The Sweets of Secrecy

A Few Thoughts On the Pleasures of Exclusive Societies Inspired by the Late Shifters

GEORGE S. CHAPPELL

WITHIN recent weeks we have been treated to a quite amazing display—the sudden springing into being of that extraordinary secret society, the Shifters. In New York it grew and grew, like a gigantic bubble, until it reached the breaking point. Then, pop! it was gone.

Were you a Shifter? Are you, perhaps, one still?

Although, in some cities it is but a memory, there still remains much that is permanent and significant in the spirit which created it. Slight and trivial as the Shifters may seem, there is food for thought in the swiftness with which the organization took form and ran like an epidemic among the younger generation. What was it in this playful sodality, which gave it its immense power and threw genuine alarm into the ranks of timorous educators and professional kill-joys?

I think I can answer the question very briefly.

The Shifters were primarily the youth of the land, banded together in secret. Nothing in the world irritates and annoys a grown-up quite so much as to feel that young people possess any knowledge or understanding in which the grown-up cannot have a full share.

Just what the secrets of the Shifters were is very vague. They were never fully understood, even by the Shifters themselves. But there was something shadowy and mysterious, to which most adults were not admitted. Thanks to a cheerful idiocy of character, I am able at times to make myself appear much younger than I really am, and it was at one of these happy moments that I became a Shifter myself, and was initiated into the ritual of the order. Of course, as a fellow Shifter, I am bound by my oath not to divulge its secrets, but I mention the fact of my membership in order to qualify as an expert in speaking of it. I know whereof I speak.

Hail, Blithe Spirits

THE point is that we youngsters are really quite harmless. Our association—at least the chapter of it to which I was admitted— represented only the fortuitous gathering together of six or seven young people aided and abetted by a bottle of gin—my own contribution, as I recall it, which perhaps accounted for the unanimous vote in my favor. We merely skylarked about and decorated each other with the official paper-clip insignia, danced and made merry and all the little ones were home and in bed by four-thirty. And this, I am convinced, was the spirit of the Shifters throughout the land. There were forfeits involved and various presents promised, but never given, the sort of promises one makes in a cab!

This was the innocent sodality which, according to educational agitators, became a nation-wide menace overnight. The foundations of our young manhood and womanhood were assailed. The Shifters had taken the lid off temptation. Our pure young girls were made the prey of unscrupulous males, after having been bound by solemn oath to obey their vile behests! These were the things that rang through the columns of our papers.

Miss Sarah Addington of the Topeka Normal School, announced boldly that she "would raze Bigbee Hall to the ground in order to stamp out the poisonous doctrines of the Shifter Society, so-called, which were threatening the very foundations of Kansas girlhood." The Rev. Henry Tophole, of Hicks Academy, viewed with alarm the "young women on the glorious roster of Hicks, who used co-education as a cloak to graft eskimo pies off the male members of the student body."

Press and pulpit echoed with denunciation. And what was the reason? Youth had a secret and Old Age didn't like it.

This is curious, because, if there is anything Middle and Old Age delights in, it is in having a secret to which Youth is not admitted.

The Element of Exclusion

I RECALL with painful distinctness the hot rage which used to rush over me when my parents whispered to each other at table, or crudely thrust me out of a conversation by asking me to "run along," or worse still, resorted to a rapid-spelling method which, in addition to keeping me in the dark, was an insult to my intelligence. This sort of treatment led me to all sorts of sin. I labored relentlessly over my spelling book and, when I received a good mark in the subject, I falsified the monthly report card so that my parents would .continue their syllabic mouthings under the impression that I was a non-comprehending ninny. I became a domestic spy, a professional eavesdropper and keyhole listener.

Secrecy invariably breeds this sort of resentment, which is why the Grundys and the Heeps pounced on the Shifters with such outcries.

As uncle and godfather to numerous small fry, I have occasion to observe how quickly the infant mind seizes upon the delights of secrecy. It is a primitive instinct, like its first cries for food. My niece Emily, for instance, suddenly evolved the idea of having a secret with me from her brother Paul. Applying her rather sticky lips to my ear—she had been eating chocolate nougat—she murmured confidentially —"Bzzt, bzzt, bzzt."

That was the entire extent of her communication. Bowing gravely, I whispered, "Pst, pst, pst." Paul howled with rage, and Emily was eminently satisfied.

Here is the very essence of secrecy. First, the possession of a secret, real or imaginary. Second, the sharing of it with one or more others. Third, the rigid exclusion of a great many people. Of course, the last is the most important.

Is not this element of exclusion the dominant one in thousands of organizations in our country today? As I look back over the milestones of my life, recalling its many stages of social development, I am struck with a certain amount of dismay as I remember the exultant feelings inspired by the fact that I belonged to certain mysterious clans and that some of my companions did not.

From the kindergarten to the grave the sequence of such secret societies is unbroken. Boyhood is marked by the crystallization of gangs and bands. My first real thrill of organized secrecy came from the Black Ten, a blood-curdling group, which held its meetings in the eaves of my Uncle Frank's house. The thoughtful builder had left a small opening which led to a long, triangular space back of an attic room. In this blackness we lighted our candle ends and smoky dark lanterns—I can smell the hot japanned tin still!—puffed our clay pipes, full of saw-dust, the bite of which is much worse than the bark, and conspired our next raid on the nearest empty house. It was an ideal place in which to have started a hideous conflagration, in which we must inevitably have perished. But the Lord was with us, even under the eaves, and we were spared for several seasons to lord it over the miserable creatures slightly younger than ourselves, who could never hope to be members of the Black Ten!

Preparatory school and college are, frankly, more intensely symbolized by the secret society than by any other form of activity. In fact, all other activities converge toward the goal of this or that magnificent group. Here we see secrecy in full bloom. How many thousands of dollars are represented, I wonder, in the luxurious structures which house the mysteries of youth, from the hermetically sealed tombs of the ultra-secretive to the more broadly open fraternity houses, which still artfully conceal the inner shrine to which only a Brother may penetrate! What dark ceremonies are enacted within, what fearful oaths sworn, and with what understandable resentment are the sacred Sigma Taus or Beta Alphas regarded by the unfortunate outsiders, whose breasts bear no insignia.

Secrets of the Elders

HERE, too, the resentment takes tangible form. The outsiders find organizations, and the cry of "Down with the Societies" is a periodical one in our educational institutions. The problem finds its solution in the only possible way. These groups can no more be suppressed than the process of fermentation. Blot out the Sigs and the Betas, and the infinitely more secret Omicrons will spring into being, undermining the law even as the vast Bootleggers' League practices its unholy rites under the shadow of the Constitution. No, the solution is in the creation of more secret societies into which the malcontents may be absorbed. How quickly their opposition fades when they, too, are decorated with a tasty enamel pin, bearing the mystic clasped hands, or what not!

This is the process which plays upon the vanity of our elder generations and results in the myriad emblems of Elks, Redmen, Buffalos, Masons and a thousand and one other orders. Nor is the element of association and exclusion absent from our clubs and social organizations. Indeed, it is the very essence of them. Tompkins is a member of the Gotham Club, but he can't for the life of him get into the Murray Hill. Why? Ah, that is the Murray Hill's secret. It isn't openly expressed. The Murray Hills don't wear any pins or swear any oaths, but they have a can ready for Tompkins every time his name comes up. Tompkins is naturally peeved. He says the Murray Hills are a bunch of prunes.

He has, in a way, become a Shifter.