Page:Discipline and the Derelict (1921).pdf/24

 semester?" she asked. "Ordinarily, yes," I replied, "but I should like to talk to the student before answering." When I did so, I found that in reality the woman had violated her contract, but wanted still to hold the student to his.

One of the things that has impressed me most in the pretty wide experience which I have had with college discipline is that no two cases are alike, because no two men are alike. There is always something new coming up—new character, a new viewpoint, new conditions, a new view of temptation and weakness. The work can never become mechanical because of its infinite variety. One might think, if he did not know, that, having seen fifty men during a year on fifty different sorts of wrongdoing, there would be nothing new, and that the next years would be a repetition of the old stories, but it is not true. Every case of discipline which I have had to do with was a special case. I have found, too, that women up for discipline are not at all like men. I have not for years had any direct connection with the discipline of women, that work being done by a committee of women, as I think it best perhaps that it should be. The experience which I did have, however, led me to the conclusion that they are less frank than men, less likely to tell the truth if they have done wrong than men are, because they are more nervous, more temperamental, and have more to lose, as society is now constituted, than men have, if they should be detected in wrongdoing.

I have come to look upon the work of discipline in a somewhat different light than I did during the first few years I had to do with it. At first it took