Chapter V: Introduction (3)

Roddy pushed his hat back on his head to let out the thought that Miss Mittie seemed to lack a sense of humor and ought to be shown a thing or two; Mrs. Ingersoll, however, inclined to the belief that the trouble was “Holy Calm was too good for use,” or at least too good for any use in a millinery establishment. Roddy suggested that “something might be done fer her if ye went about it right,” but Mrs. Ingersoll averred despairingly that you’d never get an idea into Miss Mittie’s head short of cutting it open with an ax. However, after sifting the situation back and forth between them, the upshot was a soul-saving plot: Mrs. Ingersoll was to slip out just before closing time, leaving Miss Mittie to shut up shop alone; then Roddy, with a gang of cow-boys, was to “jump the store” and hold her up for a couple of hundred yards of ribbon, which they were to carry up to Mrs. Ingersoll’s house afterward.

All started off according to program. Holy Calm, softly humming to herself, was putting the store to bed as snug as anything, and thinking of her well-earned rest, when five young, seemingly desperate rascals, Roddy leading, fired their guns in the air and landed with a bounce inside, two of the boys blocking the door so she couldn’t get away.

Miss Mittie never quivered an eyelash.

“What can I do for you, gentlemen?” she asked, fixing her gaze and a smile on Roddy, whom she had met, and admired tremendously for the tales told of him.

Roddy was just a trifle dashed by her politeness, for he’d “allowed she’d screech, er something, like a woman always does,” and when anybody screeched his rule was, “Give ’em some more o’ the same medicine.” But under her serene, uncomprehending stare Roddy forgot what he’d come for.

Beany Johnson nudged him in the ribs as a reminder, and then, seeing a hesitancy, kicked him with his spur. Thus pushed to his duty, Roddy blurted out:

“I want some ribbon--pink ribbon--fer a church-fest’val decorations.” He slipped his gun into its holster, gave a hitch to his chaps and a jerk to the red handkerchief about his neck, picked up a roll from the counter, and told her in an offhand way: “This here will do. Gimme forty yards offen it,” and began carelessly unwinding it on the counter.

“There aren’t forty yards in that piece,” said she, taking the roll from his hand with her holiest calm and a smile at him, and at the same time noting the number on the roll. “There’s only eight and a quarter.”

“Well, gimme what they is--an’ then some more,” he commanded.

She measured off the eight and a quarter, then ten from another roll, said she was sorry she couldn’t match that pink exactly, but it was “special-sale goods,” and wouldn’t something else do, since it was for a church and not for a dress? The quality would be absolutely the same; the store didn’t carry any but the best.

Roddy, who had somewhat found himself by this time, amiably explained that “It didn’t matter about the match; it was only fer a church, anyways,” and handed her a roll of bright green.

She measured it demurely without looking at him. Still, it wouldn’t have helped her if she had; she wouldn’t have perceived the glitter of his eye.

With the green on the counter his self-confidence entirely returned. At the same time Beany Johnson and Hank Homans began to clamor, their arms overflowing with ribbons, that she measure some for them; and presently upon that counter lay a haystack of silk of all colors of the rainbow, and every roll that the boys could lay hands on had been unwound.

“Thirty-seven dollars and five cents,” said Miss Mittie. “But I’ll throw in the remnant and call it an even thirty-seven, since you took so much.” She had done the sum all in her head while she was measuring off!

“Charge it,” said Roddy, loftily. “This here gent--” He presented Hank, who bowed acknowledgment--“is Mr. Andy Carnegie. I guess you heard of him often enough, and know you can trust him all right; an’ this here one with the _mus_tache is Mr. Pierpont Morgan. I am John D. Rockyfelly.” That being the preconcerted cue for them to go on with their parts, they began gathering the ribbons into their arms as fast as they could, meaning to cut and run with them.

“Excuse me, but this is a cash-down store,” informed Miss Mittie, laying her hand on the ribbons nearest her. “I can’t charge anything. I’m sorry not to oblige,--” She turned a little pale at the thought of it,--“but you see how it is; I’m not allowed, so I can’t. Thirty-seven dollars, please.”

“Well, I guess you won’t refuse _us_,” said Roddy, ingratiatingly, pulling surreptitiously at the ribbons while Hank added this sweet touch, “it’s fer a strawb’ry fest’val--real strawb’ries, real cream, you know.” (The season was late October.)

The words gave Roddy an idea. “Perhaps you’d like to go--with _me_.” The wretch beamed at her, thinking here was the best chance yet to “do her one” and send the shivers over her in a way she’d never forget.

A faint tinge of color suffused her cheeks. How kind of him, the great Roddy, to want her! She spoke, however, with her calm:

“I’d like to go with you ever so much. Yes, I’m sure I can go to-night; I haven’t anything else. I’ll go,” she accepted, making what she felt a momentous decision. Never yet had she been anywhere with a real live cow-boy, and it had been the dream of her life--the dream now at last come true! What a story to write home to Philadelphia! She smiled happily at Roddy, then, suddenly remembering her duty, said, “Thirty-seven dollars, please,” but very sweetly, and as though she hated to ask him for it after that invitation, and felt it not quite ladylike.

“Charge it, please,” he gave back, with a sweetness imitating her own, while a flush was beginning to be felt on his cheeks also. He hadn’t expected her to take him up so quickly. He was prepared to wheedle and urge, and it made him feel just a bit mean to see her so eager to go with him to a fictitious festival; and after his first stab of self-pride came the thought, was he “the first fella ever ast her to go somewheres in the evening? Didn’t she git no amusement at all? Why, the poor kid!”

He questioned, hesitating:

“You--ain’t been out much--in Laramie--sence you come?”

She shook her head.

“I haven’t been to one thing,” she replied, giving him a wistful look, and adding with a brighter one and a sigh, “until to-night.”

Meanwhile the two guards at the door had become so entranced with the scene at the ribbon counter that they’d cast aside their duty: they acknowledged the duty, however, by tiptoeing to the region of the ribbons, flattering themselves that, if they were not heard, they would not be seen.

Miss Mittie swept a glance at the five young men ranged before her and then at the clock. It was ten minutes past closing-time, and the street door stood wide open! Dreadful! In her shy delight at the prospect of a strawberry festival, she’d forgotten her sacred trust in putting the store to bed. What would Mrs. Ingersoll say when she found it out?

With a quick, “Excuse me,” she slipped along behind the counter, those five cow-boys standing like gawks and watching her do it, and locked the door and put the key in her pocket. She took the key, naturally, so she could get in the next morning, and she was intending to let the young men out by a certain back way in order that nobody should know how remiss she’d been. Returning hurriedly, she said, “Thirty-seven dollars, please,” and stuck her pencil in her hair.

The young men had been exchanging disconcerted glances. Roddy dropped his ribbon on the counter. Figuratively speaking, he threw up the sponge then; but it was Hank Homans who first found a usable tongue.

“I guess we don’t want it, after all,” said he, depositing his armful beside Roddy’s.

She smiled at him a smile that nothing but calm that is calm all through can produce on earth, and said, “Thirty-seven dollars, please.”

“No--I guess we don’t want it,” corroborated Roddy, trying to appear self-confident while he bunched his ribbons together with decisive gestures that eschewed ribbons from his life forever.

For the fraction of a second she appeared to believe it; then she repeated, “Thirty-seven dollars,” and thrust the slip across the pile at him.

He turned red.

“I say--we don’t want it,” he stammered.

She took this for a pleasantry, and held out her hand for the money. At the same moment he felt a spur dig into his boot; the situation was become exceedingly unpleasant to his fellow-missioners. What was the girl up to, anyway? And what in thunder did she mean by locking them in? Beany Johnson came to the rescue.

“I say, why, this here was--a--er--kinder _joke_,” he explained sheepishly, and feeling dreadfully uncomfortable.

She looked at him, puzzled.

“I don’t see it,” she remarked. Literally she didn’t. “What is the joke?”

“Why--er--all this here--” He waved his hand over the pile of ribbons--“this here pink ribbon hold-up--why, it was all a--er--kinder joke, without meanin’ any offense,” he trailed off, blushing.

“But I don’t see it,” she repeated, still with her puzzled look.

“Well, it is, anyway,” he assured her, desperately. “It’s what it is all right--a joke.”

For a moment after this brutal confession they thought comprehension dawned in her eyes; then she murmured, looking critically at the ribbon: “But I’m sure I measured it all right; I never make mistakes on ribbons. Mrs. Ingersoll will tell you that. I was very particular as I went along. And I know I counted it right--thirty-seven dollars, and the remnant, five cents; but I threw that off; I didn’t charge it on the slip.” She glanced at the slip to make sure on that point.

“Oh, you’re all right,” Hank chipped in courageously. “We ain’t kickin’ on yer measurin’. An’ the thirty-seven--it’s all right, too; but--why--er--”

“I gave you all-silk ribbon, no cotton-back,” she interrupted. “I looked at every piece before I undid it. There’s some cotton-back in the store for cheap trimmings and flower ties, but I was very particular to give you the same as you started out with--that pink Mr. McQueed took first.” She began rummaging the pile for the original sample.

“Oh, that’s all right; we ain’t kickin’ on the quality,” Hank rumbled on, despite the pucker on her brow feeling he was making progress--that by a process of elimination of false scents he was gradually getting her on the track of a true apprehension. He motioned with his hand to include the others. “We ain’t kickin’ on that part of it, fer it’s all right; but--”

“Then I don’t see what _isn’t_ all right,” she sighed helplessly, glancing at the sale-slip to make sure the joke wasn’t there. “Yes, thirty-seven.” With that a light dawned on her face, and she handed the slip to him. “Oh, I see,” she cried, “I’ve been asking the wrong gentleman to pay!”

Beany only shook his head and pushed the bill aside. He was beginning to perspire, and the others, coming to his rescue in a chorus, protested:

“But it was all a joke--this here. Don’t you see?” hoping she’d see and make the best of it by opening the door and telling them to get out for a mean lot of--, well, anything you like and can imagine as coming from her chaste lips. Getting out was now all they were capable of thinking of in the present predicament; they wouldn’t have cared what she called them. Hank added firmly, and as a sort of inspiration, “You see, we don’t want it now.”

She looked from one to the other of them, repeating, “Don’t want it now, did you say?” Then with another of her comprehending smiles, “But you ain’t the kind of gentlemen that orders things you don’t want, and then don’t pay up for ’em, and you wouldn’t disappoint a church. Besides--” Here she presented them with a smile apiece--“I know you wouldn’t leave a lady to roll up ’most two hundred yards of ribbon just for a matter of thirty-seven dollars.”

“It wouldn’t be kinder jes right,” Hank admitted, seeing a chance here to slide out on excuses. “Sure it wouldn’t; but we didn’t none of us fellas think o’ that--”

She broke in on him with a quick, “I see it now!” and they waited breathless while she looked at the price-tags on several rolls. “You think I made a mistake in the different prices, carrying the different widths in my head, and you’re all too nice to tell me for fear you’ll get me in trouble with Mrs. Ingersoll. Well, maybe I did. Nobody’s perfect; no matter how careful you are, you’re liable to a slip-up once in a while. But I’ll measure it again and count it over just to satisfy you.”

She took a long ribbon in her hand. Inwardly they groaned, and Roddy felt spurs digging at his legs and elbows at his ribs that said, “You got us into this fix; now get us out, and be quick about it, too.”

But Roddy seemed to have been struck with paralysis. The truth is, Miss Mittie had those young missioners cowed. They didn’t dare tell her to her face how they’d planned and played a mean joke on her confiding innocence when she’d never done anything to harm or annoy them in the whole of her blameless life. To leave her to roll up that pile of ribbon was, as Roddy afterward confessed when he told me the story, “sich a dirty, ornery trick to play on a lady as only a coyote would think of.” And, then, they didn’t dare to give Mrs. Ingersoll away. Yet if they didn’t make a clean breast of it and show Miss Mittie just how low-down cussed they’d been, how were they to get the key? They couldn’t take it from her by force; at least things hadn’t reached the point where they felt they could “do anything that was _reely_ ungentlemanly,” as Roddy said. And then this thought came to all of them: suppose they did make her understand, and “she struck it hoppin’ mad an’ kep’ ’em there all night to pay ’em fer it an’ git even!” By this time they felt her capable of anything through sheer lack of imagination.

Drawn by Fletcher C. Ransom Half-tone plate engraved by H. C. Merritt

“‘THIRTY-SEVEN DOLLARS, PLEASE’”]

“One--two--three--four--five--” She measured swiftly, counting aloud as she went that they might be sure she was making no mistake. Under cover of her voice Hank hissed in Roddy’s ear:

“It’s yer turn to play. Say something, can’t yer? An’ git us outa this here hold-up.”

“Hold-up! I should say _yes_!” snorted Beany in Roddy’s other ear, suddenly appreciating the real essence of the joke; and then snorted again as he heard “Seventeen--eighteen--nineteen,” accompanied by the rapid swish of silk along the counter.

But all Roddy, now very red of face, could contribute toward a graceful retreat for himself and friends from the scene of disaster was, “We don’t want it,” while pushing the ribbons weakly in her direction.

Before he could think of anything else, she raised her unsuspicious eyes questioningly to his, acknowledging him the leader and his word her law. That was the glance that shot him through the heart--that, and the way she’d beaten them at their own game and never turned a hair. Roddy was enough the man and the sport to appreciate the laugh on himself.

“Fellas, the drinks are on us,” he informed them, grimly. “The little girl gits the jackpot. It’s up to us to shell out an’ be P. D. Q. about it, too.”

Miss Mittie stopped her measuring, since he was satisfied to take the ribbon as it was, and put the slip into his hand with a smile that said, “Now I’ll be ready to go with you to our entertainment.”

They made up the amount with difficulty,--it took every cent Roddy had and most of the spare cash in the party,--and when he had given it to her, he leaned over the counter, almost to kissing distance, and said:

“Little girl, y’ can buy _me_ fer a nickel.”

She drew a shabby purse and took out of it a shabby nickel.

“It’s all I have,” she told him, soberly, offering it.

All she had, and she was giving it to him _in earnest_! In one swift flash it came to him why she hadn’t seen through the mean joke they were playing on her: she had trusted him too much; or, as he more picturesquely put it, “She knowed I was too much of a gentleman to do a girl dirt.” Her lack of comprehension of the true inwardness of the whole affair was precisely her measure of the high estimate she placed on his chivalry; she saw him as his own deepest ideals painted him, and he knew she saw him thus; and in the shine of the heavenly revelation he saw her as lovely calm womanhood confiding in his nobility. Something broke loose in him; his better nature, his affection, his generosity, his instinct for fair play, rose to its occasion, and in one instant he ceased to be a lawless young rapscallion--his heart truly and in the scriptural sense turned from its wickedness and the error of its ways.

“Little girl, if I take this here nickel offen ye, it’s a bargain between us,” he told her, dizzily. “You an’ me’ll belong to each other fer keeps. I mean it, honest.”

She hesitated, blushing from throat to forehead under the gaping stare of the other young fellows; then she said bravely, “I mean it honest, too,” and laid the nickel in his hand.

I fear I’ve told this so jocosely I’ve belittled their miracle, which was very real. I met her on the street in Laramie last summer, five years after the episode, and speaking of her marriage she confided to me that she and Roddy had been “made for each other.”

TIMOTHY COLE’S
WOOD ENGRAVINGS
OF
MASTERPIECES
IN
AMERICAN GALLERIES

LADY MILDMAY

BY

HOPPNER
]

LADY MILDMAY. BY HOPPNER

(TIMOTHY COLE’S WOOD ENGRAVINGS OF MASTERPIECES IN AMERICAN GALLERIES)]

EXCLUSIVENESS AMONG COLLEGE WOMEN

WHAT CAN WE DO ABOUT IT?

BY EDITH RICKERT

Miss Rickert’s article, “The Fraternity Idea among College Women,” in
the November number, developed the argument that women’s fraternities
like men’s are aristocratic, in that they are self-perpetuating
and destructive to freedom of intercourse; that they stand for the
privilege of one as against the common rights of all; that the
benefits that they claim to bestow upon members are exaggerated,
even in the case of individuals, and do not counterbalance the two
evils which are inherent in the system and cannot be done away with
by regulation from without or reform from within; and that these
evils are, as regards members, that the fraternities educate to type,
and, as regards outsiders, that they harden social differences into
caste.--~The Editor.~

Can we do anything? Should we try? Some of the women’s colleges are taking action. Fraternities have recently been abolished at Rockford as contrary to the democratic spirit of that institution; also at Pembroke, on the ground that they had come to absorb too much of the interest that should go into general college activities. At Elmira, where they have been since 1856, they have recently disbanded of their own accord, and they are to be discontinued at Mount Holyoke after 1913.

Among coëducational institutions, however, the fraternal spirit is certainly growing. Although the entire number of fraternity women is less than one fifth that of fraternity men, the active members--that is, the undergraduates--are almost half as numerous as the men, and the rate of initiation is nearly the same. Unless some check is put upon them, the women will soon outnumber the men, as they are said to surpass them in efficiency of organization.

FACULTIES AND THE FRATERNITIES

Presidents and deans of colleges in which the Greek-letter societies exist show little inclination to abolish them, but rather a distinct recognition of the value of their coöperation in manipulating the student body. On the other hand, officers of institutions where only the local organizations are admitted, with no uncertain voice, declare that they mean to keep the control in their own hands, while the authorities of colleges where no fraternities have ever been admitted[4] are equally emphatic in stating that, as a force hostile to democracy, they shall never be allowed to enter.

There are the three faces of the problem. Which attitude is right?

The women’s fraternities, which first arose in small colleges that were scarcely more than boarding-schools, were purely in imitation of men’s organizations. But when women students were admitted to the state universities and other big endowed institutions, which were without provision for their students beyond lecture halls, laboratories, and libraries, the situation changed. In so far as the universities were concerned merely with intellectual training and made no attempt to reach the social side, the women’s fraternities took on a certain defensive quality--the banding together of the minority, whose presence was more or less resented by the men. Their practical value in providing safe and comfortable homes for students was quickly recognized both by parents and by deans, upon whom came the responsibility for student welfare. But now this question of housing is a very minor aspect of the case, as even in institutions where chapter houses exist, these provide for less than one third of the women, usually much less; and in the majority of institutions the fraternities have no chapter houses at all.

On the other hand, the immediate practical use of the fraternities to-day is that by their organization and their training in organizing power they can be trusted to put things through. One dean writes, “Unconsciously one often chooses a fraternity girl to do a necessary thing, knowing that she will see it through.” Several others, deans and presidents, say that the fraternities do valuable service in two ways: first, by making themselves responsible for the conduct of individual members of their societies who give trouble to the faculty; and, second, by taking the initiative, and standing solid in passing measures for the welfare of the whole student body.

These two virtues seem to me to be on very different levels. In regard to the first, I doubt whether any other agency could easily be found to deal as successfully with a recalcitrant student as a self-appointed committee of her intimate associates. It does not follow, however, that this committee need have the social characteristics of the fraternity. As for the second, it would seem that larger and more weighty organizations, such as the Young Women’s Christian Association and the Women’s League, not subject to the jealousies and rivalries of the fraternities, could be of much greater service.

SOME GOOD AGAINST MUCH EVIL

It is difficult to balance the good and the bad points of the local and national organizations. The former are more democratic in that they are usually larger, being less strictly limited. They are without the element of permanent regulation that comes from the national union. They lack the exchange of ideas which comes from the association of a group of organizations, and their activities are entirely confined to the undergraduate years. In that they are always subject to faculty regulation, it is probable that loyalty to the society or club does not, as is too often the case among the fraternities, usurp the place of loyalty to alma mater.

As for the alleged democracy of the women’s colleges, it is, in many cases, largely theoretical. These colleges provide for their students both housing and social life. The latter is somewhat cloistral, to be sure, but it is open to all. By the very conditions of their life, they do not need the help of the fraternities for disciplinary or legislative measures. Does this mean that the colleges are without cliques, that every student is a sister to every other? Who that has lived in a woman’s college does not know that every class is run usually by one group of friends, with occasional more or less successful attempts by other rival groups to grasp the power? The “fraternity spirit” comes into play all over the world as soon as three people meet, because one combination of two will always be more congenial than the other, and one is always left out. The fraternity spirit is simply the aristocratic impulse, the social instinct that is ever working toward the formation of class. Then, as it cannot be torn out of human nature, is it to be recognized and allowed to develop freely as in the case of the national organizations, or is it to be checked and controlled from without as in the case of the local organizations, or is it to be ignored, hidden under a cloak of theoretical democracy, as in the women’s colleges?

REFORMING THE SYSTEM

The furthest limit to which the national organizations will go in the way of outside regulation is to allow a representation of non-fraternity members of the faculty on their boards--a minority, I judge. On the other hand, they freely admit the more obvious faults of their system, and declare their earnest purpose of self-regulation. They even admit that these measures are defensive; they feel that their system is threatened. Let us look at the reforms they propose, and see how far they will go to change its fundamental nature.

They propose to do away, first, with the practice of “rushing” and the hysteria, expense, bitterness, and heartburn that accompany it, and to insure a thorough acquaintance on both sides by postponing pledge-day to the sophomore year. At the same time they mean to raise the scholarship standard for admission, and to regulate the social life of the chapter houses by insisting upon the observance of uniform and reasonable house rules.

The first trouble is that their chance of success in these reforms is very small. They may keep rushing, to all appearances, within bounds, but the feelings that it engenders must arise wherever a few persons are singled out by the arbitrary choice of several rival organizations.

When they postpone pledge-day, they cease to house the very students--the beginners--who in our big, promiscuous universities chiefly need care. Even if they provide for the freshmen by themselves building dormitories, they have to face the problems how the wide acquaintance of the first year is to pass into the segregation of the later years without breaking up friendships formed at that time, and whether, to avoid this thing, there will not be formed among the freshmen defensive cliques which will be taken in as wholes when the time comes. Under these conditions, which actually prevail in at least one university where sophomore pledging has been adopted, the system will remain unchanged.

The scholarship standard for admission, while it will improve the tone and efficiency of the fraternities by keeping out the thoroughly frivolous and incapable element, might conceivably, must inevitably render them still more exclusive by adding pride of intellect to pride of social standing. Even where a most beneficent result is confidently urged, that is, when the fraternity acts as a stimulus to drag the poor student up to the required grade, I am still in doubt. Is it worth while to force scholarship by means of social reward? Would it not be better to let these girls drop and find their place in another level in which they are moved by real interest in the thing they are doing, instead of by the goad of social ambition? This is at least a question to be considered.

As for the uniform house rules, where is the machinery that can enforce them in an aggregation of societies widely scattered and independent?

But suppose these reforms are carried out to the last degree, how will they affect the system? Will they break down the barriers between Greek and barbarian? Will they make the selection of the college aristocracy any less artificial? Will they not, by still further elimination of “mistakes,”--the incongruous element,--tend to make the fraternity woman still more conventional? Will they not _ingrow_ more and more in their limitation of types? Will they not be still more the circle of girls looking inward and blowing up the little flame of their own ideals and aspirations, instead of individual women mingling with the great crowd of human beings, and turning their faces this way and that according to the needs of the time?

But if outside regulation is impracticable where the national organizations are already in control, and the proposed regulation from within only intensifies the abnormal conditions of the system, what can be done?

The fundamental problem for both the fraternities and the officers of colleges where they exist, is, whether or not the number of societies is to be restricted.

One dean says: “If I could, I would keep them out. As I cannot, I say let us have as many as possible.”

Another dean stands for, “The rendering of fraternities inconspicuous and unimportant as an element in college life.” She adds: “Often this end may be in a measure accomplished by strengthening the organizations to which all women students are eligible.”

A FOMENTER OF CASTE FEELING

There is the difference of theory. One view looks toward enough fraternities to take in all the students who have any inclination to be “clubable”; the other, toward preserving what is sometimes called “the balance” between fraternity and non-fraternity women. The first tendency is democratic by bringing the majority into the position held by the minority to-day; the second is democratic by limiting the powers of the present minority. The regulation from within, being urged by the National Pan-Hellenic, is aristocratic in that it aims to increase the efficiency and power of this minority.

Where the fraternities contain nearly the whole body of women students, as happens in some small institutions, the few who are left out suffer proportionately. Again, as the “barbs” need not be reckoned with, jealousies between chapters are almost sure to arise.

On the other hand, in regard to the balance, one of the fraternity journals says in effect: Why should there be this balance between the fraternity and the non-fraternity element? If the system is ideal for one girl, is it not for all? What ground can a college stand on in putting a premium on the fraternity girls? Why increase the difference which we would all gladly lose sight of? Our ideals are the same as those of every true college woman, and the banding together into a fraternity is a help toward these ideals. Why refuse any college woman this help?

It is not merely a question of ideals and of the help of friends, but of definite social values, such as, for example, more intimate association with members of the faculty, more opportunities for meeting distinguished guests, and so on. Why should the fraternities have the monopoly of these social pleasures and assets?

The usual answer of the fraternity woman would be, I think: “Shall we do away with colleges because fewer than two persons out of a thousand go to college? Opportunities must necessarily be limited to the few.”

“Limited to the few?” Yes, necessarily to a few at a time; but not always to the same few.

No, the fraternity woman does not wish to open up her fraternity to the general public. She may go outside her walls and speak with the barbs on terms of what she calls perfect equality and friendliness; but she wishes to keep to herself the fastness of her fraternity, with its idealistic ritual, its trivial secret, as a sanctuary secure from the miscellaneous hordes of the world.

There is no getting over or around or away from this attitude of mind. The insidiousness of it is that no amount of theory will save from it the average human being who gets the chance. One may have heard of the college professor who objected strongly when his sister was “bid” because he did not wish her to become a snob. Later, as fate would have it, he himself was called upon to organize a fraternity. Where was the snob then? On the other side of the wall, to be sure! And that is just where the difference comes in.

DO COLLEGE AUTHORITIES FACE THEIR DUTY?

One conclusion which would be generally admitted is, that the colleges and universities where the fraternities thrive have not done their whole duty by their students. Suppose, then, that they realize this, and wish to use the fraternal spirit to forward the welfare of the general body of students, what can they do? As a result of many suggestions, I seem to see that a somewhat definite line of action is possible.

In the first place, they are even now facing the problem of housing their students, and there arises the question of choice between the dormitory and the cottage. The large dormitory is more economical, and it was more manageable than a group of cottages in the old days before student government; but from every other point of view it fails. The small dormitory and the large cottage are rapidly approaching each other in size, and the approximation is due to a compromise between the desire of each college to put first the welfare of its students and the money available to carry out its plans.

But suppose--a somewhat visionary hypothesis, I am afraid--that an institution is free to build as many cottages as it needs, of the size that should bring the best possible results of group development, so that every girl student may be assured of a comfortable home with, for example, nineteen or twenty-nine others. She would then be on the proper basis for extending and receiving hospitality, and social training would follow as a matter of course.

THE GROUPING OF STUDENTS FOR DEVELOPMENT

The fraternity girls put great stress on their power of developing one another, the “house mother,” or chaperon, even when she is not the cook, seeming to be usually more or less a figurehead. In this cottage system, what would happen if the group were left to itself in the same way? Naturally this would depend entirely upon the constitution of the group. If all birds of a feather flocked together, no sparrows would learn the song of the canary. If they were housed haphazard, in the order, for example, of registration, there would be at first anarchy, with the speedy assertion of the clique and government by the strongest spirits who were attracted to one another by congeniality, much as happens in the chapter houses now, while the weak and isolated spirits would have much the position of extension members of fraternities, taken in to help pay the coal bills. Clearly some sort of regulation from without would be not only desirable, but essential, unless the development of the individual girl is to be as much a matter of chance as with the fraternities. The line of remedy would seem to be by a proper distribution of upper-class girls and new students--poor dean!--and by the appointment of some responsible older woman as “house mother.”

A great deal would depend upon the type of woman in charge. As one of the fraternity members said, she ought to be an alumna. But however important it is that a woman of fine ability, tact, social distinction, and loving-kindness should be paid an excellent salary for developing this side of life in every cottage or dormitory on the campus, there is probably not an institution in the country that can afford to pay for such service exclusively. A middle way, perhaps not so impracticable, would be to choose from the graduating class of each year girls for whom college has been rather a general training for life than a specialized preparation for some one profession--girls who could afford to give a year’s time and who would gladly do so in return for board and lodging, special college privileges, such as graduate courses, and so on, and the not invaluable experience that they would gain by acting as these house mothers. They would be near enough in age to sympathize with the undergraduate point of view, far enough away to counsel, direct, and influence; and they, acting with house committees chosen by the household of each cottage, could guide each little group in such a way as to insure a flexible system which would permit both the individual and the social virtues to flourish. One might even foresee that a conference of these house mothers with the officers of the large students’ organizations and a committee of the faculty might form a board comparable to the local Pan-Hellenics of the fraternities for the general guidance of student affairs.[5]

This might allow for social training and group development; but, the objection may be urged, how would it react upon student friendships? What assurance is there that in any cottage home there might not be as many “mistakes” as occur in fraternity choosing? Deans are proverbially not infallible, and the burden put upon them by such a plan would be heavy.

The answer is that congenial friendships are no more a matter of accidental living together than of arbitrary imposition by upper classmen, but of a free choice that in undergraduate years should range over the campus and as far as possible out into the world. With these the cottage system has little to do, except that by its flexibility it saves a girl from being unhappy more than one year or perhaps even a semester. Whether her most intimate friends are all in her own house or scattered over the campus and through the town is a matter of special temperament. No two--poor dean again!--should be treated alike. The intense girl who tends to abnormality of the affections should have scattered friends. The solitary, self-sufficient girl should have her friends about her. With the eminently conventional, clubable girl it will make little difference with whom she lives; those about her will always be her friends, and by continued intimate association with them, she will develop a certain attitude of permanence in her ties which probably makes for character development.

A NARROWING INFLUENCE

IN this connection I cannot forbear pointing out another fallacy in the fraternity theory. As most fraternity girls are naturally of the clubable type, it is undoubtedly true that the four years of close association lead them to permanent ties of friendship as no other system could do; but, on the other hand, as these girls in their teens must grow at different rates of development, the fraternity becomes an actual clog on those who might otherwise develop more rapidly and more freely; it tends to keep them all back to the pace of those who remain most nearly what they were in college years.

It must be admitted, however, that the cottage system does not do much to foster the kind of growth that comes, not from the clash of different types of personality, but from congenial associations. But is there not in every college adequate machinery for such expression of tastes? With the students’ associations, the women’s leagues, the Young Women’s Christian Association, literary associations, tennis clubs, golf clubs, garden clubs, walking clubs, journal clubs,--the multifarious club activities of almost any college, to which ability, or at least interest, is the test for admission, there should be no lack of opportunity for any student to encourage to the utmost any taste whatsoever. Nor should there be any limitation as to the number of clubs to which any student belongs, apart from the question of her interests and the amount of energy that she diverts from her main business as a student.

Because of the diversity of their activities and the overlapping of their memberships, with such clubs as these there could be no question of rivalry. Rivalries and jealousies between the different cottages might spring up, but with a strong students’ association and with partizanship weakened by the inevitable scattering of friends, this could not grow into anything like the hostility between fraternities and non-fraternities, between Greeks and Greeks, that exists in many institutions to-day.

INTERCOURSE BETWEEN ALUMNA AND STUDENT

One thing not provided for in the scheme outlined is put forward by the fraternities as one of the great advantages of their organization, and that is the continued relationship between the alumna and her alma mater. Without admitting the wisdom of allowing too much alumnæ interference and control, one may see that some continuance of the tie is a good thing. The fraternities foster this connection, where they have chapter houses for the small proportion of students whom they reach, by means of a permanent college home and an abiding interest in the younger sisterhood. A similar result could be secured for the whole student body by means of a club-house built by the alumnæ to put up those who return for visits and to accommodate offices for the various organizations of students.[6]

All this is visionary and impracticable, at present; and yet it is only following out the various lines of suggestion, which are based upon institutions already in existence.

SOCIAL EXCLUSIVENESS

IF the colleges and universities should develop in this direction, what would become of the fraternities? The double system of cottages and clubs would remove the practical reasons for their existence. There is no work that they claim to do for the few that could not be done for the whole either in a cottage organization of students or by a club. They would be driven back upon the real ground of their growing prosperity in our land of the Newly Made--social exclusiveness. On that basis doubtless they will continue to exist. There will always be some people who will wish to wear a badge possessed by the few, who will wish to retire into an inner circle of common knowledge and common acquaintance where they are safe in feeling superior to those whom they keep outside as far as the choice lies with themselves. But these cliques, whatever each thinks of itself, will be forced to yield to the larger organizations of students both the control of affairs and the right to set the fashion in character and in social customs. They may become specialists in “cliquocracy”--the frat of the Vans and the frat of the Vons and the frat of the Log-Cabin Ancestors, the frat of the Ultra-Platonists, the frat of the Super-Bogies, and the frat of the Number-Two Shoes. That is, if the element of good which the fraternities give to their members is supplied to all college students in other ways, the fraternities themselves are bound to dwindle and shrivel until they become mere social excrescences, curiosities of aristocratic affinities.

Probably it is too late to make a stand. The fraternities are strong among the privileged classes, and tenacious of their privilege. They see, as who does not, that in an age and a country where opportunities are increasingly restricted to the few, this caste system of education is the best possible preparation to enable the few to use the opportunities that are theirs, in that it gives them all the social powers and affiliations by which chiefly the few rule the many; and the development of the individual is not the concern of a system that works to make corporate bodies closed against individual striving.

When one remembers the movement against the high-school fraternities, one is tempted for a moment to hope for a revision of popular opinion. How should what is generally condemned for the years between twelve and twenty be approved for the years between sixteen and twenty-four? Is there so wide a difference between the fraternity idea as it finds expression in the high-school girl of eighteen and the college girl of eighteen? The very women who most earnestly advocate the system in the colleges are bent upon driving it out of the high schools. Yet the fact that neither the joint effort of parents and teachers and state legislation has succeeded in this, argues ill for any successful movement against it in the colleges.

A NEW ALTRUISM NEEDED

What can we do? We need a new religion to teach the subordination of personal good to communal welfare. We believe in it theoretically, we are anxious that our neighbors should practise it; but when it cuts home, we falter and fail. We see the evils of the fraternity system, and the fraternity people are among our most desirable acquaintances. We like them for friends and especially for our children’s friends. We argue against the system and preach its abolition; but when Alice goes to college and is rushed by Beta and Gamma and Kappa in eager rivalry, we step down from the pulpit and rejoice with her and suffer with her anxious little heart until she is safely housed within the chapter that has the best standing.

And yet we do not call ourselves snobs. There must be a top layer. Why should not we be in it? Democracy? Yes; but that we and our children are to be on the same level with venders and hagglers and foreigners and other impossible people--absurd! Let us hasten to put on the Alpha Omega pin, which assures public recognition of our social superiority.

In other words, we still care more for individual distinction than for the welfare of society. I have heard more than a few thoughtful fraternity women sum up their position thus: “I hate the system; I deplore it! But _as_ it’s here, I’ve got to be in it because I can’t bear to be left outside!” Can we fight this spirit? Can we win? If we do, the victory will mean that we have grown wise and sane and strong enough for such a democracy as the world has never yet known.

[4] As Vassar, Bryn Mawr, and Radcliffe; and, properly speaking,
Smith.

[5] It has also been pointed out to me that the system could be used
even in a large dormitory by dividing up the building into floors
or sections, and that this is now being done in the newest
dormitories. The idea is not, of course, to secure boarding-school
_supervision_.

[6] Such club-houses are already in existence for men, and seem to
fulfil their purpose admirably.

THE PITILESSNESS OF DESIRE

BY SHAEMAS O’SHEEL

Cease, cease, implacable desire,
Cease, cease!
The endless ways no longer, for I tire!
I who went forth mantled with morning fire
Pray now surcease
And peace--peace!

O Protean, pitiless, perilous, dread desire,
Cease, cease!
Blow not again
Your trumpet tyrannous, nor sound your lyre:
Once in their notes I heard a spirit choir;
Now only pain.

Whispers at my young soul, blood in the heart,
Limbs of the leaping goat--aye, these I had,
And spurned a myriad summits gained, to start
Down through new vales to newer hills apart;
And I was glad
To be insatiably mad
For more--more knowledge, wisdom, passion, art!

But now release
Your broken bondsman from his broken bond!
What is beyond
This, and the next horizon, and beyond
The last horizon, could not give me peace.
That I have learned at last, and therefore cease
The bloody goad and the illusory wand--
Cease, cease!

Cease, cease!
My life’s a burning arrow shot in the dark,
Fearfully arching heaven to find no mark.
Must it be always warfare, never peace?
Nay, then I ground my arms! I will not hark
The old command; so maybe you will cease.

This is the end of all; I quench the fire.
Calm of the hills, the rooted flowers and trees,
Have some right to my love, and now to these
I turn, because their service will not tire.
My staff, my scrip, my cloak into the pyre!
Yet--what high vision through the hot flame flees?

THE SET-BACK TO ENGLISH SOCIALISM

BY G. K. CHESTERTON

The present condition of England is a very curious one, and the only obvious thing to say about it is that there is virtually nothing about it in the English papers. When I heard long ago that Mr. Balfour never read the papers, I thought it was because he was languid and frivolous; by which you will see that I did read the papers. Now I am older, I think it was more likely because he was practical and busy, and preferred to deal direct with the real facts. If, like the English, you run what is still at best an aristocracy with most of the forms of a democracy, it is found virtually necessary that the journalists should talk in public about anything or everything except what the politicians are really doing in private.

You may therefore utterly disregard all the things printed in very large letters in the “Daily Mail” or the “Daily Chronicle.” I have heard that American journalism is in a manner more truthful, if it is only by being more transparently untrue; but I will not presume to guess about that, or to imagine what the headlines in American papers mean. The headlines in English papers mean nothing. Mr. Bonar Law means nothing. Sir Edward Carson means nothing. Belfast means nothing. There is not one man of education and influence in England who cares a button about Belfast; at least in the governing classes, who have long seen that Home Rule is horse sense and nothing else; and least of all in the Conservative party, where a general High-Church flavor can be varied by Romanism, Atheism, Theosophy, Christian Science, or Devil-worship, but where such a thing as a No Popery puritan simply could not live for twenty minutes. Nor is there anything in Mr. Churchill’s supposed frenzy for war, or the other Radicals’ frenzy for peace. There is no more division among Englishmen about the need for national defense than there would be among you Americans or among Frenchmen or any other white men. And the mysterious ambitions and alterations of Mr. Churchill (of which you will see a great deal in the papers) mean nothing whatever but this: that the man is a cynic and an oligarch, but not a traitor; and that he is behaving exactly as any Englishman in his place would behave.

There was more in the comparatively slight stir about the tragedy of the _Titanic_. For that was connected, though largely unconsciously, with what is the deepest thing in modern England, a general suspicion that the men and methods now on top everywhere are not the best even from their own paternalist point of view; or, to use the foolish modern phraseology, that the survival of the unfittest rather than the fittest is the real result of our competitions or conspiracies. But here again the very phrase reminds us that in the modern world the real issue is carefully cloaked with a false issue.

There is much in the English papers just now, and I do not doubt in the American papers also, about degeneration and eugenics and the appalling sexual conduct and physical condition of the submerged. This also is a mere plutocratic fad, and corresponds to no general public feeling. Every sensible man in England knows that the poor must somehow or other be given more money for food and rest; but every sensible man also knows that in other respects they are as mixed and average as any other class, and marry and are given in marriage, as people always have done and always will do.

The suspicion really abroad in England is not a doubt about the people below, but about the people above. Looking at those who emerge into the first social rank, we are more inclined to be ashamed of our successes than of our failures. It is the breed of the top dog rather than the breed of the bottom dog that is becoming a mongrel breed. And there is certainly something amusing in the picture of the rich and powerful peering down into the abyss and dropping tears over the poor specimens that make up the populace, while by far the greater part of the populace is remarking more and more what uncommonly poor specimens are looking down at them.

This doubt of the powers that be is vague but universal, and had a sort of stifled explosion at the time of the _Titanic_ affair; a general suspicion that governors cannot be trusted to govern or inspectors to inspect or arbiters to arbitrate, that captains are not to be trusted with ships, that lawyers are not to be trusted with laws. The kind of man who comes to the top everywhere conquers nothing but his superiors, gains nothing but his own gain. In modern England the successful man is not a success.