quaintances of mine, being strong
Delta Kap. allies, and they usually managed to see me only after a
severe effort; but this time you'd have thought I was a whole regiment
of fiancees. They literally fell on my neck. It was cruel of me, they
declared, to be so unsociable. There I was, a football hero--I'd just
broken my rib on the scrub team--and every girl in school was dying to
tell me how grand it was to suffer for one's college; and yet I wouldn't
so much as hint that I wanted to come to the sorority parties--and lots
more talk of the same kind. Naturally I was somewhat dazzled and I'd
walked about half a block with the prettiest one before I noticed that
the other one was steering Freshie the other way. I turned around and
never even said "Good day" to that girl; but it was too late. About a
dozen Delta Kaps appeared out of the ground and tried to look surprised
as they gathered around that scared little Freshman and engulfed him. We
never saw him again--that is, in his innocent condition--and the boys
wouldn't even trust me with the pledges we were rushing around for bait
the rest of the fall term. Bait? Oh, yes. Sometimes we'd pledge a man on
the quiet and leave him out a week or two, so that plenty of frats could
bid him--made them appreciate his worth, you know, and got every one
well acquainted.

By the time I was a Senior the competition was desperate. We spent the
summers scouring the country for prospects and we spent the first week
of school smuggling our trophies into our houses and pledging them,
without giving the other fellow a look in--that is, we tried to. We came
back fairly strong in my Senior year, with a good bunch of prospects;
but the one that excited us most was a telegram from Snooty Vincent in
Chicago. It was brief and erratic, like Snooty himself, and read as
follows:

Freshman named Smith will register from Chicago. Son of old man
Smith, multimillionaire. Kid's a comer. Get him sure! SNOOTY.

That was all. One of the half million Smiths of Chicago was coming to
college--age, weight, complexion, habits and time of arrival unknown.
That telegram qualified Snooty for the paresis ward. We didn't even know
what Smith his millionaire father was. The world is full of Smiths who
are pestered by automobile agents. All we knew was the fact that we had
to find him, grab him, sequester him where no meddling Alfalfa Delt or
Chi Yi could find him, and make him fall in love with us inside of