by Bro. Sydney P. Brown

GOODWILL is the monarch of this house.  Men, unacquainted, enter,
shake hands, exchange greetings, and depart friends.  Cordiality exists
among all who abide within.

I am the eminent expression of friendship.  Character and temperament
change under my dominant power.  Lives once touched by me become tuned
and are therefore amiable, kindly, fraternal.

I inspire the musician to play noble sentiments and assist the chemist to
convert ungenerous personalities into individuals of great worth.  I destroy
all ignoble impulses.  I constantly invoke principles which make for common
brotherhood and the echo responds in all communities and princely men are
thereby recognized.  Education, health, music, encouragement, sympathy,
laughter - all these are species of interest given on self-invested capital.

Tired moments find me a delightful treat, hours of sorrow, a shrine of
understanding - at all times, I am faithful to the creed of companionship.

To a few, I am the castle of dreams - ambitious, successful, hopeful dreams.
To many, I am the poetic palace where human feeling is rhymed to celestial
motives; to the great majority, I am the treasury of good fellowship.

In fact, I am the college of friendship, the university of brotherly love;
the school for the better making of men.
I AM ALPHA PHI ALPHA!

by Rudyard Kipling

If you can keep your head when all about you   

    Are losing theirs and blaming it on you,   

If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you,

    But make allowance for their doubting too;   

If you can wait and not be tired by waiting,

    Or being lied about, don’t deal in lies,

Or being hated, don’t give way to hating,

    And yet don’t look too good, nor talk too wise:

If you can dream—and not make dreams your master;   

    If you can think—and not make thoughts your aim;   

If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster

    And treat those two impostors just the same;   

If you can bear to hear the truth you’ve spoken

    Twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools,

Or watch the things you gave your life to, broken,

    And stoop and build ’em up with worn-out tools:

If you can make one heap of all your winnings

    And risk it on one turn of pitch-and-toss,

And lose, and start again at your beginnings

    And never breathe a word about your loss;

If you can force your heart and nerve and sinew

    To serve your turn long after they are gone,   

And so hold on when there is nothing in you

    Except the Will which says to them: ‘Hold on!’

If you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue,   

    Or walk with Kings—nor lose the common touch,

If neither foes nor loving friends can hurt you,

    If all men count with you, but none too much;

If you can fill the unforgiving minute

    With sixty seconds’ worth of distance run,   

Yours is the Earth and everything that’s in it,   

    And—which is more—you’ll be a Man, my son!