College Freshman's Don't Book

<h2>AS TO SETTLING DOWN</h2> <div class="sidenote">YOUR ARRIVAL</div> <div class="figleft"> <ANTIMG src="images/i_003-drop-d.png" width-obs="150" height-obs="176" alt="D" /></div> <div class='unindent'><br/><br/><br/>ON'T think that your <i>mere arrival</i> at College has made you able to <i>relieve Atlas</i> in holding up the World. The World's idea of you at this point is, that you're something like a gold-fish just let loose in a glass globe. It <i>will begin to expect</i> something of you when you're dumped into the big Ocean.</div> <div class="sidenote">YOUR RESIDENCE</div> <p><i>Don't</i>, if you can possibly side-step it, begin to live in a place which you do not like. The <i>Blue-Willies</i> may lurk in the corners. Many a <i>Freshman</i> changes his residence about the <i>mid-year</i>, because he has not made a careful selection at first. The moving<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_4" id="Page_4">[4]</SPAN></span> often entails cracked wash-bowls, broken pictures and casts, stifled oaths, and a sense of <i>great unrest</i> not appropriate to the season.</p> <div class="sidenote">YOUR LANDLADY</div> <p><i>Don't</i> treat your <i>Landlady</i> 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 <i>descended from the best early families</i> (you have only to take <i>their</i> word for this). Though they are often inquisitive, their inquisitiveness often comes from their genuine interest in you. Sometimes, <i>the more they know</i> of your family history, <i>the less they will charge</i> you for oil and gas, at the end of the month.</p> <div class="sidenote">HER RIGHTS</div> <p><i>Don't</i> begin <i>too</i> early in the term to make your Landlady's house a <i>noisy abode</i>. She may get impatient and do something hasty, such as even demanding your key, payment and evacuation.<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_5" id="Page_5">[5]</SPAN></span> In <i>such</i> 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 <i>catch</i>, as to <i>land a fish</i>, you now see that it is primarily derived from her ability <i>to come down hard</i> on a special occasion.</p> <div class="sidenote">THE DUSTING LADY</div> <p><i>Don't</i> be discouraged if you can't find anything in the right place after the <i>dusting lady</i> has put things in order. It's a <i>way they have</i>.</p> <div class="sidenote">YOUR ROOM</div> <p><i>Don't</i> 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 <i>raised in a barn</i>, and there can be no <i>harm</i> in letting the appearance of your room bear out this as fact.</p> <div class="sidenote">FITTING IT UP</div> <p><i>Don't</i> try to make a <i>royal residence</i> of your room. Your taste<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_6" id="Page_6">[6]</SPAN></span> may alter. A College man's taste often undergoes rapid and violent revolution <i>for the better</i>, within the first year.</p> <div class="sidenote">A WORD ABOUT RUGS</div> <p><i>Don't</i> think that you must have Turkish rugs. <i>Generally</i>, a <i>Freshman</i> 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 <i>get</i> 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 <i>Oriental</i> they look. You've no idea how much sweeping this saves.</p> <div class="sidenote">ABOUT BRIC-A-BRAC</div> <p><i>Don't</i> go in for a lot of fine china, the first term. How can <i>you</i> 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,<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_7" id="Page_7">[7]</SPAN></span> a "rough-house" may be a more expensive variety of entertainment than Grand Opera <i>with seats for the family</i>.</p> <div class="sidenote">ABOUT DECORATIONS</div> <p><i>Don't</i> get angry if a Senior comes into your room and looks about and smiles. Probably, he's only remembering that <i>he</i> once decorated his room the way you now do yours. Just <i>keep your eyes open</i> 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 <i>sole</i> decorations may be lived down,&mdash;or later <i>pulled down</i>. If you wish to be <i>exceptionally</i> 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 <i>you</i> were <i>once</i> a Freshman.</p> <div class="sidenote">ABOUT FURNITURE</div> <p><i>Don't</i> overdo with respect to<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_8" id="Page_8">[8]</SPAN></span> <i>furniture</i>, even if you can afford it; it <i>may</i> make some of your visitors uncomfortable. If you <i>can't</i> afford it, you'll be made uncomfortable yourself.</p> <div class="sidenote">THE COLLEGE COLOR</div> <p><i>Don't</i> mistake the <i>color</i> of your College. A good many Freshmen do this;&mdash;it is especially pathetic, by the way, to see a Freshman waving a flag which is <i>off-color</i> at a big game. Sometimes the mistake is attributed to color-blindness. This is a charitable interpretation.</p> <div class="sidenote">ABOUT THAT STUDY-DESK</div> <p><i>Don't</i> buy a roll-top desk or an iron safe during your first year. You know, you may not care to occupy one room <i>all through College</i>. 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 <i>rooming in the desk</i>.</p> <div class="figcenter"> <ANTIMG src="images/i_008a.png" width-obs="369" height-obs="600" alt="Decorated room" /> <span class="caption">DONT OVERDO THE <i>DECORATION</i> OF YOUR ROOM</span></div> <div class="sidenote">GETTING ON</div> <p><i>Don't</i> think that you have fairly <i>got on</i> to things while the tray of your trunk is still <i>unpacked</i>.</p> <div class="sidenote">TAKING A HAZING</div> <p><i>Don't</i> 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 <i>funeral</i> or a <i>farce;</i> 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 <i>just</i> about as bad as getting mad about it. Just fool them into thinking you're <i>enjoying</i> yourself, and they'll stop.</p> <div class="sidenote">A TRICK ABOUT RECEIVING VISITORS</div> <p><i>Don't</i> neglect to <i>receive</i> your <i>visitors</i> as if you were glad to see them. This is not encouraging hypocrisy, inasmuch as the<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_9" id="Page_9">[9]</SPAN><br/><SPAN name="Page_10" id="Page_10">[10]</SPAN></span> recommendation <i>need not include</i> the laundryman or the tailor's collector. You couldn't fool <i>them</i>, 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 <i>between</i> visitors, they ought not to cause you to waste any valuable time.</p> <div class="sidenote">MUSICAL TEMPERANCE</div> <p><i>Don't</i> play the piano at all hours. Have a regular time for practice; then your neighbors may <i>protect</i> themselves. If you play the violin or the trumpet, <i>don't overdo it;</i> you are tempting Fate.</p> <div class="sidenote">THE PROCTOR</div> <p><i>Don't</i> incur the anger of your Proctor by noisy conduct or disrespect. Proctors&mdash;especially young ones&mdash;are apt to feel their oats and to report you on slight provocation. But a friendly Proctor is a friend worth having.</p> <hr class="chap" /><p><span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_11" id="Page_11">[11]</SPAN></span></p> <div style="break-after:column;"></div><br />