While I am quite aware that a college education should do more for a man than make him a good dinner companion, I have been curious about the matter ever since I overheard a famous hostess proclaim, "Whenever I want to brighten up a dinner, I look around for a Harvard man!"

These words were not balm for the soul of an Eli nor yet again would the strike with anything like smoothness on a son of Old Nassau. I asked several ladies of my acquaintance about this and their replies were polite enough; but usually they had a smatter of frankness in them. "You Yale men have no small talk", I remember being told. "And as for Princeton men--they have nothing but small talk."

While this did not tally with my own observations in the matter, I nevertheless found that I must bow to the dicta of the fair sex. Still curious, I asked Ethel Kelly, novelist and humorist of repute, to discuss this question. She did so. In her articles, which having ordered I am forced to publish, she dismisses the Princeton man with a word. Why? Have Princeton men no social graces? As for Yale she slays them; humorously to be sure, but completely.

As one Yale man to Princeton men, I ask you, is this fair? She writes: "I might make the point that a Harvard man always tried to conceal his college and a Yale man to exploit it"--and again "A Yale man would make me feel that his conversation was the most interesting thing in the world; a Harvard man as if my conversation was the most interesting thing in the world."

Is the genuine Yale type an ogotistical one? Is there a Yale type? Is the genuine Princeton type a pleasant rather self-effacing one? Above all, is this true of the Harvard man? Don't you honestly thing that someone should step in to tell the truth about these matters? I for one do not agree with Miss Kelley when she says: "Of course, all that education can do is to give you the finest use of your natural advantages. I merely say that Harvard best develops a man's sensitivity and social consciousness."

I don't believe it! If a man is a born bore no college in the world can make him a social success. And if a Harvard man attempts to conceal the fact that he is a Harvard man from his dinner companion of the fair sex. I'm sure every undergraduate at Princeton will agree with me that modesty is not his only reason for doing so.

However, if the impression is getting abroad that Harvard men are the only social successes something must be done about it. Where indeed, are the tea-hounds of Yale and Princeton?

--John Farrar in The Daily Princetonian.