As to the drinking bit, the President observed that there wasn't as much drinking in college as out, and that the average college man did not consume so much as his average father.

Eliot's endeavors to make Harvard less a monastery and more a university found little sympathy in the press.

The Boston Herald gave word that it had information about Harvard which, if printed, would leave no Harvard parent "whose blood would no boil and who would not stamp his feet with indignation."

On listening to the Herald's opinion, Eliot told reporters that "this editorial is beneath notice and I shall certainly pay no more attention to it."

But others, including various Overseers and faculty members, were paying attention. The Transcript spoke for many when it commented that "President Eliot has made this policy his hobby to such a preposterous extent that he is today very popular with the fast set which runs the Dickey."

Evidently the fast set controlled some portion of the press, however, for Eliot found defense, some thoughtful and some puerile.

The Illustrated American advised "the youth who cannot undergo the amusing ordeal with equanimity" to remain at home "in bib and trucker, and confine his worldly career to the mastery of the abacus and the building of mud pies."

Eliot's position was far, however, from the-Dickey-boys-will-be-amusing-won't-they, approach. In theory he wanted exactly what Garrison advised when he poetically entreated the President to "Ring in nobler modes of life with sweeter manners, nobler laws."

Except that Eliot appreciated the difficulty of ringing changes in. Instead of edicts, he used the same ap-