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. "I suppose you're right, 'fresh,'" he admitted slowly. "I'm not of the fighting sort. And I have my fraternity to consider. That's the worst of belonging to a fraternity." He took up his pipe again and smoked in silence for a while. "I suppose you think you'll never be happy, now that you know you aren't going to be in a fraternity. Take my word for it, you're ten times luckier in having your freedom. Wait until you're an upperclassman and you'll agree with me." It seemed a dreadful sacrilege for him to be saying it. Besides, I thought he was blaming his own lack of fighting power on his fraternity in too heavy and unjust a degree. I wasn't any more of a fighter than he--but I was disappointed, somehow, that his pugnacity had died out so readily. "I can't do it, 'fresh,'" he confessed, with a grin. "I'm not the scrapper I thought I could be. I just want to go through college lazily, happily, respectably--and all that. I wouldn't know how to make a rumpus if I wanted to. But listen here." He pointed his finger at me sternly. "If I were you, I wouldn't rest until I had made the fight and won it. Fight it not only for yourself but for the hundred other Jewish fellows in college. See that they get a square deal. See that they don't lose out on all the things that make college worth while. A Jew is just as good as anyone else, isn't he?" "Yes," I answered him only faintly. "Well, then, go ahead and prove that fact to the whole college world." But, though I did not answer him, I knew that I was not any more able to make the fight than he. Less able, perhaps, because I was more handicapped. I made myself a thousand excuses as I sat there thinking it over--I was not brave enough, that was all.