Page:The Fraternity and the Undergraduate (1923).pdf/140

 rettes—the plays are cheap and easy of access.

In the end, however, the cost piles up higher than most boys will admit unless they keep a daily expense account, for very often there is the streetcar fare going and coming and soft drinks before starting home. Next to a student opera, there is no greater time waster than these same plays. If one goes in the day time the whole afternoon is wasted; if one goes at night the evening is gone, for if in the evening one selects the first show it is past ten before he can settle down to any real work, and if he goes to the second it is midnight before he can get himself into anything like a studious frame of mind, and then he is too sleepy to do anything and decides to get up early the next morning and do his studying. There is no need, to tell anyone who has ever been to college that the studying is not done at all.

The fraternity freshman perhaps more than freshmen in general is started off on a congested menu of picture plays and vaudeville. It is a daily part of the routine of rushing that after a couple of hours of rag time on the piano following dinner everyone starts for the "Princess" or the "Orpheum" or the "Park" or whatever the name of the particular show house may be. Started out in this way the freshman comes naturally to look upon vaudeville if not as a regular and required