except to contest the control of a student activity with some other fraternity. There were a few “brothers” that Hugh liked, but most of them were not his kind at alL Many of them were athletes taken into the fraternity because they were athletes and for no other reason, and although Hugh liked two of the athletes—they were really splendid fel¬ lows—he was forced to admit that three of them were hardly better than thugs, cheap muckers with fine bodies. Then there were the snobs, usually prep school men with more money than they could handle wisely, utterly contemptuous of any man not belonging to a fraternity or of one belonging to any of the lesser fraternities. These were the “smooth boys,” interested primarily in clothes and “parties,” passing their courses by the aid of tutors or fra¬ ternity brothers who happened to study.
Hugh felt that he ought to like all of his fra¬ ternity brothers, but, try as he would, he disliked the majority of them. Early in his sophomore year be knew that he ought to have “gone” Delta Sigma Delta, that that fraternity contained a group of men whom he liked and respected, most of them at least. They were n’t prominent in student ac¬ tivities, but they were earnest lads as a whole, trying hard to get something out of college.
The Nu Delta meetings every Monday nighi were a revelation to him. The brothers wen openly bored; they paid little or no attention to th<
