“The system is certainly unique,” mused Hewitt. “Yes,” answered Robinson, “other colleges have societies; whereas Harvard unquestionably has Society.” “Do you consider the place snobbish then?” asked Horace. The graduate thought a moment before answering. “I object to the word,” he said at last; “it’s as easy to say, as vague and denunciatory, as ‘vulgar’ or ‘selfish’ or any of those hardworked terms we apply to other people; you can only say that, making some necessary allowances for a few purely local customs, Harvard society is influenced, or guided, or governed, as you please to express it, by about the same conventions that obtain in other civilised communities. Lots of people who have only a newspaper acquaintance with the place think that wealth is the only requisite here. They have an affection for the phrase ‘a rich man’s college,’--whatever that may mean. But of course all that is absurd to any one who has spent four years in the place, and has known all the fellows with no allowances to speak of who are welcome in pretty much everything; and has seen all the bemillioned nonentities who languish through college in a sort of richly upholstered isolation. ‘Birth’ is certainly not the open sesame; a superficial inquiry into the shop and inn keeping antecedents of some of our most prominent and altogether charming brothers, smashes that little illusion. I’m not a sociologist, and I don’t pretend to know what constitutes society with a big S--to put it vulgarly--here or any place else. But there is such a thing here more than in any other college. An outsider, hearing me talk this way, would say I was making an unnecessarily large mountain out of a very ordinary molehill. But that’s because he wouldn’t understand that Society at Harvard is really the most important issue in undergraduate life. The comparatively few men who compose it, have it in their power to take hold of anything they choose to be interested in, and run it according to their own ideas--which shows the value of even a rather vague form of organisation. Fortunately, their ideas are good ones,--clean and manly. You all find out the truth of this, sooner or later. Then if you haven’t a good time, I suppose you can go away and call the place snobbish--lots of people do.” “I don’t think that’s my style exactly, and I wish you wouldn’t take that tone about it. I want to know fellows, of course: fellows like Philip Haydock and Endicott Davis and Philip Irving and ‘Peter’ Bradley and Sherman and Prescott,” said Hewitt, frankly, naming six of the most prominent men in his class; “but I can’t imagine myself thinking worse of any of them if--if--” “If you never do get to know them,” Curtiss broke in; “if your chance fails to materialise--if, after all, you are not the ‘tenth man.’” He got up as if to leave.