1905-06 Volume 30 No 1–5 - Phi Delta Theta Scroll Archive

458 THE SCROLL.Embarrassing circumstances sometimes overtake the best of us, and wecannot help it. It is related that one of our distinguished brothers was recentlyinvited to deliver the commencement day oration for his alma mater,and being very busy, he was unpble to give any thought to what he shouldsay. In passing through a large swing door at the entrance of the chapelwhere the commencement exercises were held, the word "push" caught hiseye. Like a flash it occilrred to hira that here was a text he could use veryappropriately. When his time came he started off somewhat as follows:"Young gentlemen, the subject of my talk to you this morning can beexpressed in one short word; it is a thing especially applicable to you youngmen who, in one line or another, are going out into life to make your owuway. Without it no man attains success. Young gentlemen, on yonder dooris the word I refer to."Of course everybody immediately looked toward the door indicated andthe speaker also looked. He was sorry he hadn't looked before, for theword inside of the door, plainly painted, was "pull."But to come back to my subject, the boys in college are all right, especiallyPhi Delta Theta boys. And no one will dispute the proposition thatit is better to send them to college during the four troublesome years thanto barrel them up and feed them through the bung, as suggested. Andthen the delightful associations and fond recollections of college life, itsnever fading impressions and everlasting friendships, its moral training anddiscipline—talking about discipline, I believe there was a statement made inthe Star last week to the effect that the students of Indiana University hadorganized a club, eligibility to which consisted in having been under arrestby the Bloomington police at least one time. And then there is the moralstimulus of athletics, inter-collegiate contests, initiations, class rushes,tank scraps, the sublime delight of- hazing freshmen, and all that sortof thing."Hobbes clearly proves, that every creatureLives in a state of war by nature."And then,"Extremes in nature, good produce;Extremes in man occur to general use,"The exuberances and extravagances, the misdirected energy, the insubordination,if you will, of boys in college, presage the courage, enterprise andpersistence of successful men out of college. President Eliot, of Harvard,in a recent utterance, found in them indications of the progress of the race.I believe, however, he excepted football. But who would say to the boys,"cut it out?" Who that was present would blot out the memory of thatwild uproarious night a year ago last Thanksgiving, when the Phi DeltaTheta boys, assembled for the 28th annual convention, gathered around thebanquet table at the Claypool hotel? Who that was there wolild forget,if he could, how the boys made garlands for their intellectual browsand sashes that fell gracefully across their manly bosoms, of the accordionpleated paper decorations that had fringed the planked blue fish; how theymade headgear of various kinds of the shades the hotel people had providedfor the wax candles that adorned the table; how they rode the chairs, hobbyhorse fashion, around the room; how they circled the room, each brother'shands resting on the shoulders of the brother in front of him; how they circledit again doing a sort of a kangaroo jump; how they turned their coatswrongside out in order to relieve the occasion of any semblance of formalitythat might yet have lingered; how the different chapers vied with each otherin presenting for imitation some new and unheard of stunt more insane thanany that had preceded it; how they put the dishes on the floor aud