"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