A Public Appeal for Redress to the Corporation and Overseers of Harvard University Professor Royce\'s Libel
_Gentlemen_,--Believing it to be a necessary part of good citizenship to defend one's reputation against unjustifiable attacks, and believing you to have been unwarrantably, but not remotely, implicated in an unjustifiable attack upon my own reputation by Assistant Professor Josiah Royce, since his attack is made publicly, explicitly, and emphatically on the authority of his "professional" position as one of your agents and appointees, I respectfully apply to you for redress of the wrong, leaving it wholly to your own wisdom and sense of justice to decide what form such redress should take. If Dr. Royce had not, by clear and undeniable implication, appealed to your high sanction to sustain him in his attack,--if he had not undeniably sought to create a widespread but false public impression that, in making this attack, he spoke, and had a right to speak, with all the prestige and authority of Harvard University itself,--I should not have deemed it either necessary or becoming to appeal to you in self-defence, or, indeed, to take any public notice whatever of an attack otherwise unworthy of it. But under the circumstances I am confident that you will at once recognize the inevitableness and unquestionable propriety of my appeal from the employee to the employer, from the agent to the principal; and it would be disrespectful to you to doubt for a moment that, disapproving of an
"The King! The King never comes here," said the servant; "and
neither do we allow idlers about the royal kitchen. So depart at once,
or I shall be forced to call a guard to arrest you."
Gilligren arose obediently and slung his sack over his shoulder. As
he did so the birds that were within began to flutter.
"What have you in the sack?" asked the servant.
"Blackbirds," replied Gilligren.
"Blackbirds!" echoed the servant, in surprise, "well, that is very
fortunate indeed. Come with me at once!"
He seized the boy by the arm and drew him hastily along until they
entered the great kitchen of the palace.
"Here, Mister Baker!" the man called, excitedly, "I have found your
blackbirds!"
A big, fat man who was standing in the middle of the kitchen with
folded arms and a look of despair upon his round, greasy face, at once
came toward them and asked eagerly, "The blackbirds? are you sure you
can get them?"
"They are here already; the boy has a bag full of them."
_Gentlemen_,--Believing it to be a necessary part of good citizenship to defend one's reputation against unjustifiable attacks, and believing you to have been unwarrantably, but not remotely, implicated in an unjustifiable attack upon my own reputation by Assistant Professor Josiah Royce, since his attack is made publicly, explicitly, and emphatically on the authority of his "professional" position as one of your agents and appointees, I respectfully apply to you for redress of the wrong, leaving it wholly to your own wisdom and sense of justice to decide what form such redress should take. If Dr. Royce had not, by clear and undeniable implication, appealed to your high sanction to sustain him in his attack,--if he had not undeniably sought to create a widespread but false public impression that, in making this attack, he spoke, and had a right to speak, with all the prestige and authority of Harvard University itself,--I should not have deemed it either necessary or becoming to appeal to you in self-defence, or, indeed, to take any public notice whatever of an attack otherwise unworthy of it. But under the circumstances I am confident that you will at once recognize the inevitableness and unquestionable propriety of my appeal from the employee to the employer, from the agent to the principal; and it would be disrespectful to you to doubt for a moment that, disapproving of an