utes. So they approved these things that the two
editors had done, did they? So they could laugh and clap to hear how
Sayer and Braley had crushed the spirit out of two young Jews in front
of fifty other freshmen?

I grew too angry to wait. I was not going to dawdle idly in the
background, waiting for a foolish, theatrical entrance cue--I wasn't
going to "stand aside" a moment longer!

I hurried into the building, up stairs and around corners until I was at
the very threshold of the hall. The big mass of men there, the lights,
the noise of their clapping, ten times louder from within--all of it
gave a tightening to my throat. My knees began to tremble violently.

It was Braley who was speaking. He was waving his hand with his usual
sense of the grandiloquence of his remarks. I heard, I suppose, only the
last of them--but that was enough:

"I regret, of course, that I should have had to give pain to these two
poor little kike freshmen. I regret that I have thereby offended no less
a person than the president of the class. But there is the broader way
of looking at this thing: that of the interest of the whole community.
And I believe, as every man in this room believes, that it would be ten
times better that all Jews be debarred from our college. If not that,
then certainly from all our college activities, in order that real
Anglo-Saxon fair play may prevail! If any man, including the Jew who has
instigated this protest against Sayer and myself, wishes to refute
this, let him step forward now or be forever silent."

He sat down grandly, amid huzzas.

I do not know whether he or Sayer actually meant me to be incarcerated
during all that day and night, while the meeting went forward so
famously. Probably they had had it in mind when they played the
vindictive little prank, and had been ashamed, when in better senses, to
come back and release me. Certainly Sayer, who sat close to the door,
turned pale when he saw me now.

I went slowly to the front of the room. My eyes pained me and I was
nauseated. But I had ceased to tremble and was calm with a fury that
checked all nervousness.

"The Jew who instigated this protest is here to back it up," I said
slowly. "He is here to appeal to the 'real Anglo-Saxon fair play.'"

I could feel in the air the antagonism which I must down. I knew, as
never before, how bitter and insensate was the prejudice which I must
conquer by fifteen minutes of quiet words.

What I said does