Page:The plastic age, (IA plasticage00mark).pdf/189

Rh friends are my friends, and if the fraternity doesn’t like them, it can leave them alone. I pledged loyalty to the fraternity, but I ’ll be damned if I pledged my life to it” He got up and started for the door, his blue eyes dark with anger. “I hate snobs,” he said viciously, and departed.

After rushing season was over, he rarely entered
 * hat fraternity house, chumming mostly with Carl,

but finding friends in other fraternities or among ion-fraternity men. He was depressed and gloomy, ilthough his grades for the first term had been •espectable. Nothing seemed very much worth vhile, not even making his letter on the track. He vas gradually taking to cigarettes, and he had even lad a nip or two out of a flask that Carl had >rought to the room. He had read the ‘Rubaiyat,” and it made a great impression on him. de and Carl often discussed the poem, and more md more Hugh was beginning to believe in Omar’s >hilosophy. At least, he could n’t answer the argunents presented in Fitzgerald’s beautiful quatrains, fhe poem both depressed and thrilled him. After eading it, he felt desperate—and ready for anyhing, convinced that the only wise course was to ake the cash and let the credit go. He was much 00 young to hear the rumble of the distant drum, ometimes he was sure that there was n’t a drum, nyway.

He was particularly blue one afternoon when