The Worcester spy. [volume] (Worcester, Mass.) 1898-1904, 1899-08-20
The CLUB BACILLUS.
Popular Girls Must
Guard Against its
Baneful Influence.
SOCIAL SIDE OF COLLEGE LIFE.
1t Knocks Snobbishness
Ont of the American
Young Woman.
SOCIAL SIDE OF COLLEGE LIFE.

81 think next year I'll keep out of
college clubs. I belong to nine just
now, and they're rather exhausting, SO
many Of them"
Thus confided a popular Junior, and
she smiled approximately as suggest
ed that it looked very much as if she
had caught the club bacillus and had
had bad attack, writes Mary Caro-
lin Crawford in the Philadelphia
Press.
The club bacillus, indeed, has been
abroad in many girls colleges of late,
and against its baneful influence the
popular girl needs especially to guard.
In college, as out of it, there is real
danger today of being ''over-elubbed."
Fortunately, however, college clubs
are admirably varied in their aims and
in their modus operandi. There are
clubs for work and clubs for play, and
members do not get them confused.
There are even those very desirable
things for busy women, clubs devoted
to the cultivation of that profitable
idleness which, as Stevenson has said,
consists not so much in doing nothing
as in doing a great deal that is not
usually recognized as work. Clubs, in
deed--where no insidious desire for la
Der is allowed to masquerade under
the guise of recreation, and no amount
of recreation serves to carry any I'LL
terror purpose of self-improvement.
Such purely social organizations are
many of the college fraternities. Such,
too, are the musical and theatrical
clubs of girls colleges. For the girl
with narrow or starved home life
this kind of club is immensely stimu-
lating. In her little village she has be-
longed perhaps to sewing societies and
to church organizations, but she has
never before thought of meeting peo-
pie merely for the good of her social
instincts She learns at college, there
fore, courtesies of manner pleasant
amenities of society life she would
never have learned at home
A girl, too, soon finds her level among
these college organizations finds al
most at once the thing-:if there be any
thing-that she can do better than her
chum or any of her particular friends
And what is quite as important-she
finds also that there are some things
she cannot do, things she should never
attempt.
The latter experience is a trying one,
good to have over early in life. She
applies perhaps for admission to the
glee club-and is refused. After that
she doesn't bore her friends with her
singing. Similarly she may discover
that she hasn't the slightest gift at
writing, and she stops firing kindly ed
itors with Mrs. Browningesque SON
nets. All this the right-minded girl rec
ogniZes as valuable experience
The other side Of the picture is far
more pleasant, however. With what a
thrill girl suddenly finds that she can
act well enough to be cast for a good
role in theatricals, can speak good
enough French to be sought after in
the Cercle, can write sufficiently lido
matte German to have her Verein pa
per commended by the clubs PRESIDENT
These things put heart into the shy
girl. and since many clubs multiply on
portunities for such heartening and
give varied gifts a chance for self-ex-
preston, / for one am thankful the COL
lege has many clubs.
OF the social development which
comes from campus friendliness too
much in the way of praise can scarcely
be said. OF course, this has its pos
sibility of abuse. Very often a, girl
begins her college career with such So
clal proclivities as to permit her no
chance for study, but if she doesn't
stop frittering in time she is sure to be
brought I'D at examinations with a
turn so round as to serve for a final
warning. Thus the abuse corrects it
self
The part that college girl friendships
are destined to play in American de-
nocEacy is subject so vast and so
deep that one wonders it has not been
more widely recognized.
We are told that it is the American
woman who today inclines to snobbisb
ness. Her brother has rubbed at col
lege against fellows from every re-
spectacle stratum Of society. He
knows man when he sees one, ire
spective of the tailor who made him.
The country minister's son, working
his way through college, he met on the
foot ball team. The millionaire's off,
spring, encountered in his dining club
he knows for Thoroughly good
chap"
Now just such rubbing against all
sorts and conditions Of girls ii is thar
will knock the snobbishness out of the
American young woman. The society
girl brings her narrowness to college
with her, but she seldom has it when
she is graduated. She has learned di1r-
ing her course as she never could have
learned from distance how much there
is that is fine and noble in girls who are
not in her set" And this Democratic
intelligence it is which in the fullness cf
time will work out as one of the great
est gifts of the girls college-a social
gift because we are a social people
Yet, when all is said, club contact and
the natural intercourse of classmates
are very secondary social influences in
the modern college. 1t is the real love
girls come to feel for each other which
does most to brighten their lives.
Have you ever noticed groups Of col
lege girls as they stroll about the cam
pus oc chat together on the hall steps ?
If you have you must have observed
that there is comparatively little shunt-
ing in couples" Three, four or FIVE
girls come along together, chatting
brightly They drop into somebody's
room for a cup of tea, and still, though
all is friendly and affectionate. there is
almost nothing of r-sentimentality.
No jealousies, no smallnesses are here.
Congental friends, these girls love each
other with the right kind Of love. the
love which "beareth, believeth. trust
eth and nopeth all things"
And when college days are long past
and clubs and coteries forgotten the
pure, sweet remembrance of such love
as this will make better, drawer women
Of the girls, who felt it and will be
treasured up as the most vital social
influence in four years Of a distinctly
social life"
LnM LIE ENRRESSEn