Youth is the age of many awakenings. Before the rapidly unfolding panorama of personalities and events, amid a curious jumble of experiences, the member of the rising generation must win to a firm station of spirit. In his own mind heterogeneity and confusion, of ideas and ideals, must give place to consistence and order. In the colleges the fraternity stands for a coordination and a settling; it takes the young man "in four of the best years of his life" and helps him to understand, and to become what he seriously intends to be.

At the dinner table, in the afternoon after work is over, all that is needed is for some one to give the proper turn to the conversation and a spirited discussion will ensue in which all will be interested, and from which all will be instructed. "Anyone who has had anything to do with the formulation of critical theories"-anyone who has looked over the lives of the Goncourt brothers or of Maxime Ducamp, or the story of the PreRaphaelite Brotherhood-anyone who has ever familiarized himself with the personnel and the talk of the evenings at the house of Charles Lamb-anyone who has read in the history of rationalism of the twice-a-week dinners given by the Baron d'Holbach where assembled Diderot, Rousseau, Helviteus, Raynal, and many another noted Frenchman, where went noted travelers passing through Paris, Hume, Beccaria, Franklin, and Priestly, to visit the charmed circle-anyone who has studied British radicalism and contemplated the prominent rôles played by such men as Horn Tooke, Thomas Holcroft, and the young Wordsworth, and the manner in which the ideas of these men hark back to simple dinner parties with Godwinanyone who has known and thought of these things will know how greatly the talk of a few men, of a small group, of a brotherhood or even "the exchange of ideas of two or three friends will end in putting vague ideas into words and from words into action." In the history of art, of literature and of politics there are many records of enthusiasitc friendships and warm discussions that have ended in great ideas. Many an informal evening has resulted in the organization and the expression of as many worthy ideas as a university lecture. This is the chief

intellectual stimulus of the fraternity, aside from the mere committee-work of assisting men poor in curricular work. We speak now of the purely fraternal relationship.

It is more significant than these other matters of society and intellect. It is the essence of the fraternity, the brotherhood in the fullest sense of the word. The social side represents friendship; the intellectual, community of interest; the fraternal, love. The spirit of the fraternity is not of time or condition, of place or circumstance. Stevenson wrote to William Ernest Henly in 1881: “Times change, opinions vary to their opposites -and what can be more encouraging than to find the friend who was welcome at one age, still welcome at another?" The fraternal bond is this sort of sublimated friendship:-it is Platonic love in the sense in which Plato meant it, the love of one man for another. This is the ideal of fraternity; its expression is in the treatment of the brother.

Anatole France has remarked that "every creature in the world, however small, is at the center of the universe." The field, the scope, the world of each person is made up of his personal experiences; and friendship is but an experience. Our classmate essayist has admitted that "our friends must be pointed in the same direction in which we are going."

Circumstances of accidental association and separation may govern our friendships but not our loves. In the fraternity, an indissoluble tie always unites brother with brother; there is always a commonalty of opinion on certain of the deep and fundamental things of the spirit. Founded on a clear conception of the meaning and purpose of life, the fraternal bond premises every meeting, every renewal of acquaintance, with agreement on the intimate and personal motives and ideals. At the fraternity home, in the quiet of the study hour, before the evening fire, when we have eaten, talked, walked, slept with a man of our own age and with our own or like interests, when we have lived with him in high-light and shadow, only then can we appreciate, understand, love and serve our friend. We can help him as only he can help us. The bond of the fraternity is sufficient introduction for any heart-to-heart talk, for be

stowal of advice or request for assistance. It means mutual criticism and mutual help. It means a similarity of inspiration and aspiration. It increases the opportunities for close intimacies. The brothers pattern their relationship after an ideal and they would each further the advancement of the other toward that ideal. Finally, the soul does not, as Maeterlinck would say, flower only on nights of storm. The persistent personal influence is always the strongest and best. Such persistent personal influence, in the light of high ideals, exists in the American college between fraternity members. It is decidedly unfair for those members to have to bear the distorted charges which are brought against a part, by people not cognizant of the whole, of the fraternity situation.

TOPICS FOR DISCUSSION AND PRACTICE IN WRITING

1. What are the advantages of fraternities as set forth in this selection? Can you give others? Which of these seem of the greatest weight in justifying the existence of such organizations? 2. What criticisms of fraternities have you read or heard? Give any that you yourself would make from your own experience. 3. What is the situation with reference to the fraternities of your institution? Are they an advantage or a disadvantage? 4. Which side is most responsible for friction, if it exists, the fraternity men or the non-fraternity men? 5. How do the fraternity men of your institution, taken as a whole, rank in scholarship with the other students? 6. Discuss what should be the relation of the older members of a fraternity to the younger ones. Consider in this connection the common practice of keeping underclassmen in a subordinate position regarding chapter affairs. 7. Should the college authorities ignore or utilize the fraternity? 8. How can evils connected with the present system of pledging new members at your institution be minimized or avoided? 9. What should be the relations of the fraternities to one another in an institution? 10. What should be the relation of the fraternities to the life of the nation? Have they any duties beyond their own membership? If so, what?

THE COLLEGE LITERARY SOCIETY

HENRY NELSON SNYDER

[Henry Nelson Snyder (1865- -) is president of Wofford College. Before his election to the presidency of this institution he was professor of English literature. He has written many contributions to reviews and periodicals on literary and educational subjects.]

One of the significant things in college education of the last twenty-five years has been the comparatively steady and general decline in the value of the literary society. Anyone who entered college (say) in the early eighties, could still hear the reverberating echoes of superlative efforts in college oratory and much talk of a golden age of literary society efficiency. Even yet, when the older alumni of Southern institutions come together at commencement, they sadly lament a something gone out of the platform exhibitions, and in reminiscent mood recall a time when college students "could speak," as they say. They visit their old societies and, in the very act of recounting former glories illustrate the oratorical qualities that made the other years so splendid in speaking achievement. One of them, whose name is still one to charm with in tradition, came to me much out of heart and dissatisfied with the debate of the Juniors and the speeches of the Seniors. In a tone that implied that the bottom had dropped out of all things, he said: "Your boys write better English, discuss more up-to-date subjects than we used to; but they simply can't speak." "What do you mean by that?" I inquired. "Why," continued he, "they don't know how to make gestures, they don't feel what they say, and they have no voices."

Here, then, was a student of the old school, by way of criticism of the new, asserting the aims and ideals of the literary society of former days, and at the same time suggesting an essential difference in present-day aims and ideals. Gesture, feeling, voice, these made the basis of the consummate product

of literary society work in the Southern College both before and immediately following the war. At their best, these elements brought a charm of stately attitudinizing, graceful action, moving and winning appeal to the emotions, and range and power of vocal expression; at their worst, affected extravagance, brazen and clanging rhetoric, and the sound and fury that signifieth nothing. This baser expression of college oratory has, unfrequently, I think, ruled in our conception of the general type of the older product of the college literary society, and has made it a mockery and byword. But it should be steadily kept in mind that the literary societies formerly aimed to develop the orator, and that the orator was the hero of the campus and the unfailing wonder of admiring audiences. And this supreme position of the orator and the fame he won were sufficient to furnish a vital atmosphere for the abounding life of that which produced him, the literary society.

However, changed conditions both without and within the college campus have been potent enough to take the orator from his lofty pedestal as a college hero and furnish other social and scholastic ideals, which have brought about his virtual undoing, and hence an almost fatal enfeebling of that within which he moved and had his being, the literary society. Great changes have come in the social ideals that appeal to young men of intellectual aspirations. Formerly the law and politics were the supreme fields that invited them, and these fields were the arena for the display of the power and influence of the orator. It should be remembered, too, that in no other part of the world did the mere speaker get so many glittering rewards, and no people were more sensitive to the charm of voice, emotional appeal, and graceful action than the people of the South. Every state, every district, every community, every crossroads and more than one man whom the people heard with eager gladness, and upon whom they were willing to confer honors and offices of trust for his much speaking. These outside influences naturally beat into the retirement of classic shades, to use an old-fashioned phrase, and furnished ideals potent enough to make the college literary society seem the most practical part of