Page:The Fraternity and the Undergraduate (1923).pdf/163

 the doing of his college work is the main thing for which an undergraduate is supposed to go to college, the fellow who accomplishes this result with distinguished credit to himself is certainly entitled to some special mention even in the chapter letter.

One could wish sometimes that the writers had adopted a more direct and a simpler style. The following is the introductory sentence to a letter full of the most ridiculously exaggerated eulogium. One feels as he is reading it as if he were wallowing in a mire of oratorical slush.

"Fifty-six years of Iowa Zeta's existence have passed into the realm of history, and as Apollo casts his radiant gleams upon her fifty-seventh annus we wish first of all to introduce seven new brothers."

Each issue of one fraternity journal which comes to my table is full of such humor from the first letter to the last.

The effect of all this inflated style, exaggerated self-praise, and failure to realize the relative value of things, is bad. The letters seem artificial, insincere, conceited. They remind me often of the conversation of two imaginative small boys the one trying to outstrip the other in tales of personal accomplishment and adventure. They too often lack character, force, and real truthfulness, and