tion to such honorary organizations as Phi Beta Kappa, Sigma Xi, and Tau Beta Pi. In conference colleges the athlete as a class is not a flunker, for when he becomes a flunker he can no longer represent his college as an athlete. No more is he satisfied merely to pass, for he has been taught that intellectually, at least, a miss is not nearly so good as a mile, and that his physical safety lies in making his intellectual calling absolutely sure.
The athlete is the best known man in college. The man who made high scholastic average for the year is occasionally pointed out; the editor of the college daily, or the student colonel of the cadet regiment may swagger a little as he walks across the campus; the fellow who took the rôle of leading lady at the spring performance of the Union opera may cause a few admirers to crane their necks as he passes, but every one knows the athlete. When "Shorty" Righter made three home runs in the last baseball game with Chicago and settled the conference championship for that year, he was a bigger man in the eyes of the undergraduates than if he had been president of the steel trust or Ambassador to the court of St. James. There wasn't any one in the country, they were quite convinced, who had anything on "Shorty."
The athlete sometimes excuses his too vigorous participation in physical affairs to the consequent detriment of his studies on the ground that it is for the good of the college—it is all for the love of Alma Mater. There is very little to such talk. The real athlete is such from pure love of it. He longs for a fight; he enjoys being in a contest; he is overflowing
