after he had made the suggestion, he began to stammer and make strange
protests. I asked him to tell me plainly what was wrong.

"Why, it's the same with that as with the track team. The
editor-in-chief of the paper is in my 'crowd.' I'll speak to him--and
save you any trouble. If he says yes, then you go out and win a place on
the board of editors. But if he says no, I want you to promise me that
you won't subject yourself to any more of this puppy-dog prejudice."

I did promise. And two days later I received a postcard from Trevelyan,
telling me that it would hardly be worth my while to try for the college
paper. He added, in the large, unruly handwriting which his
near-sightedness made necessary:

"You may go on breathing, however, if you don't make a noise at it."

He supplemented this, a few nights later, when he and I were at our old
places in his room. He threw down his pipe in the midst of talking about
something carefully unimportant, and sat up with a laughably angry
face.

"See here, 'fresh,'" he bawled out, "you're getting the rottenest deal I
ever saw. You know why--so do I. And we're going to show them a thing or
two. We're going to buck up against the strongest thing in the
world--and that thing is prejudice. We're going to beat it, too. Do you
understand? Were going to beat it out! Smash it to pieces!"

Yes, I understood, I said. I understood it all only too well. So well,
indeed, that I knew there was no use trying to fight. I knew that
prejudice of race and religion was the strongest shield of the ignorant
and mean, that neither he nor I could fight it fairly--and that, if he
came into the fight by my side, he would ruin his own chances of being
one of the biggest men in the college world when his senior year
arrived.

"A lot I care for being a big man in a place of little thoughts," he
snapped back at me. "I'm ready to take the consequences, now and forever
after."

"Have you thought of what your fraternity brothers might say about it?"
I asked him.

"I don't care--I don't--well, if they--." His voice died away in
perplexity. I had hit upon his weak spot. He was an easy-going, likeable
chap; he hated a rumpus. If he made any sort of fight against the
anti-Jewish prejudice, he would have his whole fraternity against him,
he would perhaps be shunned by all his sworn brothers, by his best
college friends. His enthusiasm became a little dulled, then died down
into a great good-natured sigh.