“I’m not quite clear about it,” said Lowell. “It had something to do with the gas company, did it not?” “Yes,” replied Smith. “It was merely gas? It had nothing to do with electricity?” “Oh, no,” said Smith. “Nothing whatever.” “You are sure the electric light company was not involved?” “Quite sure. They are separate concerns.” “I see,” said Lowell, and talked about the European situation. So Professor Smith went home, and told a friend about the matter; the friend made him repeat it over, word for word, and then burst out laughing. “Don’t you see the point?” he asked; but Smith saw no point whatever. “Don’t you know that gas companies and electric light companies are sometimes rivals?” inquired the friend. “You can light your house with either gas or electricity; you can cook with either gas or electricity, you can heat with either gas or electricity.” “Yes, of course,” said Smith, still unenlightened. “Well, you attacked the gas company,” said the friend. “You did not attack the Edison Electric Company of your city, which happens to be a part of the electric trust which covers the entire United States. Harvard is all tied up with this electrical trust, and Massachusetts Tech still more so, and Lee, Higginson & Company are its bankers. President Lowell was perfectly willing for you to fight your local gas company, but he wanted to make sure that you hadn’t trod on the toes of Harvard’s leading industry! You will get your invitation to Harvard, I’ll wager.” And, sure enough, the invitation came a few days later! To complete the humor of the story, the fact of the invitation became known at once among the faculty of Professor Smith’s university, and had the effect of instantly killing the talk of Professor Smith’s being asked to resign! I tell this incident as it was told to me. Standing by itself it might not mean much; but before we finish with Harvard we shall have plenty of evidence to prove that when the electric men play a tune, the Lee-Higginson university dances. President Lowell, I am told, did not know the difference between a mathematician and an astronomer; when Pickering died, he proposed to put in a mathematician, and was naively surprised when it was explained to him that modern astronomy has gone so far that an observatory cannot be run by a mathematician, however expert. But ignorant as our Boston Brahmin may be about the stars of the milky way, it is certain that he knows all about the stars of State Street, he has them carefully charted and plotted, and neither he nor any member of his faculty ever bumps into them. CHAPTER XVI FREE SPEECH BUT—