e a Freshman so hard as to have about
six other frats after him. I've seen women buy hats the same way.
They've got to beat some other woman to a hat before they can really
appreciate it. And when we could swat half a dozen rival frats over the
heart by waltzing a good-looking young chap down the walk to chapel with
our colors on his coat, and could watch them turning green and purple
and clawing for air--well, I guess it beat getting elected to Congress
or marrying an heiress-apparent for pure, unadulterated, unspeckled joy!

Competition was getting mighty scarce in the country even then. There
were understandings between railroad magnates and beef kings and biscuit
makers--and even the ministers had a scale of wedding fees. But
competition had a happy home on our campus. About the best we had been
able to do had been to agree not to burn down each other's frat houses
while we were haltering the Freshmen. I've seen nine frats, with a total
of one hundred and fifty members, sitting up nights for a week at a time
working out plans to despoil each other of a runty little fellow in a
pancake hat, whose only accomplishment was playing the piano with his
feet. One frat wanted him and that started the others.

Of course we'd have got along better if we'd put the whole Freshman
class in cold storage until we could have found out who the good men
were and who the spoiled fruit might be. We were just as likely to fall
in love with a suit of clothes as with a future class orator. We took in
one man once because he bought a pair of patent-leather tan shoes in his
Junior year. We argued that, if he had the nerve to wear the things to
his Y. M. C. A. meetings, there must be some originality in him after
all--and we took a chance. We won. But it's a risky business. Once five
frats rushed a fellow for a month because of the beautiful clothes he
wore--and just after the victorious bunch had initiated him a clothing
house came down on the young man and took the whole outfit. You can't
always tell at first sight. But then, I don't know but that college
fraternities exercise as much care and judgment in picking brothers as
women do in picking husbands. Many a woman has married a fine mustache
or a bunch of noble clothes and has taken the thing that wore them on
spec. That's one more than we ever did. You could fool us with clothes;
but the man who came to Siwash with a mustache had to flock by himself.
He and his whiskers were considered