Page:The Fraternity and the Undergraduate (1923).pdf/145

 worn topic of conversation wherever the undergraduate loafers gather. It is like the talk about automobiles in a country town. The sum total of energy expended upon the various vaudeville bills that appear weekly in the average town if turned into intellectual directions would revolutionize scientific discoveries, and if converted into physical force might soon have ended the recent European war. Unless they have had their attention drawn specifically to this matter I am sure that few undergraduates realize how much of their time and thought are given to these trifling histrionic matters. The boy who comes under the spell of such an influence can with difficulty resist when the invitation comes to see the show; he finds it difficult or impossible to spend an evening or an afternoon in study, and as for reading a book for pleasure at one sitting as we used to do when I was a boy, that is unthinkable. He becomes restless, he lacks concentration, if he studies an hour and a half he is in such a state of mind and body that he grows desperate for the relaxation of the picture show. The call comes, and his studies are forgotten and his scholarship not strengthened.

With us the interest in vaudeville and moving pictures has gone so far that very few student gatherings are thought to show the finishing touch of refinement unless there is introduced some