Kansas University Weekly.
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violet, or the tinting of the shell, were there not some one whom I could call upon to look and see and enjoy with me. No, men were made dependent on each other to that extent that even their joys must be shared, or else they are not joys.
And yet the most lonesome place on earth is not found in the wilderness where human foot has never trod before, nor on great deep, where one may sigh and sigh and there is none to hear; nor yet among the frozen grandeurs of the Arctic, where naught but whitened bones tell that man has ever passed that way. The most lonesome place on earth is in the heart that finds itself surrounded by a seething sea of humanity, where not a face is friendly, and not a voice is known, and where every form is a stranger. Unhappy he, who, in pursuit of ambition, has climbed to such dizzy heights that, above his fellow men, he is left alone; unhappy the monarch who has not sympathy and association with his subjects. Unhappy he who leaves the home on the hillside to go forth into the world to seek learning, ambitious, brave and honest, when he finds himself under new surroundings where every being is a stranger and no eve responds to his.
It is to such a one that our college fraternity appeals, with its unrevealed mysteries, its warm fireside and its congenial manhood. For fifty years it stretches into the past, and the honorable record of its achievements is an open book. To-day, the ideal fraternity must have a past about which traditions gather. It must have been a past of elevating tendencies that show worthy products.
The mysteries of the fraternity do but recognize the law of nature. We live in a world of mysteries, and it is in solving them that man becomes self-reliant, preserving and noble. The great discoveries of this age are but a glimmer of the light of the future. The mysteries of a fraternity must be such as to lift up and not degrade those to whom they are made known. He who dares do all that becomes a man, need not hesitate, when invitation is extended, to penetrate to their deepest depths the
mysteries of a Greek letter society.
There can be no fraternity that is not based on mutual help. It is for this that fraternities exist. Society is the creation of God, and not of man. Flowers live for the insects, and the insects for the flowers; the hills for the valleys, and the valleys for the hills; the ocean to replenish the rivers, the rivers, the ocean; man lives for humanity, and humanity for man. Men congregate in cities that they may be near each other. Men join fraternities that they may see, hear, touch, and lean upon each other; that the strength of the one may offset the weakness of the other; that the sorrow of one may be dispelled by the gladness of the other; that youth may support old age; that old age may counsel youth; "that the poverty of one may make the other rich in goodness, that the weakness of one may make the other strong." There is a giving that bringeth more and a with-holding that doth impoverish. He has an altogether loftier and ampler being who lives beyond himself.
Mutual help must and will be followed by mutual growth. I don't believe in stagnant waters. And with mutual growth there will come a "widening faith, increasing confidence, enduring patience, forgiving love, unselfish ambirion, and affection that will bear the test of time and trial."
A fraternity should be, aye and is, "like the beautiful shadows of evening, spreading and growing till life and its lights pass away."
He who comes within the pale of a fraternity finds friends who forsake not in time of distress. "The friendships of the world are oft confederations of vice, or leagues of pleasure. College fraternity has severest virtue for its basis, and such a friendship ends not but with life." Emerson says, "The highest compact we can make with our fellow is,'—'let there be truth between us two forevermore.'"
A fraternity should boast not in the multitude of its members, but in their worth and choice. It must possess the cement of that friendship to which the poet refers when he says: