We have received a communication from a person signing himself "Harvard Graduate" calling us to account for our supposed hard treatment of the freshman eleven subsequent to their defeat at Exeter, and claiming that our editorials on the subject were written in a jealous spirit of upper class men, against defenceless fresmen. We are sorry that the gentleman did not sign his real name, for he thus prevented us from publishing his letter, but we feel compelled in justice to our selves. to the college, and to Eighty-Eight in particular, to defend the position which we assumed in our previous statements.

In the first place the CRIMSON was in a much better position than our correspondent to judge of the game and its results, being represented on the practice field, and at the particular match in question and aided by data concerning the games of freshmen in the past. We wrote not from any spirit of jealousy, for all the upper classes wish well to the freshmen and look upon their efforts with an interest which almost equals their own. Nor was it a spirit of useless criticism which prompted our editorial but a desire to point out in a clear and forcible manner where their mistakes lay, and to show them that, as a part of the college, it is their duty to do their best if they intend to play foot ball, so that at the end of the season they may come out victors over their New Haven rivals.

Granted, as an '88 man claims, that the freshman eleven at Exeter was weakened by the loss of Hurd and by the injury to Fargo, yet it was strengthened, compared with the team which played at Andover, by the presence of Osgood and Woodman. The eleven was able to keep the ball at the exeter end of the field, as was clearly demonstrated by the goal which they made, and by the number of times which they uselessly punted the ball over their adversaries' goal line, during the greater part of the game. That they allowed Exeter to score in the end must have been due, not to any superiority of Exeter, or this advantage would have been quickly taken by the academy boys without waiting until the last twenty minutes of the game, but to some weakening by our freshmen. This weakess was due to a lack of endurance from want of training, a fault for which at this late season of the fall there is no excuse.