was Lin Wilbur, but Charlie had few supporters and fewer admirers of his talents, and he belonged to the wrong political party, so that settled his case. I remember that Lin told me with some chagrin that when he was approached by his friends who asked him to become a candidate, the spokesman of the party said, "It isn't because you are the best man, Lin, that we are asking you to run, but because you can be elected." The organization was simple, but it was effective; we were able to predict two or three years ahead who would hold the important offices, and we scarcely ever missed it, nor do the politicians of to-day.
I was talking not long ago with one of the old timers who was deploring the fact that things have changed so completely since he was in college, and, from his point of view, changed for the worse. The fraternities, he said, had come in and had undermined the influence and work of the literary societies which, he averred, had done so much to train men to think and to speak effectively. I pointed out to him that the former supposed province of the literary societies had been usurped by the English department and that in reality the literary societies in his time and in mine were the most carefully organized political machines extant; that they would have made a present-day democratic central committee ashamed of its crude work, and further that the fraternities were simply playing in an amateurish and weak way the political game that the literary societies had taught them. I cited a few things to him that had occurred while he was in college, and after he had thought these over a short time, he decided that per-
