are possible of correction. Such men can be released in a dignified and orderly way. New men in college will, also, under even more favorable conditions than at most institutions exist at the present time, continue to pledge themselves to the wrong fraternity. There is a way open to any such to correct the error. No fraternity will hold a man if he is dissatisfied. If the fraternity to which you have pledged yourself is not what you thought it


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 would be, if the men have low ideals or are uncongenial; if the conditions of living are not such as to commend themselves to you, or if for any reason you feel that you have made a mistake, the only wise thing to do is to say so frankly and to ask for release. The member of another fraternity, however, who comes to you and either by open statement or by more subtle suggestion attempts to bring about dissatisfaction in your mind as to your choice or tries to persuade you that you should join his fraternity because it is a superior organization, is doing a dishonorable thing no matter who he is or what fraternity he represents. Before you are pledged any one may enter the contest for your favor; after you have put on a pledge button of any social fraternity, whether it be national or local, anyone who approaches you in an attempt to win you away from the organization of your choice is doing wrong, is not playing the game fairly, and he should not be listened to. If you break your pledge, it should be your own act.

If social conventions require that a widower wait a decent length of time after the death of his former wife before he takes another, so fraternal conventions are best honored when a man who has broken his pledge with one organization shows his good sense by not rushing headlong into another. Having made a mistake once, he might better give


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 himself time and opportunity for consideration before risking a second error. A good many interfraternity organizations have recently passed regulations which prohibit a man released from one organization from being pledged by another within six months, and some go so far as to require a year to intervene. Neither the pledge nor the fraternity can suffer by the enactment of such legislation. A fraternity which refuses to abide by the rule is scarcely worthy of respect, and the pledge who is not willing to pay a fair price for his mistakes, is not likely to profit by experience.

Granted, however, that the pledge is satisfied with his choice that he has neither opportunity nor desire to go to another organization, difficulties will arise, disappointment will come, and adjustments will need to be made. It is no easy matter to get on amicably with twenty-five or thirty men, most of whom, very likely, one has never known before. Especially is this true of the boy who, before coming to college has had his own room and exclusive use of his own possessions. Fraternity men are too likely to consider the property of any brother common property, and the freshman who finds his bureau drawers rifled and his favorite studs in another man's shirt has at once something to learn when he moves into a fraternity house.

A young fellow who had been invited to join a


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 fraternity came to see me only a few weeks ago to ask my advice. "I think it would help you, Dave," I said. "You have always had your own way, you have always followed your own desires, and though that way has been in the main a good one, and those desires excellent, you have yet to learn the lesson of adjustment to the wishes and the comfort of others. It would do you good to join a fraternity."

"That's just it," he responded, "I'm afraid I don't want to be done good." His better sense controlled him, however, and he is learning the lesson which every young fraternity man must learn if he is to get the best out of the organization, and that is to give up, to submit, to adjust himself to new conditions.

After the pledging a good deal of the glamour of the fraternity life disappears, and the new man finds that he is expected to do a considerable amount of work that is not wholly pleasant or clean or easy. If he has not previously been used to such tasks they may seem galling and they may even strike him as being imposed more for his discipline than because of any real necessity for their accomplishment. If he is a wise young man he will take these duties cheerfully, he will, at least externally, perform them willingly, and he will


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 receive such adverse criticism as may be imposed without resentment.

"How does it happen," I once asked a cheerful freshman at a fraternity house, "that you who are so apparently willing to work are seldom asked to do anything, while Rogers, who growls when he is disturbed, is constantly being sent on errands?"

"That's the secret of the whole thing," the freshman exclaimed. "I got on to the fact right at the outset that the more I kicked, the less I accomplished. So I decided never to complain, always to volunteer, and regularly to do my tasks cheerfully. The result is that I'm seldom disturbed because I seem so willing." It was the reward of seeming virtue which he was receiving.

The fraternity house is often a crowded house. When the freshman wakes up as he ultimately must, to the fact that the college life is a life of study, he very soon after this realizes too that study in a fraternity house is something that must be accomplished with others around him and often others who, at the time when he himself must work, are not themselves so inclined. He must learn a sort of independence. While not forgetting others in allowing himself to get out of sympathy with them, he must yet manage his own affairs, look after his own interests, and see that, amidst all the confusion and bustle of the house, his own work is


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 done. This business of utilizing his time to the best advantage, I shall leave to another paper.

The man with the right attitude, after his pledging, will do what he can to get into the spirit of the house. He may have no special work assigned to him, and yet if he keeps his eyes open he will see without being told things which he can do, and ways in which he can help to keep things going right; to keep his room and the rest of the house in order, to promote good feeling, and to bring about harmony among the different members of the household. It is a far cry from pledge to president of the chapter, but I am sure that many a freshman has in the first few weeks of his connection with his fraternity settled his claim to that remote and coveted office by the way in which he has got on to the work and into the spirit of the house. He has found happiness by helping those who were in trouble; he has made friends by being friendly, and almost at the outset he has become a standby, a prop upon which even an older man has learned to lean.

I remember a young freshman who was a member of my own chapter only a few years ago. We had been having a gathering of the older alumni, the new men had all been introduced and had been looked over and discussed.


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 "Which one," I asked, "will be at the head of the chapter when he is a senior?"

"Brockton," they all said at once, "because he gets into things, he takes hold, he has the spirit of the house already," and they were right, and Brockton today is making one of the best of officers we have ever had.

I remember as a graduate student in an eastern university of being admitted to a special class in English Composition.

"No one who is admitted to this class," the old instructor informed us at the first meeting, "need ever expect to have anything complimentary said of his literary composition. The fact that one is admitted at all is sufficient proof that he has shown more than average ability as a writer. Granted that, it will be my business in the future to discover to him his faults and weaknesses."

I have no doubt that the fraternity pledge often feels as discouraged as I did when I got back my first long theme mutilated and scarred, covered with red ink and scrawled over with vituperative criticisms. Nothing that I did seemed right or good. The new man in the house gets little praise; he is bawled out if he violates or evades rules; he is seldom commended if he does well. "Don't praise them," is the suggestion, "or you'll make them conceited." The freshman does not realize


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 that the head of the house most often employs a gruff and surly manner to mask his inexperience. He is afraid that if he is gentle and soft voiced and kind that the pledges and the underclassmen will not recognize the fact that he is in control. He often feels more kindly than he seems, and this fact if the pledge will do his duty, if he will keep up his part of the work, he will soon come to realize. The time will go rapidly, the arduous duties will soon be done, and the pledge before he knows it will be a real brother.


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188 ecclesiastical politics, passed into the legislation. The king was the chief of the army and the only legislative power. The last is clearly proved by the Councils of Toledo, concerning which there have been so many erroneous opinions.

It is therefore necessary to discuss in some detail the organisation and authority of these Councils. The kings alone were empowered to summon them, they had also the right to appoint the bishops, and to deprive them of their sees, thus exercising in the Catholic Church the power which, in these matters, they had been wont to exercise in the Arian. Their power to summon the Councils is acknowledged in the decrees passed by each of these, with the possible exception of the seventh, which seems to leave the question undecided. On the other hand, the decree of the ninth Council clearly states that the bishops have not the power to assemble except by command of the king. The latter did not issue his summons at regular intervals. The Council was formed of two elements, the clerical and the lay. The first consisted of the bishops, who in varying numbers were present at all the Councils; the vicars, who appeared for the first time at the third Council; the abbots, who began to attend at the eighth; and the archpriest, archdeacon, and precentor of Toledo. The lay element was composed of the officials or nobles of the palace (optimatibus et senioribus palatii, magnificentissimis ac nobilissimis viris, etc.), whose presence is attested by the signatures and prefaces to the decrees of all the Councils dealing with civil matters. From these we see that the lay element is absent from the Council held in 597 (which is not numbered), from that summoned by Gundemar, also known as "Gundemar's Ordinance," from the fourteenth and from the seventh, which merely confirmed or re-enacted a law already approved by the lay element at the Royal Council. We are left in doubt as to the presence of the lay element at the following Councils: — the tenth, where the signatures are probably incomplete; the eighteenth, of which there are no decrees in existence; and the third of Saragossa, from which the signatures are missing. As in the case of the ecclesiastics, the number of the nobles varied considerably. We see from the decrees of the twelfth and sixteenth Councils that they were chosen by the king, and we learn from those of the eighth Council that this was in accordance with an ancient custom. What part did the nobles take in the assemblies? Historians are by no means agreed; some hold that they had a voice in the discussion of lay matters only, others that they were nothing more than passive witnesses, or that their presence was a pure formality; again, others believe that they represented the king. Perez Pujol, the most recent historian of Visigothic Spain, has a convincing argument that, in matters wholly or partly lay, the nobles had the same rights to discuss and vote as the ecclesiastical members of the Council. This is the inference drawn from authentic texts of the eighth, tenth, twelfth, thirteenth, seventeenth Councils, and from the


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If there is one excuse offered more often than another for failure on our part to accomplish a result or to accept an obligation, or to perform a service it is the conventional one that we have no time. The more shiftless we are, the fewer obligations and duties we have, the more convinced we are that it would be disastrous if not impossible for us to take on anything more. St. Peter, if he holds up any eager entrant to the pearly gates with an inquiry as to why he has not accomplished more is met, I have no doubt, with the ready reply that the sinner in question did all that he had time to do. I have scarcely ever talked with a freshman who wished to omit some unpleasant duty or to get out of some irksome task or to drop some uninteresting study who did not allege that his main object was to get more time to put on his studies. When I propounded the direct question as to when he studies and just how much time he does actually give to the business, he seldom if ever knows, and for this there is a very good reason.

"Why did you fail?" I asked Hawkins who managed last semester to get by with only two hours in military and physical training out of a schedule of eighteen hours.


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 "I suppose I did not have enough time for study," was his reply; and yet no one has more time for the accomplishment of the tasks at hand than the freshman.

I am always disappointed at the close of each semester to find how many freshmen fail, and how many others who do not actually fail are yet satisfied to attain less than commonplace intellectual results. They come to college ambitious, with good preparation, and yet they fail; indeed it seems sometimes that those who come with the best preparation apparently, if the well-equipped city high school offers the best preparation, fail the most dismally.

The college course is planned for the average man with an average secondary training; its schedule is arranged so as to give him ample time in the preparation of his work, and yet one third of the young fellows who enter college each year, with us at least, fail in something. Why? It can not be because freshmen are dull or ignorant, because they are not, it can not be because they are badly taught in college, for though it can not be denied that there is some inefficient teaching in college, yet, if he would work, the average student could pass any course in college without being taught at all, and the inefficient teacher is not always the one who fails the largest percentage of his students. The


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 real reason seems to me to be not that the freshman has too little time, but that he does not know how best to utilize his time. He fritters a good deal of it away instead of using it energetically or systematically either in the pursuit of normal recreation or pleasure, or in the mastering of his studies. He does not know where his time goes to, for he follows no schedule.

One of the main difficulties seems to me to be the fact that before entering college very few boys have learned the first principles of concentration, or know anything about study; nor do many realize that college is fundamentally different in its demands and requirements from the academy or the high school. I have no doubt that there are preparatory school boys or high school boys who have learned to concentrate their minds upon their work until they have actually mastered it, but I do not happen at this moment to recall the names of any. It has been my privilege recently to be an observer for a few weeks of the mental travail of two boys, students in one of the high class academies of the Middle West. They study like squirrels at play. They are quiet for scarcely a moment. They are restless, talkative, kittenish while they are supposed to be at work. They tease each other more persistently than they apply themselves to their books. They are constantly


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 changing seats or books or getting into more comfortable positions or lighter attire. They stick at nothing long; they carry nothing to a conclusion. They chatter and hop about like wrens, and all the while they deceive themselves with the delusion that they are getting their lessons, and having done this sort of thing for four years they will go to college with the idea that they know how to study when all they really know is how to fool away time.

The opportunities in college to waste time are infinite, and some of them are so alluring, and others seem to contain so many elements of real improvement and training to the individual that it is not strange that the freshman, ignorant of the exactions of college life, should fall into error. The fraternity freshman, surrounded as he usually is by a large group of congenial companions is more likely than other first year men to fall into this error of misusing his time. If he desires to go down town there is always some one to bear him company; if he draws up his chair to join the circle of fireside bums, there is so much that is interesting going on that it is hard at the proper time to break away; even if he goes to his room to study, there is his roommate usually to engage him in conversation. The fact that in most fraternities the freshmen are sent to their study-rooms at half


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 past seven is no conclusive evidence that from that time on for the rest of the evening they are engaged in study. There is quite as much time wasted by college students during study hours as at any other period.

Because of the fact that the freshman is often for the first time having a taste of individual freedom it is harder for him to bind himself by rules, to set for himself a schedule for the disposal of his time, and yet such a procedure is for him the only safe one. If at the outset he will divide the day into three parts, giving two-thirds of it to sleep, eating and recreating and the remaining third to class attendance and study, unless he has a more than ordinarily heavy schedule of drawing or laboratory work, he will have made a pretty sensible and workable division. The freshman who is carrying a schedule made up in any large degree of drawing or laboratory science will need to retrench somewhat more upon his recreation time than I have indicated.

If the freshman could only realize that he is taking up a regular business as exacting and as important as any in which he will ever engage, if he could only see that if he is to get on in it he must work at it regularly, seriously, and with all the energy and interest he can summon, there would be fewer failures, fewer underclassmen


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 leaving college, and fewer upperclassmen working up too late to what college really means. The freshman who really recognizes that his first duty in college is his work and who plains his pleasures and his recreations with this thought in mind will be very unlikely to fail.

One of the first questions which the freshman will have to decide with reference to the disposal of his time will have to do with the question of outside activities. Most fraternities urge their men, including the freshmen, to go out for something. I have no particular quarrel with this practice excepting as it has to do with the freshman, and no particular quarrel here if the freshman could only be made to see that any extra-curriculum activity into which he may go is of minor importance as compared with his college work, and that if his class standing begins to drop down because of his activities even though those be athletic his immediate duty is to eliminate the activity. One football coach I know always says to the members of the freshman squad "Get your stu dies first: you will have three years later to learn football; but if you fail in your studies you are no good to the team no matter how well you play."

One of the first temptations which the freshman in activities has to encounter is the templation to cut class, and such a temptation is a grow-


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 ing one, that has the most disastrous and depressing effect up his college work. I believe fhe freshman will be the wisest who goes little into activities until the end of his first semester or at least until he has learned well how to study.

I was talking to a young fellow only a few days ago concerning his irregular class attendance.

"I never cut class merely for the pleasure of cutting," he said.

"Why do you cut?" I asked.

"Usually to study for another recitation," was his reply.

"Are you carrying an over-schedule?" I asked.

"No," he answered.

"Then you waste your time in some way. I want you to do one thing for me," I said. "Keep an accurate record of how you spend your time for the next three days accounting for the whole twenty-four hours; then we'll talk it over."

When three days later he came in there was little I needed to say. The process of setting down in black and white how he had disposed of the various hours of the day had taught him very thoroughly how his time was going, and it was not difficult to see that it was mostly going to waste. He was trifling it away and accomplishing little or nothing.

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 his college life whether it be pleasure or profit will accomplish his purpose best by having a schedule from which to work and by following this schedule with pretty careful regularity. He would be foolish never to allow himself to deviate from such a plan, but he should not do so excepting for really adequate reasons. First of all such a schedule should contemplate no omission of class exercises. When unexpected engagements must be made they should be arranged so as not to conflict with regular recitations. The dentist or the doctor or your roommate can each adjust himself to your convenience or necessity if you will insist upon it. When a friend says, "I will meet you at ten," it is quite easy to explain that you have a French recitation at that hour and can not see him until eleven. This all seems trivial and childish, perhaps, but the records of the college office will show that the young fellow who begins cutting class for any reason very soon develops the habit and needs only the slightest pretext to cause him to omit an exercise. Still another thing the college records will show and that is that high scholastic standing and regular class attendance are closely related. The twenty men who last semester made the highest averages at the University of Illinois had either no absences from class exercises or their absences were negligible, and


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 ninety per cent of the men who were dropped for poor scholarship or who went on probation for poor scholarship were habitual cutters. The student who cuts a little during his first year generally keeps it up with greater regularity during his succeeding ones, and his grades suffer accordingly. The man who will go to class every day and pay close attention to what goes on there ought to pass almost any course even though he studies little.

The sensible freshman, however, will have regular hours of study, for he will not be quite satisfied merely to pass. In the adjusting of these study hours it seems to me that most freshmen make their gravest mistake in that they relegate most of their study if not all of it to the evening hours. Every student, and especially every freshman, should have some time for study during the day. His mind is most alert at this time, it is easier during the day to find a place for study where he can be quiet and undisturbed, and by preparing at least one lesson during the daylight he taxes his eyes less and leaves for the evening an amount of work not impossible of accomplishment. The freshman is still pretty young, he has not been accustomed to late hours, and however much he may like the habits of the night owl such hours are good neither for his studies nor for his health.


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 I suppose I shall be laughed at when I say that every freshman, excepting on rare occasions, ought to have his work done and be in bed by half past ten o'clock. The student who prepares one lesson during the day will never under normal conditions need to study more than three hours any evening and so can get to bed as he should do at a normal time.

One of the most useless as well as the most vicious student habits is the keeping of late hours. Living in a community of college students as I do, I have never arisen early enough nor gone to bed late enough to find the lights out in the students' rooms about me. At whatever hour of the night or morning one may walk down John street or Illinois street he may always see some student's light brightly burning.

I remember a young fellow who some years ago lived next door to me and into wrhose room I could look from my own study window. He was dull in the classroom, and if he passed at all did so with very low grades. At night his light was seldom out. He goaded himself to work far into the morning hours. I have wakened at three in the morning to find his study light still shining in at my window, and to see him nodding over his books. If he had worked hard one hour in the day time and put in two or three good hours


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 in the evening, and then had gone to bed early he might have learned something. As it was he never had time for anything, never got anywhere, never seemed to be awake. He utilized time badly while priding himself that he was working hard.

"We send our freshmen up to their rooms at half past seven every study night," the fraternity man proudly asserts in proof of the fact that a fraternity house is a good place for a freshman to be in; but what do the freshmen do after they get to their rooms? Some of them study it is true, but more of them waste their time in unconcentrated effort, get down to their work about the time they ought to be going to bed, oversleep in the morning, and miss an eight o'clock because they have been up studying so late the night before. The man who got the highest grades of any student I have known in thirty years seldom studied more than two or three hours during an evening, but when he went to his books he banished every other thought and occupation; dynamite could not have turned him from the solution of a problem in calculus or from the writing of an exercise in rhetoric after he once got set at it. He wasted no time in looking for his pipe or discussing politics or the last dance; he had learned concentration, and so the freshman must learn if he is to get the most possible out of his time.


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 Procrastination is the bane of the intellectual lives of most students. They falsely argue that it does not matter if they get behind a little; there is always plenty of time in the future. The only time one can safely count on is today, and that is the reason why, in the midst of a very enjoyable vacation, I have stopped long enough to finish this article which I have promised for next week. I know that I have the time today, and experience has taught me that in all probability I shall not have it next week when I get back to the regular duties of my office.

"Are your themes all in?" I asked a freshman whose adviser I am.

"I think so," he replied, "at least I am not back more than four or five." He did not see that lacking the four or five he would probably fail the course, and that having them in he might pass with a creditable grade, nor did he realize either that if he came to the end of the half year lacking a good percentage of his work, it would be entirely impossible for him to make it up. It is a safe rule never to get behind, for in that case one is always ready for an unexpected emergency. The freshman, boy-like, too often takes his pleasure first and promises himself that he will find plenty of time after he is through with the show or the game or the dance to get up the neglected work.


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 Such plans almost always go astray. One of the best freshmen I know this year, and he is in reality a boy of only ordinary attainments, has made high grades and has found time besides for all sorts of recreations and pleasures, by always doing his college work first. If he is going out at night, he stays in during the afternoon and writes his theme or his French exercise, so that when he comes to the party he has nothing on his mind, he is not goaded with the thought that he must get up early in the morning to prepare a delayed lesson, but can give himself unreservedly to the pleasure at hand. He is one of the high men scholastically and he has Imd time for both athletic activity and social pleasure because he does his college work before he goes at anything else.

The gist of my sermon to the freshman so far is, plan your work, never put it all off until evening, otherwise you will grow dull and sleepy; attend every class exercise; learn concentration early in your course, and see that all assignments are kept up to date. Do your work before you give your time to pleasure. Such a course of action will raise your class standing ten or fifteen per cent and give you more time for sleep, exercise, and pleasure than you could possibly have if you go at your work in a hit and miss, haphazard way.


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 You have twice as much time as you really need if you will only utilize it sanely.

Nothing is more closely connected with the proper utilization of the freshman's time than the use he makes of his money, and the way he handles it.

"How much money should I give my son?" is a question which I am constantly being asked by fathers who are sending their sons away from home for the first time. It is a hard question to answer and a question the answer to which is not in all cases the same. What is ample for one boy is too little for another, and vice versa. In most fraternities there is a flat monthly rate covering board, house dues, the social affairs in which all of the members participate, and a few other details. This amount should be a good index of the total monthly allowance necessary for the boy's expenses while at college. A reasonable allowance will usually have to be larger than one might calculate or infer from reading the college catalogue, for a college student, like the average newly married man, finds that the extras count up about as much as the regular expenses. A proper allowance will vary with the individual. I have in mind two brothers who, while they have been in college, have had the same monthly allowance, and it is quite an ample one. The older boy never


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 has any money, is usually in debt, and never seems to be able to meet any unexpected financial obligation. The younger seems to go to as many social affairs as his brother, has as many and as expensive clothes, always meets his financial obligations as soon as they are presented to him, and always has money in the bank. The only difference that I can discover between them is a temperamental one. The older man has no system as the younger has, never plans for the future, spends a dollar whenever he has one in his pocket, and constantly cherishes the hope that an allowance which has up to the present time proved wholly inadequate to his needs will grow into more gratifying proportions next month. He never learns by experience, never gives up hope that a wind fall will drop at his feet, that a rich uncle will die and leave him a fortune, or that in some way he will stumble out of his financial difficulties. However much or little the student spends it should be a definite sum each month, and it should come to him regularly on a definite day of the month.

"Father complains that I spend too much," a freshman said to me not long ago, "but the fact is I don't know how much I do spend. He sends me a hundred or a hundred and fifty dollars and when that is gone I ask for more. It is a kind of a game now to see how much I can get. If he'd


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 give me a definite allowance each month and tell me I had to live within that, I should do it, and take pride in the accomplishment even if the amount were much less than I now spend. I have nothing on which to plan now." The fellow who leaves college and gets a job will usually have to live on a definite monthly salary; he might much better learn to do the trick while he is in college.

The freshman should begin at once to do business in a business-like way. He should open a checking account at some reliable bank and should pay his bills regularly by check. He should carry his check book with him always, and should number his checks consecutively. One of the greatest difficulties which I have to encounter is with the college fellow who writes checks without having his regular book with him and who then forgets to make the entry when he gets back to his check book. The result is an overdrawn account and a blot on the man's credit.

College students are so notoriously careless in keeping their bank balances and yet are ultimately so sure to pay up that merchants and even banks in a college town have grown more lenient with such derelicts than is wise. Students often learn to count on this leniency and purposely overdraw their accounts and so make a small enforced loan until such time as their next allowance shall arrive.


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 Merchants and bankers have often told me that before a vacation, especially, when students are going home scores of "phoney" checks are turned in, the student arguing that he may be back and his depleted account replenished before the overdraft is discovered. I could write a list of students now who may be regularly counted upon to do this sort of thing. The excuses they offer when called to account for their dishonesty, for such a practice is nothing less than dishonest, is that they made an error in calculation, or that they have done business enough with the bank to entitle them to a little favor once in a while. One man told a merchant of my acqaintanec not long ago that he had to have the money somehow, and that writing a check seemed the easiest way to that end. The freshman who starts out doing business in this irregular way will sooner or later find himself in disrepute if not in jail, and he will never have any money.

The freshman should use his money with an eye to the future. I have in mind now a young fellow whose monthly allowance comes regularly on the first of the month. Such of it as is not already disposed of through bills due and debts contracted melts in his hands like snow before an April sun. He does not give a thought to the future or a sigh for the past; he thinks only of the present, and


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 his money is usually gone and he is comfortably broke before the end of the first week of the month. He lives a hand to mouth existence from one month to another and is convinced that his allowance, which is in reality a much more generous one than that of most of his companions, is wholly inadequate to his needs. Like all men of his class, while he is engaged in the rapid disposal of his funds, his studies are going to the bad, for no man can spend money and study to advantage at the same time. Either one takes a mans' best efforts to accomplish creditably.

As I have frequently found that a student is helped in the disposal of his time by keeping for a few days an actual record of just how the twenty-four hours of the day are spent, so too I am sure that, if for nothing more than his own personal benefit, he will find much that is suggestive and helpful in keeping an accurate expense account. I remember very well what a shock it was to me when I first began to live on a salary to find upon casting up my accounts at the end of the month what a disproportionate percentage of it was going for things that were useless in themselves and that gave me little real pleasure. Even though a boy's parents do not require him to keep an expense account, he will find an education in the practice just for himself.


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 Beyond a certain point, the amount of money which a young fellow has to spend in college does not add to his pleasure, to his popularity, nor to his success in any way. The man is never really popular who is courted merely because he has money, and the pleasure that comes from spending money is always greater when it must be planned for, when it comes as the result of a little sacrifice. If we could go to a formal party every night or see a circus every day the interest in these forms of relaxation would soon wane. We often give ourselves more pleasure by having a little less. A man ought to plan not to spend quite all the money that he has. The wise man, even if he be only a freshman, should keep an eye out for the unexpected, should be prepared for the emergency, should save a little for the rainy day which is quite as likely to come in college life as in any other with which I am acquainted. Nothing gave me more satisfaction than to find recently that a young boy with whom I am associated had saved enough out of his regular allowance to buy for himself an article of clothing which he very much wanted but which his guardian did not quite feel like advancing the money for. It is never pleasant to meet a pretty girl near an ice cream refectory and find that you are broke or to come upon a group of fellows going to a good show and realize that your


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 pocketbook is empty and the first of the month a week off.

Nor is it a good plan to borrow. The easy borrower has a distressingly poor memory of his obligations, never pays when he says he will, and seldom ever pays, and so falls into bad repute with his friends. There are not many bad habits which a freshman can learn that are worse than the habit of borrowing money, or of going into debt for something that is not absolutely necessary. Borrowing money to be paid out of your next month's allowance is like cutting one class to study for another.

No student should spend more than the family at home can afford. I have known too many cases of cruel sacrifice at home, when theboy at college was having a good time, wasting his opportunities, and spending lavishly money that was coming only through the greatest economy of the older members of the family. The freshman at college ought not to be unwilling to make his share of the sacrifice.

Every fraternity that I have known has its new men, and its old unfortunately, who, being a little short of money are quite willing that the fraternity should carry them. "We hope Granger will not be dropped from college," a fraternity man said with reference to an uncertain brother. "He owes us


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 a lot, and we want to get it out of him before he has to go." There was no regret expressed at the boy's going except the possible financial regret, and there seldom is much in such cases. No self-respecting man, freshman or upperclassman, will allow himself to be carried in this way. He will so plan his expenditures that such money as is at his disposal will be sufficient to meet his obligations. Hundreds of freshmen whom I know who can receive from home only a moderate amount of money, by some sort of outside work are able to meet the added expenditures which they want to make. I know any number of such men who by the exercise of one talent or another pay easily and willingly for their own pleasures and enjoy them more fully for so doing.

I have always had the greatest respect for the student who by his own efforts pays his way through college, but I have come to feel also that the young fellow who spends wisely and conservatively the money which is sent him from home is, entitled to almost as much credit as the man who makes his own way.


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There are some institutions, I know, which will not stand for the fraternity house party. Sometimes there is a rule against it; sometimes it is an unwritten unexpressed law; but whether the prohibition is down in the book of undergraduate rules or not, there is no getting by with this particular form of social function. The argument is that the house party overemphasizes social life, that there is moral danger in it, that it takes most of the undergraduate's time for an indefinite period prior to the function in making preparation for it, that it takes all of his time and more than all of his money during its progress, and that it leaves him an intellectual and financial wreck at its close. I could bring illustrations to prove that all of these alleged evils have more than a mere foundation of truth. I know one organization that had a house party some years ago, that was written up in all the city papers and that is still the talk of the simple country community in which our institution is situated; the chapter enjoyed the advertising that it got from this function, but it is still struggling to pay the bills, that were incurred in giving it.

Besides all this, there are delicate problems of


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 social conventionalities that frequently arise, and that require skill in solution; there are the wounded feelings of the local girls, caused by the presence of too many "imports," to be considered. In fact there are a considerable number of dangerous rocks to be avoided, so that I think, very wisely at times, a good many colleges, as I have said, do not permit the fraternities to give house parties. We shall, possibly, ere long come to this decision ourselves, but at present we have not done so.

Every year in my own fraternity, when on occasion I drop in on the boys, I hear the rumbling of this discussion as to whether or not the annual formal dance shall this year be in connection with a house party. The older fellows whose incomes are not unlimited and whose memories of the last function of this sort given by the chapter are still fresh, recall the fact that we are as yet scarcely free from the incubus of debt which was left us as a heritage by those who staged the last show of this sort, and that it would be a matter of wisdom and sound judgment to move with a little social conservatism. "We simply can't afford it," they say and gloomingly recall the past and the weeks of "oleo" and beans that the commissary department forced upon them in order to cut down expenses and save something to meet the extra bills that seemed to rain in for months after the party was


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 over. They allege that such a party always costs twice as much as, when it is being planned, any one imagines it will cost.

Then the mathematical geniuses who are quick at figures and able to prove anything when they get busy, take the floor and show that it is really economy to give the house party. They demonstrate the fact that with the girls in the house there is neither the opportunity nor the necessity for the fellows to spend money that there is when just a formal dance is held. The facts are presented so alluringly, and the details are shown so convincingly, that the freshmen, innocent of this sort of guile and eager for the excitement of things new, believe the sophistry and are ready at once to vote for the party. They need only the argument of the socially ambitious to the effect that this is the one and only way to put ourselves right before the girls and to give us a center position upon the local social map, to make them, as the girls say, really crazy for it. A vote of this sort is often very much like a Sunday school election—the children are sure to vote for anybody or any thing that is put up.

They had had some warm discussions this year, I am quite convinced, before I was called in to give my opinion and to make suggestions. The arguments pro and con were well presented, for there


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 are few matters which give better training in extempore speaking and which more completely perfect the brothers in oral debate than the proposal to give a house party. The advocates of the scheme showed how simple it all was, how little it would cost, and how easily the expenses could be kept down if the fellows would do the work. They were willing for any personal sacrifice—to sleep in the hay loft or the bath tub or to camp out in tents on the front lawn.

I arrived on the scene not completely carried away with enthusiasm over the scheme, for I have been through a good many house parties, and I am, besides, the treasurer of the corporation, and I remember with what difficulty and reluctance the house rent comes in following these social debauches. I know, too, how the class attendance deteriorates and how the studies suffer. After I heard the discussion, however, I realized that all other plans were chimerical; this was the only simple one, the only sensible one, the only one that was really economical and that would win for us the social prestige to which we were entitled. They assured me that "Cap" had figured it all out, that "Cap" was a mathematician, and that he knew that one dollar would not pay a bill for five; so I was won over.

The time for the party was set and the prepara-


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Rh sixth, which is conclusive with regard to the vote. The difference between the respective powers of the lay and clerical elements was limited to matters wholly religious, and the right of proposing laws to the king.

With regard to lay matters, the functions of the Councils were of three kinds: (1) Deliberative, concerning the methods of government, adoption of new laws, modification or repeal of the old ones, and their codification or compilation. On these points the king consulted the Councils, both in the tomus regius which he handed to them at the opening of the Council, and in special communications, such as the one sent to the sixteenth Council (9 May 693). (2) The right to petition or to initiate legislation, that is to say, the right to present to the monarch, for approval, such proposals as were not included in these communications or in the tomus regius. But only the ecclesiastics were entitled to take this initiative. (3) Judicial, that is to say, the power to act as a kind of tribunal in the case of disputes connected with the administration; this tribunal settled the complaints and charges brought by the citizens against the government officials, and possibly also against influential men. In this sense, the Council formed part of the system of the courts. It is not known whether these matters were laid directly before the Council, or whether they first passed through the hands of the king. The discussion concerning the tomus and the royal communications was followed by voting, as a result of which the original proposal of the monarch was approved or modified. He frequently entrusted to the Council, not only the adoption of specially important laws, but also the general revision of all the existing laws — as we see from the tomus regius of the eighth, twelfth, and sixteenth Councils. This added to the freedom enjoyed by the clergy with regard to legislative initiative (as expressed in the canons of the sixteenth and seventeenth Councils) and furnishes grounds for the very general opinion that the Visigothic monarchy was dominated by the clergy, and was therefore mainly ecclesiastical in character. In the different Visigothic codes, and, consequently, in the most recent versions of the Liber or Forum Judicum, there is a large proportion of laws made by the Councils on ecclesiastical initiative: further, the political and theological doctrines of the time — of which Isidore of Seville is the chief representative — are reflected at every stage in the legislation, such as the duties of the monarch, the divine origin of power, the distinction drawn between the private means of the monarch and the patrimony of the Crown, etc., and the duty of the State to defend the Church and to punish crimes committed against religion.

The Visigothic legislation was deeply imbued with the spirit of Catholicism. This was due, not only to the piety of the monarchs and upper classes, but also to the superior culture of the clergy, which gave them great authority over Spanish society, and enabled them to defend the principles of justice. Yet we have no right to suppose that, from


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 tions began. They persuaded me at the outset as treasurer of the corporation to have the house painted—it would look so much better and besides it was needing a new coat of paint pretty badly. The painting of course necessitated the fixing of the gutters, the pointing of the walls, and the repairing of the roof, until I was somewhat in the position of the woman who, having yielded to the temptation of buying new curtains for the parlor ended up finally by being compelled, in order to make things harmonize, entirely to refurnish the house. I was not at all sorry, however, for I realize that it is poor business policy not to keep the house in excellent repair, and my painting the exterior of the house stimulated the fellows within. They organized a kalsomining corps and retinted all the rooms from the basement to the dormitory; those artistically inclined mixed the colors, and the skilled laborers applied them. All the wood work was varnished or rubbed with oil, the rugs were cleaned, new curtains were bought, and the beds were thoroughly overhauled and put into shape. The house had not had such a cleaning since the last house party. Perhaps the greatest accomplishment was the straightening up of the closets. The fellows found things crammed into the remotest corners of those closets that they could not remember that they had ever possessed. They


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 unearthed personal effects that had been lost for years—textbooks, notebooks, sweaters, skates, ball bats, and other athletic supplies sufficient to stock a gym store. They even went so far in their reforms as to clean up the kitchen and the back yard. I am sure the cook had a shock when she saw the kitchen range shining and the kitchen utensils in mathematical order. But if nothing else had been accomplished, the cleaning of the closets would (as a sanitary measure) have been worth all the time and money that the house party cost.

The girls invited to the party were to arrive Thursday noon. Wednesday evening I called at the house to see how things were going and to offer a little encouragement. It was really a sad sight that met my gaze. The house was still in pretty dire confusion. They had torn everything out of its hiding place, had piled it in the middle of the floor, and, tired and cross, they were sitting around looking at the chaotic heap. If I had not seen house parties before, I should have been sure that no order would ever be evolved out of the mix-up, but I had faith that they would burn what they could not hide or get into some sort of respectable shape.

Before going home I visited the hall which was being decorated for the formal dance. The room


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 was filled with tired or active or irritated brothers doing what they could to carry out the elaborate plan for internal decoration of the room (infernal decoration one of the fellows said it might more appropriately be called) which had been prepared by one of the artistically inclined brothers. The windows, some of which opened upon a blank dormitory wall, were to be filled with elaborately designed panels in black and white of tall cypress trees behind which a brilliant full moon was rising. There was a dado of black and white about the walls, there was a huge screen of black and white to conceal the gallery, and huge lanterns hung from the ceiling and great lamps stood on the floor all designed to represent the shadowy grove of cypress trees and the brilliant full moon rising behind them. Of course any one not a novice knows very well that to get these much desired effects requires a considerable amount of wielding of the hammer and the saw and the paint brush, and running of electric wires and chewing of the rag, and consequent weariness of the flesh. When I arrived they were just at the stage where everything is confusion and nothing seems to be coming out right. The whole lot seemed exhausted and disgusted, and I am sure if at that moment a vote could have been taken on the advisability of giving a house party, there would have been no voice to


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 champion the enterprise. It all reminded me of the last rehearsal of an amateur play when every one loses his temper and forgets his lines. It is one of the sure indications of a successful outcome of the performance. I knew for certain when I saw how wretchedly things seemed to be going that the result would be perfect.

I did not get to the party for an unfortunate and an unexpected telegram took me out of town on Thursday morning, and I did not get back to the house until Sunday evening. The girls had come and gone again, and the fellows were sitting around the fireplace talking it over, physically wrung out, but girding up their mental loins for the repair of their disorganized and wrecked studies. Everything had turned out all right. There had been no social blunders, no hitches in anything, nothing to regret. The girls had been charming, all of them, and pleased and complimentary beyond expression. They had thought the house delightful and had left money enough to buy a new rug to replace the worn one in the library, which had really been the one thing that had kept the furnishings of the place from seeming perfect. There was much self-congratulation and self-satisfaction on the part of every one, and much joy over the fact that it was all over and every one was alive. They had had a little time to take account of expenses,


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 and of course even under "Cap's" careful management, the party had cost about twice what they had planned. They were like the man, however, who said that he did not get off as cheaply as he had thought he would, and he did not think he would. It had cost more than they thought it would, and each one of them had always thought it would, so they had been prepared for the worst and were satisfied. They had established their social prestige for a year or two, they had proved their ability to put on a really high class social function, and they were ready to have a good sleep and get back to the real work of college.

Seriously, I have never known an organization to give a house party that did not ultimately cost nearly twice as much, when all the bills were paid and the actual overheard expenses added on, as it was scheduled to cost. It is difficult to use judgment and to practice economy when one is entertaining a pretty girl. When we plan we are conservative; when we are in the midst of expenditures and the actual money is not going out, we are far less likely to hold ourselves down. There are so many unexpected things to be done, so many desirable ones, so much acting upon the impulse that the bills rapidily mount up. My experience has been that it is much easier in theory to keep down the bills than it is in practice. Any frater-


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 nity that is going to give a house party ought to be prepared to meet expenditures twice as great as the committee planning the party say will be necessary, and it is not a bad thing to have the money in the till before the party is given. Otherwise it is like paying a security debt or a bill for something that has been long ago worn out.

It is usually an extravagant form of entertainment. The man who argues that it is cheap and can be done for little more than the ordinary formal party is either ignorant or an intentional deceiver. It is a form of social entertainment that has got more fraternities hopelessly into debt than any other that I know. Any organization which goes into it should not do so without seriously counting the cost, and the cost is frequently more than young fellows of modest means can afford. One's social standing is not dependent upon such a function. In point of fact most of the young women invited to house parties come from out of town and their entertainment adds little or nothing to the social prestige of the fraternity. Local people get in very slightly on these things; the social reputation which the fraternity develops is usually one of extravagance. The cost of the party, high as it sometimes is, is exaggerated by the neighbors, deplored by the faculty, and protested against by the home folks many of whom are


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 unused to such things. The house party is the most difficult form of fraternity social dissipation to explain to the outsider; from his point of view it is little less than an orgy. It is a form of pleasure that is undoubtedly hard on a man's studies. The theoretical time taken up by the party seldom exceeds three days, but no house party was ever given that did not consume two weeks of actual time in discussion and preparation and participation and at least a week after it was over in getting back to a normal state of mind and emotion. A boy called me up while I have been writing this paper to ask my advice concerning his work. "What is the trouble?" I asked. "I simply can't get down to work since the house party," he replied. "We had so much pleasure and excitement that I cannot get it out of my mind." To a middle-aged, stolid parent or professor this may all seem like foolishness, but it is quite a regular and normal viewpoint for the young undergraduate.

I have never seen such a function where the program was not too congested. At the outset the fellows mean to be conservative, to give themselves a little time to think, to give their guests a few minutes to rest; but by the time the preparations have been fully completed the different events have been planned so closely to follow one another that there is little opportunity to eat and none at all


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 to sleep. The girls are rushed from one event to another until by the time things break up and they are ready to leave for home they look as jaded and haggard as a colony of convalescents. If I were giving advice to a committee planning the program for a house party, I should say plan to allow the girls twelve hours a day for sleeping and putting on their pretty clothes, and they will bless you for your thoughtfulness and not go home the physical wrecks that they usually are.

The house party has more possibilities for risqué situations than any other social function the fraternity can give. There is social danger in it, if it is not conventionally managed and carefully chaperoned, as many a fraternity has learned to its sorrow when it was too late.

The extravagance of the fraternity almost always leads to emulation on the part of another. "You should have seen the Delt house," one man whom I was advising to be conservative said to me. "They must have spent a heap of money. We are to have some of the same girls at our dance, and how do you suppose we should feel if our party seemed cheap?" There is no logic that can meet an argument of this sort. If you give a party, the undergraduate thinks, it must be a little better than the best, whether you have money to stand for it or not.


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68

All's hush'd as midnight yet.

Trin. Ay, but to lose our bottles in the

pool,—

Ste. There is not only disgrace and dishonour

in that, monster, but an infinite loss.

Trin. That's more to me than my wetting:

yet this is your harmless fairy, monster.

Ste. I will fetch off my bottle, though I be

o'er ears for my labour.

Cal. Prithee, my king, be quiet. Seest thou here,

This is the mouth o' the cell: no noise, and enter.

Do that good mischief, which may make this island

Thine own for ever, and I, thy Caliban,

For aye thy foot-licker.

Ste. Give me thy hand: I do begin to have

bloody thoughts.

Trin. O king Stephano! O peer! O worthy

Stephano! look, what a wardrobe here is for

thee!

Cal. Let it alone, thou fool; it is but trash.

Trin. O, ho, monster! we know what belongs

to a frippery.—O king Stephano!

Ste. Put off that gown, Trinculo; by this

hand, I'll have that gown.

Trin. Thy grace shall have it.

Cal. The dropsy drown this fool! what do you mean

To dote thus on such luggage? Let's along,

And do the murder first: if he awake,

From toe to crown he'll fill our skins with pinches;

Make us strange stuff.

 223 king Stephano; cf. n.

228 frippery: place for the sale of old clothing

title: Page:Tempest (1918) Yale.djvu/79


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 There are some advantages. If it is done well, it requires generalship, organization, and thought. It gives social training and develops social experience as very few other functions can. It takes no little finesse for a group of young fellows successfully to carry through a one day party, but when the time grows into three or four the strain and obligation are more than proportionately increased. Sometimes I have felt that this effort was worth while, especially if the success of the undertaking were not made to depend wholly upon the expenditure of money, but rather upon a thoughtfully worked out plan, in the carrying out of which every man in the chapter did his part. If the fellows could only realize it, there is so much more to be gained in effect by using their heads than by spending money. Anyone can spend mohey if he has it or can get it, but it takes a good man to plan an original and effective function that can be carried out with the expenditure of a moderate amount of money. Some of the most delightful parties, however, that I have ever attended have cost the least in the expenditure of actual money. There are so many opportunities to show good taste, and refinement, and thoughtfulness and breeding that if the fellows get by with it, they have had an experience worth while. There are many dangers to avoid—dangers of overdoing


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 the attentions paid to the guests, of wearing them out by long programs and all night performances, and by never giving them a chance to rest or to be alone or to think over what they are doing, of careless and unconventional manners that it gives one a chance at moderation and self-restraint. It is a severe test of a man's ability to do two things well at once—to keep up his college work and not neglect his guests.

Leaving out of account entirely what it may do to the undergraduate's studies or social standing or pocketbook, the house party is unquestionably a good thing for the house. I have thought sometimes that our corporation which rents the house to the active chapter might well afford for the good of the property to contribute something every three or four years toward defraying the expenses of a house party or might give a generous rebate on the rent every time one is given, for there is such a cleaning and scrubbing and polishing, such a painting and kalsomining and varnishing, such a repairing and furbishing, and beautifying within and without as gets the house in condition, and keeps it from running down at the heel, and as makes it perennially looking fresh and new. It is for this reason, perhaps, that when I am asked to give advice about a house party, I view the project with less serious objec-


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 tion than I otherwise might, for though I know the dangers and the expense, I also appreciate the compensations. It may not bring us social prestige, and it may lower our scholastic average, but it is thoroughly good for the house.


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There are many influences in and about college which in one way or another affect undergraduate life and undergraduate morals and scholarship. Training, environment, tradition, example, extra-curriculum activities, all play a part, but in these modern times I believe that at least so far as the colleges which are situated in small cities or country towns are concerned, there are few influences which have done more to discourage and vitiate scholarship and to soften character than cheap photo plays and vaudeville. The effect is a subtle one. The habit of patronizing these performances grows on one imperceptibly but surely.

I do not wish to minimize the good effects of these two classes of amusements. I have only recently heard much commendation of them from people who ought to know what they are talking about. I have no doubt but that moving pictures have their place in education and that they will come to have a wider and a more general use. One can, without doubt, gain admirable effects by the use of pictures which could be obtained in no other way. These points have been discussed and are being discussed by people whose education and whose experience fit them far better than I am


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 fitted to discuss these matters. No doubt these modern and cheap methods of presenting dramatic compositions to the public have opened up new fields of amusement to classes of people who could not previously afford them.

Working people who live in unattractive houses, who are busy all day, and whose evenings are free to spend them as they please, should have amusement, and, if they find it at all, they must get it from an inexpensive source. For them photo plays furnish a means of recreation and some little education, perhaps, and vaudeville adds a touch of humor and romance which they are quite to be excused if they do not resist. With them I have no fault to find. The college student is in a somewhat different class. His evenings may with propriety and profit be spent in study; he can not afford, if he would be more than commonplace, to spend them regularly in cheap moving picture and vaudeville theatres. Moreover, we have a right to expect that his tastes be somewhat higher than those of the average man. Anyone who attends these plays in a college town or who simply watches the crowds as they pour out of the play houses, however, may well be astonished at the numbers of students who regularly attend. Even mature students fall into the habit. Only a short time ago I had reason to inquire into the daily life of


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 a graduate student whose work was coming along badly. He had been reported ill, and I interrogated one of his fraternity brothers as to the condition of health of the supposed invalid. "I don't think he is dangerously sick," the man replied, "for he hasn't missed going to a picture show any day that I remember." I was quite sure I was getting the truth, for the undergraduate who made the statement, so far as I could learn, had missed none himself.

There is every reason, however, why boys should come to college with the cheap show habit, or at least there is every reason why those who come from communities outside of the big cities should do so. They are trained to it at home. With four performances a day and half rates to all those who attend the graded schools and the high schools, there is a strong tendency for all such children to develop early a decided picture show or vaudeville taste. It is an allurement which they can not resist. I know boys in the graded schools and in the high schools who go to these shows practically every day or twice a day, and who are under the spell of the habit as one might be enslaved by a narcotic. No wonder, then, when these boys enter college they should continue the practice and should consider Charlie Chaplin's as the highest type of humor.

The temptation is like the temptation of ciga-