over. They allege that such a party always costs twice as much as, when it is being planned, any one imagines it will cost.
Then the mathematical geniuses who are quick at figures and able to prove anything when they get busy, take the floor and show that it is really economy to give the house party. They demonstrate the fact that with the girls in the house there is neither the opportunity nor the necessity for the fellows to spend money that there is when just a formal dance is held. The facts are presented so alluringly, and the details are shown so convincingly, that the freshmen, innocent of this sort of guile and eager for the excitement of things new, believe the sophistry and are ready at once to vote for the party. They need only the argument of the socially ambitious to the effect that this is the one and only way to put ourselves right before the girls and to give us a center position upon the local social map, to make them, as the girls say, really crazy for it. A vote of this sort is often very much like a Sunday school election—the children are sure to vote for anybody or any thing that is put up.
They had had some warm discussions this year, I am quite convinced, before I was called in to give my opinion and to make suggestions. The arguments pro and con were well presented, for there
