The College Freshman's Don't Book

Don't expect the College Town to furnish you with good weather; because it won't. The weather is generally the only thing about a College Town not yet educated. Of course, if you happen to have come from Lapland or Patagonia, and do not know what good weather is, the weather here may suit you. The oldest inhabitants in a College Town live to be very old; this is to be accounted for by the fact that they are kept alive by their curiosity to see what kind of weather is going to develop next.

Don't forget that sight-seeing relatives and others coming on a visit to the College, must see the Library, the Gymnasium, the Dining Hall, and the Athletic Field. These, and the Campus, are generally all the sights there are. It is well to get this list carefully in mind early, as it saves you from a panic at the last minute. You often think that you will explore the place and get something new to show people; but this you never do. The above list is a fairly accurate one, and it suffices. Those whom you are guiding about always pretend they are dreadfully interested and excited about every thing in turn. On your first trip as official guide, you yourself see a great deal; on your fiftieth, you try not to.

THE WEATHER IS GENERALLY THE ONLY THING ABOUT A COLLEGE TOWN NOT YET EDUCATED

Don't, if you can possibly side-step it, begin to live in a place which you do not like. The Blue-Willies may lurk in the corners. Many a Freshman changes his residence about the mid-year, because he has not made a careful selection at first. The moving often entails cracked wash-bowls, broken pictures and casts, stifled oaths, and a sense of great unrest not appropriate to the season.

Don't treat your Landlady shabbily if you happen to live in a private house. Some Landladies are the best souls in the world. All of them are proud and descended from the best early families (you have only to take their word for this). Though they are often inquisitive, their inquisitiveness often comes from their genuine interest in you. Sometimes, the more they know of your family history, the less they will charge you for oil and gas, at the end of the month.

Don't begin too early in the term to make your Landlady's house a noisy abode. She may get impatient and do something hasty, such as even demanding your key, payment and evacuation. In such an event you see the full meaning of her appellation. Whereas, before you may have thought that the word "land" in her title meant to catch, as to land a fish, you now see that it is primarily derived from her ability to come down hard on a special occasion.

Don't be discouraged if you can't find anything in the right place after the dusting lady has put things in order. It's a way they have.

Don't neglect taste in your room. How do you know but that somebody may judge you by the way you decorate your study? Presumably, you were not raised in a barn, and there can be no harm in letting the appearance of your room bear out this as fact.

Don't try to make a royal residence of your room. Your taste may alter. A College man's taste often undergoes rapid and violent revolution for the better, within the first year.

Don't think that you must have Turkish rugs. Generally, a Freshman cannot tell the real article when he sees it. The man at the sale may try to make you believe they'll never wear out. Never mind. You have only to get them to know what he means. Just get some old, reliable patterns. There is a secret connected with this. The older and dirtier they get, the more Oriental they look. You've no idea how much sweeping this saves.

Don't go in for a lot of fine china, the first term. How can you tell but that your neighbors or visitors may not care as much for that sort of thing as you? Remember, that in a room where costly china lies about in profusion, a "rough-house" may be a more expensive variety of entertainment than Grand Opera with seats for the family.

Don't get angry if a Senior comes into your room and looks about and smiles. Probably, he's only remembering that he once decorated his room the way you now do yours. Just keep your eyes open when you go into older fellows' rooms. You'll soon learn that two crossed college flags, a vile plaster copy of the Venus de Milo, and a copy of the Barye Lion as sole decorations may be lived down,—or later pulled down. If you wish to be exceptionally original, don't go in for either the flags or the casts. Yet, in following years, these things may become good old friends to remind you that you were once a Freshman.

Don't overdo with respect to furniture, even if you can afford it; it may make some of your visitors uncomfortable. If you can't afford it, you'll be made uncomfortable yourself.

Don't mistake the color of your College. A good many Freshmen do this;—it is especially pathetic, by the way, to see a Freshman waving a flag which is off-color at a big game. Sometimes the mistake is attributed to color-blindness. This is a charitable interpretation.

Don't buy a roll-top desk or an iron safe during your first year. You know, you may not care to occupy one room all through College. We heard of one house having to be torn down, that a Freshman might move out with his roll-top desk. Not only this, but when he failed to find another place, a house had to be built up around his cumbersome furniture. It was a case of this or his rooming in the desk.

DONT OVERDO THE DECORATION OF YOUR ROOM

Don't think that you have fairly got on to things while the tray of your trunk is still unpacked.

Don't look too sober if hazing happens to be in vogue, and the Sophomores order you about. Remember that you can make the affair either a funeral or a farce; and it's pleasanter to be the leading man in a farce than to be the principal at a funeral. The best way to get along with Sophomores is to take them good-naturedly. Don't be nauseatingly saccharine, for that's just about as bad as getting mad about it. Just fool them into thinking you're enjoying yourself, and they'll stop.

Don't neglect to receive your visitors as if you were glad to see them. This is not encouraging hypocrisy, inasmuch as the recommendation need not include the laundryman or the tailor's collector. You couldn't fool them, anyway. It is not polite, when visitors come, always to be found with a green shade over your eyes. When a visitor calls, look as if you had just been waiting for some one to talk to. If you improve your time between visitors, they ought not to cause you to waste any valuable time.

Don't play the piano at all hours. Have a regular time for practice; then your neighbors may protect themselves. If you play the violin or the trumpet, don't overdo it; you are tempting Fate.

Don't incur the anger of your Proctor by noisy conduct or disrespect. Proctors—especially young ones—are apt to feel their oats and to report you on slight provocation. But a friendly Proctor is a friend worth having.

Don't dress too "sporty," during the first term. The effects you try to imitate at this period of the game are apt to be only the superficial and amusing ones.

Don't wear long hair. Hair, if left to grow as it listeth, may attain to a surprising length within a single season. The Freshman year is not the time to test the accuracy of this statement. Wait till you are a Sophomore; then you won't care to. Remember that long hair is the Poet's privilege (though not always proof of a Poet). To wear long hair, you had better take out a Poet's license. In this respect a dog-license will do if you fail to qualify as Poet.

Don't feel it incumbent upon you to wear a beard or a moustache, if you happen to have raised one on the farm or in England, during the summer. Whiskers are the plus sign of masculinity. Upper-classmen do not appreciate them in Freshmen.

Don't wear too much jewelry; as an over-amount of it suggests trips to places where they loan money.

DONT DRESS TOO SPORTY

Don't affect stick-pins bearing large horses' heads or horseshoes, thinking these will demonstrate that you keep a gig. The horsy ornament connotes the coachman's white tie and the odor of the stable.

Don't carry a cane in your Freshman year; something is very likely to happen to it.

Don't be found displaying a tall hat. A tall hat is a mighty nice thing for Sister's wedding at home; but better leave it there. Its dignity is liable to fade, like the glory that was Greece and the grandeur that was Rome. It was only because those nations got too chesty, you remember, that the Vandals of old worried them.

Don't think that crazy or odd clothes are necessarily "College" clothes. Lots of College men do wear crazy clothes; but it isn't so much because they're College men, as because they're crazy.

Don't forget to dress neatly and up to your means. You owe it to yourself to dress as well as you can. I don't mean that owing this to yourself should necessitate your continually owing something to your tailor. You do not owe it to yourself to owe anybody.

Don't attempt, in a large dining hall, to get a place at a society, club, or athletic table for which you have not yet qualified. You are liable to queer yourself from the start.

Don't try continually to air the sum of knowledge which you are just assimilating. There are few things more pathetic than the first-year chemist who keeps asking you at table to "pass the NaCl," or the fledgling psychologist who would try to prove that bread-and-butter is matter for the mind and not for the stomach.

DONT MONOPOLIZE THE CONVERSATION AT THE TABLE

Don't keep telling how they do things in that part of the country which you come from. The assumption is, that since you came to College, you are willing to learn something of how they do things here.

Don't monopolize the conversation at the table, especially if there are older men around. You'll get yourself snubbed if you talk too much about yourself. Fellows don't care much whether your grandfather kept a brake and ten horses, or drove a "shay" over the plank-road. Be a good listener. Then, too, older men like to be listened to. The chances are you will learn a sight more by hearing them than they will by hearing you.

Don't continually find fault with the things you have to eat. Act as if you were used to eating away from home. Half the time the jokes you make at the expense of the food come merely from an uncontrollable desire to air your wit. "Knocking the grub" doesn't require half so much brains or individuality as shutting up about it.

Don't let yourself be mesmerized into taking a lot of things you feel a positive disinclination for. Many a Freshman has spoiled his first year in this way; and, failing to pass, has left College and become a street-car conductor or a clerk.

Don't mistake the willingness to accept a "snap" course for a startling aptitude for a subject.

Don't abuse the Elective System if you are privileged to be at a College where it is employed. It is a system which presupposes your own interest in your intellectual welfare. It is too easy to fill up with a lot of unrelated subjects. You may say, "But I desire a broad education." Very good. Did you ever go to a circus? There the prettiest feats are performed upon the broad, spacious back of one horse. The rider gets the broadest-backed critter he can find that will keep moving. Those who ride two and three horses take a risk. In College you may find that when you try to do the intellectual split, you're liable to fall down between your horses.

Don't neglect any honest opportunities you may have to make friends with an Instructor or a Professor. Meeting Teachers represents a privilege and not always necessarily a pull. As for knowing Professors intimately, few do, except other Professors. As for their knowing us intimately, it might seem as if this seldom happens, until it comes time to expel us.

Don't try to fool the College Doctor into believing that you can't go to lectures, or are going to die, because you've sprained your left thumb. Generally, the College Doctor is a shrewd man, or he would not be the College Doctor.

Don't fail to make a list of the required reading in any course. And do some of it—say, a little more than will enable you merely to pass the Exam. It is barely possible that the reading you have done in connection with your College courses will some day prove you an educated man. As for doing all the reading that all the Professors require—well, a fellow must sleep and eat.

Don't think that Exams can be passed without any preparation. It takes some. The minimum has not yet been determined; nor has the maximum. The middlemum has even been known to vary, according as the instructor imagines that the crowd is or is not taking the course as a snap. The little birdies are surely in league with the Faculty.

Don't rely upon special tutors to pass all your courses. It's lazy and not entirely self-respecting. When our friend Gulliver went to Laputa, he met certain Teachers who gave their pupils small intellectual wafers. These they swallowed upon empty stomachs. As the wafers digested, the tincture mounted to the pupil's brain, bearing the proposition along with it. The same system of cramming exists today; only it doesn't always work as advertised. A fellow resorts to special tutors when he has lost confidence, and needs an intellectual narcotic. Special tutors represent the drug-capsule of learning. Why be a dope-fiend?

Don't try in your Exams to make a hit by writing long papers. The Exam is not an endurance contest. Somehow, long papers don't take, unless there is some sense in everything you have written. If you don't believe this, try it and find out.

Don't rely wholly upon typewritten notes to get through your courses. Many College Professors show no quarter to those whom they ascertain to be addicted to this predigested form of information. Often the Professor's life-specialty is the tracing of literary works to their sources; so be careful. Better take notes in lectures; if this serve no other purpose, 'twill keep you awake.

Don't put off that long piece of written work till the night before it is due. A piece of work about which you have been warned months beforehand, can't be done between 8 p.m. and 3 a.m. Here "rush orders," contrary to the rule, spoil. If you come up to the scratch as you should, in the matter of long pieces of written work, the Instructor will almost forget how dog-goned lazy you have been all along in the little things.

Don't idle away time to such an extent that you get a reputation as an idler, either among your friends, or with the members of the Faculty. You'll find such a reputation hard to live down. Notwithstanding the fact that everybody is supposed to come by a love of Learning in College, there are some things which the Faculty will not take for granted. With the Faculty, the chronic idler will find that his name is anathema, or Dennis at least.

DONT FAIL TO KEEP IN MIND THE STEPS OF DESCENT

Don't fail to keep in mind the flight of steps which represents the descent from the plane of regular work. It goes something like this: work, slack work, probation, special probation, then, "I am sorry to inform you that the Faculty has decided that you are no longer needed to ornament the College," etc. After which, it is the greased-slide, down and out, so to speak. In other words, you are about to feel the thrill of Academic life along your keel for the last time. Facilis descensus Averni: Avernus being the cold, cold world, and the bother of having to explain to one's relations and friends in the home town how it all happened.

Don't show disrespect or contempt for the College Dean, or for the retinue within his gates. Once you "queer" yourself with the College Office, you are on dangerous footing, and the College Degree you seek is no longer seen to be "constant as the northern star." Keep the Degree in mind; hitch your wagon to it. But don't get too ambitious in the way of Degrees. We once heard of a fellow who was called up and given the Third Degree by the Faculty, without ever being graduated.

Don't be surprised or disappointed, if you find you have neither time nor inclination to keep up with everything you thought you would, when first coming to College. Your interests naturally needed a sorting out.

Don't think that offering suggestions to an athletic Coach is the way to make a team. And don't answer back if the Coach speaks harshly to you; be thankful for any of his attention, even if it be gruff. With some Coaches, swearing is more than a liberal art; many think that the oftener they send their men to Hell during practice, the surer they are of sending them to Victory in the contest.

Don't, for Heaven's sake, ask people how one ought to go about getting into Social clubs. It isn't considered polite. Just why, I can't tell you; but you'll learn why, some day, if you are the right sort.

DONT ANSWER BACK IF THE COACH SPEAKS HARSHLY TO YOU

Don't hesitate to accept all chances for making friends, especially among your Class. Don't think that you can always control the making of friends; you can't. Friends are Heaven-sent. Hold the ones you make, and count yourself lucky if you make half a dozen very good friends your first year. There is a difference between acquaintances and friends, by the way, just as there is a difference between fellows to whom you'd casually offer a cigarette and those to whom you'd gladly offer your pocket-book.

Don't rely too much on prejudice in deciding what certain fellows may or may not be good for. You may or may not be right. Your standard may or may not be the only small stone on the seashore.

Don't invite everybody you meet to your room. It doesn't pay. But make a point of accepting as many invitations as possible which come from men you like. Visit any upper-classman who takes the trouble to offer you his hospitality. It may help you to get on, later.

Don't shake hands like a clam. The flipper-shake is not popular, and may make you distrusted. You'll need a good hand-shake all through College.

Don't be one of those who continually pick up anything on the street that wears a bonnet and high heels. There are lots of girls who are willing, at any time, to be seen with a College man. The varieties differ. Some are genuinely pretty; others wear the deliberate as distinguished from the natural complexion, being perhaps not so well preserved as carefully preserved. Maybe you think it is great fun to take a partner into the small hotel dining-room with an "I-do-this-every-evening" kind of air. But you may find out, after smoking your brandy and drinking your cigarettes, that it isn't pleasant to be played for a "good thing."

Don't, however, neglect any opportunity to meet ladies of your own station. You are sure to require their society from time to time. The Monastic life is not profitable for a man at College. The purr of pretty women and the occasional exchange of amicable nothings will preserve your social soul and keep the little blood-pumping organ in good condition.

Don't hesitate to hear other people's opinions. The World did not begin, nor will it end, with you.

Don't strut or look patronizing, if you happen to have success; it makes people feel sorry for you.

Don't forget the little things; fellows notice them. Some will even judge you by the way you give or receive a match or cigarette.

Don't imagine that your entire success in College will be finally measured by the number of Clubs you make during your first year. Always remember, that it is the standing of the ones you identify yourself with which counts. Don't join any final Club or Society until you feel pretty sure you could not do better.

Don't forget to write home once every so often. Mama and Papa are always glad to see the College-town postmark; and, like as not, Papa is paying your way through College. Think how you'd feel, if he forgot, sometimes, to send that check!

Don't treat Father or Uncle John shabbily if one of them happens in town unexpectedly. Maybe you'll have a son or a nephew in the old place one day; and then you'll like to take a run out, once in a while, and see how things are getting on.

Don't swagger when you go home for your first Thanksgiving or Christmas vacation. It doesn't make your friends envious of you. It's apt to make them sore.

Don't think that because you can charge things at almost any store in the College Town, it is your duty to have your name on the books of every firm. You don't need to back every enterprise; besides, most every firm has a habit of rendering monthly bills, and a few of these make even a fair allowance look washed out and faded.

Don't think that it is your Father's duty to present you with an automobile. In Father's day, it was possible for a boy to go through College without one of these things. Remember that it cost a few pence to repair them and run them;—or rather run them and then repair them; and Father's twenty years in business have taught him a few things. Many a father would as soon buy his son an auto, but is not willing to endow one.

DONT PAWN YOUR WATCH DURING YOUR FIRST YEAR

Don't pawn your watch or sleeve-links during your first year. This privilege is limited to upper-classmen who do Society. A pawn-ticket is a very compromising thing if found by some of your close relatives. You don't know what it is? It is a thin slip of paper somewhat resembling a check; only it weighs more heavily on the mind. No matter how funny a story you make at home of pawning your Grandfather's watch, the heads of the family never see the joke. When you rake in the price of exchange for your pawned watch, it seems just like finding money, but when you pay it back out of a slim allowance at the end of the month, it seems like losing the same amount, plus.

Don't buy cigars in wholesale quantities from mysterious-looking foreigners, who say they have just done a neat little job of smuggling from Havana, and are willing to let you in on a good thing. They may even flatter you by telling you that you look trustworthy. They really mean that you look easy. It's your move.

Don't give money to able-bodied beggars. Some may even speak good French or German. If you happen to be taking French or German, you will imagine that you are the only one in the world who can help them. But don't yield. As for crippled or blind and deaf beggars, help them now and then. You don't have to listen to their reminiscences of Life in a Saw-mill to do this, unless you care for that sort of thing.

Don't kill your conscience in regard to matters which you have been brought up to see in certain definite lights. If you think playing cards for money and the drinking of beer wrong, then don't play and don't indulge. You'll never be thought less of in College for hanging on to principle. Just be sure that your principles are worth sticking up for, and then stick. A wise old Englishman puts it this way: "Obey your conscience; but just be sure that your conscience is not that of an ass."

Don't get into the little game too often. Under certain conditions it's as easy as rolling off the decalogue. Sometimes you get in because you're afraid others will think you are afraid to play. This is really not courage. A word more: when you're in, often the time when you think you can't afford to stop is just the time when you can best afford it. Take this advice; it is better than that of R. E. Morse.

Don't keep spending money for a lot of things that you would hardly care to itemize in the account you send to Father. Remember how he said, "I'll keep you decently, only I don't want College to make only a sport of my boy." Sometimes, when you are pressed, you think of asking Father to lend you money to be paid back with interest, when you get older. Don't be surprised if he refuses and asks, "Where's your collateral?" Remember that the Business World, hunting about for something to which to attach its respect and admiration, does not single out the Undergraduate in College.

Don't be ashamed of chances to earn money in College, if you need it. More fellows earn their way through College than you have any idea of. College men have lots of respect for a fellow who isn't ashamed to work.

Don't be a Sport or a Snob. Either is fatal. The dead game act plays itself out sooner than those who work it suppose, and serves oftener to point a weakness than adorn a virtue.

Don't imitate the manner of some one else. When you try to be like some one else, you only succeed in being unlike yourself. People don't expect or want you to be like them.

Don't pretend that you have a fancy income, if you haven't. It's a cheap, expensive pose. Lots of fellows get money regularly from home. All they have to do, it would seem, is to rip open letters and sign their names on the back of what falls out. If you aren't in this class, don't pretend you are. It isn't how much money you've got, but how you make what you've got do, that shows you up a good one.

Don't fail to keep one eye on that bank account. It slowly and surely dwindles. It needs watching especially, about the time the elms put on their new leaves, and the undergraduates their new flannel trousers. To end the year with an over-drawn bank account is risky. No fellow can afford to have his credit go below par.

Don't neglect the health habit. Substitute the tennis racquet for the cigarette, one of these days, and note the difference. It may make you feel like a King in the pink of condition; after which you'll probably try it again, which won't hurt you a bit.

Don't repeat all the jokes that come into your head. Avoid especially jokes that may be old. Many a fellow's popularity may hinge on the fact that he'll listen to a funny story without insisting on telling another that isn't quite so funny.

Don't, if you are from a large well-to-do Preparatory School, talk too much about it, or think that the College must be run on the same plan as your school. Your views may not be appreciated.

Don't aspire to be taken for an upper-classman by cultivating a walk or a swagger or an air. You can work this so hard, that finally you are the only one deceived.

Don't be rowdyish, or get the reputation of being a drunken fellow. The real fun you get out of College need not be a continual round of batting.

Don't think it is always entirely the other man's fault if he fails to speak to you. If you have not the ability to make an impression worth another's remembering, look to yourself.

Don't be a fool. This is the sum and the substance of all that herein precedes. A fellow shows himself a fool or not a fool by his habits. College habits are funny things. The sooner you form your College habits the better,—or worse. To put off the sensible resolve till the time of your last exam may be as useless as the call of the doctor after the minister has left.

Don't imagine for a moment that coming to College enables you to act in a superior way to others who have not enjoyed the same privilege. A College career is a grand, good thing; but its object is to enable you, if possible, better to understand the World, not to lift you at all above it. The World hates a fool; but a College-bred fool, it thoroughly despises. Don't let your ears grow long, and don't bray.

Don't imagine that the College Catalogue, or even this book, can tell you all the things you need to know concerning how to make a man of yourself. After all, its really up to you. Look about, and be a gentleman. You say, "But these few remarks hardly begin to solve the problem." And echo answers, "VERBUM SAP."

HERE ENDS THE COLLEGE FRESHMAN'S DON'T BOOK BY G. F. E. (A. B.) A SYMPATHIZER. DECORATIONS AND INITIALS BY RAYMOND CARTER ILLUSTRATIONS BY CHARLES FRANK INGERSON PUBLISHED BY PAUL ELDER & COMPANY AND PRINTED FOR THEM BY THE TOMOYE PRESS UNDER THE DIRECTION OF J. H. NASH IN THE CITY OF SAN FRANCISCO DURING THE MONTH OF MAY AND YEAR NINETEEN HUNDRED & TEN