We look upon the insult offered to W. H. Lewis by a local barber as something out side of the ordinary case of trouble between a student and a tradesman. It is in one sense a private affair; in another it concerns the college at large. It is plain that the man who refused his accommodations to a student because this student was colored, did so because, in his opinion Harvard men themselves would draw such a distinction. In other words he catered to a snobbish spirit which he thought existed here at college. To outsiders, then, who may hear but one side of the story, the case may give a false idea of the society at Harvard. To do justice to the man who was wronged and to correct any such misunderstanding we feel it our duty to refer to the matter.

Any man who is worthy to represent the university in a great athletic event and to eat at the same table with other members of the team, is worthy of indiscriminate treatment by a Cambridge tradesman. But when such a man can command the respect of all who know him, whose character has always been borne out by his conduct, he deserves the impartial treatment of the students themselves. We have little to say of a man who will deny this, We are glad that in Harvard there is a just appreciation of a person's worth. When an insult is offered to a colored man of Lewis character, the whole university is broad enough and generous enough to rise up in indignation that any one should infer by his conduct, that so contemptible a spirit of snobbishness is in the university and must be catered to.