Page:Discipline and the Derelict (1921).pdf/213

From Wikisource
Jump to navigation Jump to search
This page has been proofread, but needs to be validated.

He had spoken to no one apparently during the whole evening excepting the young woman over whom he had been hovering until he condescended to give me a word and a hand-shake. "These parties are a horrible bore," he ventured, "one never meets any one whom he cares to know or to associate with," and the young woman with him simperingly assented to the doctrine. His object in speaking to me, I found, was to ask my advice and to obtain my consent to his organization of a little group of men, a kind of a social monopoly, which would make it unnecessary for him to come into contact with any excepting the most select—he to make the selection. I tried to show him the advantage of a wide acquaintance, the opportunities for training and improvement in the democratic associations which were open to him in just such social functions as he was then a part of; but he could not see it; it did not appeal to him; he was altogether selfish and narrow in his social activities; he hated the crowd. He was a good illustration of the typical fusser, who desires to restrict and dominate the social life of college for his own advantage and his own narrow, petty, selfish pleasures.

There are a great many young women in our co-educational institutions who encourage this type of man. He keeps the furniture in sorority houses dusted and polished through his various calls; he contributes chocolate bon bons to satisfy the feminine craving for saccharine; he has a fluent flattering tongue, and he is ready to play the gallant at a moment's notice. He so well satisfies the social needs of the moment that it seems useless to many so-