Smith at Harvard

Democratic politicians of Boston stood in the rain before the portals of the aristocratic Union Club on Beacon Hill, one night last week, asking a liveried flunkey if it were really true that Alfred Emanuel Smith was a guest at a private dinner being given by 40 Brown Derby members of the Harvard faculty and corporation.

It was true. Mr. Smith was inside, sitting on the right of Professor Felix Frankfurter, famed Harvard Law School liberal and Sacco-Vanzetti defender. Close by sat Professor Francis B. Sayre, Woodrow Wilson's son-in-law. Mr. Smith talked for two hours on Water Power, municipal v. private operation, from his long experience of it in New York. Utmost secrecy attended the dinner. Newsgatherers, as such, are never allowed in the Union Club. Nevertheless, when Mr. Smith found the Press was present, he said: "You've got to give the boys the news."

The boys were admitted. They begged for "extended remarks."

Mr. Smith: "I had about six weeks or more to make all the remarks I had in my system."

A Reporter: "Well, Massachusetts took them all right."

Mr. Smith: "You bet it did. If some of the others took them as well, maybe it wouldn't have been possible for me to be here tonight."