in our own fraternity and undervaluing those outside, especially those beyond the Greek letter pale. For it is there that we might, if we tried, find sometimes the most of worth in character and ability, in capacity for hard work and earnest effort. And in so far as we underestimate the really fine things in others, we neglect them in ourselves and become the victims of our own illusions. There are fraternity girls, many of them who have writhed with humiliation when confronted with the charge that they and their sisters are snobs. Yet, after all, snobs, and snobbishness are only questions of value; we are all snobs in so far as our standard of values is a false one; and perhaps, if we are quite honest, we may admit sometime, not that the charge is true, but that it is so dangerously near the truth as to make us uncomfortable when we think of it. The beautiful medieval principle of noblesse oblige is not threadbare yet. A man owes something to his order; he is a renegade if he deserts it; he is a traitor if he dishonors it. A girl owes much to her fraternity, and she can pay the debt only by loyal service. She has more than her own reputation at stake; the world of which she is a part judges her fraternity as well as herself by what she says or does. If she is a snob, she has branded all her sisters, and every such act of snobbishness remains always an unpaid debt against them, that no act of kindly courtesy on their part can ever cancel. But all this is not so much lest we forget, it is rather lest we never realized that it was there to be forgotten. There is after all no more suitable time than a post-rushing season to take to our fraternity heart what Stevenson said about being honest and being kind. During this quiet time for meditation, we might find an opportunity for a good many square confessions and best of all for occasional glows of righteous feeling when it is all over, successfully or unsuccessfully, and there has been nothing said or done to leave a blot on the fraternity escutcheon. There is honor, we have always been told, among thieves, and we have always believed it. Surely, our most irreconcilable critics will not begrudge us a place on this level. But we can remain there only by remembering that we owe much in rushing season not only to our rivals but to the girls who are rushed, especially to the girls who are rushed and not asked. But the path of the rusher is beset by more pitfalls than poor Christian's, and if fraternities, unlike people, might ever be justified in wishing for that Pharasaical feeling, it would be after a rushing season when the temptation to become partners in a game of Machiavellian diplomacy has been almost irresistible. This seems though when all is said, very useless and very tiresome, for we all know our own faults and usually remember them better than other people who should be sufficiently occupied caring for their own. Yet we must bear with those who preach to us now and then about our most crying sins, lest we forget them and discredit more than ourselves in so doing. To be honest, to be kind; it is a good ideal to have in mind surely, and one whose simplicity appeals to us more strongly on further acquaintance. You are right, Robert Louis, one need not hitch one's wagon to a star unless it be the star of truth, for if we try bravely and earnestly to do as you would wish us to, Delta Gamma need not be ashamed to claim her own. EDITH ABBOTT, Kappa, '01. de de "An All-'Round Girl." They were sitting around the tea-table and had been talking about the Phi Beta Kappa announcements. "Well," said a Freshman, energetically, "It's well enough to be a Phi Beta, and gratifying to one's family, but my ideal is the all-'round girl who does well in her work; shines in society; indulges in athletics somewhat, and appears in dramatics occasionally; the girl, who, pausing for inspiration, 'does everything with her might,'' "With her might,'" repeated the old girl, back for a visit, thoughtfully. "I wonder if she could, that ideal of yours. Now, there was Margaret. You all know Margaret. She entered college an enthusiast. Her physique was magnificent; her mind brilliant; her personality charming. She seemed fit for all things, and she was." "In a few weeks she had joined the Dramatic Club, the Christian Association, the Tennis Club, and had been put on an important class committee. This, of course, was besides her work and her fraternity. Then her father, who was literary, and her mother, who was musical, kept writing her, urging her not to neglect her work and her music. Her father wanted her to write for the college magazines, and her mother was anxious for her to practice piano an hour or so a day. She began meeting men, you know how attractive she is, and that meant several evenings each week spent receiving calls, at the theatre or at hops. The basket-ball season opened. Fired with class loyalty and love of sport, she devoted hours to practice in the gym., finally making her class team." "I remember the day I went into our room, toward the end of the year, and found Margaret there, trolling out her Latin. If you had known her in the old glorious prep. school days you would understand my surprise. She looked up at me, half ashamed, half defiant, and said: 'This Horace is so hard, and I've cut so much. Then I have that Dramatic Club rehearsal, which will last a couple of hours besides the mission study class and my fencing lesson. You know that long theme that's due. This afternoon doesn't count, for I promised a poem for the magazine, overdue now, and I simply must receive at that tea.' "Well, that's just the way she lived, each day a hurry, a scramble. When you met her on her flying trips across the campus, or in the halls, she just had time for a smile. When you went to her room she was always starting for some stunt." "Sophomore and Junior year, it was the same. She acted, wrote, played basket ball, danced, managed class stunts and ran class politics. She was prominent, popular, gay." "But one day, at the beginning of our Senior year, she came to me with the dreariest face. 'Helen,' she began, 'I'm cross and homesick and blue. I'm sick of it all. These dear beautiful years! They are all wasted in mistakes. I want them again. I want to begin over. I've been so busy trying to be everything and do everything that I've let the best of college, the things that count, the things that are worth while, slip away. Friends! I have none. They have been sacrificed for committee meetings and games and poems and dances.'" "It was true. I had begun to realize it when we discussed Senior elections. Margaret had hoped for the presidency. The girls said, 'Yes, Margaret is fine. She's executive and would look stunning on the stage, but you know she does so many things, we are afraid she wouldn't have time.'" "She was suggested for poet. Again the girls said; 'Margaret writes well, but really Dorothy does much better. Margaret always has so much doing and Dorothy would devote her whole soul to getting up a perfect class poem.' "The last I heard from her, she had given up writing and music and was doing college settlement work. She wrote me the other day that she had given up her dream of being an all'round girl. 'She's an impossible creature,' she said. She has decided to leave a few things for others to do, and not try selfishly to do everything herself. She said she was going to content herself with the consciousness of one thing well done, of time well spent." "And after all," finished the old girl, putting down her tea cup, as if the sermon were over, "isn't that worth while?" ADAH MURRAY HORTON, Chi, '02. de de Delta Gamma Friendships. It is hard to imagine the havoc that would be wrought should some mighty hand sever one by one the many and delicate threads that bind us to our fellows and leave us alone and isolated in the world. Men and women, from Cicero down to that glorious production, the budding high-school orator, have felt the power and value of friendship and have given their thoughts to the world. Sir John Lubbock speaks of our friends and the place they hold in our life, as individuals moving in rings about each person; in concentric circles. In the smallest circle are those fewand they are few, indeed, even with the best of us-with whom we are in almost perfect sympathy; who meet and satisfy us in each mood and temper, to whom we can go in joy or in sorrow, in success or in failure, and be sure of being understood and loved through it all. Just outside of these are others whom we know less intimately yet value highly, beyond these and still beyond, others, until we reach the great outer circle of those who are mere acquaintances, and whom we barely recognize. The criticism has been made so many, many times of fraternity girls that they are exclusive or, in other words, the Greek girl has won the fame of relegating to the extreme outer circle of her life the large majority of her college mates, and of admitting to the inner circles few besides her chosen set-and these mostly fellow inhabitants of the Greek world. Things have come to a woeful state when a 'frat' pin or fine clothes are our chief standards in judging of others. The more people we can meet sympathetically on some common ground, the richer and fuller and happier will be our lives. The Delta Gamma who gives a ready, helpful friendship to her own sisters, but whose heart and mind are big enough to have warm friends among the other Greeks and in the nonfraternity world most of all, is the Delta Gamma who is going to do much to brighten our fame and to break down the shameful barrier which makes so unnecessarily sharp the distinction between "barb" and "frat." LEONORA C. MANN, Lambda, '02. dede The Freshman's Point of View. Now that the excitement of rushing season is over, we Freshmen are beginning to realize what the fraternity life really means to a college girl. In the first three weeks of gaiety and innumerable engagements we were naturally impressed by its social side, but our views then were merely those of outsiders and not of those who see and understand the other and deeper side. Those of us who had belonged to preparatory or high-school fraternities had of course, very distinct ideas as to the meaning of the word, but I think that even we failed to realize entirely the power and depth of that life which was soon to mean so much to us. In the constant and intimate intercourse of the girls one understands a fraternity's strength, and in the coming and going of the old girls one understands its breadth. The friendships found now are not friendships for the four college years only, but friendships for life. In the Fraternity House a girl learns to be thoughtful and considerate of others, if she has never learnt it before, and also to realize how to keep selfish thoughts or plans from interfering with the pleasure of others. If the outsiders who see only one phase of the life and who consequently rail against fraternities for their narrowness and exclusiveness could but see the other side, their ideas would probably change very radically. But it is only given to the few to realize the helpful, powerful spirit of fraternity life. HARRIET C. SEVERANCE, Upsilon, '06. |