I'm here for? I didn't know it. There's a hazy
notion in my noodle that I'm here to develop myself."

"That's what I'm telling you. Go in for the things that count. Make a
good frat. Win out at football or debating. I don't give a hang what you
go after, but follow the ball and keep on the jump. I'm strong with the
crowd that runs things and I'll see they take you in and make you a cog
of the machine. But you'll have to measure up to specifications."

"But, hang it, I don't want to be a cog in any machine. I'm here to
give myself a chance to grow--sit out in the sun and hatch an
individuality--give myself lots of free play."

"Then you've come to the wrong shop," James informed him dryly. "If you
want to succeed at college you've got to do the things the other fellows
do and you've got to do them the same way."

"You mean I've got to travel in a rut?"

"Oh, well! That's a way of putting it. I mean that you have to accept
customs and traditions. You have to work like the devil doing things
that count. If you make the team you've got to think football, talk it,
eat it, dream it."

"But is it worth while?"

James waved his protest aside. "Of course it's worth while. Success
always is. Get this in your head. Four-fifths of the fellows at college
don't count. They're also-rans. To get in with the right bunch you've
got to make a good showing. Look at me. I'm no John D. Rockefeller, Jr.
Athletics bore me. I can't sing. I don't grind. But I'm in everything.
Best frat. Won the oratorical contest. Manager of the football team next
season. President of the Dramatic Club. Why?"

He did not wait for Jeff to guess the reason. "Because our set runs
things and I go after the honors."

"But a college ought to be a democracy," Jeff protested.

"Tommyrot! It's an aristocracy, that's what it is, just like the little
old world outside, an aristocracy of the survival of the fittest. You
get there if you're strong. You go to the wall if you're weak. That's
the law of life."

The freshman came to this squint of pragmatism with surprise. He had
thought of Verden University as a splendid democracy of intellectual
brotherhood that was to leaven the world with which it came in touch.

"Do you mean that a fellow has to have money enough to make a good
showing before he can win any of the prizes?"

James K. nodded with the sage wisdom of a man of the world. "The long
green is a big help, but you've got to have the stuff in you. Succe