Page:The Fraternity and the Undergraduate (1923).pdf/164

 they seldom give us any adequate idea of the actual condition of the chapter.

Having heaped so much criticism upon the chapter letters as I have found them, I ought at least to make a few suggestions as to their improvement, and this I shall attempt to do.

I have never seen any advantage to the local chapter or to the fraternity at large in fabricating the facts. Such a procedure seldom deceives anyone. When a pale, haggard-eyed undergraduate comes into my office and tells me that he is in riotous good health and that he never felt better in his life, I know that he is practicing the faith cure or lying, though I do not always go to the trouble of telling him so. So when a fraternity boasts of his chapter's having the best year in its history, of its having pledged seventeen of the most superb freshmen that ever came out of prep school, and of being on the whole the most inexpressibly successful and influential bunch ever tolerated by the college authorities, every one who has had any experience knows about where they stand. To blow one's horn mellifluously and modestly is a task so difficult that the ordinary correspondent might better not attempt it. Present the facts fairly and as they are. Tell the truth. If the fellows have succeeded, say so; but we have all learned that life is not entirely