Harvard Morality.

The writer remembers, one evening several years ago, before he entered Harvard, riding from Boston to Cambridge in company with a couple of Harvard students. One of these students who was highly exhilarated periodically, solaced himself by grasping the supporting straps and swinging his feet up against the roof of the car. This simple amusement pleased us all, but one old lady remarked that she guessed that no young man in such a state could be very moral. Whether any exact definition of morality could be found in Harvard undergraduate ethics is a matter of grave doubt. Some think that morality taboes smoking, drinking, gambling, and the like. Others maintain that the term is not so general. Still, others say nothing, but adopt a code of morals so highly elastic that they do not themselves dare to classify their acts. Is it true that the students of Harvard smoke more, drink deeper, and live faster than the students of other colleges? Let us look at the matter a little closer for a moment. In a university so large as Harvard it will be possible to find students of every shade of private character. Some of us affect the Byronic and boast themselves "perfect Timons, not nineteen." Others betray the evil course of their life quite unconsciously. A few of us are cheats, and betray it in all that we do. But notwithstanding such exceptions, is it true that the spirit of Harvard fosters a loose morality and tends to elevate the evil above the good? It is true that our "social gatherings" are better attended than our prayer meetings, that societies offer more attractions than the chapel, that the Harvard spy-glass is not unknown in Boston theatres at certain seasons of the year, and that the writings of certain authors are a little more closely thumbed than the books of Miss Austin. But where is the harm in all this? "Boys will be boys, of course." The question then resolves itself into a question of innate morality. Are our ideas chronically immoral?

If we were to judge the character of all from the positively expressed characters of the few, we would agree with some of our staid, well-meaning friends in thinking that "those Harvard boys are the worst lot this side of Yale." But suffice to say, we do not agree to this verdict. We are not a "bad lot." There are as noble young men among Harvard students as ever despised cant and followed the right. Why then is this unfavorable opinion? It is simply because the rank grass has overtopped good, the tares grown over the wheat. Judged by such a standard as this verdict would necessitate, we would all be athletes, dudes, and writers of sentimental pessimistic verse. This, of course, is absurd. Let us then be judged with fairness if not leniently. We are gentlemen, and our actions prove it. Nor because we sign a prayer petition can we be justly called a "pack of boys," as one New York paper styles us, or a "set of indifferent, dissolute young men," as still another journal classifies us. Every university has the same imputations laid at its doors in the same blind carping spirit. While we acknowledge all that is true, we protest against the sneer conveyed in the term "Harvard Morality!"