Chicago was by no means the worst American university in this respect; it was supposed, on the contrary, to be one of the best. An objection often urged against it by its detractors was that it lacked 'campus life.' Thank God it had no more 'campus life' than it did. Even with its heavy emphasis on graduate study, the University of Chicago could not prevent its undergraduates from being blatantly collegiate. An institution so vast, so fantastically rich, so solemnly devoted to the highest possible standards of scholarship and research, was partly inhabited by a couple of thousand young nincompoops whose ambition in life was to get into the right fraternity or club, go to the right parties, and get elected to something or other. I well remember when Professor Michelson received some distinguished honor. When the announcement was made, the undergraduate's comment was: 'Who is Michelson?' Some of us, lofty with knowledge, were able to answer that he was the father of a certain pretty girl. Aside from this we knew nothing at all about the great physicist who was one of the glories of the institution.

The business of 'campus activities' was taken much more seriously by the typical undergraduate than any subject offered for study. Freshmen were advised by their elders, and I remember many a solemn conclave in which fraternity upper-classmen debated whether X should be made to 'go out for the Maroon' (that is, work for the college newspaper) or for 'the team' (football) or for 'class politics.' Fortunately I knew very well, from my first day in the place, that I wanted to work for the college newspaper; it was almost the only thing I did know, but it was the key to all the rest.

I 'went out for the Maroon' at the earliest possible moment after matriculation. This meant reporting, with an assortment of other ambitious freshmen, to the minute editorial offices of the paper in the University Press Building. That august personage, the Editor of the Maroon, addressed us from the heights of his seniority, and we were given various small jobs of writing to do.

The amount of work done in all such undergraduate enterprises appalls me now when I think of it. I was never particularly industrious, but at various times for the Maroon, and certainly for the Blackfriars, the dramatic club, I worked like blue fury. And since work of any sort is seldom altogether wasted, I do not regret it now. The Maroon taught me, at any rate, the formulas of writing for a newspaper; and the Blackfriars taught me to stop trying to write verse. One of the songs I wrote for a Blackfriars show was so bad that sometimes it still comes back at night to haunt me.

II.

These organized 'campus activities,' with their elaborate elective hierarchies, were supplemented at Chicago by a social life of singular ferocity. The women undergraduates had a number of clubs to which all the 'nice' girls were supposed to belong. Four or five of these clubs were 'good' and the rest 'bad.' Their goodness and badness were absolute—past, present, and future -and not to be discussed. I suppose the 'good' clubs must have been organized earlier than the others, and consequently all the prettiest and best-dressed girls who came to the University were marked from the first day for membership. The clubs had no houses or rooms of their own, but they maintained a rigid solidarity and succeeded in imposing on the undergraduate society a tone of intricate and overweening snobbery.