Page:The Fraternity and the College (1915).pdf/133

 way home were in the main the opportunities which he had for acquainting himself with college life. He left college a veritable stranger to its real home life and with only a few facts as the result of his four years of college training. Occasionally a boy living in the college town sees the wonderful opportunity which college life offers for the de—velopment of a new life, and makes the struggle which is required to break away from the old environment, and to establish himself in the new. He becomes a real part of the college life, and lives in it as other students do.

The boy who lives at home while he is going to college has another and quite as serious a difficulty with which to contend, and that is the influence of home. Most parents are so gratified at having their sons at home that they entirely overlook the tendency of such a condition to rob the boy of initiative and independence. I am sure I do not underestimate the protective value of the home influence at the period of a young fellow's life when he is in the high school. I think on the whole, however, that the average boy who lives at home while he is going to college loses in independence and self-reliance and initiative by so doing. I have no recollection of any young fellow who was strengthened, or stimulated in college or saved from loafing, or from other bad habits by having either or both of his parents with him. The mother