Pennsylvania Stories

Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: THE CONVERSION OF WARREN FORBES. Warren Forbes had come to college possessed by one idea, namely, that the sum total of all the evil in the University was comprehended in the word Fraternity. He had had this impression instilled into him by his grandfather, who had been one of the local leaders of the...
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Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: THE CONVERSION OF WARREN FORBES. Warren Forbes had come to college possessed by one idea, namely, that the sum total of all the evil in the University was comprehended in the word Fraternity. He had had this impression instilled into him by his grandfather, who had been one of the local leaders of the Anti-Masonic Party, and to whom everything in the nature of a secret society was the invention of the devil. As a consequence, Forbes looked upon the little shields and crosses, which he saw glittering upon the vests of the upper-class men, on the opening day of college, as hostile symbols, whose influence must be for evil and must be opposed by him. He could not help seeing that the Fraternity men were in general the best dressed, the most striking-looking and seemed to be enjoying themselves the most, but hecomforted himself by thinking that it was all appearance, for men of real worth could hardly belong to such foolish institutions. Being a tall, pleasant looking fellow, and coming of good people, it was not long before Theta Chi gave him a bid to a rush smoker, which he promptly and rather unceremoniously declined. This fact, being reported at the Kappa Phi house, was considered as an evidence of good taste, and that Fraternity began rushing him, with a similar result. He refused the advances of two or three more Fraternities and then he was let alone. In the meantime, he had seen all the prominent men from his school join one of the various Chapters and his sense of pity for them began to be mingled with a suspicion that something might be wrong, either in his own or his grandfather's conception of life. He did not like to believe this, of course, and he comforted himself by the fact that he was not alone in his neutrality, but that there were fully a dozen other me...