s history? We
had to use other means of getting him. We had to hypnotize him, daze
him, waft him off his feet; and if necessary we had to get the other
frats to help us. How? Oh, you never know just how until you have to;
and then you slip your scheme wheels into gear and do it. You just have
to; that's all. It's like running away from a bear. You know you can't,
but you've got to; and so you do.

Makes me smile now when I think of some of the desperate crises that
used to roll up around old Eta Bita Pie like a tornado convention and
threaten to engulf the bright, beautiful world and turn it into a
howling desert, peopled only by Delta Kappa Whoops and other
undesirables. I'm far enough away, now, to forget the heart-bursting
suspense and to see only the humor of it. Once I remember the Shi Delts,
in spite of everything we could do, managed so to befog the brain of the
Freshman class president that he cut a date with us and sequestered
himself in the Shi Delt house in an upper back room, with the horrible
intention of pledging himself the next morning. Four of the largest Shi
Delts sat on the front porch that evening and the telephone got
paralysis right after supper. They had told the boy that if he joined
them he would probably have to leave school in his Junior year to become
governor; and he didn't want to see any of us for fear we would wake him
up. I chuckle yet when I think of those four big bruisers sitting on the
front porch and guarding their property while I was shinning up the
corner post of the back porch, leaving a part of my trousers fluttering
on a nail and ordering the youngster in a blood-curdling whisper to hand
down his coat, unless he wanted to lose forever his chance of being
captain of the football team in his Sophomore year. He weighed the
governorship against the captaincy for a minute, but the right triumphed
and he handed down his coat. I sewed a big bunch of our colors on it,
discoursed with him fraternally while balancing on the slanting roof,
shook hands with him in a solemn, ritualistic way and bade him be firm
the next morning. When the Shi Delts came in and found that Freshman
pledged to another gang they had a convulsion that lasted a week; and to
this day they don't know how the crime was committed.

There was another Freshman, I remember, who was led violently astray by
the Chi Yis and was about to pledge to them under the belief that their
gang contained every man of note in the Uni