Part 2 (2/2)
His cousin laughed. ”I'll see a barber to-morrow.”
”And you must have a room where the fellows can come to see you.”
”What's the matter with this one?”
A hint of friendly patronage crept into the manner of the junior. ”My dear chap, college isn't worth doing at all unless you do it right.
You're here to get in with the best fellows and to make connections that will help you later. That sort of thing, you know.”
Into Jeff's face came the light that always transfigured its plainness when he was in the grip of an idea. ”Hold on, J. K. Let's get at this right. Is that what I'm here for? I didn't know it. There's a hazy notion in my noodle that I'm here to develop myself.”
”That's what I'm telling you. Go in for the things that count. Make a good frat. Win out at football or debating. I don't give a hang what you go after, but follow the ball and keep on the jump. I'm strong with the crowd that runs things and I'll see they take you in and make you a cog of the machine. But you'll have to measure up to specifications.”
”But, hang it, I don't want to be a cog in any machine. I'm here to give myself a chance to grow--sit out in the sun and hatch an individuality--give myself lots of free play.”
”Then you've come to the wrong shop,” James informed him dryly. ”If you want to succeed at college you've got to do the things the other fellows do and you've got to do them the same way.”
”You mean I've got to travel in a rut?”
”Oh, well! That's a way of putting it. I mean that you have to accept customs and traditions. You have to work like the devil doing things that count. If you make the team you've got to think football, talk it, eat it, dream it.”
”But is it worth while?”
James waved his protest aside. ”Of course it's worth while. Success always is. Get this in your head. Four-fifths of the fellows at college don't count. They're also-rans. To get in with the right bunch you've got to make a good showing. Look at me. I'm no John D. Rockefeller, Jr.
Athletics bore me. I can't sing. I don't grind. But I'm in everything.
Best frat. Won the oratorical contest. Manager of the football team next season. President of the Dramatic Club. Why?”
He did not wait for Jeff to guess the reason. ”Because our set runs things and I go after the honors.”
”But a college ought to be a democracy,” Jeff protested.
”Tommyrot! It's an aristocracy, that's what it is, just like the little old world outside, an aristocracy of the survival of the fittest. You get there if you're strong. You go to the wall if you're weak. That's the law of life.”
The freshman came to this squint of pragmatism with surprise. He had thought of Verden University as a splendid democracy of intellectual brotherhood that was to leaven the world with which it came in touch.
”Do you mean that a fellow has to have money enough to make a good showing before he can win any of the prizes?”
James K. nodded with the sage wisdom of a man of the world. ”The long green is a big help, but you've got to have the stuff in you. Success comes to the fellow who goes after it in the right way.”
”And suppose a fellow doesn't care to go after it?”
”He stays a n.o.body.”
James was in evening dress, immaculate from clean-shaven cheek to patent leather shoes. He had a well-filled figure and a handsome face with a square, clean-cut jaw. His cousin admired the young fellow's virile competency. It was his opinion that James K. Farnum was the last person he knew likely to remain a n.o.body. He knew how to conform, to take the color of his thinking from the dominant note of his environment, but he had, too, a capacity for leaders.h.i.+p.
”I'm not going to believe you if I can help it,” Jeff answered with a smile.
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