Perfect Behavior: A Guide for Ladies and Gentlemen in All Social Crises
Donald Ogden Stewart106COLLEGE BOYS It is the tendency of the age to excuse many social errors in young people, and especially is this true of the mischievous pranks of college boys. If Harvard football heroes and their “rooters,” for example, wish to let their hair grow long and wear high turtle-necked red “sweaters,” corduroy trousers and huge “frat” pins, I, for one, can see no grave objection, for “boys will be boys” and I am, I hope, no “old fogy” in such matters. But I also see no reason why these same young fellows should not be interested in the graces of the salon and the arts of the drawing-room. Consider, for example, the following two letters, illustrating the correct and incorrect method in which two young college men should correspond, and tell me if there is not some place in our college curriculum for a Professor of Deportment: An Incorrect Letter from a Princeton Student to a Yale Student Congratulating the Latter on His Football Victory DEAR MIKE: Here’s your damn money. I was a fool to give you odds. ED. P. S. What happened at the Nass? I woke up Sunday with a terrific welt on my forehead and somebody’s hat with the initials L. G. T., also a Brooks coat. Do you know whose they are? P. P. S. Please for God’s sake don’t cash this check until the fifteenth or I’m ruined. And here is the way in which I would suggest that this same letter be indited.

