2321 3 py 1 OLDMANDARE'S TALKS h COLLEGE MEN Howard Bement Book_^J>^ CppyrightlM? COEHUGHT DEF0SJI5 Old Man Dare's Talks to College Men Old Man Dare's Talks 4 to College Men By HOWARD BEMENT With an Introduction by Marion LeRoy Burton President of the University of Michigan New York Chicago Fleming H. Revell Company London and Edinburgh Copyright, 1922, by FLEMING H. REVELL COMPANY y \p^ New York: 158 Fifth Avenue Chicago: 17 North Wabash Ave. London: 21 Paternoster Square Edinburgh: 75 Princes Street •DEC 30 ClA602ei9 To William A. Comstock, "Old Man Dare's" Foster-Father INTEODUCTION EVEEY fraternity man in America ought to read this little book. He ought to read it as a fresh- man because it tells in plain words just the choices he must make. He ought to read it as an upperclassman because it will give perspective to a joyous life, the serious duties of which he may neglect. He ought to read it as an alumnus be- cause, with " Old Man Dare," he has messages in his soul which his chapter needs. Discriminating parents will not misun- derstand this book nor borrow unneces- sary trouble from certain dark spots in the background. The fraternities in American colleges and universities have become aware of their mistakes and have 7 8 INTRODUCTION corrected the evils which grew up around them. Their tendency is distinctly up- ward. In recent years they have been real assets to our institutions of higher learn- ing. The author of this book has sensed with remarkable clearness and searching in- sight the whole situation. College men must give heed to his message. Surely no one can imagine that he does not know what he is talking about. He is perfectly familiar with the background. He writes freely in the technical jargon of the under- graduate. Above all, he has not lost his sympathetic understanding of college stu- dents and their world. No one need imagine that college men to-day are not serious. On the surface, it appears that the things of the mind are their least concern. Just scratch that pro- tective exterior, however, and you will dis- cover a real man struggling honestly with the issues of life. Our greatest danger is that too many people will assume that the student's pose is the student himself. He INTRODUCTION 9 likes to get away with it. He likes still better to have you pull it off. This book does it. If you want an intimate glimpse into American fraternity life read these pages. If you are a fraternity man you must prepare yourself, if you are honest (and I know you are), to assume actively some new obligations. Marion LeEoy Burton. University of Michigan, Ann Arbor. Contents I. " What are You Here For? " . 13 II. "Why Study?" 29 III. "How to Study" .... 42 IV. "The Fraternity — A Millstone or a Milestone?" .... 57 V. " Causes and Effects " . . .75 11 I " WHAT ARE YOU HEEE FOR? " 1TELL you the old man was right. The trouble with you, Freshman, is that when it comes to waving the long ears no one can compete with you. You're just a natural born ass. Now you cut out of this conversation for a bit, and give it a chance to recover itself.' ' " Well, for my part, I think the old man is plain nutty, and — " " Who asked your opinion? " the first speaker broke in with heat. " Here are two of us upperclassmen soberly discuss- ing a serious subject before the fire, and you young asses kick out of bounds and begin braying like * * * " So much greeted my ears as I took off my overcoat in the familiar reception hall. I had not been back at the old house for more than five years. Not in all the twenty-three years since my graduation 13 14 OLD MAN DARE'S had so long a time elapsed between visits. Now I liad softly opened the front door, and had let myself in ; noting with a thrill of remembrance the spacious hall, the dig- nified wainscoted dining-room, the library and stair-hall on the left, and beyond, through two intervening doorways, the old circular smoking-room that was the heart of the place. I could now see a segment of that room, blue with tobacco smoke, in the midst of which human figures moved dim as ghosts in Tartarus. How familiar it all looked and sounded! I felt an under- graduate again, and, with a sense of pos- session, strode through the library into the circle before the fire. The strange faces sitting there, half-hidden in the in- cense, soon disillusioned me, however. Who were these young interlopers that had taken, with such assured effrontery, my old place by the fire? My first im- pression was one of pique; but this soon changed as all sprang to their feet and greeted me, after the first hasty self-intro- duction, with a warmth that said more TALKS TO COLLEGE MEN 15 plainly than words: " You are welcome; you are one of the elect; that is all we need to know." I was soon seated, pipe in hand, on the circular window-seat that marked the cir- cumference of the room; and, after a bit of conventional, made-to-order conversa- tion, I gradually fell out of the desultory talk hoping that the discussion I had inter- rupted would be resumed ; for I wanted to know what it was that could so stir the phlegmatic undergraduate mind. The blight of my coming was, however, like the first frost to the squash vines. The subject had wilted before my alien presence, and apparently could not be revived. So I turned to the upperclassman who had seated himself at my side — a blue-eyed, dark-haired, clear-cheeked fellow, with a rich, mellow voice, which I at once recog- nized as the one that had so warmly in- veighed against the freshman. He had been introduced to me as Thomasson, and seemed to respond to the name of Eob. I liked him at first sight ; and it took no very 16 OLD MAN DARE'S keen observation to see that he was, among those in the room, the one to whom all looked for initiative and leadership. " Tell me," I said, " what all the row was about as I came in." Bob laughed his 1 contagions laugh, and said that it was all about " Old Man Dare." " Do you mean Eollo Dare, '97? " I asked; " for, if you do, I'll have you re- member that he was a class below me, and I'm not so old as to be decrepit." But you couldn't abash that boy; he just laughed again, more heartily than before, and I liked him better than if he had at- tempted some labored apology. " Well, he's ' Old Man Dare > to us, in any event; and I assure you the adjective is one implying respect and affection rather than disrespect. You see he has been over here from Chicago for a fort- night (he went back only last night), deliv- ering some lectures before the Junior Laws. I believe he is a non-resident lec- turer on Admiralty Law. He stayed here TALKS TO COLLEGE MEN 17 at the house, and after dinner we used to listen to the old man gas. He held forth every evening to crowded benches; and I believe none of us would have gone to bed if he had not sent us off. The last half- dozen evenings he was here, he gave us what he called some ' four-minute talks ' before we broke up and went to our rooms to study. He would get up and drape him- self over the mantel — you know how tall and thin he is — and, with pipe in his left hand and the index finger of his right leveled at us as though we were a stubborn jury, he would begin. And he handed us some straight stuff, too, and most of it so clear and convincing that even the most stupid freshman couldn't evade its logic. But some of his points roused heated argu- ments last night, and to-night they broke out again; and I guess we were at it when you came in." " What kind of stuff did he hand you? " I asked with interest, for I knew Dare as well as most; knew him as a young pledgling the year before he became a 18 OLD MAN DARE'S brother, always under foot and in tlie way ; knew him as an underclassman, bright, at- tractive, lazy ; knew him as an upperclassr man, slowly growing up; knew him as a law student, just beginning to see the in- side of things; and knew him as a prac- titioner, each year adding to his capital stock, financial, mental, and spiritual. " As I said," continued Bob, " it was straight stuff; but it wasn't preaching, and it wasn't dogmatic, and it wasn't over our heads. It was simple, direct, sympathetic, and — irritating; I guess that's the word. It was irritating just as a flannel under- shirt is; made you feel squirmy and scratchy, and yet you knew it was good for you." "In other words," I said, "it got under your skins. And what was it all about? " 11 Let me see," said Bob, as he groped back a bit to find the answer. " Well, he started off with one harangue which he called, < What Are You Here For? '; and then came, ' Why Study? ' ; and then ' How TALKS TO COLLEGE MEN 19 to Study ' ; and ' Causes and Effects ' ; and there was one mighty pertinent one, 1 The Fraternity — a Millstone or a Mile- stone? ' That was the one we were dis- cussing when you came in." "I'm interested," I said. " You see, 1 Old Dare ' and I have been friends for years. He visited me last summer when he was east, and he draped himself over my mantelpiece and gave me some four- minute talks expanded. He told me many of the things he wanted to say to every young undergraduate; and now, I see, he has got some of it, at least, off his chest. I'm glad you liked it, and approved of it. Now tell me what he had to say on subject number one, as nearly as you can remem- ber it; for I think the thing ought to be reported for the benefit of all, and I'm willing to be the goat if no one else will be. His subsequent remarks I'll make him dictate to his stenographer for me; or you yourself can give me the substance of them after dinner, or at any convenient time. ' ' 20 OLD MAN DARE'S I was much interested to see how well this young collegian would be able to give the substance of one of my friend's talks. It was a severe mental test to which I was subjecting him, although he did not know it. I have tried to reproduce what he said, sitting on the outskirts of the crowded smoking-room, with fitful gusts of conversation from all quarters blowing upon him. He was a good boy, that kid; he thought. And what I have transcribed below is the result of his thinking. " I find it difficult," he said, " to give you the impression of Brother Dare's first talk. You see he had gassed with us very freely during that initial week; and what he had said was very informal. When he began on that first formal little four- minuter, all he had previously handed out to us served as a kind of background. You really ought to have that to get at the meat of his more studied utterance. Among other things he had made very clear to us that he didn't especially blame underclass- men for being damn fools; he said quite TALKS TO COLLEGE MEN 21 frankly that lie liad been one himself. But lie did blame all college students, not for what they did that was off-color, but for the insufferable number of essential things they failed to do. ' I don't ask you not to do this or that/ he said; ' you will probably be asses enough to do it no mat- ter what I say. I don't ask you never to touch a drop; I don't ask you not to raise hell like a lot of hoodlums; I don't ask you, in short, not to do anything. If your own inbred ideas of what is decent and right won't direct you, nothing from me will induce you to be decent and gentle- manly and clean. But I am full of wrath at the thought of things you don't do: the things for the doing of which you really came away to college in the first place.' " He poured this sort of thing into us hot and heavy," continued Eob in remi- niscent strain. " Then on that night about a week ago he stood up there where Cootie Bryan is standing now, and said he wanted to give us, each evening until he went away, a four-minute talk which 22 OLD MAN DARE'S should summarize some phase of what he had been giving informally. He had been delivering four-minute talks during the Loan Campaigns, and he was obsessed with the notion that four minutes was the divinely appointed interval within which all the sacred revelations had been im- parted to man. Moses must have been on Sinai about this length of time; and God's talk to Paul on the Damascus road was a 1 four-minute speech.' I'll give you his first speech as nearly as I can remember it. He entitled it ' What Are You Here For! ' " In the old Biblical theory of the human body, we find the bowels to be the seat of the affections; the heart, the seat of the intellect. The old record speaks of ' bowels and mercies ' ; and the psalmist prayed for an i understanding heart. ' We, of a more modern age, have moved every- thing up one story in the human dwelling ; the affections from the bowels to the heart; the intellect from the heart to the head. TALKS TO COLLEGE MEN 23 This process seemed to leave the base- ment untenanted ; but not for long. A new tenant moved in, a noisy, domineering fel- low, whose influence extends to the top of the house. And so we are accustomed to speak in racy modern parlance of the man who has anything under his abdominal belt as one ' who has guts \ In this day and age a man who is to get ahead in the world is supposed to have his basement pretty well stored with the article named; but the trouble with most of you is, that you have been storing the basement, and playing high-jinks on the second floor, with never a thought as to the tenant who should be living and working up under the roof. This three-fold equipment for life — stam- ina, sympathy, and scholarship — is what college is supposed to bring out. You get the first on the football field, the second in your fraternity and general social experi- ence ; the third in the classroom. " When I ask you, ' What are you here for? ' I ask you a question that may bring a multitude of answers. But mighty few 24 OLD MAN DARE'S of them will come from heads that have thought the thing out very deeply. Most of you are here because you were sent; because you followed the path of least re- sistance. Not one of you, I venture to say, came of your own volition in the hope of becoming three-story men. You never thought out the three-fold function of col- lege, and never aimed at well-rounded character. You wanted, perhaps, to make a team and sport a college letter ; and your entire time was spent, so to speak, in throwing out on your bodily residence an abdominal bay of pretentious size ; or else you aimed at becoming pigeon-breasted by giving free reign to social intercourse. The top floor with most of you is not built up at all; it's only a rough-hewn attic, stored with useless lumber and junk which you have lugged in from a lot of college courses into which you put neither the stamina of persistent effort, nor the heart of sympathetic understanding. You don't live there at all, and the place is cold, bleak, and uninviting. TALKS TO COLLEGE MEN 25 " Cardinal Newman said that a univer- sity was a collection of books. If that be true, most of you have never been to col- lege at all. You have been working in a muscle factory day-times, and have been attending a kind of social finishing school at night. But how many of you know in- timately the inside of the college library? Could you investigate a subject requiring original research? Could you go to the stacks and track a subject down? Do you study, long hours at a time, in reading- or seminar-room? Do you know anything about ' a collection of books ' that does not begin with a best-seller and end with a worst? Have you ever made the slightest effort to meet your professors half-way? Have you ever accorded them anything but a kind of condescending tol- erance? Have you ever been beyond the threshold of their top story and noted the rich furnishings of their intellectual resi- dence? You are too poverty-stricken yourselves even to possess the desires to be richer intellectually than you are. 26 OLD MAN DARE'S " What are you here for? To grow into a three-story symmetry. But the trouble is that you emphasize the building and the furnishing of the lower floors, and neglect the topmost. That is why I am hammer- ing at the necessity for study. Stamina you must have — and you will probably get it (of a physical kind, at least — I am not so sure of moral stamina) without any urging from me. Sympathy (I use the word broadly) you will need all through life; but I think I can trust you to get it without my pleading for it. But scholar- ship you will not get because your stamina has too little moral fibre in it, and your sympathy is too narrow to include hob- nobbing with your intellectual superiors. " And so I insist that you are here chiefly to study. And right here I want you to note the two most important by- products of study. The first is culture; the second is power. You are here to store culture and to create power. Believe me, you will need both in the world of men. Culture will do two things: it will bring TALKS TO COLLEGE MEN 27 you broad satisfactions from within, and will accord you pleasurable recognition from without. Power will do two things : it will create in you a self-poise, the sense of which is akin to greatness; and it will carry you among men with a sense of ac- complishment. Culture and power — the product of scholarship — supplemented by stamina and sympathy: get this sym- metrical growth out of your college ex- perience, and you will have answered ' What are you here for? ' as the modern collegian must answer it if he is to become a citizen of the new world of men and things now springing into being. Don't, I beg of you, leave this place with * Nothing to look backward to with pride, And nothing to look forward to with hope.' Dante never pictured a hell deeper or more fiery than these words imply. Are you going to think of your college in after years as ' Alma Mater ' or as a Deceitful Mistress? It's up to you to make the answer yourselves." Here the familiar, resonant old gong 28 OLD MAN DARE'S rang for dinner. Eob laughed aloud. " I feel almost like a preacher," he said. I gave his hand a cordial pressure, and fol- lowed him out into the dining-room. " I want to hear the rest after dinner/ ' I said. n " WHY STUDY? " I DON'T know why it has always been considered bad form to shake hands with the butler. Possibly it is because we have inherited our ideas of butlers from English forebears, who liked theirs made of wood, and loved to regard them as silent, well-oiled automatons; bloodless and nerveless, figures in livery for the performance in faultless routine of conventional duties. We in my day dis- liked thinking of our general factotum — our butler-valet-waiter — as merely an ani- mated corpse. We made Davy, who was a true " image of God carved in ebony," a member of our little family. I don't know that he was ever initiated into the secrets of our order, but he was certainly admitted into the very Star Chamber of our daily intimacies. We u joshed " him 29 30 OLD MAN DARE'S like an equal, and he " joshed " back, his thick lips parting over his ivories in an expansive but well-bred smile. He bor- rowed our money and wore our clothes. Many a negro ball was graced with the purple and fine linen of our chiefest Beau Brummel, Clark Hyatt; not always, to be sure, with the Beau's knowledge and con- sent. His knowledge usually followed the fait accompli; his reluctant consent came after Davy's smooth and ingratiating apologies and explanations. So it was, when I entered the dining- room and beheld the well-remembered black face surmounting the faultless white jacket, that I did not hesitate to grasp a swarthy extended palm, and did it with a real sense of feeling at home. I rather wanted to invite Davy to sit down with me at the table and talk over old times, for he knew my contemporaries as none of these youths did who were flocking in to dinner with me; but I yielded to convention and gave over the desire to call Davy from his proper sphere, one which he graced with TALKS TO COLLEGE MEN 31 as much, ease and sang froid as the diners theirs. He was the only living link con- necting me with the past of my college days, and I made certain that I should have a visit with him before the evening was over. He could tell me, I knew, all the latest gossip of Charlie Stratton, Harry Bridgmen, Dude Stone, Billy Comstock, the "Whitmans, Marquis Eaton, and all the other unregenerates of my time who have forgotten the gentle art of letter- writing ; whose epistles generally are typed, and bear in the lower left-hand corner, " Dic- tated but not read by Mr. "; soul- less records of slaves* of business depend- ent on their secretaries or stenographers. The dinner went off bravely albeit I de- tected familiar culinary lapses which made me think the beery cook I knew twenty years before still infested the kitchen. The brave palates, however, and the copper-riveted digestive organs of these college boys seemed not to notice anything amiss; but then, they had not known married life and home-cooking. 32 OLD MAN DARE'S The thought of what I used to do, gas- tronomically, indicated clearly to me the amount of water that had passed under my bridge since the time when I had been accustomed to thrust my legs thrice daily beneath that long, black, oaken table. Eob Thomasson was on my right; on my left, a burly blond youth with a ready wit and a brisk tongue. The boys called him " Spider.' ' What Eob could not tell me of Old Man Dare's second four- minute speech, Spider supplied; and from the quantity of material poured out by the two during the dinner-hour I in- ferred that my old friend, Eollo Dare, must have lost his four-minute terminal facilities. From the material which the two supplied I worked into somewhat co- herent form Old Man Dare's second talk, entitled " Why Study?" " You boys won't study as you ought until you see the reasonableness of study. Most of you have been drawn here to col- TALKS TO COLLEGE MEN 33 lege by the vaguest of purposes, some of which I outlined to you in my talk last night. What I want to do to-night is to make perfectly concrete the reasons why study should be your chief aim in college ; and I can do this only by showing with absolute clarity the relation of habits of study and concentration formed now to your future success in life. In attempting this I shall do little more than paraphrase a memorable article by President Foster, of Eeed College, entitled ' Should Students Study? ', which appeared some years ago in Harper 9 s Magazine. The article is now available in book form, and I earnestly commend to you the purchase and the care- ful reading of it. I also want you to buy and read a book, equally memorable, by Charles Mills Gayley. His book is Idols of Education. " Now I think you will agree that you are here in college to promote your chances of success in life. The fatal error with most of you is that you regard the social light of the fraternity or the athletic 34 OLD MAN DARE'S hero as the one most certain to succeed in his chosen business or profession. By common consent yon regard the c grind ' as foredoomed to failure — a fellow with- out imagination, a dull plodder, wliose eyes are blind to the joyous insouciance which seems to you the best preparation for life. " Let us begin at the very beginning, and see if you are right. In so far as sta- tistics are available for our purpose, let us follow boys from high school to college, from college to professional schools, from professional schools into life, and see if there be any definite relation between scholarship and success. " A University of Wisconsin professor compared the records of hundreds of stu- dents at the University of Wisconsin with their records in various high schools. He found that above 80 per cent of those who were in the first quarter of their high school classes remained in the upper half of their classes throughout their four years in the University ; and that above 80 TALKS TO COLLEGE MEN 35 per cent of those who were in the lowest quarter in their high school classes failed to rise above a line of mediocre scholar- ship in the University. A similar investi- gation conducted by the University of Chicago produced surprisingly similar re- sults; whence it seems fair to infer that promise in the high school becomes per- formance in college. Of course the boy who was a failure in high school may be- come a success in college. Statistics show that he does once in five hundred cases — a miserable sporting chance to take, you will admit. " Let us now follow the college man into the professional school. Many a col- lege loafer ' kids himself along ' by saying that the abstruse subjects of the liberal arts course may well be slighted, for they bear no relation to the real work of life. It will be sufficient, he thinks, to drag along over these obstructions in the way, and begin seriously to work when he has reached the practical studies of law, medi- cine, or engineering. But notice the sta- •> 6 OLD MAX DARE'S tisties. Here are some that refer to all graduates of Harvard College who, during a period of twelve years, entered the Har- vard Medical Seliool. Of 239 who received no distinction as undergraduates, 36 per cent were graduated with honors from the Medical School. Of the 41 who received honors as college undergraduates, 92 per cent took their medical degrees with honor. In the Law School, figures for twenty successive years are available. Of those who were graduated from college with no special honor, only 6% per cent attained distinction in the Law School. Of those who were graduated with honor from the college, 22 per cent attained dis- tinction in the Law School; of those who were graduated with great honor, 40 per cent; of those who were graduated with the highest honor, 60 per cent. Of 340 men who entered college with conditions and were graduated with plain pass de- grees, not 3 per cent won honor degrees in the Law School. " What shall we infer from these rec- TALKS TO COLLEGE MEN 87 ords? Simply this: that it is so hard for a .student to change his habits of life after the crucial formative years of college, that not one man in twenty years who v. satisfied with a ' C ' grade or lower, gained distinction in the studies of the Harvard Law School. The same deadly parallel follows the Yale graduates who went up to Cambridge for their courses in law. Their performance at Yale proved a per- fect index of their performance in the Har- vard Law School. It is evident, therefore, that the ' good fellow ? in college who 4 does not let his studies interfere with his education,' but who intends to settle down to hard work and real accomplishment in the professional school, is almost a myth: he simply does not exist in numbers suffi- cient to be reckoned with. " But is success in the professional school a necessary index of success in life? In answering this question — the vital one for all of you — President Foster has con- ducted some invaluable investigations which bears pertinently on the point at 38 OLD MAN DARE'S issue. From two widely separate univer- sities, Harvard and the University of Oregon, lie had competent judges send him a list of men who had made a notable suc- cess of life — men from certain classes ex- tending from 1871 to 1901. He then had the college records of these men compiled, and compared them with the records of men selected at random from the same classes. In general it was discovered that above 50 per cent of the successful men had been good students in college; of the men not regarded as successful or selected at random, only 12 per cent had done work of distinction in college. Evidence tend- ing to the same conclusion has been com- piled by other widely separated universi- ties — Yale and the University of Kansas. The president of Western Eeserve, after wide study of the subject,, states that he finds no exception, in the records of any American college, to the general rule that those who achieve most before graduation are likely to achieve most after gradua- tion. The list of the first ten scholars of TALKS TO COLLEGE MEN 39 each of the classes that were graduated from Harvard College from 1850 to 1860 is a list of men eminent in every walk of life. It is no unfair inference that the first quarter in scholarship in any college class will give to the world as many distin- guished men as the other three-quarters. " I could go on multiplying figures. From the records of 1,667 graduates of Wesleyan University it is found that of the highest honor graduates one out of two becomes a distinguished man; of Phi Beta Kappa men, one out of three ; of the rest, one out of ten. Of Yale valedictory ans, 56 per cent are included in Who's Who. Of the men from twenty-two se- lected colleges, it was discovered that three times as many honor graduates were in Who's Who as all the rest of the living graduates of those colleges put together. The records of Oxford and Cambridge Universities show surprisingly similar re- sults ; for a certain period dealt with in a special investigation of the matter, it was discovered that 46 per cent of the honor 40 OLD MAN DARE'S men at Oxford who were admitted to the bar attained distinction in the practice of law, while of the mere pass men, only 16 per cent attained distinction. " Why study? Simply because you can't afford not to. The almost inevitable result of college loafing is spelled large in the records. The curse of the age is the curse of Mediocrity; and those contribute most largely to the army of the mediocre who could have achieved, but did not; those who had your opportunities, and neglected them. Why study? Because it has been proved with almost mathematical certainty that the hours on end you can grind without ceasing are the coefficient numbers showing how many times your normal chances of success in life are mul- tiplied by power of concentration and piti- less application. Can you r afford not to study, and study hard? ' Think on these things ' ; and then come to the only sensi- ble conclusion. That conclusion must be, if you have sanity and sense, something like the following: ' What I do with to- TALKS TO COLLEGE MEN 41 day's lesson in Psychology or Mathe- matics will, in large measure, determine what I shall do with to-morrow 's problems in those subjects; what I do with to- morrow's lessons determines the result of next week; next week will determine next month's success or failure; next month, next year ; next year, the next decade ; the next decade, my sum-total of life. Whither am I tending? Toward success or failure? Toward habits of study or habits of loaf- ing? My present is the product of my past ; my future is the child of my present. What that future shall be is mine to deter- mine, — and that problem in College Al- gebra is yet to be solved. Thanks, fellows, but I guess I'll go upstairs and study." Ill " HOW TO STUDY " AFTER dinner I went out to pay a call on an old friend of my col- lege days, now Dean of the De- partment of Literature, Science, and the Arts. He could tell me, I knew, something of what I wanted to find out about the reputation of my fraternity for scholar- ship. At the conclusion of the visit, remi- niscent of old times and old friends, I thought I knew a little more of the signifi- cance of Pope's words, " Damn with faint praise/ 7 Still, anything was better than" the kind of praise which had been faculty habit in my day. The Dean said frankly that scholarship in the chapter was better than during the time of my college career (which was not especially flattering to me, I told him) ; but he left a quite clear im- pression with me that there was still some- thing to be desired. I wandered back to the chapter house 42 TALKS TO COLLEGE MEN 43 about eleven. The living rooms were a blaze of light, but empty. The house was still. I had noticed that a few windows in the second floor were still aglow, and I wondered if Old Man Dare's four-minute talks had taken hold, and if those lighted panes betokened the proverbial " midnight oil " of the pale student wrestling with syntax, social statistics, and psychology. In a fair glow of optimistic enthusiasm I wandered into the smoking-room, and drew an easy chair up before the fire. Out of the glowing coals I fell to conjuring up the past, with all its tragi-comedy of youth, its fun and its frolic, its hopes and its fears, its successes and its failures. What a procession of old familiar faces went flitting by! And how time had played high-jinks with many a dear- remembered chap ! Some of our most lib- eral spenders were now filching a pre- carious livelihood from the pockets of a cold and unsympathetic world. Some whose youth seemed to promise little were now captains of industry, " riding in 44 OLD MAN DARE'S chaises/' and dropping an occasional largesse, with the broad gesture of con- scious liberality, to their less fortunate brothers. Some were prominent in law and politics ; some were treading the hum- drum by-paths of life* But all went by in beloved and well-remembered attitudes as I sat thus in a brown study before the fire. Suddenly I sat up, shook off my remi- niscent mood, and drew a little writing table toward the fire. I had soon written the following letter: " Deak Old Man: " You have cut a wide swath here at the Chapter House. I find evidences of your recent visit scattered about as thick as beet-seed in a kitchen-garden. You have dropped platitudes like hail. The chapter-stomach (I vary the figure) is fairly distended in an effort to assimilate your spiritual and intellectual fodder. I fear that moral indigestion will soon set in. For heaven's sake, then, give me these four-minute classics of yours, for TALKS TO COLLEGE MEN 45 they ought to be preserved in authorized version in the archives of our devoted order. In particular send me your simple little lilt on How to Study, for if you have any gaudy sign-posts to set up along the highroad to learning, I want to see them. I have never yet known any man who could with certitude direct blind youth toward the fount of pure wisdom. If you have the nerve to think you can do (or have done) it, please put me next by first mail. I am, as you know, a simple, un- adorned schoolmaster, and I don't know lioiu to study myself. I should immensely like to know how, and I should like to be able to share the secret with the lame, halt, and blind pupils before whom I pose as an omniscient pointer-of-the-way. Sit down before your patient, sad-eyed stenog- rapher, and point out the way to me. Do it now." " Whah, ain't yo'-all gone to bed yit! " It was Davy's oleaginous voice, sounding somewhat between the purring of a cat 46 OLD MAN DARE'S and the dripping of thick molasses. It startled me, however, out of my train of thought, for his step was as light as his voice was soft. " You old black rascal," I said; " you nearly frightened me into goose flesh. Why don't you put your feet down so that they will give some advance notice of your coming? " Davy was going the rounds, extinguish- ing the lights for the night. He now stood expectantly in the doorway. " What's Mr. Dare's city address? " I asked. " 110 Souf Deebo'n Street, sah," was the ready answer of our travelling direc- tory, given with a grin of solid ivory and solid satisfaction. " He's jes' been heah, sah. It's a pity yo' missed him." " Yes," I said. " I understand he has been talking a bit during his stay." Davy's face became fairly luminous with joyous reminiscence. " Talk! " he cried; " say, cain't Mistah Dare talk, dough! He's jes' de lubbliest talker Ah TALKS TO COLLEGE MEN 47 ebber beard. He jes' open bis mouf, and de words come a-slidin' out as smoove as dey was greased. He don' nebber bab to wait for no word to come. He jes' tbinks a thing, and dere's de words a-waitin' to jump rigbt out and tell yo' all 'bout it. Ab come in Tuesday nigbt wid a telef oam message f oh him, and beard him argyfyin ' de young men somethin' gran'." " What was he talking about? " I asked, wondering if this black cistern could yield anything but muddy water. " He was lecturefyin' 'em on how to study," was Davy's immediate answer. " What did he have to say? " I asked, feigning an indifference that only half con- cealed my interest. I had heard it said, " Out of the mouths of babes "; but I had never foreseen such an application of Biblical wisdom as this coincidence seemed to promise. If this African babe could satisfy my curiosity, I should make sure of what I wanted without waiting to hear from Old Man Dare. I was not sure that there would not be distinct advantage 48 OLD MAN DARE'S in getting his pedagogic platitudes diluted with Ethiopian innocence. I confess I somewhat feared receiving the weighty letter for which I had made so summary a demand, for I looked forward to Rollo's writing me the usual drool about study somewhat in the following fashion: " Study is not merely the definite act of memorization; it is not merely reading and absorbing; it is not merely thinking. It is the bringing of a welter of ideas into orderly cohesion; it is the systemization of apparently incoherent, but related facts ; it is the building up of divergent but com- ponent elements into a body, and the in- fusing of that body with the breath of life. It is making lifelike what would otherwise be dead ; it is making glow with ruddy fire what would otherwise be a dull spark; it is the vitalization of drudgery by a vision, at the beginning of the effort, of that drudgery in its relation to human activ- ity." I had fancied his going on with a dry dissertation on " interest, habit, at- tention, concentration, observation, asso- TALKS TO COLLEGE MEN 49 ciation of ideas; the cultivation of mem- ory, reasoning power, and the reflective processes. " If Davy was an honest me- dium, Old Man Dare said nothing of the stock, pedagogic platitudes in the stock, pedagogic terminology. I motioned my luminous black compeer to a near-by chair, stretched myself out comfortably in my own, and plucked the following wisps of wisdom from the burrs of Davy's reten- tive memory (as nearly as I can remem- ber them) : " How to Study." " Now, yo' young fellahs doan know nothin' 'bout study. Yo' tinks yo' does, but yo' ain't. When Ah used to live in dis yeah house it was jes' lak a barnyard at study-time. De donkey was a-brayin', de sheep was a-runnin' roun', de cow was a-mooin', de hog was a-gruntin', de chick- ens was a-cluckin', an' de ole fox was a-barkin' ober de fence. Ah specs it's jes' de same now. Befoah yo'-all kin study, gotta keep de animules quiet; an' to keep 50 OLD MAN DARE'S 'em quiet yo' gotta quit bein' 'em. When yo' studies, yo' quit bein' all de animules in de barnyard. Some of yo' am one ani- mule, an' some of yo' am all of 'em put togedder. 11 Now, fust ob all, doan none o' yo' be de donkey. What does he do when he's thinkin' a heap — when he's a-studyin'? He jes puts his foah laigs in foah difrunt drections, an' he lays back his years, an' he meks all his muscles hard, an' dey ain't nobody kin move him. No sah, he won't budge a inch. Lots o' boys when dey studies is jes lak dat. Dey's all tight- muscled, an' muley, an' obstinet. De good learnin' wants to lead 'em somewheres, but dey's too tied up wid stubbornness to move. Dey ain't relaxin' none. Dere whole min' am plumb again de thing de study-book's a-tryin' to do; Now doan yo' be like no jackass. To' jes' git yo' foah laigs in shape, restful an' easy, an' yo' whisk up yo' years so's dey kin heah, an' yo' git ready, quiet an' easy, to tak de load; an' den it won't be so darn hebby. TALKS TO COLLEGE MEN 51 Yo- 9 jest try to git in min 9 an 9 body de attitude ob study. " Nex', doan yo' be like no sheep, fer it am sliure one damfule beast. It ain't got no mite o' sense ob drection. De ole ram go off on a tangent, an' dem fool sheep s follows along, along, not a-thinkin' where, an' bnmps dey fool haids. Dat's yo' all ober, yo' fool Mabels o' fake students. An ole ram-thought breaks loose in yo' haids, an' yo' go a-follerin' it like a sheep, nebber thinkin' where yo' started fer nor where yo' wanted to go when yo' picked up yo' study-book. Yer ole mis'ble habits, dey jes' act plumb locoed, and dey f oilers roun' and roun' de barnyard, an' dey doan git yo' nowheres, an' all yo' do is to bump yo' fool beans. Doan yo J be no damfule sheep when yo' tries to study. " An' fer hebben's sake doan yo' be no ole cow when yo' settles down to work. She ain't got no pep. She jest lays dere in a cool corner, an' blinks her purty, lum- nous eyes, an' chaws her ole cud, an' flicks her ole tail kinda lazy-like. Ah seen many 52 OLD MAN DARE'S a young lawyer study a brief, Ah has, lak he were a cow; an' say, man, it jes' natch 'lly made me mad to watch him. His eyes had a fur-away look in 'em like he was a-eaten' lush grass an' drinkin' cool watah miles away in de meddows. An' he kep' a-turnin' obah his ole cud, an' chewin' kinda mild-like. He kep' a-goin', shuah; but his motions was* so restful dey'd a put a angel to sleep in de midst ob a hallelu- yah chorus. Slow, an' solem, an' far- away, an' dreamy — dat's de ole cow when she studies. In hebben's name, doan yo 9 be no ole cow when yo 9 studies. " Now, some of yo' studies jest lak a hog. Yo' noses roun' somethin' fierce. Yo' gits yer ole black snout right down in de dirt ob de subject, an' yo' roots roun'. But yo' doan nebber tak yo' eyes off en de groun', an' yo' doan see nuthin' bey on' jest de one carrot ye's a-rootin' fer. An' My soul! What a pow'ful lot o' gruntin' all de while. Shuah! Yo' wants to root roun' fer de lesson ob de day; but cain't yo' lift up yo' ole muddy eyes an' see no TALKS TO COLLEGE MEN 53 connection ob de lesson wid things up highah? De carrot am only one part ob de whole garden, and only one teeny mite ob de whole meal. An' yo' so plumb dirty, intlectually speakin'. Yo' wants to wash yo' minds an' lift up yo' haids. Doan be no ole dirty gruntin' rooting hog when yo' studies. " An', land's sake! Ef dere ain't de ole hen ! Ah jes' hates dat damfule bird. Ah run ober one wid my car a-comin' here, kase I could no mo' help it 'en Ah could fly. Dat ole hen, she race dis-a-away, an' den dat-away; an' den she turn an' run to de right, an' den she turn an' run to de lef ', an' den she turn an' run plumb under de wheel. De f edders f ollered me lak smoke ; but de ole hen she lay in de middle ob de road as daid as las' week Friday. De only time she's ebber quiet is when she's set- tin'; but she doan know if it's china aigs er ones she made herself dat she's settin' on. She ain't got no jedgment, but she runs off lak her mind was set on a hair- trigger; shootin' in ebery direction and 54 OLD MAN DAKE'S h'ittin' nothin' but de fendah or de radia- tah ob life's buzzwaggin. Some ob yo' studies lak dat. Yo' rushes at a subjec' an' den yo' rushes away from it, workin' lak de debbil, an' jes' gettm' nowlieres but under de wheel. Mah boys, don't yo y study lak no ole fule hen. " Listen! D'ye heah dat? Dat's de ole fox barkin' ober de fence. Ain't he de boy? He ain't shet up in no ole barnyard, an' he kin come and go when he pleases. He's plain clebber, dat slim lil' fox. When he wants a meal, he jest creeps in, all sneaky an' quiet, lak a bit o' breeze bio win' through a crack, an' he taks off a chicken es easy es first declenshun. He 's de walk- in' delegate ob de nebber-work union, an' he's right on to his job. His life am jes' one long play-time. He jest lubs excite- ment, an' he gits in dangrous places fer de fun o' foolin' somebody an' gittin' out. His motto ain't ' Treat 'em rough '; it's 6 Fool 'em right, an' fool 'em always.' He does it, too. An' — hark! What's dat? Blame me, if it ain't de yell of ole Mr. TALKS TO COLLEGE MEN 55 Fox. I specs lie's ketched in de trap dat was set yestiddy — dey mostly is. An' some ob yo' — all dat's so clebber — always foxin' de perfessers, always workin' lak Mistah Bushtail to fool 'em right an' fool 'em always — well, look out fer de trap, fer it's gwine to spring on yo' slmali. Doan yo' study lak no sly ole fox dat only fools hisself. " Now, ef yo' will p'sist in studyin' lak some one ob de barnyard aninmles, why doan yo' study lak de boss? Jes' look at 'im standin' dere. He kin be trusted to stan' widdout hitchin'; be '11 come when he's called; he'll stan' quiet while yo' hitchin' him; he'll pull hard when yo' give him de ordah; he'll go fast when yo' flick him wid de whip; he'll stop when yo' yells ' Whoa '; he'll back up when yo' done gone too fur; he'll stand an' tek his meals civil an' proper; an' when he's turned loose, dey ain't none of dem barnyard folks can frisk any finer 'n him. He keeps hisself clean, and he ain't so keen on feedin' he doan nebber look up. His years is always 56 OLD MAN DARE'S a-pointin' to'ds de truf, an' he's got a open eye fo' wisdom. Push er pull, stand er trabble, fas' er slow, always on de job, gib me de ole hoss. My belubbed chilluns, when yo' studies, Ah recmend yeh studies lak de hoss." I threw my letter to Old Man Dare into the fireplace, and wrote him a letter of apology which I think he never fully un- derstood. Davy I rewarded with an old safety razor and a copy of Talks to Stu- dents on the Art of Study. IV "THE FEATEENITY— A MILLSTONE OE A MILESTONE !" 1CAME down to breakfast late on the morning that followed Davy's midnight dissertation on the art of study. The dining-room was nearly de- serted, but a confusion of dishes, and chairs in disarray, proclaimed many a hastily swallowed meal. Three late-com- ers were leisurely eating. " Isn't it the very dickens," proclaimed an indignant freshman from the bottom of the table, " the way this darned academic faculty insult us with eight-o 'clocks ? You'd think their chief business in life was to make things as unpleasant for us as possible. Here I am — my eight-o'clock in French all prepared, and a dead sure 100 per cent in sight. And what happens ? I don't get my 100 and am charged with a cut, merely because I forgot to wind my alarm-clock. I call that rotten luck; and all because the faculty make a point of 57 58 OLD MAN DARE'S getting us out of bed in the small hours of the morning. " 16 You make me tired, freshman, with your kindergarten complaints," said a two-hundred-pound sophomore from near the bottom of the table. " If you call the faculty names for setting eight-o 'clocks, what can be said for them when they make a special point of assigning us football men to afternoon divisions that recite at four? I call that plain brutal. It seems to me they are doing everything they can to queer athletics in this institution. They're a bum lot anyway, with a point of view as circumscribed as an oyster's. Here we are, trying our darndest to make the university great in athletics ; and they show as much sympathy toward our efforts as a freshman medic exhibits toward the cadaver he's carving. I call the whole system rotten, and the faculty rotters." I took a seat beside Eob Thomasson, the only senior present, and tried to drag my mind into sympathetic accord with the at- titude of the persecuted underclassmen. TALKS TO COLLEGE MEN 59 " Is the university really going to tlie devil? "I asked of Bob. Kob's face lighted with his contagious smile. " Absolutely," he said. " The faculty are wholly unreasonable in their attitude toward the undergraduate point of view. They insist on too much atten- tion being given to academic performance, and are too little sympathetic toward the more important activities of college life. Of course they are a bunch of nuts, or they would see that they can't get away with it. They stand about as much chance as an egg in a cyclone. They're just making themselves unpopular, and are tolerated here only as a necessary evil. We have as few dealings with them as possible." Eob's eyes twinkled as he reached for a muffin. " It is terrible," I said, u for a state university to lend official sanction to study from books, and attendance upon pre- scribed recitations. I wonder the taxpay- ers stand for it. My own idea is that this institution ought to turn itself into a glori- 60 OLD MAN DARE'S fied night-school, leaving the entire day- free for the more important functions of college life. Still, I suppose there are stu- dents here who want their evenings open for certain kinds of social relaxation that cannot be found during the day; so per- haps my scheme would not work after all. A few are bound to be dissatisfied, no mat- ter what you do for them. ' ' Davy brought me some cold cereal and tepid coffee with the regal air of disposing of a largesse. I took what was offered in a spirit of meek and grateful acceptance, and propounded a question to Eob. " You were having a hot argument the night I arrived over one of Old Man Dare 's talks. I infer that he did not strike an altogether popular note in the talk under discussion. What was the rub? I thought what he had to say met with a rather popular acceptance. J 9 " It did/' said Eob; " but some of those foundling orphans among the underclass- men have got to crab at something, and one of the points the Old Man made in his TALKS TO COLLEGE MEN 61 fourth talk got under their skin. He was giving it to us older fellows as to our posi- tion of responsibility toward the younger; and the infants, some of them at least, re- sented the notion that anybody had to be responsible for them. They were quite able to take care of themselves, they said ; and they wanted it distinctly understood that they came away from home with their eye-teeth cut, and came away primarily for purposes of freedom from restraint. If we older fellows were to dog their every movement, keep them in nights, superin- tend their study, and give them their bot- tles, they might just as well have stayed at home under nurse or governess. So it went until some of them got very crabby indeed. " " They're an uneasy lot," I remarked; 1 c they remind me of some one I once knew very well indeed." " They're uneasy all right," answered Eob. " You see they took exception also to another thing Mr. Dare said. He stressed the idea that they were, as a gen- 62 OLD MAN DARE'S era! thing, an impressionable bunch, look- ing with round-eyed wonder and admira- tion to the upperclassmen, worshiping the very ground we walked on. I must say that I myself took some exception to that. I hadn't noticed any freshmen around this joint making a tin god of me. If they do worship me, they have a confirmed habit of conducting their rites in secret. But you never can tell what they really are thinking about, for they have a habit of concealing their thoughts behind a camou- flage of words. They can talk more and say less than any politician who ever mounted a soap-box.' f " The human race will never grow up," I remarked, substituting a platitude for the better reply I ought to have made. " History goes on repeating itself, and freshmen are still freshmen. But with re- gard to the Old Man's standpoint: do you suppose for a moment that he has forgot- ten his college days, or has he simply changed his mind about things with the passing of the years? " TALKS TO COLLEGE MEN 63 "I don't know," answered Eob. "I know lie hadn't lost his sympathy with youth. The fellows had only to hear him and see him to understand that. And by the way," he said, diving into his coat pocket and producing a formidable-looking envelope, " here are all the Old Man's talks, received in this morning's mail. I asked him to transcribe them for me, but I never thought he would take the trouble. He must have dictated them almost at once upon reaching Chicago. I told him I wanted them to read at chapter meetings, where they could be discussed at length, and with due order and decorum. Don't you want to read these over? " — and Eob passed the envelope to me. And so it is that I am able to produce in Dare's own words his fourth four- minute talk, entitled " The JB'eateenity — A MhjjStoete or a Milestone? " " ' God gives us our relatives; thank God we can choose our friends,' said a gentle cynic not long ago. Most fraternity 64 OLD MAN DARE'S affiliations, however, are rushed into not with, eyes open to the choosing of wholly congenial friends, but rather with eyes upon the securing of the kind of specious social position which this or that frater- nity may seem to offer. By the same token the fraternity often blindly chooses the scion of some socially prominent family without regard to the qualities of con- geniality possessed by the candidate him- self. If he wears his clothes well, pos- sesses the requisite air of sang froid, seems to be sufficiently sophisticated, and does not eat with his knife, we gather him in with a sense of complacent self-satis- faction. He may later prove to have the irascible temper of a Sam Johnson; the intellectual capacity of a Peter Simple ; or the morals of a Don Juan ; and he may fit into the family relationship of the frater- nity as easily as a cat can be made to feel at home in a kennel of Boston bulls. It's pretty much a matter of luck, under the present system, how it's all going to turn out. The element of luck can be neutral- TALKS TO COLLEGE MEN 65 ized, as I see it, only by such moral strength, in the fraternity as will enable the chapters to assimilate even the weak- est of freshman material, and bring it out at the end of the course worked up into the best finished product possible. u Let me tell you the story of one fresh- man who came to the university in my time. It is typical of a number of cases I could cite. Ned French came from a small town in central Nebraska. He was as clean, as fine-looking, as upstanding a young freshman as I saw on the campus that autumn. Good breeding and gentle- manly conduct marked him immediately as a desirable acquisition for any frater- nity; and a winning personality com- mended him to our entire chapter before he had been in the house ten minutes. It was a short rushing season for him. We ' saw him first, ' and made certain that no other crowd got a look at him. He liked us, and we certainly liked him; and it was only a few days before he was wearing the pledge button. 66 OLD MAN DARE'S " He was initiated in early November. Not until after initiation did the boy's inherent weakness really assert itself, though I thought I saw signs of it in his daily intercourse with us as a pledged man. Coming, as he did, from a small middle-western town, he exhibited a real fear lest he might lose easte with his newly acquired brethren through his lack of sophistication. His cue, it seemed, was to be thought competent always to do the proper thing, to appear the man of the world. By the same token, a few of the upperclassmen who were men of the world, seemed to fear lest their favorite fresh- man should have too few opportunities to learn the arts of sophistication. They would not have him a mollycoddle or a milksop or a ' Christer r — as the irrelevant but expressive term then was. He must sow his wild oats; every red-blooded and virile man did. They made it their busi- ness, therefore, to break him in early. The night after initiation they took him to ' Joe's 9 * f and brought him back about TALKS TO COLLEGE MEN 67 four the next morning thoroughly soused — loaded to the gunwale — his first ' beer- party. ' Some of us were pretty hot about it, but our anger cooled under the rush of laughter that greeted Bill Fairly 's witty account of the freshman's behavior. " The next week they took him to De- troit, and gave him his first glimpse of a red-light district. I never heard the de- tails of the orgy that followed, but I soon learned the dread result of it. Ned seemed ill, and I learned of secret visits to one of the young physicians of the town. His work lagged ; he cut classes with persistent regularity, spending hour after hour, with unopened book upon his knee, staring into the open fire from the depths of an easy- chair; and soon he had a Dean's warning. The fresh, wholesome color of his face and the clear look of his fine blue eyes faded, and were succeeded by a haggard face and a furtive eye. The square, manly shoul- ders drooped, and the boy's whole attitude became devil-may-care. He went home before Christmas, disease-ridden, disap- 68 OLD MAN DARE'S pointed, despondent. Of all the bright hopes for a happy and successful career which he had brought with him to col- lege, not a vestige remained. Physically wrecked, mentally morbid, spiritually be- smirched, he went back to his parents (he had been less than three months away from them), bearing, not in what he said perhaps, but more eloquently far in what he was, testimony to the wickedness of sending boys away to college. I have often wondered what tragic scene was en- acted as he faced his mother and father; I have often wondered what became of him. I never heard of him again, and I fancy he never wanted to think of us; but I have never forgotten his splendid promise nor his dizzy fall, like Lucifer's — from heaven to hell in a few short weeks. Had the fra- ternity been his guide to the best instead of to the worst, the fraternity would have profited immensely itself; for Ned had potential qualities of greatness. And the boy would have got that for which he left TALKS TO COLLEGE MEN 69 home to go a- seeking — growth in man- hood, power, and usefulness. " Of how many fraternity chapters throughout our land may similar stories be told? And the sadness of it all is that the full force of the tragedy is not realized until callow youth becomes ripe age, see- ing life slip away year by year, noting the preciousness of time, the fitfulness of op- portunity. If Ned French had been tossed into the sea with a millstone about his neck he could not have stood a worse chance for life than he did, cast as he was into a small group of amiable and delight- ful drifters, who clung about his neck and bore him down. The fraternity was his millstone, and it carried him under before he even realized he was in deep water. When I read Lycidas I think of Ned, ' under the whelming tide, ' and visiting * the bottom of the monstrous world'; he always seems to me literally under the wave, literally drowned — as much so as poor Brownie, who went to his death in Whitmore Lake in '99. 70 OLD MAN DARE'S " I remember another freshman who came into the chapter during my senior year. He wasn't much to look at, wore his clothes badly, and possessed few of the amenities of polite society. How he got in, I don't know. I think he must have slipped in when no one was looking; or perhaps some of the brothers were color- blind on the night of election and couldn't tell a black ball from a white one. But be- hind a rugged exterior Frank Farquhar concealed a heart of gold and a character of rock. The friends he picked out, the upperclassmen he most emulated, were those who set him right, and guided toward the light his first faltering steps in aca- demic life. I never saw a boy grow as he did. He took polish like a block of Car- rara marble. There never had to be any apology for his appearance after the first semester; and as for the * social ameni- ties ' — he fairly ate 'em up. By Sopho- more year (so I was told — I was then in the law school, and couldn't do much first- hand observing), he was an incipient Ches- TALKS TO COLLEGE MEN 71 terfield; and at graduation lie wore dress- clothes with the ease of a Ward McAlister leading a cotillion. He was, however, no mere fashion-plate. His heart of gold had not rusted, and the rock of his character had not crumbled. He imparted of gold and rock alike to the upbuilding of the chapter and the whole fraternity; and gave of both in equal measure later in the service of the university. The fraternity in his case was not a millstone to drag him down; it was rather a milestone to mark his steady, onward progress. The frater- nity made him outwardly what he already was inwardly — a gentleman ; and from her he drew fast friendships, and of her he carried away warm and tender memories. " I tell you, fellows, these two cases (not remote and infrequent, but near and oft-repeated) are at once the shame and the glory of our fraternity — of all fraterni- ties of which I have knowledge. The shame must now and forever be wiped out — de- leted — done away with; and in this the fraternity cannot shirk its responsibility. 72 OLD MAN DARE'S If it is to take untutored freshmen and make of them worthy graduates, it must stand toward them in the relationship of a parent. Whether the fraternity likes the job or not, it is in partnership with the college, and it must accept the responsi- bility of a partner. The college aims to turn out gentlemen and scholars ; and that chapter is false to its co-partnership re- sponsibility which does not supplement the college effort with all the powerful and pervasive influence inherent in the frater- nity system as it now exists. " Was there ever an influence greater? The most plastic material in all God's world comes fresh to the fraternity's hand to be molded as the fraternity will. The average freshman neophyte is the most impressionable creature of the animal kingdom. He is truly simian, ape-like in his terrible eagerness to conform, to be like the norm, to follow his elders, c to belong ' in every sense of the word. No Philistine ever prostrated himself before Dagon more abjectly than the average TALKS TO COLLEGE MEN 73 freshman, in spirit, bows down to the ad- mired upperclassman. Do you upper- classmen to whom I am speaking feel no overwhelming sense of the responsibility that is yours? Are your lives so ordered that they may safely be taken as models by the freshmen of this group? Are your leisure hours sometimes devoted to setting the verdant one on the right path? Are your thoughts set upon disciplining the weak and directing the blind? Do you dare ask, with Cain's scornful emphasis, ' Am I my brother's keeper? ' If you do dare to put that question I must answer you: ' Whoso shall cause one of these * * to stumble, it is profitable for him that a great millstone should be hanged about his neck, and that he should be sunk in the depth of the sea.' And I say to you again, if one of these freshmen needs your help, he must not come to you in vain, for ' whosoever shall compel thee to go one mile, go with him twain. ' " Boys, is your chapter as it stands to-day a means of destruction or of life 74 OLD MAN DARE'S to the freshmen you so unthinkingly ini- tiate? Are they better or worse for their affiliation with you? Will they rue the day they went with you, or look back on that day as a memorable and happy turning- point in their lives? Your chapter — is it a millstone or a milestone? " V " CAUSES AND EFFECTS " AS I sat in the lounging room that evening, waiting for the taxi that was to take me to the east- bound train, three sturdy freshmen in " tucks " were gathered about the piano doing a bit of close harmony preparatory to a concert to be given an hour later by the Freshman Glee Club. They presented a pleasing picture in their dress clothes, which set off broad shoulders and well- proportioned figures to advantage; and their vocal efforts were not wholly dis- pleasing. I was proud of the lads, and glad that they had found their way to the true fountain-head of light — my chapter of the best fraternity in America. " Three hearts of oak," I said, nodding toward the boys. 75 76 OLD MAN DARE'S a Three black crows, I say," rejoined an embittered sophomore. a Three black sheep," broke in a junior. " Three black-balls," murmured a tired and troubled senior, heavy with responsi- bility. " Three black idols, each worshiping it- self," spoke up a fourth. " Three black coons, with an African average of intelligence," urged a fifth. And the innocent victims of these jibes sang on untroubled and undisturbed, and I smiled as my own freshman days came back to me. The smile faded, however, as I remembered some of the harsh readjust- ments that had to be made during that troublous year; but it returned, as, in swift retrospect, sophomore, junior and senior years flitted by. I was leaving the scene of it all to go back to my work, and I was going with regret. I had found much in common with these genial hosts of mine. They had treated me well ; seem- ingly glad to see me when I came, and ap- pearing sorry now that I was to go. A TALKS TO COLLEGE MEN 77 man of more than forty is not above (or beyond) feeling flattered when yonth ac- cepts him on terms of comparative equality. The freshmen ceased from warbling and the weary upperclassmen seemed at rest, when Eob proposed the Parting Ode. "We gathered round the piano and sang it with real feeling, as I had done so many times before in that very place, years ago. The doorbell rang, the taxi was announced, and I was whirled away to the accompani- ment of boisterous farewells on the part of the boys, and a lusty backfire on the part of the car. Once on the train I began to read the last of Old Man Dare's Four-Minute Talks, Eob having permitted me to take the manuscript along. I read and mused intermittently until the train reached Detroit. There, to my delight, Frank Far- quhar clambered aboard, bound for New York. During the rest of the evening, until late into the night, we talked of old times, and during our visit I read him Old Man Dare's last talk, entitled 78 OLD MAN DARE'S " Causes and Effects " " I am going home to-morrow morning and am speaking to you to-night, there- fore, for the last time. You have been patient and attentive listeners, and I thank you. I am grateful, too, for these oppor- tunities to get off my chest much that has weighed me down for years like an in- cubus. If you have been patient and at- tentive heretofore, may you be doubly so to-night; for what I have to say is that which comes most truly from the depths of my heart, born, as it is, of the fleeting thoughts and impressions of years, which go by like a procession. For no man who has been twenty years out of college can help being reminiscent, nor indulging in the habit of philosophizing over the in- evitableness of cause and effect. At forty a man's philosophy is not that conned from books ; it is all of his own making, conned from the pages of life. He reads at twenty from a Book that ' whatsoever a man sows, that shall he also reap ' ; but he discounts his reading (despite the au- TALKS TO COLLEGE MEN 79 thority of the Book), and believes that he is the great exception to all rules. At forty he reads from the scroll of life the same grim truth, and he now rejects the law of chance on which he formerly built his exceptions. Where he once hoped, he now knows; his theoretical has become practical; and he discounts the sporting chance. If he be a man of thoughtful habit he ' sees life steadily, and sees it whole ' ; and if he be also a man of forti- tude he remains still unabashed and un- afraid, despite the fierce inexorableness of all that he sees about him, and despite his knowledge that the law of cause and effect is as unchangeable as that of the Medes and Persians. " Do you remember the Bible story of Behoboam's career? Let me remind you of it. This young prince was to succeed his father, Solomon, as king over the twelve tribes of Israel according as he made wise or unwise answers to the ques- tions of the people. He had about him the old and tried counselors of his father, who 80 OLD MAN DARE'S advised moderate words and popular con- cessions; but he rejected their counsel for that of the youth who had grown up with him, and who advised a harsh answer to the people. l And he spake to them after the counsel of the young men, saying, " My father made your yoke heavy, and I will add to your yoke; my father also chastised you with whips, but I will chas- tise you with scorpions." 9 And Eeho- boam lost five-sixths of his kingdom, and his life was a failure. " To the man of mature years the one astounding thing in life is the failure of youth (he forgets his own, perchance) to profit by the advice of its elders. When I see youth setting out on Life's journey, I think of Charles Lamb's jolly paradox: ' Nothing puzzles me more than time and space; but nothing puzzles me less, for I never think about them.' Youth is puz- zled by life, but it never thinks of life. Youth has before it a million vivid object- lessons; were it endowed with any power of observation and reasoning it might TALKS TO GOLLEGE MEN 81 begin life where the older generation left off — and be spared much grief. The his- tory of the human race would then be a stirring tale of progress from generation to generation, instead of the grotesque chronicle it now is of a little progress from aeon to aeon. There is not a youth in the land who does not think his father an old fogy, just as Eehoboam thought his father's counselors old fogies and out of date. * Times have changed/ Eehoboam doubtless said : 6 you old fossils are out of touch with the march of events. Go 'way back and sit down.' And the youth all cried ' Yea, Bo ! ' — and look what hap- pened. This young prince forgot, as many another forgets to-day, that the moral law is the same now as in the days of the decalogue; and that human nature re- mains the same from age to age; and that cause still, as always, is the father of effect. " Let me be more concrete in my state- ments. I have in my desk at home a pic- ture of eight men from the class of 18 — , 82 OLD MAN DARE'S the initiates of that class into the sopho- more fraternity of Theta Nu Epsilon. They were upperclassmen when I was a freshman; and with a freshman's ingenu- ous emotion I coveted the picture because all the men in the group seemed then my ideals of what an upperclassman should be. They possessed, I thought, all the qualities of good-fellowship and camerad- erie to which I never could aspire. I often take that picture out of my desk to look at it; and as I scan the laughing, hand- some faces, I invariably fall into a brown study. History is here writ large. I see them as they were — care-free, jovial, happy-go-lucky; most of them easy drink- ers, jolly carousers, and liberal spenders; faultlessly dressed always, and always socially in demand. As I muse over the picture I remember what time has done to them. Two I have lost sight of entirely. Of the six whose stories I know, two died in youth and two others before they reached their prime; and of these four all but one died to pay the price exacted by TALKS TO COLLEGE MEN 83 outraged nature. They sowed their wild oats ; and they reaped their wild oats. Of the two who still are living, one is bank- rupt in health, the other in pocket and prospects. " If you want other concrete illustra- tions I can give them to you by the score: illustrations of the inevitableness with which effect follows cause. There was brilliant little Meadows, who threw money away as though he were working on the principle enunciated by old Ealph Bigod, that i money kept longer than three days stinks.' His time he wasted on the basis of the same generous apothegm. Expelled from college in his sophomore year, he soon had to be bailed out of jail by a gen- erous brother for jumping a hotel board bill. The last I heard of him he had run away with a chorus girl, who was support- ing him in precarious wise from her own earnings. " There was dear old Bill Eversley, who had more money to spend than any other man in the chapter. He spent it, 84 OLD MAN DARE'S too. I saw him five years ago, gaunt of feature and glum of countenance. His 6 bank ' had broken; and he, compelled to go to work, found himself unprepared for aught but manual labor. He was running a lathe in a Detroit factory, earning a bare living for his wife (a society favorite of our time, whom Bill had married in his days of affluence) and his two children. I respected his nerve, but I pitied his mis- fortune, for he had never been brought up to face the deadly round of economies which his* circumstances forced him to practice. " I could tell you, too, countless stories to illustrate the other side of the picture; stories of men of my time and of this chapter who also reaped what they sowed, but who sowed sobriety and industry, and reaped success. I can still hear the curses flung at the head of modest little Shanklin, who was denounced for an unsociable old oyster because he insisted on doing his work ; and whom many thought stingy be- cause he saved his money. He is well-to- TALKS TO COLLEGE MEN 85 do; is happily married; has a family of fine children; and now that he can afford it, is the most generous of men. It is easy, yon know, to be generous with money not your own, which you had not to earn, and of which you do not know the value. Old Shank is generous now with money he earned himself, and earned by hard work and worry. " The college man who wants his good time unadulterated by scholastic effort, by self-denial, or by serious thinking on the serious problems of life, may have his way if he will. But he must pay the piper. Cause and effect are Siamese twins, who cannot be parted; or, a better figure, they are the fateful Clotho and Atropos — and it is always the thread that Clotho spins which Atropos cuts at the end of life. It can be no other. Causation works cease- lessly, and the product is true to its genus. The egg of a goose produces a goose, not a swan ; and the egg of a swan produces a swan, not a duckling. " I yearn to see the day when college 86 OLD MAN DARE'S men shall seek, as their portion in college, not softness, but hardness; not ease, but adversity; not Boman luxury, but Spartan simplicity. ' What a deal of cold busi- ness/ says Ben Jonson, ' doth a man mis- spend the better part of life in! In scat- tering compliments, tendering visits, gath- ering and venting news, following feasts and plays, making a little winter-love in a dark corner. \ That old Elizabethan might have been describing modern col- lege life ! It was he, too, who said, ' 111 fortune never crushed that man whom good fortune deceived not,' and by good fortune Ben meant i ease,' and by ill for- tune he meant ' adversity/ in contending with which a man's spiritual muscle grows hard. I could quote Bacon, also, to the same effect. c The virtue of prosperity (ease) is temperance; the virtue of ad- versity (hard work) is fortitude, which in morals is the more heroical virtue. Pros- perity is the blessing of the Old Testa- ment; adversity is the blessing of the New, which carrieth the greater benedic- TALKS TO COLLEGE MEN 87 tion, and the clearer revelation of God's favor. * * * We see in needle works and embroideries [that] it is more pleas- ing to have a lively work upon a sad and solemn ground, than to have a dark and melancholy work upon a lightsome ground ; judge, therefore, of the pleasure of the heart by the pleasure of the eye. Cer- tainly virtue is like precious odors, most fragrant when they are incensed, or crushed; for prosperity doth best discover vice, but adversity doth best discover virtue.' " How wise those old fellows were! Have we lost in wisdom's stature since the ' spacious times of Queen Elizabeth '? Shall we add nothing to their learning? 1 1 know no disease of the soul but igno- rance, ' said Jonson again ; and I could add, i I know of no fatal disease of youth but blindness.' Lift up your eyes and see, modern collegian, writ large upon the scroll of time, how Nature works. Learn the laws of recurring seasons, of seed-time and harvest, of youth and age, of cause 88 OLD MAN DARE'S and effect. And remember the words of Seneca, ' Vere magnum habere fragilita- tem horninis, securitatem Dei — It is true greatness to have in one the frailty of man, and the security of a God. ' " It is infinitely better to earn your pleasures in youth for maturity's spend- ing than to spend your pleasure in youth for age's bankruptcy; as much better as to have, in embroideries, the lively work on the dark background rather than the dark work on the light background. There is fiction, however, even in this concen- trated wisdom of the maker of epigrams. For the chief pleasure of youth comes (could youth but see) with satisfaction in things accomplished, with the approving nod of conscience, and with the free, un- trammeled play-spell that is honestly earned through work well done. Too much is daily condoned the college man on the plea of the ' thoughtlessness of youth.' ' I have no patience,' cries Euskin indig- nantly, c with people who talk of the "thoughtlessness of youth" indulgently. TALKS TO COLLEGE MEN 89 I had infinitely rather hear of thoughtless- ness of age, and the indulgence due to that. When a man has done his work and nothing can any way be materially altered in his fate, let him forget his toil, and jest with his fate, if he will; but what excuse can you find for wilfulness of thought, at the very time when every crisis of future fortune hangs on your decisions? A youth thoughtless! When all the happi- ness of his home forever depends on the chances, or the passions of an hour! A youth thoughtless! When the career of all his days depends on the opportunity of a moment! A youth thoughtless! When his every act is a torch to the laid train of future conduct, and every imagination a fountain of life or death! Be thoughtless in any after years, rather than now — though, indeed, there is only one place where a man may be nobly thoughtless — his death-bed. No thinking should ever be left to be done there. 9 " Let us revise our entire thinking about the opportunities of youth and 90 OLD MAN DARE'S the demands of college life. Cause is merciless; effect is inevitable. Moral blindness is unpardonable. Men are liv- ing now in a day the light of whose judg- ment is white and searching. * Whatso- ever ye have said in the darkness shall be heard in the light; and what ye have spoken in the ear in the inner chambers shall be proclaimed upon the housetops.' Verbum sapientibus satis." Printed in United States of America LIBRARY OF CONGRESS 021 490 358 1