Page:The High School Boy and His Problems (1920).pdf/195

 is more alone in a big institution, one has more freedom, one must more often fight single-handed one's own battles. There is more chance of being lost in the crowd and more honor if one rises above it.

One would suppose, if he did not know otherwise, that a freshman in college barring the matter of a few months difference in age, is quite similar to a senior in high school, but whoever assumed such a premise would be far from the truth. One can always tell a freshman at college, just as, with few exceptions, one can tell an American college man when he sees him whether in Duluth or Singapore. The freshman may be as self-possessed as possible; he may dress as he chooses; he may ask no foolish questions or show no lack of familiarity with the college customs; but he is a marked man the moment he sets foot on the campus. Whether he comes from South Hadley, Massachusetts, or a country town in Kansas with one general store and a post office, it makes little difference, he can not conceal the fact that he is a newcomer beginning his experience in college. He is like the American in Paris, or Rotterdam, who thinks that if he does not speak no one will know him for a foreigner, but who is spotted a block away by every small boy, and fakir, on the street.

No one knows how he tells a freshman—it is probably a matter of intuition. But the freshman learns rapidly to adapt himself to the new situation; he picks up at once the ways of the campus; by Thanksgiving he seems like an old settler, and by the end of the year he is ready to