"LIKE HIS FATHER."
Scarborough soon lifted himself high above the throng, and was marked
by faculty and students as a man worth watching. The manner of this
achievement was one of those forecasts of the future with which youth
bristles for those who take the trouble to watch it.
Although Pierson was only a sophomore he was the political as well as
the social leader of his fraternity. Envy said that the Sigma Alphas
truckled to his wealth; perhaps the exacter truth was that his wealth
forced an earlier recognition of his real capacity. His position as
leader made him manager of the Sigma Alpha combination of fraternities
and barbs which for six years had dominated the Washington and
Jefferson Literary Society. The barbs had always voted humbly with the
aristocratic Sigma Alphas; so Pierson's political leadership apparently
had no onerous duties attached to it--and he was not the man to make
work for himself.
As the annual election approached he heard rumors of barb disaffection,
of threatened barb revolt. Vance, his barb lieutenant, reassured him.
"Always a few kickers," said Vance, "and they make a lot of noise. But
they won't draw off twenty votes." Pierson made himself easy--there
was no danger of one of those hard-fought contests which in past years
had developed at Battle Field many of Indiana's adroit political
leaders.
On election night he felt important and powerful as he sat in the front
row among the arrogant Sigma Alphas, at the head of his forces massed
in the left side of the hall. He had insisted on Scarborough's
occupying a seat just behind him. He tilted back in his arm-chair and
said, in an undertone: "You're voting with us?"