CHAPTER II.

SOCIAL RELATIONS — CONTINUED.
A ruddy drop of manly blood
The surging sea outweighs, The world uncertain comes and goes,
The lover rooted stays.
— E??ierson.
Few things are more delightful in experience, or more dear to memory, than the friendships of college days. Growing up between hearts young and noble, full of hope and enthusiasm, they fill college life with happiness, and their memory stays in tlie heart like some rare per- fume, fragrant till the last hours of life.
The foundation of friendship is virtue. " It is Virtue alone that can give birth, strength and permanency to friendship," writes Cicero in his charming essay. ^ There is an attraction in virtue, that by a secret and irresistible bias, draws the general affections of those persons toward each other, in whom it appears toreside." Any friendship worth the name must be based on mutual respect. The second requisite is adapt- ability of character and purpose. Out of this spring the confidences which are so delightful and healthful to the whole nature, and which are confidences because there are very few within the reach of any one man who have followed out the deeper lines of experience which are parallel to his own, and so can understand and sympa- thize with him. True friendship, therefore,
^ Essay on Friendship, pp. 305, 266.
28 THE SECRET SOCIETY SYSTEM.
needs no exclusiveness ; rarely can any one en- ter its charmed circle, and he who can belongs there. "We talk of choosing our friends, but friends are self-elected." Nor do they need much contrivance for coming at one another. '* Friends also follow the laws of divine neces- sity ; they gravitate to each other, and cannot otherwise."^ "Genuine friendship, being pro- duced by the simple efficiency of nature's steady and immutable laws, resembles the source from whence it springs, and is forever permanent and unchangeable." ^ A third element usually enters into friendship — that of time; friends must be summered and wintered, known in adversity and prosperity, in many relations of life, before their affection is strong and permanent. Hence, organizations to promote friendship are a resort to unnatural and forcing processes, like those of the hot-house; whereas, true friendship is a hardy plant, and thrives best on the rugged soil of effort.
Now the very organization of school and col- lege is most favorable to the growth of friend- ship. To begin with, the college itself is a great family. Its members are all chosen men at the start, and more and more as the years go by; and presumably gentlemen. They are at an age when lasting attachments are easily formed. Says Whewell, ^ "at that crisis of life, when the vigor of manly thought blends with the warmth of youthful susceptibility," the student "acquires a number of subjects of common interest, of agreeable retrospect, of endearing recollection ;
^ Emerson's Essays, 2d series, p. 122. ^ Cicero's Essay on Friendship, p. 250. 2 University Education, p. 88.
THE SECRET SOCIETY SYSTEM. 29
and these points of union bind together the uni- versity men of the same standing by a tie which rarely loses its hold, or its charm, during their lives." The class organization of the American college is a strong bond between all its mem- bers. It takes the place of the college bond that unites the students in the various colleges which make up the English universities. Liv- ing in dormitories brings men into close and constant social relations. Multitudes of organ- izations unite still more closely — eating clubs, boating, ball and other athletic associations, the papers, musical clubs, religious, literary and art societies — all uniting men in ways most favor- able to friendship. Besides the more permanent clubs, temporary organizations of a more or less private nature easily spring up between those of like tastes, which attain the same ends. "The true type of a Cambridge club," writes a Har- vard graduate w^ho studied at Cambridge, " is one where a certain body of students, interested in one object, unite to carry out that object, and are ready to admit anybody who cares for it too, and want nobody who does not. And the per- fect example of these is in the clubs for athletic sports."^ This I believe the true system, under which social relations will be natural and spon- taneous, and a source of the highest benefit and happiness to the community.
To these natural relations, under the princi- ples above given, students owe their friendships, and only to a very limited extent to artificial social systems. The life-long friendship between Ex-President Woolsey and Dr. Leonard Bacon
^ Everett's On the Cam, pp. 182-183.
30 THE SECRET SOCIETY SYSTEM.
was fostered in college by a club for reading poetry, in which they were joined with three or four others. When the Cambridge Union en- tered its new building, and Lord Houghton delivered the address, this ,was part of a pub- lished letter :
Lord Houghton's beautiful reviving of those old days has in it something fragrant and sweet, and brings back old faces and old friendships very dear as life is drawing to its close. Yours, etc. Henry E. Manning.
Imagine the friendships which must have grown up in days when Tennyson, Alford, Trench and Maurice belonged to the Union, and when a deputation, of which Arthur Hallam was one, was '' sent from the Union of Cam- bridge to the Union of Oxford "^ ^ to assert the right of Mr. Shelley to be considered a greater poet than Lord Byron ;" ^ and w-as enter- tained at Oxford ^'by a young student of the name of Gladstone."
Goethe, who created the literature and per- haps led the thinking of Germany, and who speaks with the authority of a magnificent intel- lectual and social endowment, says of his uni- versity friends, '' Without the external forms, which do so much mischief in universities, we represented a society bound together by circum- stances and good feeling, which others might occasionally touch, but into which they could not intrude." '^
There is in Cambridge University a society, the Apostles, *' a strictly private club, and in no
^ Cambridge Union Speeches, pp. 12. 13. '■^ Autobiography, p. 320.
THE SECRET SOCIETY SYSTEM. 3 1
way putting itself prominently forward," ^ usu- ally composed of thirteen members, of whom "■ all had a certain fondness for literary and met- aphysical pursuits in common;" who "did not make any parade of mystery, or aim at notoriety by any device to attract attention. "^ ^ did not have special chambers for meeting," and '* did not attempt to throw any awful veil of secrecy over their proceedings." It was known that they "' met to read essays and hold discus- sions, with occasional interludes of supper." Their "immediate and tangible influence in the University amounted to just nothing." Now it may not be well that such a club should be per- manent, all things considered; l;)ut if it is — and there are some advantages in permanence — some plan like the above would seem to be thetrue one.
It may be urged that secret societies meet the legitimate demand for ordinary general society, by affording a common meeting-place for men of different classes, and graduates. This is partly true; but there is no demand here which could not be met by open clubs. A large part of it, also, is met by mixed society and by social occasions incident to college life; when mem- bers of the faculty, for instance, entertain stu- dents who take their optionals or who are in their divisions, as some of them do, the same or greater benefits may be derived with none of the evils. Officers of the college do not seem to realize how greatly they might thus increase the pleasure of the students, as well as their influ- ence over them in every direction. In one
- Bristed's Five Years in an English University, pp.
157, 158.
32 THE SECRET SOCIETY SYSTEM.
aspect, the societies may express a demand for something of the kind suggested by President Porter, who says : '* Is it desirable that public parlors should be furnished, or places conven- ient for rendezvous and conversation?"^ and adds, *' an accessible and cheerful reading-room, amply furnished with the best newspapers and journals, should be esteemed a necessity, and if it were made attractive and tasteful in its ap- pointments, and supplied with retiring rooms for conversation, and could also be rigidly con- trolled by the rules of gentlemanly etiquette, would be a most desirable and useful agency in the college community."
It is obvious that the societies supply such a want most inadequately. They are usually lim- ited to a few ; and if they were more numerous, society would still be divided into rigidly exclu- sive cliques, which could offer no hospitality to one another or to strangers. The University of Leyden has a great central house, of three stories, managed by the students, with reading-room, parlors for conversation, and other students' conveniences; which is open to the w^iole Uni- versity, and does much to unify the students. Such an institution would perhaps meet the want already noticed, of some place where grad- uates returning to the college might feel that they were welcome and at home. The Univer- sity Club, lately established in this college, may be regarded as a step in this direction ; but there are several reasons why, as yet, it does not by any means fill such a place. . Looking at the societies as meeting a demand
^ American Colleges, p. 196.
THE SECRET SOCIETY SYSTEM. ^^
for club life, I do not believe this a legitimate demand in college, and not often elsewhere. The legitimate wants are sufficiently met by the college system and the natural associations growing out of it; while club life gives undue prominence to social and physical enjoyments^ as such, and is not calculated for the true ends of college life. This principle given by Presi- dent Porter applies equally here : " If college students are distributed in lodgings throughout the village or city they will form sets and asso- ciate in cliques, which, the more intimate and exclusive they are, are likely to become more narrowing, but they cannot partake of a general public life with its manifold cross and counter currents, its checks and counter checks, the in- fluence of which upon the plastic minds of active minded and sagacious youth is liberalizing in an eminent degree."^ Of the student, "it is not desirable that he should be restricted to the uncertain chances and narrowing influences of a private and exclusive clique." Dr. Howard Crosby says of club life, in its relation to the family, " The secrecy of the college society ren- ders it peculiarly adapted to be a rival to the family. Now a young man too easily learns the false and ^ad lesson that it is manly to slight domestic ties and substitute a species of club life in its place, and where that club-life takes on the fascinations of secrecy, the danger is greatly augmented."^ On this point may be
^ American Colleges, pp. 187, 188.
^ College Secret Societies, published by Ezra A. Cook, Chicago ; p. 33.
34 THE SECRET SOCIETY SYSTEM.
given the following letter, published recently in the Boston Advertiser .•" ^
The undersigned, members of the Hasty Pudding club living in Cambridge, Boston and neighborhood, taking a hearty interest in its welfare, and regarding its character as of no slight importance, have observed with regret the at- tempts now making to raise funds for the erection of a house for the club. To provide the club with a house of its own, would be, in their judgment, likely to foster a mode of club life undesirable in itself, and inconsistent with the simple and pleasant traditions of the Hasty Pudding. They believe that such a change as would result from this innovation would prove injurious to the club, — by increas- ing the expenses of its members, and consequently limiting the range of selection, and making membership depend on other qualities than those of genuine good fellowship ; and, further, by exaggerating the importance of purely club in- terests, and thus promoting the tendency, at all times strong among undergraduates, to subordinate the real interests and objects of their college life to social pleasures and trivial occupations.
The undersigned, therefore, earnestly beg their fellow graduate members of the Hasty Pudding club to consider whether they wish to aid in carrying out a design which cannot but greatly change the long-established character of the club, and which will endanger both its pleasantness and its usefulness.
Charles F. Dunbar, C. E. Norton,
John C. Gray, G. H. Palmer,
J. B. Greenough, Francis G. Peabody,
E. W. GuRNEY, A. T. Perkins,
A. S. Hill, George Putnam,
Archibald M. Howe, H. W. Putnam,
H. Howland, J. B. Thayer,