pathway, dear Hippocrates? I wish it had spared you, but I feared as much
when I heard that your peaceful town had been invaded by an advance guard
of those same People of the Whirlpool who keep the social life of their
own city in a ferment.

"You ask what is the matter, what the cause of the increasing
restlessness that appears on every side, driving the conservative
thinking class of moderate means to seek home shelter beyond city limits,
and drawing the rest into a swirl that, sooner or later, either casts
them forth as wrecks or sucks them wholly down.

"The question is difficult of answer, but there are two things that are
potent causes of the third. Money too quickly earned, or rather won,
causes an unwise expansion, and a fictitious prosperity that has degraded
the life standard. Except in exclusively academic circles, the man is
gauged by his power of financial purchase and control, and the dollar is
his hall mark. He is forced to buy, not win, his way. Of course, if
pedigree and private character correspond in quantity, so much the
better, but their importance is strictly held in abeyance.

"Even in the legendary classic shades of learning, the cold pressure of
the golden thumb crowds down and chills penniless brains. All students do
not have equal _chance_ and equal _rights_. How can they, when the
exclusiveness of many fraternities is not by intellectual gauge or the
capability for comradeship, but the power to pay high dues and spend
lavishly. Of later years, in several conspicuous cases, even the choice
of college officials of high control has been guided rather by their
capacity as financiers than for ripened and inspiring scholarship.

"Then, too, the rack of constant change is detrimental to the finer grade