Explore "Gladiator" by Philip Wylie on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
From the day of his arrival Webster University felt the presence of Hugo Danner. Classes, football practice, hazing, fraternity scouting began on that morning with a feverish and good-natured hurly-burly that, for a time, completely bewildered him. Hugo participated in everything. He went to the classroom with pleasure. It was never difficult for him to learn and never easier than in those first few weeks. The professors he had known (and he reluctantly included his own father) were dry-as-dust individuals who had none of the humanities. And at least some of the professors at Webster were brilliant, urbane, capable of all understanding. Their lectures were like tonic to Hugo.
The number of his friends grew with amazing rapidity. It seemed that he could not cross the campus without being hailed by a member of the football team and presented to another student. The Psi Deltas saw to it that he met the entire personnel of their chapter at Webster. Other fraternities looked at him with covetous eyes, but Lefty Foresman, who was chairman of the membership committee, let it be known that the Psi Deltas had marked Hugo for their own. And no one refused their bid.