The argument ended nowhere, but Amory noticed more than ever how the sentiment toward Burne had changed on the campus.
“It’s odd,” Amory said to Tom one night when they had grown more amicable on the subject, “that the people who violently disapprove of Burne’s radicalism are distinctly the Pharisee class—I mean they’re the best-educated men in college—the editors of the papers, like yourself and Ferrenby, the younger professors.... The illiterate athletes like Langueduc think he’s getting eccentric, but they just say, ‘Good old Burne has got some queer ideas in his head,’ and pass on—the Pharisee class—Gee! they ridicule him unmercifully.”
The next morning he met Burne hurrying along McCosh walk after a recitation.
“Whither bound, Tsar?”
“Over to the Prince office to see Ferrenby,” he waved a copy of the morning’s Princetonian at Amory. “He wrote this editorial.”
“Going to flay him alive?”
“No—but he’s got me all balled up. Either I’ve misjudged him or he’s suddenly become the world’s worst radical.”
Burne hurried on, and it was several days before Amory heard an account of the ensuing conversation. Burne had come into the editor’s sanctum displaying the paper cheerfully.
“Hello, Jesse.”
“Hello there, Savonarola.”