ir substitute
for a parlor--and you're likely to meet not only college freaks, but
worse ones from goodness knows where. There's a beer-drinking old
monster who goes there every Sunday to play the fiddle that you
wouldn't have speak to you on the street for anything in the world.
And the way they entertain! My, in such a countrified way! Some of the
company go out into the kitchen to help Mrs. Marshall serve up the
refreshments--and everything homemade--and they play charades, and
nobody knows what else--bean-bag, or spelling-down maybe--"

This appalling picture, which in justice to the young delineators must
be conceded to be not in the least overdrawn, was quite enough to give
pause to those impetuous and immature young Sophomores who had lacked
the philosophical breadth of vision to see that Sylvia was not an
isolated phenomenon, but (since her family live in La Chance) an
inseparable part of her background. After all, the sororities made no
claim to be anything but social organizations. Their standing in the
college world depended upon their social background, and of course
this could only be made up of a composite mingling of those of their
individual members.

Fraternities did not wish to number more than sixteen or eighteen
undergraduates. That meant only four or five to be chosen from each
Freshman class, and that number of "nice" girls was not hard to find,
girls who were not only well dressed, and lively and agreeable in
themselves, but who came from large, well-kept, well-furnished houses
on the right streets of La Chance; with presentable, card-playing,
call-paying, reception-giving mothers, who hired caterers for their
entertainments; and respectably absentee fathers with sizable
pocketbooks and a habit of cash liberality. The social standing of the
co-eds in State Universities was already precarious enough, without
running the risk of acquiring dubious social connections.

If Sylvia had been a boy, it is almost certain that the deficiencies
of her family would have been overlooked in consideration of her
potentialities in the athletic world. Success in athletics was to the
men's fraternities what social standing was to the girls'. It must be
remarked parenthetically that neither class of these organizations
had the slightest prejudice against high scholastic standing. On the
contrary it was regarded very kindly by fraternity members, as a
desirable though not indispensable addition to social standing a