The Vision Splendid | Page 6

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 nobody."
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 nobody. 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 leadership.
"I'm not going to believe you if I can help it," Jeff answered with a
smile.
The upper classman shrugged. "You'd better take my advice, just the
same. At college you don't get a chance to make two starts. You're
sized up from the crack of the pistol."
"I haven't the money to make a splurge even if I wanted to."
"Borrow."
"Who from?" asked Jeff ungrammatically.
"You can rustle it somewhere. I'm borrowing right now."
"It's different with you. I'm used to doing without things. Don't worry
about me. I'll get along."
James came with a touch of embarrassment to the real object of his
visit. "I say, Jeff. I've had a tough time to win out. You won't-- you'll
not say anything--let anything slip, you know--something that might set
the fellows guessing."

His cousin was puzzled. "About what?"
"About the reason why Mother and I left Shelby and came out to the
coast."
"What do you take me for?"
"I knew you wouldn't. Thought I'd mention it for fear you might make a
slip."
"I don't chatter about the private affairs of my people."
"Course not. I knew you didn't." The junior's hand rested caressingly on
the shoulder of the other. "Don't get sore, Jeff. I didn't doubt you. But
that thing haunts me. Some day it will come out and ruin me when I'm
near the top of the ladder."
The freshman shook his head. "Don't worry about it, James. Just tell the
plain truth if it comes out. A thing like that can't hurt you permanently.
Nothing can really injure you that does not come from your own
weakness."
"That's all poppycock," James interrupted fretfully. "Just that sort of
thing has put many a man on the skids. I tell you a young fellow needs
to start unhampered. If the fellows got onto it that my father had been
in the pen because he was a defaulting bank cashier they would drop
me like a hot potato."
"None but the snobs would. Your friends would stick the closer."
"Oh' friends!" The young man's voice had a note of angry derision.
Jeff's affectionate grin comforted him. "Don't let it get on your nerves, J.
K. Things never are as bad as we