A Class in Engineering and Omelets

Despite his aloofness, Milt was not unpopular in his class. The
engineers had few of them the interest in dances, athletics, college
journalism, which distinguished the men in the academic course. They
were older, and more conscious of a living to earn. And Milt's cheerful,
"How's the boy?" his manner of waving his hand--as though to a good
customer leaving the Red Trail Garage with the generator at last
tamed--indicated that he was a "good fellow."

One group of collegians Milt did seek. It is true that he had been
genuine in scorning social climbers. But it is also true that the men
whom he sought to know were the university smart set. Their satisfaction
in his allegiance would have been lessened, however, had they known how
little he cared for what they thought of him, and with what cruel
directness he was using them as models for the one purpose of pleasing
Miss Claire Boltwood.

The American state universities admit, in a pleased way, that though
Yale and Harvard and Princeton may be snobbish, the state universities
are the refuge of a myth called "college democracy." But there is no
university near a considerable city into which the inheritors of the
wealth of that city do not carry all the local social distinctions.
Their family rank, their place in the unwritten peerage, determines to
which fraternity they shall be elected, and the fraternity determines
with whom--men and girls--they shall be intimate. The sons and daughters
of Seattle and Tacoma, the scions of old families running in an unbroken
line clear back to 1880, were amiable to poor outsiders from the Yakima
valley and the new claims of Idaho, but they did not often invite them
to their homes on the two hills and the Boulevard.