Page:The Fraternity and the Undergraduate (1923).pdf/97

 receive such adverse criticism as may be imposed without resentment.

"How does it happen," I once asked a cheerful freshman at a fraternity house, "that you who are so apparently willing to work are seldom asked to do anything, while Rogers, who growls when he is disturbed, is constantly being sent on errands?"

"That's the secret of the whole thing," the freshman exclaimed. "I got on to the fact right at the outset that the more I kicked, the less I accomplished. So I decided never to complain, always to volunteer, and regularly to do my tasks cheerfully. The result is that I'm seldom disturbed because I seem so willing." It was the reward of seeming virtue which he was receiving.

The fraternity house is often a crowded house. When the freshman wakes up as he ultimately must, to the fact that the college life is a life of study, he very soon after this realizes too that study in a fraternity house is something that must be accomplished with others around him and often others who, at the time when he himself must work, are not themselves so inclined. He must learn a sort of independence. While not forgetting others in allowing himself to get out of sympathy with them, he must yet manage his own affairs, look after his own interests, and see that, amidst all the confusion and bustle of the house, his own work is