Page:The Fraternity and the Undergraduate (1923).pdf/86



The young fellow who has just been through a strenuous rushing season and who has accepted the pledge button of a fraternity which satisfies him and measures up to the ideals which he has cherished with reference to such an organization, like a young lover who has just become engaged to the girl of his choice, usually feels that the worst is over and that the future will see only smooth sailing, congenial associations without disagreement and without friction. The very opposite of this is too often true, for the freshman is quite likely to find the period intervening between his pledging and his initiation a time of trial and discouragement, a time of uncertainty and of difficult adjustment to new conditions.

During the rushing season he has seen only the most attractive features of fraternity life; every member of the chapter has presented his best side, his most engaging manners, his strongest personal assets. Before his pledging he has been made to see his prospective brothers as beings far above and beyond ordinary men; they are to him more like young gods than commonplace mortals. "I have never met a bunch of fellows who seemed to me so altogether admirable and perfect," a young