Page:The Fraternity and the College (1915).pdf/32

 reception line at a dance, may be in themselves trifling, but they may show the difference between good and bad manners. The fraternity man usually finds some one willing to point out to him these errors if he makes them, while the other man may stumble on indefinitely in a condition of ignorance. The real fraternity is a home, and those living in it usually get a good deal of the social training that one may rightfully expect to receive in a home. Careful dress and nice manners are learned largely by example and associations, and this example and these proper associations one is very likely to find in the fraternity house. I do not underestimate the value of sterling worth, but it counts for much more when linked with courtesy and a neat appearance.

The fraternity as an organization helps materially in the training of college leaders. The man who can successfully stand at the head of a group of twenty-five or thirty men, who can manage a household as it were with all the multifarious things that such management implies, is usually well fitted for leadership in other ways. Fraternity men manage their own house servants, oversee the care of their houses, care for the finances of these houses, and take many serious responsibilities which men outside of these organizations may evade. The men at the head of things in our University are for these reasons usually fraternity