TYPICAL HARVARD MAN "INDIFFERENT MAGGOT"

Undergraduates are fated to be "indifferent old maggots with a funny accent," according to an editorial in the current issue of the Alumni Bulletin. This is the "logical definition" of the typical Harvard man, and one "which will serve as well as the next."

This statement was provoked by a letter sent to the Boston Herald, by David Moore '36, asking the question, "What is a Harvard gentleman?" The Bulletin discarded the Herald's answer that the Harvard gentleman is the man whose gentlemanly qualities "are so unadvertised they become apparent only when they are tested" as being altogether too mild. They went searching for a definition that would leave to the Harvard man his long-cherished position as a general target for all foes.

First they turned to Webster, who defined "gentle" as "archaie" and a gentleman as a "maggot." After deciding, then, that the Harvard man is an archaic maggot, it is not difficult to solve other features of the same subject, such as the Harvard indifference and the Harvard accent.

The first is merely an outcropping of the Emersonian doctrine of transcendentalism, which produces an indifference to all things material. This characteristic seems to have a marked effect on others, either very pleasant or distinctly irritating.

The "Harvard accent," according to the Bulletin, is easy. There is no such thing. Citizens of the rolling-R States confuse it with the Boston accent (Hahvahd, haht, cah, etc.), which is the same as the New England accent, except that its point of origin is in the throat rather than the nose.