"I think you ought to keep Jewish boys out of my college," I told him. "It--it isn't altogether fair, and it would only provoke a renewal of the prejudice, if there should be as many freshmen next year as there were this." "You are a Jew yourself," he said accusingly. "Yes, I am. But don't judge by me.... I have always been an exception to all that prejudice." "Oh, have you? I wonder why?" I resented his tone, but went on to explain how I had entered college long before the antagonism had broken out; had worked hard, with Christian friends to help me, until I had won honors which assured me immunity from any unpleasantness. "I congratulate you," he said dryly. "You no doubt deserve these honors. Your sort always does." I stood up angrily and looked him square in the face. Then suddenly I recognized him.... Pictures of my public school days came up before me.... The class room and the big, crippled bully, Geoghen.... That finding of the Hebrew prayer book when the teacher was out of the room, and the hooting and mocking ... and then the teacher's return--and the fight. It was Mr. Levi. He smiled when he saw that I knew him, now. "I remembered you more readily," he said. "You have no beard to change your appearance." But it was more than his beard: there was a complete change in him from the dreamy, pale young man who had learned so harsh a lesson in those old days. There was a bitter twist to his mouth. His lips were set sternly, his eyebrows were lowered, his brow crossed by scowling lines. "There's one thing about you that I remember," he snapped at me. "You were a Jew--and yet you stood aside and let those little cads take the book of God and make nasty fun of it--and never raised your hand or even your voice to stop them. That's the sort of boy you were. And, I suppose, you're still the same. It'd seem so, anyhow. You probably won all your college honors through standing aside. And now you have the audacity to ask me to do the same, lest you be made uncomfortable by the number of other Jewish boys at your college. You want me to stand aside, do you? Well, I wish I had a thousand Jewish boys to enter into your college's next year's class!" He glared at me. "If you want to know the truth, I can't get a single boy in my school to go to your college, now. I wish I could. Because I'm training them to fight like men. They aren't the sort who win honors by allowing themselves to be classed as exceptions...." As for myself, I knew that he was half wrong, half right--and that there was nothing more for me to say. I had learned what I came to learn. So I got up to go. "And if there's another such demonstration, next year," he sneered, "you and your precious honors will have to stand aside again, eh? It must keep you very light on your feet!" XVIII I STAND--BUT NOT ASIDE Thus it happened that only five Jews enrolled in the entering freshman class. One of them, of course, was Frank Cohen.