Page:The Fraternity and the Undergraduate (1923).pdf/172



Some learn only through their own experience, by hard knocks and not by suggestion; others pick up an idea or a method as soon as it is presented to them. Now that it seems to be the style, and I think it a good one, for every fraternity chapter to have its own house whether it has any money or not, I thought it might be helpful to tell the story of how we got our house, in the hope that my tale might serve as an incentive to others to do as we did.

I don't remember who it was that first suggested the idea of building a chapter house. I presume it was Wes King, for Wes was a lawyer down town who had worked collections on the side and who had learned to wring money from the most reluctant debtors. He was a man who under difficulties got results. One of the brothers was responsible for the statement that Wes had stopped in front of a wooden Indian one day, and by flattery and cajolery had induced him to pay a bill which had been long owing by the proprietor within, so I feel sure it must have been Wes who first made the suggestion. Whoever it was, he had nerve.

When our chapter was first organized we did business, as the other chapters did at that time, in