Page 27 - To Dragma May 1930

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fun and good times, and see instead a sort of set mechanical way of
getting enjoyment. The reason is plain enough. You don't do enough
to make your own good times, and you leave everything to the outside
diversion that relieves you of all effort.

In my college days, except for friendly class competition, life went
on without much struggle for prominence. There wasn't any money
anywhere to spend on parties. We just had the parties, regardless of
what "the other fellow" did, and "a good time was had by all." I f it was
a tea, a kind word about our sandwiches was all we asked. Possibly it
was a formal tea, with the now extinct coffee frappe, and a macaroon,
in which case we wore our better afternoon dress, though the train was
a bother if we had to help serve. Or it might have been a dance, with
three musicians in a corner behind some rented palms, (how we did
begrudge the money for those palms!), a few obviously bored but faith-
ful chaperons on the side lines, and we young ladies gracing the scene
in our new crepe de chine or point d'espris. Perhaps we were lamenting
the sad fact that we had given the wrong man the waltz to "Bartlett's
Dream." You see, we had programs with the music printed against
each dance, and chose our partners according to whether his type was
best suited to "Mosquito Parade" or "The Message of the Violets."!
Perhaps we cut the dance with the wrong man, and shamelessly sat out
the "Dream" with him—not in a parked car, but in some remote corner,
or outdoors on the campus if we were very daring. And then when the
three palm-sheltered musicians gave us "Home Sweet Home," we put
on our street shoes, put our slippers in our party bags, and tripped blithely
home on the trolley. That doesn't sound like a lot of fun, does it? But
it was. Now it's a big hotel, and favors, and a dinner dance, the best
jazz orchestra, and a car to take us to it all—it looks a lot more, but you
have no better time.

Life on a college campus in my day was actually "college life, not
fraternity life lived at a college." I t seems to me that the young people
of today ( I almost feel old when I write that) are not getting the full joy
out of their college associations, for they are so engrossed in projecting
their own particular group into the limelight, that they forget the large
organization of which they are a part. Class and college activities arouse
less interest than fraternity affairs. And here again the boys and girls
are not to blame. So much is being crammed into their days that they
can't do it all. Something has to be sacrificed, and unless affairs at a
university are so regulated as to permit fewer interests, and more time
to give those few, very often it is the college life and not the fraternity
life, that suffers. One hears less of "Alma Mater" than we used to,
possibly because the college is developing into the kind of mother that
we real parents are said to be, in these days of clubs and bridge. B u t
I still maintain that the youngsters are not to blame.

Maybe I'm wrong about this, but hearing girls from many colleges
discuss their problems, leads me to believe that we used to approach
the idea of college in a very different frame of mind. We all had a Pur'
pose, spelled with a capital, sometimes all in capitals. We didn't always