to be enough company for each other.

There were plenty of frats in Siwash to make things interesting in the
fall. There were the Alfalfa Delts, who had a house in the same block
with us and were snobbish just because they had initiated a locomotive
works, two railroads and a pickle factory. Then there were the Sigh
Whoopsilons, who got to Siwash first and who regarded the rest of us
with the same kindly tolerance with which the Indians regarded Daniel
Boone. And there were the Chi Yis, who fought society hard and always
had their picture taken for the college annual in dress suits. Many's
the time I've loaned my dress suit to drape over some green young Chi
Yi, so that the annual picture could show an unbroken row of open-faced
vests. And there were the Shi Delts, who were a bold, bad bunch; and the
Fli Gammas, who were good, pious boys, about as exciting as a
smooth-running prayer-meeting; and the Delta Kappa Sonofaguns, who got
every political office either by electing a member or initiating one;
and the Delta Flushes; and the Mu Kow Moos; the Sigma Numerous; and two
or three others that we didn't lie awake nights worrying about. Every
one of these bunches had one burning ambition--that was to initiate the
very best men in the Freshman class every fall. That made it necessary
for us, in order to maintain our proud position, to disappoint each one
of them every year and to make ourselves about as popular as the
directors of a fresh-air and drinking-water trust.

Of course we always disappointed them. Wouldn't admit it if we didn't.
But, holy mackerel! what a job it was! Herding a bunch of green and
timid and nervous and contrary youngsters past all the temptations and
pitfalls and confidence games and blarneyfests put up by a dozen frats,
and landing the bunch in a crowd that it had never heard of two weeks
before, is as bad as trying to herd a bunch of whales into a fishpond
with nothing but hot air for gads. It took diplomacy, pugnacity and
psychological moments, I tell you; and it took more: it took ingenuity
and inventiveness and cheek and second sight and cool heads in time of
trouble and long heads on the job, from daybreak to daybreak. I'd rather
go out and sell battleships to farmers, so far as the toughness of the
job is concerned, than to tackle the job of persuading a wise young
high-school product with two chums in another frat that my bunch and he
were made for each other. What did he care for our gloriou