common sense is the solitary guide-post. The fraternity, however, which heeds a few very obvious maxims, advances faster on the road to success than that organization which trusts to common sense alone. We all know these maxims. In campaigning, "the race is not to the swift," yet speed and freedom from all hesitation are most desirable. The weight of first impressions is known; this is his who is most vigilant and swiftest to cultivate the new-comers acquaintance. Once impressed, the first effort with a man who is known as far as possible externally, seems to be to make sufficient engagements to permit a more searching, and, if we may so speak, internal examination. The elasticity of engagements is frequently marked, and causes much delay and inconvenience. An honorable rival will never resort to such littleness; engagements should be kept strictly and to the letter. The truth is the safe rule in all conversation with the brother-to-be. Gossip derogatory to a rival is unworthy of any fraternity. Another thing, it will be noticed the respected rival never attacks until attacked. We mean our brother should only employ arguments touching the foibles or mistakes of his rivals, when he finds himself confronted by similar arguments and treatment; then the hot shot must be employed and plenty of them. Firmness is half the battle with a weak man or a vacillating fraternity. A good campaigner is always firm, in particular, when manifestly in the right. Courtesy and politeness, too, do much. These not only impress the usually impressionable youth, but are remembered by the rival, and with him often do much to mitigate the bitterness of defeat. A good rule, is, be as courteous in a campaign as in every day intercourse. If our brother be gentlemanly in all things, he will not exult outwardly over his victory; this, though pleasing to his own conceit, but rankles in the hearts of the defeated. And if chance or misfortune has put victory in the other's scale, the fraternity gentleman will hide the wound as best he may, will be pleasant to his conqueror and above all to the man whose choice has been elsewhere. Such in substance are the maxims. Circumstances and sudden crises may alter them; the rival may attack on a single issue, such as scholarship; he may fight his battle solely on the strength of the renowned names among his

alumni; or he may be dishonorable and a stranger to the truth. These and other methods often cause a change of treatment, but the one primary rule is, that our brother should have common sense as his guide and always remember that he is a gentleman.

COLLEGE TRADITIONS AND THE COLLEGE FRATERNITY.

[George William Curtis, in Harper's.]

One hundred and thirity-two years ago Columbia College, in New York, then called King's College, opened its doors for students. It was the year in which Dr. Franklin proposed his plan of colonial union in the Albany Congress, and in the same year the French built Fort Duquesne, and before the Freshmen at King's had ripened into Seniors, Braddock was defeated and Washington had made his famous march to the fort. The modest little town of New York, in which the college was planted, contained about ten thousand inhabitants, and King's College was the sixth in order of foundation, following Harvard, William and Mary, Yale, Princeton, and the University of Pennsylvania. The young College was not a very prolific alma mater in the earlier years. During twenty years from its organization until the Revolution it graduated but one hundred students. But it was an illustrious progeny. Among those pupils were Alexander Hamilton and John Jay, and Robert Livingston and Gouverneur Morris, and Egbert Benson and Philip Van Cortlandt, and Henry Rutgers, and sons of all the conspicuous New York families.

Now noblesse oblige. Is it surprising that the descendant of a noble house is proud of his ancestry, that the youth of to-day who can trace his lineage straight back to historic heroes and patriots and poets and philosophers and statesmen feels himself to be not only the heir of their renown, but born to the duty of maintaining its lustre untarnished, if nothing more? So feels the worthy alumnus of a college. There is a blue blood of academic association as of family descent, and as the son of a long line of famous or noble sires feels the admonishing consciousness of a great responsibility for others as well as for himself, so the

208 COLLEGE TRADITIONS AND THE COLLEGE FRATERNITY. [Oct. college graduate owns the duty of his great association, and would live worthily of the select society to which he belongs.

If the little New York of 1754 and the little King's College could look in upon the vast and stately and prosperous city that we know, would they be surprised to see, evening after evening in the Winter, the successive triumphal feasts of the various colleges, Jura answering to the joyous Alps that call to her aloud? Not at all. Those reverend half-dozen first graduates of King's, recalling their college feeling, would gaze benignantly upon the scene, glowing with the eloquent speech, joining in the pealing chorus of the song, serenely conscious that nothing could be more natural and inevitable than the demonstrative and festive pride of college boys in their college.

Those elders, indeed, with all their sympathy, could not understand it completely. They would see through a glass somewhat darkly, but they would see. For those brave Freshmen of 1754 and graduates of 1758 had no college tradition. They founded the house, indeed, but the pictures that hang in fancy upon its later walls, the voices that fill with the airy music of imagination its later and statelier halls, the glorious romance of association, all this was wanting to those young academic ancestors. For them there was no backward vista of tender radiance, no constellated memories beyond their own experience.

When the Society of the Cincinnati was formed, a club designed to cherish Revolutionary associations and traditions, the sensitive scent of patriotism was sure that it detected the fatal aroma of aristocracy, and raised an alarm. Hereditary honors, class privileges, endangered popular rights, these were the chimeras dire that hovered over the Verplanck cottage upon the Hudson where the meeting for organization was held. But what a modest and harmless conspiracy it has proved to be! The society was always small. Its worst fulminations were appeals to patriotism. Its most flagrant offence has been an annual dinner. What a tempest in a teapot was this hostile excitement against the simple good-fellowship of Revolutionary officers! Meanwhile the vast and powerful organization of the Grand Army of the Republic, which followed the later war, and which is an immense political force whose countenance both

great parties sedulously solicit, and to propitiate whose favor national laws are passed and State laws modified, is to the Cincinnati as the King of Brobdingnag to the Prince of Lilliput, but it arouses no suspicion of peril to the commonwealth.

The college fraternity is a Cincinnati of educated men, and it is often regarded with the same kind of feeling which assailed the old association of Revolutionary comrades. Like that, it has a great tradition. Like that, it is full of proud and tender memories. Like that, it feels the tie of union to be an inspiration, a wise restraint, a consolation. Like that, it meets to refresh its recollections, and by that meeting to enrich and ennoble life. The singing roisterers in the smoky hall, whose bright banter and gay chaff are the charm of the college dinners, carry from the table the blessing that they do not always ask. They renew their consciousness of the higher ideals that brood over the mercenary strife, the contest of money-making, and mean motives and low ambitions. Yes, the tradition of college is good-fellowship, but good-fellowship in an intellectual air and amid scholarly associations. To cherish it is to remember not only that you are a member of that fraternity, that you wear its blue or red ribbon, its collar or cross, its star or garter, but that it lays an obligation upon you, an obligation of honor not to be shaken off.

The college clubs which have sprung up so suddenly and naturally in this city—which is metropolitan at least in the sense of collecting citizens from the whole country—and the pleasant dinners with which they celebrate themselves, continue the good work of the college, not by extending a ́ knowledge of Greek and mathematics, in which every college man is ex officio already proficient, but by strengthening loyalty to manly aims and stimulating generous sympathies.

Even the sensitive patriots who call Heaven to witness that college education is no better than it should be, that college alumni are to be suspected like the Cincinnati, and that reform in the civil service is only a deep and dark conspiracy to fill all the offices with college men, and, more appalling still, to keep them there!—even these patriots, whom other patriots in the press encourage, and, as it were, "'St boy!" to the onset upon

that awful plot, may be comforted. Thank Heaven, our liberties are still safe despite those artful Cincinnati, and the civil service is still free from all but a very small proportion of college men. The official statistics assure the patriots who dread education that they may sleep on in complete confidence that the college will not be permitted totally to overthrow our happy Constitution. No, tyrants and colleges, avaunt! never, never will be slaves!

Americans.

THE REAL MEANING OF NON-SECRECY.

"Vere scire est per causas scire."

[FROM Delta Upsilon Quarterly.] One day, while walking toward college, I overheard part of a conversation between two men, whom I judged to be Independents. In some way, Delta Upsilon had been suggested to the mind of one, and he said to the other: "I don't think much of Delta Upsilon; it's just as bad as any secret society, although it claims to be non-secret." The speaker's companion, in his reply, defended us by saying that outsiders were occasionally invited to our meetings. At this point, I passed out of hearing and lost the rest of the discussion; but it made an impression on my mind, which was deepened, some weeks later, when a secret-society man asked me if it was really true that we had no secrets, and seemed almost incredulous when I assured him that such was the case.

These incidents illustrate the fact that real misunderstanding, combined with malicious misrepresentation, has brought against us the charge of being false to our principle of non-secrecy. Indeed, it is sometimes said that non-secrecy is simply a step between anti-secrecy and secrecy, and that this change in our title is equivalent to a confession of defeat. In answering these accusations, it will be necessary to review briefly the history of the anti-secret contest; for it is only in the light of past events that the present can be rightly judged.

It is now a trifle over half a century since the rise of the secret societies which have played so prominent a part in American student-life. The animus of these societies comprised sev