nothing but chant its praises
and condemn any one as disloyal who happens to mention its very numerous
faults.

"Well, I'm going to mention some of those faults, not all of them by any
means, just those that any intelligent undergraduate ought to be able to
see for himself.

"In the first place, this is supposed to be an educational institution;
it is endowed for that purpose and it advertises itself as such. And you
men say that you come here to get an education. But what do you really
do? You resist education with all your might and main, digging your
heels into the gravel of your own ignorance and fighting any attempt to
teach you anything every inch of the way. What's worse, you aren't
content with your own ignorance; you insist that every one else be
ignorant, too. Suppose a man attempts to acquire culture, as some of
them do. What happens? He is branded as wet. He is a social leper.

"Wet! What currency that bit of slang has--and what awful power. It took
me a long time to find out what the word meant, but after long research
I think that I know. A man is wet if he isn't a 'regular guy'; he is wet
if he isn't 'smooth'; he is wet if he has intellectual interests and
lets the mob discover them; and, strangely enough, he is wet by the same
token if he is utterly stupid. He is wet if he doesn't show at least a
tendency to dissipate, but he isn't wet if he dissipates to excess. A
man will be branded as wet for any of these reasons, and once he is so
branded, he might as well leave college; if he doesn't, he will have a
lonely and hard row to hoe. It is a rare undergraduate who can stand the
open contempt of his fellows."

He paused, obviously ordering his thoughts before continuing. The boys
waited expectantly. Some of them were angry, some amused, a few in
agreement, and all of them intensely interested.

Henley leaned back in his chair. "What horrible little conformers you
are," he began sarcastically, "and how you loathe any one who doesn't
conform! You dress both your bodies and your minds to some set model.
Just at present you are making your hair foul with some sort of perfumed
axle-grease; nine tenths of you part it in the middle. It makes no
difference whether the style is becoming to you or not; you slick it
down and part it in the middle. Last year nobody did it; the chances are
that next year nobody will do it, but anybody who doesn't do it right
now is in danger of being called wet."

Hugh had a mom