Page:The Fraternity and the Undergraduate (1923).pdf/61

 One of the surprising features of rushing is the rapidity which it is carried on and brought to a finish. "How quickly is a young fellow pledged?" an old college mate of mine, whose only son expects to enter the University next fall, asked me at Commencement time. "Within a few minutes, sometimes," I answered in all seriousness. I have seen men wearing a pledge button at inter-scholastic time before they had been in the chapter house over night; I have known men to be approached with a pretty definite proposition of membership while for the first time on the way from the railroad station to their boarding houses. Freshmen come in to see me every fall with some curiously wrought pledge button, to which they have become attached during the night, and it has often all been brought about so suddenly that they want someone to tell them what has happened to them. The rapidity with which membership is offered and accepted is frequently appalling. It is like conversion at a Billy Sunday revival; it comes without warning or seeming deliberation.

There is nothing that urges on this rapid work like competition. In fraternity affairs, as in other business, it is the life of trade. Business may be a little dull as regards Smith and the Beta's; several of the brothers may be indifferent, and one or two stubbornly "not ready to vote," but if one of the