Loyalty
college as he might have gone to any other. But once he is there loyalty demands that he regard this college as the best in the country—perhaps in no particular, for particulars are occasionally too tangible—but at large; the best, the finest, the noblest. Of this college he must think, and above all speak, with enthusiasm, passion and devotion; he must defend its name against all aspersions, without investigating their foundations: if he even stops to consider the plausibility of these aspersions before denouncing them, the quality of his loyalty is already second-rate. The scholastic reputation of his college may be less than mediocre; its staff may not number a single scholar of note; its alumni may be an indistinguishable mob of obscure failures: worst of all, its football and baseball teams may be the laughing-stock of the locality. But his college is the best and noblest in the country and the world: the astonishing feature of all this being that not only his school-mates expect him to say and seem to believe so, but that everybody outside the college,
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