PRESS

My eye was arrested by the somewhat startling headline "Harvard Murphys Get $360 Each." It is a curious sort of scholarship, and if I were a Murphy I think I might resent it. No Murphy needs a hand-picked education, an appointed college or any other special favors whatsoever. Under proper leadership and direction, the Murphys do just as well as any other man. As a matter of fact, in my day along the Charles my closest friend was named Lambert Murphy. I imagine he would have scoffed at any such niggling subsidy as $360. On nights when he could manage to work in both a concert and a poker game he cleared more than that in a single evening.

And, in addition, he passed several college courses. A scholarship might have reduced his initiative and caused him to give up cards. As it was, he followed his twin careers into later life, and for a time he was a tenor at the Metropolitan Opera House.

Murphys are acute in financial matters and seldom stand in the need of any patronage. I think it might be a mistake if Harvard were to change the rules and demand that every student should be a Murphy. Or, for that matter, a Wiggles-worth or a Saltonstall. If this matter of scholarships by name alone were carried to its ultimate conclusion, there might even come to be a university wholly restricted to Heywood Brouns, and then what would become of scholarship? --It Seems To Me--Heywood Broun.

(The above article is somewhat condensed.)