Life — June 7, 1900 — page 6: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

there is Life there's Hope.” No. 917. New York. 19 West Tuiery-Finst St, _ablished every ‘Thoreday. 5.000 year in nd antago to forelgn countries in the Patni le current copies, three months rom No contribution will be returned unless accompanied by stamped and addressed envelope. The illustrations in Live are copyrighted, and are not to be reproduced without special arrangement with the publishers. Prompt notification should be sent by sub- scribers of any change of address. Ty propen- whe aa to gang 4. agley has of late been in process of illus- tration at Yale ; Univer- v sity, where acarefully matured scheme for dimin- ishing the importance of the Sophomore societies threatened to come to nought because of the pervérse disinclination of the obstreperous socicties te be diminished. The matter was all ar- ranged. A conference committee of Sophomores and upper classmen had considered it. Graduates had been consulted and had given their advice, and nothing remained except for the culprits to take their medicine. To the surprise and scandal of the Yale com- and the amusement of other observers, the Sophomores turned frac- tious and refused to bow to public opinion. It left things in a mischievous and embarrassing tangle. The trouble, as may be recalled, was that the ai 8 of the three Sophomore societies had grown so formidably pernicious that their members were said to be able to get what they wanted in eollege to the exclusion of outsiders who felt themselves to be more worthy. The three societies seem to have con- stituted between them a social trust, limited in membership, but exceeding- ly successful in the acquisition of power LIFE and glory. Public opinion said they must be taught to know their place; undergraduate authority prescribed their penance. Time was given them to bring forth works meet for repent- ance, and when no crop appeared the Yale faculty reluctantly intimated an intention to interfere. At this writing the intimation appears to have suc- ceeded, for rumor says that the Soph- omore society lads have taken, or are about to take, the action which their elders felt to be becoming to them. S OST Yale undergraduates, like AVL “most active men in real life, want to succeed. Success as ordinarily understood in real life means getting rich, or becoming reputably famous, or holding high office. At Yale the current outward token of success is membership in one of the three small senior societies. Whoever is taken into one of these societies is felt not to have been to Yale College in vain. It is more or less the desire of Yale ideal- ists that membershipin these dominant ‘nior societies should be a reward of merit ; that men should not be taken into them merely because they are pretty, or well-mannered, or have good taste in clothes, or have made an ad- vantageous choice of parents, but rather because they are of such quality and have so used their talents and advan- tages as to have become honorably prominent in college life. It is the Yale sentiment that if the senior societies which set the pace for the Yale community are made up of the most prominent seniorsavailable, there is nothing for anyone to complain of, because prominence fairly won is entitled to its reward, and every community ought to be led by its most prominent men. Tho basis of hard feeling towards the Sophomore societies was that they constituted a sort of political machine that was able to confer prominence, and the resulting , Preferment, upon persons who had not the ability or the diligence to achieve it in a fair field, and that they deprived stouter men of the just rewards of their strenuosity. ey 0 ‘i societies will let it, will make every- ve is hoped that the new plan, which is to govern now if the Sophomore thing come right. It provides for what is called the pyramid system, and the idea of it is that from each Freshman class after it has been in college long enough to be known, so that the more obvious goats may be rejected, the membership of several large and com- modious Sophomore societies shall be recruited. These societies in turn are to supply members to smaller junior societies, which in their turn shall give their best and brightest to the still more select societies of senior year. This system seems all right except for the goats. At any rate, it isacceptable to Yale. The men who profit or hope to profit by the system will support it, and the others are not in a position to fight it to advantage. A society sys- tem that will select without excluding has not as yet been discovered. It is recognized by the eminently wise that exclusiveness is not the prize but the penalty of distinction, but we can’t expect college boys to appreciate that idea so long as it is so sparingly ac- cepted in the great world. O* the whole, Senator Clark seems to be having his money’s worth of sport out of his seat in the Senate. It came marvellously high, and it has not proved particularly steady under him, but he sticks to it like a circus rider, and the prospect is good that he will get at least once around the ring. His recent exploit in resigning with pathetic words of farewell the seat which the Senate had determined not to be his, and turning up next day in the same chair with a new and better title, did considerable credit both to his powers of strategy and to his sense of humor. He had already mado monkeys, of the voters of Montana, and now he has made game of his brother Senators. There is no doubt about his merit as a sporting character, however it may be with his qualifica- tions as a legislator.