"WHICH I KNOW YOU WILL NOT"

There is a growing suspicion among those who have studied customs and manners during the past four or five years that the phenomenon known to the newspapers as the Social Whirl is gradually coming to rely upon the services of lower classmen for its masculine support. In the Junior and Senior years there comes to many undergraduates an awakening to the value of evenings spent in College and a coincident distrust of the glittering allurements of the ball room. The consequent open spaces in the ranks of the stags are slowly being filled by members of the Freshman class who too frequently baffled by their first contact with a world full of strange new opportunities, fall victim to the lure of whatever package has the prettiest wrapper. Two seasons usually suffice to prove to these newcomers that the contents of the carton seldom justifies the effort spent in untying the silken ribbons, but these two seasons often leave ineradicable traces on the health and dean's office standing of the seeker after truth.

Even when the value of social accomplishments is admitted for such specialized professions as the diplomatic service and investment banking, the inordinate amount of time spent in stereotyped rehearsals of these matters is only inefficiently reflected in an increased social effectiveness. If one seriously seeks to acquire a facility in the usages known as good from, there are quicker and more sure methods than an iterative attendance at eight o'clock dinners and prolonged sessions given over life dance, whose monotonous four-four rhythm, often known as "common time", is only seldom relieved by the equally hackneyed three-four of the waltz. But from this very sameness is inculcated a habit from which the plastic age finds it hard to depart Parties become not only more frequent but more lengthy and the rigid two o'clock closing rule of three years ago has been honored during the present season by breaches of from one to three hours.

There exists an association of parents ostensibly devoted to a regulation of debutante activities, but this year their sapient councils have ended in indecision. Being parents principally of debutantes they seem interested only in the ultimate tensile strength of the bond between body and soul in their daughters. The appeals so far advanced by Harvard authorities interested in preventing students in the two lower classes from forming entangling alliances have met with a rude neglect. In spite of the theory that college men should he allowed to produce their own salvation without supervision from above, a certain protection should still be allowed the younger of them from allurement that no longer tempts burnt children in the upper classes, Humanitarianism, even if unsupported by a common love of parents for offspring, should prompt the amalgamated parents of Boston ton consider the feelings of the mothers and fathers of Harvard sons. Too often this latter, less prominent group tardily discovers that an earnest devotion to the Boston side of a Harvard education cuts short the availability of Harvard itself.