The Bowdoin Prize Award.

There has been much sarcastic and unjust comment by the daily press of the country upon the award of the Bowdoin prize. This comment was aroused by an article which has been going the rounds and which was full of misrepresentations. The facts in the case are clearly stated in a letter from Professor H. W. Torrey, one of the judges, to the Boston Post. Of the three judges appointed to examine the essays, Professor Torrey alone had read the Aunex essay, when it was recalled by the dean as ineligible for the prize, because of the conditions of candidature, limiting the competition to members of the university. He returned the essay to the dean, remarking at the time that he thought it the best of the lot. The sealed envelopes containing the names of the writers were not opened till after the formal report of the judges. None of the judges knew that the recalled essay had been written by a member of the Annex till some time after their report had been handed in. The question, whether, if the three judges had actually read the Annex essay, they would have declared it worthy of a prize, has been raised, but cannot be answered. In the statements in the editorial of last Monday in regard to the opening of the envelope, we erred through following false information. The judges could not have discovered the name or status of the author of the essay in question by "opening the sealed letter which accompanied it." That letter was not in their possession, for judges are wisely not allowed to handle these sacred documents. Thus they had not the Annex essay, they had not the sealed letter, and they could not "give the first prize" to the essay. Moreover, we are authorized by Professor Torrey to deny the charge of the newspapers, that he said that "neither the brains nor the bodies of women were quite equal to severe studies." The whole matter is only another proof of what President Eliot said a short time ago, concerning the eagerness of the press to injure Harvard, even by the distortion and misrepresentation of facts.