Page:The Fraternity and the College (1915).pdf/209

 case of young fellows in college who are away from home and home influences. The ordinary high school fraternity can not do this. On the contrary instead of emphasizing the discipline and influences of home, it tends very often to take a boy away from home and in extreme cases to break down the influence of home. It is too artificial for children in their first or second year in the high school to become members of so formal an organization as are most of the organizations I have known or have been told about. It is an oldfashioned view, I am aware, but, when I hear of the gallivanting around of these children or see the account of their social escapades in the paper, I always feel that they should be sent to bed sanely at nine rather than allowed to give house parties and formal dances and dinners as they now do. Their organization seems to me too rigid, too set, too inflexible, and too much like the cut and dried organizations of grown-ups. There is nothing of 'the healthy simple life of children in it.

The expense, also, even for people of means is by no means inconsiderable. Cabs and candy, flowers and party clothes all count up pretty rapidly, and nothing is too good for these young sports. I looked over one of these fourteen-year-olds not long ago starting out in his tuxedo to an all night fraternity show at about the time some one should have been tucking him into bed and kiss-