The Plastic Age Percy Marks (read full novel txt) 📖

be sent to you later. Well, I didn’t flunk out but my record isn’t so hot. Only two of my grades are any good. I got a B in English and Math but the others are all C’s and D’s. I know that you will be ashamed of me and I’m awfully sorry. I’ve thought of lots of excuses to write to you, but I guess I won’t write them. I know that I didn’t study hard enough. I had too much fun.

I promise you that I’ll do better next time. I know that I can. Please don’t scold me.

Lots of love,

Hugh

All that his mother wrote in reply was, “Of course, you will do better next time.” The kindness hurt dreadfully. Hugh wished that she had scolded him.

XII

The college granted a vacation of three days between terms, but Hugh did not go home, nor did many of the other undergraduates. There was excitement in the air; the college was beginning to stew and boil again. Fraternity rushing was scheduled for the second week of the new term.

The administration strictly prohibited the rushing of freshmen the first term; and, in general, the fraternities respected the rule. True, the fraternity men were constantly visiting eligible freshmen, chatting with them, discussing everything with them except fraternities. That subject was barred.

Hugh and Carl received a great many calls from upper-classmen the first term, and Hugh had been astonished at Carl’s reticence and silence. Carl, the flippant, the voluble, the “wise-cracker,” lost his tongue the minute a man wearing a fraternity pin entered the room. Hugh was forced to entertain the all-important guest. Carl never explained how much he wanted to make a good fraternity, not any fraternity, only a good one; nor did he explain that his secret studying the first term had been inspired by his eagerness to be completely eligible. A good fraternity would put the seal of aristocracy on him; it would mean everything to the “old lady.”

For the first three nights of the rushing season the fraternities held open house for all freshmen, but during the last three nights no freshman was supposed to enter a fraternity house unless invited.

The first three nights found the freshmen traveling in scared groups from fraternity house to fraternity house, sticking close together unless rather vigorously pried apart by their hosts. Everybody was introduced to everybody else; everybody tried rather hopelessly to make conversation, and nearly everybody smoked too much, partly because they were nervous and partly because the “smokes” were free.

It was the last three nights that counted. Both Hugh and Carl received invitations from most of the fraternities, and they stuck together, religiously visiting them all. Hugh hoped that they would “make” the same fraternity and that that fraternity would be Nu Delta. They were together so consistently during the rushing period that the story went around the campus that Carver and Peters were “going the same way,” and that Carver had said that he wouldn’t accept a bid from any fraternity unless it asked Peters, too.

Hugh heard the story and couldn’t understand it. Everybody seemed to take it for granted that he would be bid. Why didn’t they take it equally for granted that Carl would be bid as well? He thought perhaps it was because he was an athlete and Carl wasn’t; but the truth was, of course, that the upper-classmen perceived the nouveau riche quality in Carl quite as clearly as he did himself. He knew that his money and the fact that he had gone to a fashionable prep school would bring him bids, but would they be from the right fraternities? That was the all-important question.

Those last three days of rushing were nerve-racking. At night the invited freshmen⁠—and that meant about two thirds of the class⁠—were at the fraternity houses until eleven; between classes and during every free hour they were accosted by earnest fraternity men, each presenting the superior merits of his fraternity. The fraternity men were wearier than the freshmen. They sat up until the small hours every morning discussing the freshmen they had entertained the night before.

Hugh was in a daze. Over and over he heard the same words with only slight variations. A fraternity man would slap a fat book with an excited hand and exclaim: “This is Baird’s Manual, the final authority on fraternities, and it’s got absolutely all the dope. You can see where we stand. Sixty chapters! You don’t join just this one, y’ understand; you join all of ’em. You’re welcome wherever you go.” Or, if the number of chapters happened to be small, Baird’s Manual was referred to again. “Only fifteen chapters, you see. We don’t take in new chapters every time they ask. We’re darned careful to know what we’re signing up before we take anybody in.” The word “aristocratic” was carefully avoided, but it was just as carefully suggested.

It seemed to Hugh that he was shown a photograph of every fraternity house in the country. “Look,” he would be told by his host, “look at that picture to the right of the fireplace. That’s our house at Cornell. Isn’t it the darb? And look at that one. It’s our house at California. Some palace. They’ve got sunken gardens. I was out there last year to our convention. The boys certainly gave us a swell time.”

All this through a haze of tobacco smoke and over the noise of a jazz orchestra and the chatter of a dozen similar conversations. Hugh was excited but not really interested. The Nu Deltas invited him to their house every evening, but they were not making a great fuss over him. Perhaps they weren’t going to give him a bid.⁠ ⁠… Well, he’d go some other fraternity. No, he wouldn’t, either. Maybe the Nu Delta’s would bid him later after he’d done something on the track.

Although actual pledging was not supposed to be done until Saturday night, Hugh was receiving what amounted