Page:The Fraternity and the Undergraduate (1923).pdf/87

 pledge remarked not long ago. "There is not one of them that I should have different if I could." But he waked up very shortly, as every neophyte must if he is mentally alert, to the fact that he was not associating with gods but with men—men full of impulses good and bad, possessed of prejudices and harrassed by selfish passions and desires as other mortals are. It was with these men with whom he had to live and it was to their idiosyncrasies and varied personalities that he had to adjust himself. The task is not an easy one, and it is not strange that the new man, suddenly and rudely disillusioned, should often fall into a morass of uncertainty and discouragement.

"Do all pledges have their faith tried and grow discouraged?" a despondent freshman asked me only a short time ago. "Things are made to seem so rosy at first, and then we wake up to find that we are part of an organization made up of fellows just like ordinary men."

"I presume it is a common experience," I answered, "and it is just as well so, for the work of the world is done by ordinary men associating with men equally ordinary. The sooner we learn to adjust ourselves to the peculiarities 'of all sorts and conditions of men' the better."

One could not go far in a discussion like this without saying something concerning the practice