““The Loyal Order of the Basset Hound had been conceived as a society for the elect among Alabaster students - "elect" meaning those from particularly loyal and moneyed Alabaster families, and meaning also those who were considered cool enough. Many collegiate societies have some notion of excellence that drives their selection process, and certainly no one who was not excellent was admitted as a Basset Hound. But it was a notion of excellence as determined by seventeen-year-old boys, not by teachers and parents, so the entertainment potential of your conversation counted considerably more than your ability to craft a decent essay on World War II, and your excellence on the playing field counted only if your ability to banter in the locker room was equally strong. Family wealth and social class didn't count on the surface. What those factors did was to lend the boys who had them an almost intangible sense of security regarding their places in the world, which often (though not always) led to social dominance, which led to induction in the Local Order.””
