Page:The Fraternity and the Undergraduate (1923).pdf/57

 expression to all sorts of vocal efforts from Harry Lauder in Roamin' in the Gloamin' to Tetrazzini in the Mad Scene from Lucia. I do not need this familiar sound of revelry by night to recognize the fact that the rushing season is on.

I have always been interested in the large part which music, or that which passes for music, plays in the rushing program. I have never visited a fraternity house during the period of rushing that I did not come away hoarse from my efforts to carry on a conversation in the face of the storm of music that thundered and roared constantly on. Very few chapters are content with a mere piano played by a single performer. They try duets and trios, they gather round the piano with horns and drums and shout the latest rag time. At one house which I recently visited they had formed an orchestra with two drums that made noise enough utterly to drown any attempts at conversation. I leaned over and shouted at my companion with whom I was trying to carry on a simple conversation until I was red in the face. One organization I visited last fall had borrowed for the season a musical horror that really fascinated me. It combined under one mahogany roof a regular orchestra—piano, violin, flute, and so on. All you had to do was turn a crank and press a button and you were off. The man who operates the musical