The average rate of living at college differs. One of the newspapers, in
discussing the question, said that in most of the New England colleges a
steady and sturdy young man need not spend more than six hundred dollars
during the four years. This is obviously too low an estimate. Another
thinks that the average rate at Harvard is probably from six hundred to ten
hundred a year. Another computes a fair liberal average in the smaller New
England colleges to be from twenty-four to twenty-six hundred dollars for
the four years, and the last class at Williams is reported to have ranged
from an average of six hundred and fifty dollars in the first year to seven
hundred and twenty-eight dollars in the Senior. But the trouble lies in
Sardanapalus. The mischief that he does is quite disproportioned to the
number of him. In a class of one hundred the number of rich youth may be
very small. But a college class is an American community in which every
member is necessarily strongly affected by all social influences.

A few "fellows" living in princely extravagance in superbly furnished
rooms, with every device of luxury, entertaining profusely, elected into
all the desirable clubs and societies, conforming to another taste and
another fashion than that of the college, form a class which is separate
and exclusive, and which looks down on those who cannot enter the charmed
circle. This is galling to the pride of the young man who cannot compete.
The sense of the inequality is constantly refreshed. He may, indeed, attend
closely to his studies. He may "scorn delights, and live laborious days."
He may hug his threadbare coat and gloat over his unrugged floor as the
fitting circumstance of "plain living and high thinking." It is always
open to character and intellect to perceive and to assert their essential
superiority. Why should Socrates heed Sardanapalus? Why indeed? But the
average young man at college is not an ascetic, nor a devotee, nor an
absorbed student unmindful of cold and heat, and disdainful of elegance
and ease and the nameless magic of social accomplishment and grace. He is