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Title:      Winnowed Wisdom (1926)
Author:     Stephen Leacock
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Date first posted:          October 2003
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It is the especial aim of this book to make an appeal to the average man. To do this the better, I have made a study of the census of the United States and of the census of Canada, in order to find out who and what the average man is.

In point of residence, it seems only logical to suppose that the average man lives at the centre of population, in other words, in the United States he lives at Honkville, Indiana, and in Canada at Red Hat, Saskatchewan.

In the matter of height the average man is five feet, eight inches, decimal four one seven, and in avoirdupois weight he represents 139 pounds, two ounces, and three pennyweights. Eight-tenths of his head is covered with hair and his whiskers if spread over his face could cover it to the extent of one-tenth of an inch. This ought to be a promising sign to a reader.

The average man goes to church six times a year and has attended Sunday School for two afternoons and can sing half a hymn.

Although it thus appears that the average man is rather weak on religion, in point of morals the fellow is decidedly strong. He has spent only one week of his whole life in the penitentiary. Taking an average of theft and dividing it by the population it appears that he has stolen only two dollars and a quarter. And he never tells a lie except where there is some definite material advantage.

The average man is not, by statistics, a great traveller. The poor fellow has been only sixty-two miles away from his own home. He owns nine-tenths of a Ford car, punctures a tire once every twenty-two days, and spends, in the course of his whole life, a month and a half underneath his car.

The education of the average man cost $350. But it didn't get him far. He stopped--according to the educational statistics--within one year of being ready for a college. Most of the things he learned had no meaning for him. He gave up algebra without yet knowing what it was about.

By the time I had got to this point of the investigation I began to realize what a poor shrimp the average man is. Think of him with his mean stature and his little chin and his Ford car and his fear of the dark and his home in Honkville, Indiana, or Red Hat, Saskatchewan. And think of his limited little mind! The average man, it seems, never forms an opinion for himself. The poor nut can't do it. He just follows the opinions of other men.

I would like ever so much to start a movement for getting above the average. Surely if we all try hard, we can all lift ourselves up high above the average. It looks a little difficult mathematically, but that's nothing.

Think how fine it would be to get away from the average--to mingle with men seven feet high and women six feet round; to consort with people who wouldn't tell a lie except for big money, and to have friends who could solve cross-word puzzles without having to buy the Encyclopaedia Britannica!

But the only trouble with such a movement is that if I did really start it, and if I could, with great labor and persuasion, get it going and it began to succeed, then who would come flocking into it but the darned little average man himself. As long as it was unsuccessful, he'd keep out of it. But let it once succeed and in he'd come. That's exactly his dirty little nature.

In short, now that I think of it I am not so keen on appealing to the average man. Nothing ever does appeal to him, until it has made a terrible hit somewhere else.

I had just brought my investigation to this point when I realized that I had forgotten about the average woman. What about her? Where does she come out?

So I picked up the census volumes again and took another little run through them.

The average woman, it seems, does not live at Honkville, Indiana, or at Red Hat, Saskatchewan. The percentage of women in the population being much greater in the eastern part of the country, the average woman lives one hundred and five miles east of the average man. But she is getting nearer to him every day. Oh, yes, she is after him, all right!

It is also clear that the average woman is about half an inch taller than the average man. Women, taken individually, are no doubt not so tall as men, but, on the average, a woman is just a little taller. Men will find it a little difficult to understand how this can be, but any woman can see it at once.

In point of personal appearance, it may be estimated that women, taken as an average, wear their hair just below their shirt collar and have their skirts, at an average, always two inches higher than they were a year before.

The average woman gets married at twenty-seven, has two children and a quarter, and is divorced once in every eight years.

In morals the average woman is away ahead of the man. Everybody knows this in a general way, but it is very pleasing to see it corroborated by cold, hard statistics.

The man as we have seen above, spends a week in the penitentiary. But the woman is there only half a day. In her whole life she consumes only one and a half gills of whiskey, but, on the other hand, she eats, according to the director of the census, four tons of candy. She is devoted to her two and a quarter children, but she makes more fuss over the quarter of a child than she does over the two whole ones.

In point of intellect, the average woman cannot reason and cannot think. But she can argue. The average woman, according to the educational section of the census, only got as far in arithmetic as improper fractions. Those stopped her.

And yet, take her as she is--even with her hair bobbed round her ears and her skirt higher than it was, and her inability to add or to reason--she is all right. The average man comes out of the investigation as a poor insignificant shrimp. But with the average woman, the more you think about her, the better she appears.

Perhaps on second thoughts I might dedicate this book to the average woman. But then, unfortunately, the average woman reads nothing--or nothing except love stories.

STEPHEN LEACOCK

McGill University

1926

Designed for Busy People at Their Busiest

A Preface to the Outlines

Within recent years it is becoming clear that a university is now a superfluous institution. College teaching is being replaced by such excellent little manuals as the "Fireside University Series," the "World's Tiniest Books," the "Boys Own Comic Sections," and the "Little Folks Spherical Trigonometry." Thanks to books such as these no young man in any station of life need suffer from an unsatisfied desire for learning. He can get rid of it in a day. In the same way any business man who wishes to follow the main currents of history, philosophy and radio-activity may do so while changing his shirt for dinner.

The world's knowledge is thus reduced to a very short compass. But I doubt if even now it is sufficiently concentrated. Even the briefest outlines yet produced are too long for the modern business man. We have to remember that the man is busy. And when not busy he is tired. He has no time to go wading through five whole pages of print just to find out when Greece rose and fell. It has got to fall quicker than that if it wants to reach him. As to reading up a long account, with diagrams, of how the protozoa differentiated itself during the twenty million years of the pleistocene era into the first invertebrate, the thing is out of the question. The man hasn't got twenty million years. The whole process is too long. We need something shorter, snappier, something that brings more immediate results.

From this point of view I have prepared a set of Outlines of Everything covering the whole field of science and literature. Each section is so written as to give the busy man enough and just exactly enough of each of the higher branches of learning. At the moment when he has had enough, I stop. The reader can judge for himself with what accuracy the point of complete satiety has been calculated.

Designed to make Research Students in Fifteen Minutes. A Ph.D. degree granted immediately after reading it.

1. Life of Shakespeare. We do not know when Shaksper was born nor where he was born. But he is dead.

From internal evidence taken off his works after his death we know that he followed for a time the profession of a lawyer, a sailor and a scrivener and he was also an actor, a bartender and an ostler. His wide experience of men and manners was probably gained while a bartender. (Compare: Henry V, Act V, Scene 2. "Say now, gentlemen, what shall yours be?")

But the technical knowledge which is evident upon every page shows also the intellectual training of a lawyer. (Compare: Macbeth, Act VI, Scene 4. "What is there in it for me?") At the same time we are reminded by many passages of Shakspere's intimate knowledge of the sea. (Romeo and Juliet. Act VIII, Scene 14. "How is her head now, nurse?")

We know, from his use of English, that Shagsper had no college education.

His Probable Probabilities

As an actor Shicksper, according to the current legend, was of no great talent. He is said to have acted the part of a ghost and he also probably took parts as Enter a citizen, a Tucket sounds, a Dog barks, or a Bell is heard within. (Note. We ourselves also have been a Tucket, a Bell, a Dog and so forth in our college dramatics days. Ed.)

In regard to the personality of Shakespere, or what we might call in the language of the day Shakespere the Man, we cannot do better than to quote the following excellent analysis done, we think, by Professor Gilbert Murray, though we believe that Brander Matthews helped him a little on the side.

"Shakespere was probably a genial man who probably liked his friends and probably spent a good deal of time in probable social intercourse. He was probably good tempered and easy going with very likely a bad temper. We know that he drank (Compare: Titus Andronicus, Act I, Scene I. "What is there to drink?"), but most likely not to excess. (Compare: King Lear, Act II, Scene I. "Stop!" and see also Macbeth, Act X, Scene 20. "Hold! Enough!") Shakespere was probably fond of children and most likely of dogs, but we don't know how he stood on porcupines.

"We imagine Shakespeare sitting among his cronies in Mitre Tavern, joining in the chorus of their probable songs, and draining a probable glass of ale, or at times falling into reverie in which the majestic pageant of Julius Caesar passes across his brooding mind."

To this excellent analysis we will only add. We can also imagine him sitting anywhere else we like--that in fact is the chief charm of Shakesperian criticism.

The one certain thing which we know about Shakespere is that in his will he left his second best bed to his wife.

Since the death of S. his native town--either Stratford upon Avon or somewhere else--has become a hallowed spot for the educated tourist. It is strange to stand today in the quiet street of the little town and to think that here Shakespeare actually lived--either here or elsewhere--and that England's noblest bard once mused among these willows--or others.

Works of Shakespeare

Our first mention must be of the Sonnets, written probably, according to Professor Matthews, during Shakesbur's life and not after his death. There is a haunting beauty about these sonnets which prevents us from remembering what they are about. But for the busy man of today it is enough to mention, "Drink to Me Only With Thine Eyes," "Rock Me to Sleep Mother," "Hark, Hark the Dogs do Bark." Oh, yes, quite enough. It will get past him every time.

The Historical Plays

Among the greatest of Shakespeare's achievements are his historical plays,--Henry I, Henry II, Henry III, Henry IV, Henry V, Henry VI, Henry VII and Henry VIII. It is thought that Shakespeare was engaged on a play dealing with Henry IX when he died. It is said to have been his opinion that having struck a good thing he had better stay with it.

There is doubt as to authorship of part, or all, of some of these historical plays. In the case of Henry V, for example, it is held by the best critics that the opening scene (100 lines) was done by Ben Jonson. Then Shakespeare wrote 200 lines (all but half a line in the middle) which undoubtedly is Marlowe's.

Then Jonson, with a little help from Fletcher, wrote 100 lines. After that Shakespear, Massinger and Marlowe put in 10 lines each. But from this point the authorship is confused, each sticking in what he could.

But we ourselves are under no misapprehension as to what is Shakespeare's and what is not. There is a touch which we recognize every time. When we see the real Shakespeare, we know it. Thus, whenever it says "A Tucket Sounds, Enter Gloucester with Hoboes," we know that Shakespeare, and only Shakespeare, could have thought of that. In fact Shakespeare could bring in things that were all his own, such as:--"Enter Cambridge followed by An Axe." "Enter Oxford followed by a Link." His lesser collaborators could never get the same niceness of touch. Thus, when we read, "Enter the Earl of Richmond followed by a pup," we realize that it is poor work.

Another way in which we are able to test whether or not a historical play is from Shakespeare's own pen is by the mode of address used by the characters. They are made to call one another by place designations instead of by their real names. "What says our brother France?" or "Well, Belgium, how looks it to you?" "Speak on, good Burgundy, our ears are yours." We ourselves have tried to imitate this but could never quite get it; our attempt to call our friends "Apartment B, the Grosvenor," and to say "Go to it, the Marlborough, Top Floor No. 6" has practically ended in failure.

The Great Tragedies

Every educated person should carry in his mind an outline idea of the greatest of Shakespeare's tragedies. This outline when reduced to what is actually remembered by playgoers and students is not difficult to acquire. Sample:

Hamlet (not to be confused with Omelette which was written by Voltaire). Hamlet, Prince of Denmark, lived among priceless scenery and was all dressed in black velvet. He was deeply melancholy. Either because he was mad, or because he was not, Hamlet killed his uncle and destroyed various other people whose names one does not recall.

The shock of this drove Ophelia to drown herself, but oddly enough when she threw herself in the water she floated, and went down the river singing and shouting. In the end Hamlet killed Laertes and himself, and others leaped into his grave until it was quite full when the play ends. People who possess this accurate recollection rightly consider themselves superior to others.

Shakespeare and Comparative Literature

Modern scholarship has added greatly to the interest in Shakespeare's work by investigating the sources from which he took his plays. It appears that in practically all cases they were old stuff already. Hamlet quite evidently can be traced to an old Babylonian play called Humlid and this itself is perhaps only a version of a Hindoo tragedy, The Life of William Johnson.

The play of Lear was very likely taken by S. from the old Chinese drama of Li-Po, while Macbeth, under the skilled investigation of modern scholars, shows distinct traces of a Scottish origin.

In effect, Shakespeare, instead of sitting down and making up a play out of his head, appears to have rummaged among sagas, myths, legends, archives and folk lore, much of which must have taken him years to find.

Personal Appearance

In person Shakespeare is generally represented as having a pointed beard and bobbed hair, with a bald forehead, large wide eyes, a salient nose, a retreating chin and a general expression of vacuity, verging on imbecility.

Summary

The following characteristics of Shakespeare's work should be memorized--majesty, sublimity, grace, harmony, altitude, also scope, range, reach, together with grasp, comprehension, force and light, heat and power.

Conclusion: Shakespeare is a very good writer.

Specially Revised to Suit Everybody, and Particularly Adapted for the Schools of Tennessee.

It seems that recently there has been a lot of new trouble about the theory of evolution in the schools. Either the theory is being taught all wrong or else there is something the matter with it. For years it had seemed as if the doctrine of Evolution was so universally accepted as to lose all its charm. It was running as a close second to Spherical Trigonometry and Comparative Religion and there was no more excitement about it than there is over Anthropology.

Then suddenly something seems to have happened. A boy in a Kansas public school threw down his book and said that the next time he was called a protozoon he'd quit the class. A parent in Ostaboola, Oklahoma, wrote to the local school board to say that for anyone to teach his children that they were descended from monkeys cast a doubt upon himself which he found intolerable. After that the wave of protest swept through the colleges.

The students marched in processions carrying banners with the motto "Are we baboons? Rah, Rah, Apes!" The Rotary Clubs of town after town voted by a standing vote that they were unable to support (or to understand) the doctrine of biological biogenesis, and they wanted it taken away.

The Woman's Culture Club of Winona, Utah, moved that the name of Charles Darwin be changed in the text books of the state to that of W. J. Bryan. The Anti-Saloon League voted that the amount of Darwinianism that should be licensed in the schools should not be more than one-half of one per cent.

It is to meet this difficult situation that the present outline of Evolution has been prepared. It is intended so to revise and modify the rigid character of the theory as to make it acceptable to everybody.

The obvious beginning of the matter is to present the theory of evolution as it stood before the trouble began in Tennessee. Each of us at that time carried in his head an outline, a little bit hazy, but still usable, of the Doctrine of Evolution as we remembered it from our college training.

Outline of Evolution as Dimly Recalled from College Education

We are all descended from monkeys. This descent, however, took place a long time ago and there is no shame in it now. It happened two or three thousand years ago and must have been after and not before the Trojan war.

We have to remember also that there are several kinds of monkeys. There is the ordinary monkey seen in the street with the hand organ (communis monacus), the baboon, the giboon (not Edward,) the bright, merry, little chimpanzee, and the hairy ourang-outang with the long arms. Ours is probably the hairy ourang-outang.

But the monkey business is only part of it. At an earlier stage men were not even that. They probably began as worms. From that they worked up to being oysters; after that they were fish, then snakes, then birds, then flying squirrels, and at last monkeys.

The same kind of change passed over all the animals. All the animals are descended from one another. The horse is really a bird, and is the same animal as the crow. The differences between them are purely superficial. If a crow had two more feet and no feathers it would be a horse except for its size.

The whole of these changes were brought about by what is called the Survival of the Fittest. The crookedest snake outlived the others. Each creature had to adapt itself or bust.

The giraffe lengthened its neck. The stork went in for long legs. The hedgehog developed prickles. The skunk struck out an independent line of its own. Hence the animals that we see about us--as the skunk, the toad, the octopus, and the canary--are a highly selected lot.

This wonderful theory was discovered by Charles Darwin. After a five-year voyage in the Beagle as a naturalist in the Southern Seas, Darwin returned to England and wrote a book called Sartor Resartus which definitely established the descent of mankind from the avoirdupois apes.

One must admit that in this form the theory does not seem calculated to give any great offense to anybody. One must therefore suppose that the whole of the present bitter controversy arose out of what Darwin himself must have written. But this is obviously not so. I have not actually before me the text of Darwin's own writings, but I recall the general run of what he wrote with sufficient accuracy to reproduce it here.

Darwin's Own Statement

Personal Recollection of the Work of the Great Naturalist

"On the Antilles the common crow, or decapod, has two feet while in the Galapagos Islands it has a third. This third foot, however, does not appear to be used for locomotion, but merely for conversation. Dr. Anderson of H.M.S. Unspeakable during his visit to the Galapagos Islands in 1834 saw two crows sitting on a tree. One was, apparently, larger than the other. Dr. Anderson also saw a lizard at Guayaquil in Ecuador which had lost one toe. In fact, he had quite a good time.

"It would be too much to say that the crow and the lizard are the same bird. But there seems little doubt that the apex cervicus of the lizard is of the same structure as the rudimentary dorsal fin of the crow. I put forward this statement however with the modesty which it deserves and am only led to it with deep reluctance and with a full sense of its fatal character.

"I may say that I myself while off the Oesophagus Islands in H.M.S. Impossible in the year 1835 saw a flock of birds of the kind called by the sailors "bum-birds," which alighted on the masts and held on by their feet. In fact, I saw a lot of interesting things like that.

"While I was in the Beagle, I recall that on one occasion we landed on the Marquesas Islands where our captain and his party were entertained by the chief on hams and yams. After the feast a group of native women performed a hula-hula dance during which I wandered out into the woods and secured a fine collection of toads.

"On the next island--while the captain and his officers were watching a hitchi-kitchi dance--I picked up some admirable specimens of lizards and was fortunate enough to bring back a pocketful of potato bugs."

After reading this plain account as quoted, or at least as remembered, direct from Darwin, one must admit that there is no reason to try to rob him of his discoveries.

But to make the case still plainer, let us set alongside of this a clear simple statement of the Theory of Evolution as it is now held by the scientists in our colleges. I have before me the enunciation of the doctrine as stated at the request of the press by a distinguished biologist during the height of the present controversy. What he says runs, as follows--or very nearly as follows:

"All controversy apart, we must at least admit the existence of a continuous morphological protoplasmic differentiation--"

That seems to me a fair, manly statement of a plain fact.

"Cytology is still in its infancy--"

This is too bad, but it will grow.

"But at least it involves the admission of a primitive conformity which removes any a priori difficulty in the way of evolution."

So there we are. After that one would think that the Tennessee schools would have no further difficulty about the thing.

The Time of Evolution

But even if we reach a definite conclusion as to the nature of the process by which life gradually appeared and assumed higher and higher forms, the question still remains--over how great a period did the process last? What time element must be interposed? In other words as Henri Bergson once stated it with a characteristic flash of genius, "How long did it take?"

The earlier estimates of evolutionary scientists placed the age of man at about 500,000 years. This was ridiculously low. You can't evolve any kind of real man in that time. Huxley boldly raised the figures to 1,000,000. Lord Kelvin, amid unusual applause, put it up to 2,000,000 years. The cheers had hardly died away when Sir Ray Lankester disturbed the whole universe by declaring that man was 4,000,000 years old. Two years later a professor of the Smithsonian Institute raised it to 5,000,000. This estimate was seen and raised to 10,000,000 years. This again was raised from year to year amid universal enthusiasm.

The latest advices are that a student in Schenectady Technical High School places the age of man at 100,000,000 years. For a rough working estimate, therefore, the business man will not be far wrong in assuming (for practical purposes) that the age of man is anything from 100,000,000 to 1,000,000,000. Night watchmen are perhaps a little older.

Postscript: Up-to-Date Corrections of the Darwinian Theory

A still more cheerful light is thrown on the evolution controversy by the fact that modern biologists do not entirely hold with the theory of Charles Darwin. I find on inquiry that they are prepared to amend his evolution doctrine in a variety of points.

It seems that Darwin laid too much stress on what he called natural selection and the survival of the fittest. The modern biologist attaches no importance to either of these. It seems also that Darwin overestimated very much the part played by heredity. He was moreover mistaken in his idea of the changes of the species. It is probable, too, that his notion of a monkey is inadequate. It is doubtful also whether Darwin ever actually sailed on the Beagle. He may have been in the Phineas Q. Fletcher of Duluth. Nor is it certain that his name was Darwin.

The world or universe in which we do our business consists of an infinite number, perhaps a hundred billion, perhaps not, of blazing stars accompanied by comets, dark planets, asteroids, asterisks, meteors, meteorites and dust clouds whirling in vast circles in all directions and at all velocities. How many of these bodies are habitable and fit for business we do not know.

The light emitted from these stars comes from distances so vast that most of it is not here yet. But owing to the great distance involved the light from the stars is of no commercial value. One has only to stand and look up at the sky on a clear starlight night to realize that the stars are of no use.

Practically all our efficient light, heat and power comes from the sun. Small though the sun is, it gives out an intense heat. The business man may form some idea of its intensity by imagining the entire lighting system of any two great American cities grouped into a single bulb; it would be but little superior to the sun.

The earth revolves around the sun and at the same time revolves on its own axis, the period of its revolution and the rising and setting of the sun being regulated at Washington, D.C. Some years ago the United States government decided to make time uniform and adopted the system of standard time; an agitation is now on foot--in Tennessee--for the lengthening of the year.

The moon, situated quite close to the earth but of no value, revolves around the earth and can be distinctly seen on a clear night outside the city limits. During a temporary breakdown of the lighting plant in New York city a few years ago the moon was quite plainly seen moving past the tower of the Metropolitan Life building. It cleared the Flatiron building by a narrow margin. Those who saw it reported it as somewhat round but not well shaped, and emitting an inferior light which showed that it was probably out of order.

The planets, like the earth, move around the sun. Some of them are so far away as to be of no consequence and, like the stars, may be dismissed. But one or two are so close to the earth that they may turn out to be fit for business. The planet Mars is of special interest inasmuch as its surface shows traces of what are evidently canals which come together at junction points where there must be hotels. It has been frequently proposed to interest enough capital to signal to Mars, and it is ingeniously suggested that the signals be sent in six languages.

Specially Designed for Members of Women's Culture Clubs, and Representing Exactly the Quantity of Information Carried Away From Lectures on Scientific Progress

Einstein's Theory of Relativity: Einstein himself is not what one would call a handsome man. When seen by members of the Fortnightly Women's Scientific Society in Boston he was pronounced by many of them to be quite insignificant in appearance. Some thought, however, that he had a certain air of distinction, something which they found it hard to explain but which they felt. It is certain that Einstein knows nothing of dress. His clothes appear as if taken out of the rag bag, and it is reported by two ladies who heard him speak at the University of Pennsylvania on the measurement of rays of light that he wore an absolutely atrocious red tie. It is declared to be a matter of wonder that no one has ever told him; and it is suggested that some one ought to take hold of him.

Einstein is not married. It has been reported, by members of the Trenton (New Jersey) Five O'clock Astronomical Investigation Club that there is a romance in his life. He is thought to have been thrown over by a girl who had a lot of money when he was a poor student, and it was this that turned his mind to physics. It is held that things work that way. Whether married or not he certainly behaved himself like a perfect gentleman at all the clubs where he spoke. He drinks nothing but black coffee.

Einstein's theories seem to have made a great stir.

Madame Curie's Discoveries in Radio-Activity: Madame Curie may be a great scientist but it is doubted whether she is a likeable woman or a woman who could make a home. Two members of the Omaha Woman's Astronomical and Physical Afternoon Tea Society heard her when she spoke in Washington on the Radiation of Gamma Particles from Helium. They say that they had some difficulty in following her. They say she was wearing just a plain coat and skirt but had quite a good French blouse which certainly had style to it. But they think that she lacks charm.

Rutherford's Researches in the Atomic Theory: Ernest Rutherford, or rather Sir Ernest Rutherford as it is right to call him because he was made a knight a few years ago for something he did with molecules, is a strikingly handsome man in early middle age. Some people might consider him as beginning to get old but that depends on the point of view. If you consider a man of fifty an old man then Sir Ernest is old. But the assertion is made by many members of various societies that in their opinion a man is at his best at fifty. Members who take that point of view would be interested in Rutherford. He has eyes of just that pale steely blue which suggest to members something powerful and strong, though members are unable to name it. Certainly he made a perfectly wonderful impression on The Ladies Chemico-Physical Research and Amusement Society in Toronto, when he was there with that large British body.

Members of clubs meeting Sir Ernest should remember that he won the Nobel Prize and that it is not awarded for character but is spelled differently.

From everything which I read in the press, I feel certain that it is coming. There doesn't seem the slightest doubt about it. It may not come for a month and it might be a year in coming, but there is no doubt the Next War is already looming in sight. I have gathered together all the documents that prove it--interviews and discussions with the leading men concerned in it, who simply must know what they are talking about. Let me lay some of them before the reader and he can see for himself, on the very best authority, the situation that confronts us:

Document No. 1

The Alignment in the Next War

New York, July 25: Colonel The Honourable Fizzle Bangspark of the British General Army Staff, who arrived in New York on the Megalomania, expressed his views to the representatives of the press on the prospects of the Next War. The Colonel is confident that in the Next War, which he thinks may begin at any time, it is most likely the alignment will be that of Great Britain, France, and the United States against Germany and Russia.

But he may think it equally likely that it may be fought as between Great Britain, Russia, and Germany against France, the United States, and Portugal. Colonel Bangspark states, however, that though the war is certain the exact alignment of the nations will be very difficult to foresee.

He thinks it possible that England and Switzerland, if they get a good opportunity, may unite against France and Scotland. But it is altogether likely that in a war of magnitude, such as Colonel Bangspark hopes to see, the United States and China will insist on coming in, either on one side or the other. "If they do," continued Colonel Bankspark, "it will be hard to keep them out."

The distinguished officer considers it difficult to say what part Japan will play in the Next War, but he is sure that it will get into it somewhere. When asked about the part that would be played by the races of Africa in the coming conflict, Colonel Bangspark expressed a certain amount of doubt. "It is hard to say," he stated, "whether they can get in in time. They number of course a great many millions, but the question really turns on whether they have had a training sufficient to let them in. As yet their armies would be hardly destructive enough, and it would be very poor policy to let them in if they do not turn out to be deadly enough when they get in.

"The black," said the colonel, "is a good fellow and I like him. If he were put under first class European officers, he might prove fairly murderous. But I am not as yet prepared to say that we can make a profitable use of him in the Next War."

Asked if the Chinese would play a large part in the coming struggle, the distinguished officer again hesitated. "The Chinaman," he claims, "has not yet had enough contact with European civilizations. The Chinaman is by nature a pacifist and it will be hard to get him away from the idea of peace."

Asked finally if the South Sea Islanders would be in the struggle, Colonel Bangspark spoke warmly and emphatically in their favor. "They will be in it from the start," he said. "I know the Polynesians well, having helped to organize native troops in the Marquesas Islands where I was quartered at Popo Popo for two years, and in the Friendly Islands and in the Society Islands and in the Paradise Group, where I was the first man to introduce gunpowder.

"The Marquesas Islander," the colonel went on, "is a splendid fellow. In many ways he is ahead of us Europeans. His work with the blowpipe and the poison dart antedates the use of poison in European warfare and compares favorably with the best work of our scientific colleges."

When questioned as to which side the Marquesas Islanders would come in on, the colonel stated that he did not regard that as a matter of prime importance. He was convinced, however, that a place would be found for them and he hoped to see them in the front trenches (on one side or the other) on the first day.

Colonel Bangspark expressed himself as delighted with all that he has seen on this side of the water. He says that he was immensely pleased with the powder works on the Hudson, and though he had not yet seen the powder works on the Potomac, he was convinced that they were just as delightful.

The colonel, whose sojourn in our country is to last for some weeks, will shortly leave New York to visit the powder works at South Chicago. He is accompanied on his journey by his wife and little daughter, both of whom he expects will be blown up in the Next War.

Document No. 2

The Peril From The Air

New York, July 25: General de Rochambeau-Lafayette, Director-in-Chief of the French Aerial forces, was interviewed yesterday at the Ritzmore Hotel as to the prospects of world peace. The General, whose full name is the Marquis de Rochambeau-Lafayette de Liancourt de la Rochefoucauld, belongs to the old noblesse of France, and is a cultivated French gentleman of the old school. He is himself a veteran of seven wars and is decorated with the croix militaire, the croix de guerre, the nom de plume, and the cri de Paris.

The Next War will, the count thinks, be opened, if not preceded, by the bombing of New York from the air. The hotels, which the count considers comfortable and luxurious above anything in Europe, will probably be blown up on the first day. The Metropolitan Museum of Art which General de Rochambeau visited yesterday and which he regards as equal to anything in the south of France, would undoubtedly afford an admirable target for a bomb.

The general expressed his unbounded astonishment at the size and beauty of the Pennsylvania and the Grand Central stations. Both, he said, would be blown up immediately. No air squadron could afford to neglect them.

"And your great mercantile houses," the count continued enthusiastically, "are admirable. Combining as they do, a wide superficies with an outline sufficiently a pic to make it an excellent point de mire, they could undoubtedly be lifted into the air at one bombing."

Document No. 3

The Coming Conflict On The Sea

New York, July 25: Admirable Breezy, who represents the jolliest type of the hearty British sailor and who makes a delightful impression everywhere, is of the opinion that the Next War will be fought not only on land but on the sea and in the sky and also under the sea.

"It will be fought all over the shop," said the Admirable, "but I do trust that the navy will have its fair share." The big battleship, he says, is after all the great arm of defense. "We are carrying guns now forty feet long and with an effective range of twenty-five miles." "Give me a gun ten feet longer," said the Admirable, "and I will stand off New York and knock down your bally city for you."

He offered further, if given a gun sixty feet long, to reach Philadelphia, and that if he were given the right gun platform he could perhaps hit Pittsburgh.

"I don't despair even of Chicago," said the Admirable. "We are moving forward in naval gunnery every year. It is merely a matter of size, length, and range. I could almost promise you that in ten years I could have a smack at St. Louis and Omaha. Canada, unfortunately, will mostly be on our side; otherwise, one might have had a bang at Winnipeg."

Admirable Breezy said that while he was warmly in favor of peace, he felt that a sea war between England and the United States would certainly make for good fellowship and mutual understanding between the two navies. "We don't know one another," he complained, "and under present circumstances I don't see how we can. But if our fellows could have a smack at your fellows, it would make for a good understanding of all round."

The Admiral is to speak in Carnegie Hall tonight on "What England Owes to the United States." A large attendance (of financial men) is expected.

Document No. 4

The New Chemical Terror

New York, July 26: Professor Gottlos Schwefeldampf, the distinguished German chemist, who is at the head of the German Kriegschemiefabrik at Stinken in Bavaria, arrived in New York yesterday on the Hydrophobia and is at the Belmore Hotel. The professor, who is a man somewhat below middle stature, is extremely short-sighted, and is at present confined to his room from the effects of a fall down the elevator. He speaks with the greatest optimism on the prospects of chemical warfare.

He considers that it has a wonderful future before it. "In the last war," he declared, sitting up in bed as much as a rheumatic infliction of long standing enabled him to do, "we were only beginning. We have developed now a gas which will easily obliterate the population of a whole town. It is a gas which is particularly destructive in the case of children, but which gives also very promising results with adults."

The professor spoke to the members of the press of the efficiency of this new discovery. Half a pint of the gas let loose in the room, he said, would easily have annihilated the eight representatives of the press who were present with him. He regretted that unfortunately he had none of the gas in a condition for instant use.

"But we shall not rely alone on gas," continued Professor Schwefeldampf. "In the Next War we expect to make a generous use of poison. Our poison factories are developing methods whereby we can poison the crops in the ground a hundred miles away. If our present efforts reach a happy conclusion, we shall be able to poison the livestock of an entire country. I need not dilate," he said, "on the favorable results of this--"

The Professor was interrupted by a violent fit of coughing, after which he sank back so exhausted that the members of the press were unable to prod any more copy out of him and left.

There! That's about the picture, not a bit exaggerated, of where we are letting this poor old world drift to. Can we manage, my dear people, to do something to stir up a little brotherly love all round? We ought to do it even if we have to send hundreds of people to jail to get it. As for me, I intend to start towards it right away. The very next time I see on the street a Russian Bolshevik with black whiskers like an eclipse of the sun, I shall go right up to him and kiss him and say, "Come, Clarence, let us forget the past and begin again."

I have been much impressed lately by the way in which the habit of "scathing denunciation," back and forward across the Atlantic, is growing in the press. Every time when international news gets a little slack somebody lands off a steamer and says something about British Education or about American women that sets the whole press into a flame. The people who say the things are of no possible importance. They are for the most part people of whom nobody ever heard before and never will again. But that doesn't matter. The newly arrived visitor stands up on the deck of his steamer, gets the reporters all grouped around him in a ring and then begins to "denounce." As a result next morning the newspapers of the entire continent carry news items such as the following, and the public seethes with indignation.

Denounces American Education

New York, April --:

"Mr. Farquhar McSquirt, who holds a high position in the Kindergarten Department of the Scottish Orphans Asylums at Dumfoolish, landed yesterday from the Aquitania on a tour of inspection of the American and Canadian schools and at once uttered a scathing denunciation of education on this continent. He considers that the whole educational system of America is punk. He admits that a great many pupils attend school on this continent but denies that they learn a thing. He considers that the average boy of twelve in the Orkney Islands knows more than a graduate of Harvard and Yale. The American student, he says, has never learned to think; whereas the Scottish boy begins to think very soon after he learns to talk. Mr. McSquirt considers that the principal cause of the defect of American education is the utter lack of qualified teachers. He claims that the average American school teacher is a complete nut. Few of them stay more than ten years in the profession whereas in Scotland the average period is well over fifty years."

As soon as this kind of thing has been spilt all over the map of North America, the next thing to do is to mop it up. The newspapers send out enquiries to ten heads of ten great universities, and they all answer that while they have not the pleasure of knowing Mr. McSquirt personally--which means that they hope they never will know him--they emphatically deny his strictures on our education. They claim that the average American boy, while he may not have such long ears as a Scotch boy, is more receptive. He may not know as much as a Scottish student but what he knows he has digested, a thing the Scottish student has little chance to do. After this the public is soothed and the affair dies down.

Of course it must not be supposed that these "denunciations" are all in one direction. I don't mean for a moment that they are always directed against this continent. Not at all. That merely depends on which direction the traveller is going in. If he is headed the other way and is standing on British soil the denunciation is turned around and it runs something after this fashion.

Denounces Oxford

London, April --:

"Mr. Phineas Q. Cactus, T.Q., P.F., Principal of the Texas Normal Institute for Feeble Minded Navajo Indians, has just attracted wide attention here by a letter to the Morning Post in which he utters a scathing denunciation of the University of Oxford. He claims that at Oxford a student learns nothing. He admits that they go there and they stay there, but he says that during the whole time in Oxford no student ever thinks. In the schools of Texas no student is admitted unless he has passed an examination in thinking and during his entire course thinking is made compulsory at every step. Principal Cactus considers that Oxford dulls a man's mind. He says that after a course at Oxford the student is fit for nothing except the Church or the bar or the House of Lords. He claims that the average Oxford professor would make but a poor showing as a cowboy in Texas."

Education is a splendid topic for this kind of business. But perhaps an even better one is found in getting after our women and girls and denouncing them across the Atlantic. This is always good for ten days excitement. The sample press notice is as follows:

Denouncing American Girls

New York, April --:

"Lady Violet Longshanks, a direct descendant of Edward I, in the male line, landed yesterday morning in New York from the Rule Britannia. Lady Violet has at once excited widespread comment by an interview which she gave on the dock to a representative of the press. Her ladyship, who represents the haut ton of the oldest noblesse and who is absolutely carte blanche, gave expression to a scathing denunciation of the American girl. She declares that the American girl of to-day is without manners. No American girl, the Countess claims, knows how to enter a room, still less how to get out of one. The American girl, according to Lady V. does not know how to use her voice, still less how to use her feet. At the same time the countess expressed herself fascinated with the size of the United States which she considers is undoubtedly a country of the future. Lady V. thinks it probable that many of the shortcomings of the American girl may be due to her habit of chewing tobacco."

And so, of course, as soon as Lady V. has said all this it has to be "mopped up" just like the other stuff. The press sends people to interview five heads of five women's colleges and they all declare that the American girl is as gentle as a lamb, and that if Lady V. really gets to know the American girl she will find that the American girl can use her feet, and will. As to the question of chewing tobacco they need only say that perhaps Lady V. is unaware that in all the first class women's colleges chewing tobacco is expressly forbidden not only on the campus, but in the bedrooms.

This reassures the public and gradually the trouble subsides and everybody cools off and the American girl gets right back to where she was. And then some American lady takes a trip over to England and starts the whole trouble again in a reversed direction, like this:

Denounces English Girls

London, April --:

"Mrs. Potter Pancake of Cedar Rapids, Iowa, President of the American Women's International Friendship League, has just jarred English society off its hinges by a sweeping condemnation, handed out from the window of her hotel, directed against English girls. Mrs. Pancake claims that the English girl is absolutely without grace and that her movements are inferior to those of a horse. Mrs. Pancake states further that the English girl moves like an alligator and is unable to sit down. She considers that these defects are mainly caused by drinking gin in inordinate quantities."

Whereupon trouble breaks out all over the British press from Cornwall to the Orkney Islands. The Archbishop of Canterbury is consulted and issues a statement to the effect that in his opinion the English girl is more graceful than a cow and that he has yet to see an English girl of the cultivated class take what he considers too much gin. This eases things up a bit, and the good effect is presently reinforced by a letter to the Times from the professor of Arthopedic Surgery at the Royal College of Physicians who says that he has made anthropometric measurements of over a thousand English girls and that their shapes suit him down to the ground. After that the trouble blows over and international friendship is just getting settled again and there is every prospect of the payment of the British debt and the scrapping of both navies and the rise of the pound sterling away over par, when someone starts it all off again with this:

Thinks Americans Crooked

"Mr. Joseph Squidge, M.P. Labor member for the mining district of Hiddaway-under-the-Sea, has just returned from a three weeks tour of America. Mr. Squidge, who visited the entire United States from New York to Yonkers, has just given an interview to the local paper at Hiddaway in which he says that public honesty is extinct in America. He considers that the entire population of the United States, not excepting the criminal classes, is crooked. He says that in America a man's word is never taken and that even in hotels a guest is required to sign his name."

This of course is too much--more than any decent people can stand, and as a consequence some one is at once sent over to England, either by accident or by design with the result that in a week or two the whole American press carries a despatch as follows:

Thinks British Dishonest

New York, April --:

"Edward Angle Eye, a journalist representing five thousand American Farmers Newspapers, has just cabled from London to Coffin Creek, Idaho, to say that the British are all liars. He says that with the possible exception of the Prince of Wales and Queen Mary, it is impossible to trust anybody in the British Isles. Public morality he claims has reached its lowest ebb and is washing away. He attributes the trouble to the large influx of Chinese in London."

And after that, can you wonder if we find it a little hard to keep peace and good will across the Atlantic.

Paris, 10.30 a.m.

Nothing this morning intimated the imminence of a cabinet crisis. The sky was of spotless serenity, and the whole aspect of the city one of brightness and gayety. The hotels were full of tourists, the shops were crowded, the fountains were running, Punch and Judy was playing in the Champs Elysées, and the French franc which had shown signs of restlessness the day before had passed a quiet night.

The Chamber of Deputies, however, had hardly met at 10 o'clock in the Palais Bourbon when Mr. Painlevé rose in his seat and asked the premier if he knew what time it was. Mr. Briand replied that his watch had stopped. Mr. Painlevé rushing on to the floor in front of the tribune, demanded from the chamber whether a man whose watch had stopped was fit to be the premier of France. Instantly the chamber was in an uproar. Shouts of "A Bas, Briand!"--were mingled with cries of "Attaboy, Aristide!"

Mr. Briand, who preserved throughout the most complete calm, then asked for a vote of the chamber. The vote at once showed that not only was the whole of the Left side against Mr. Briand but also a bit of the Center and the East and South and some of the North-West. Mr. Briand immediately resigned and the great government which had presided over the destiny of France and weathered every storm for six days, went out of office.

Paris, 12.30 p.m.

It has now been learned that on the news of Mr. Briand's resignation the President of the Republic summoned Mr. Painlevé to the Palace of the Elysées and asked him if he could form a cabinet. On Mr. Painlevé asking for time the President said that he could have twenty minutes. Mr. Painlevé drove at once to the Chamber of Deputies and, crossing the floor of the house where Mr. Briand sat, kissed him on both cheeks and asked him if he would join his government. Mr. Briand, having thrown his arms around Mr. Painlevé, announced his willingness to join him. Within a few moments the chamber was informed of the formation of the Painlevé-Briand ministry, the news being greeted with acclamation.

The Painlevé-Briand Ministry

The president of the session having announced a ten minutes adjournment to allow the new ministry to make a budget, it became clear that the Painlevé-Briand ministry would find itself in a position of great strength. It will have the support of the whole radical bloc, together with a chunk of Socialists and about half a bloc of conservatives. No French government, for the last six months, has been in such a position of power. Briand, it is said with great satisfaction, will be virtually a dictator over the destinies of France. As soon as the news was disseminated on the Bourse the franc humped itself up two and a half points.

Paris, 11.45 a.m.

Mr. Briand and Mr. Painlevé, entering the chamber with their arms round one another's waists, read out their budget to a breathless house. The aim of the new government will be to put the finances of France on a basis of absolute stability. To do this they will at once borrow 4,000,000,000 francs. The loan, however, will be offset and made good by a credit with the Bank of France, which will then float a loan with the public, who will then be authorized, by a decree, to borrow from the bank. The entire credit thus created will be added up and declared extinguished. The announcement of the budget policy was received with a salvo of enthusiasm, the entire left embracing the whole of the right.

Fall of the Government

Paris, 12.30 p.m.

The Briand-Painlevé government has fallen. Entrenched in power as it seemed behind a solid parliamentary support, it fell suddenly and unexpectedly on an interpellation during the budget debate. Mr. Raymond Poincaré, who is generally regarded as the master mind of French politics, rose during the discussion of budget and asked whether the government intended to retain the tax on beer. On Mr. Briand's saying that it was proposed to keep this tax, Mr. Poincaré declared that the true national policy would be to let the Germans drink enough beer to pay taxes for both nations. If they couldn't do it they should be made to. The whole chamber seethed with enthusiasm, during which Mr. Briand and Mr. Painlevé announced that their government was at an end. The president of the chamber, calling for order amid the tumult, asked if there was any gentleman present who could form a new government. Mr. Poincaré offered to do so if the president would let him talk with Mr. Painlevé and Mr. Briand outside for a few minutes. The permission being given the three statesmen shortly afterward reentered the chamber and announced that they had succeeded in combining themselves into a ministry to be called the Poincaré-Painlevé-Briand Ministry.

Poincaré-Painlevé-Briand Ministry

Mr. Poincaré said, however, that they would only do this if they could be assured of a block behind them. If there was no block they wouldn't be a ministry. The enthusiasm of the Left together with part of the Right and a little bit of the Top, made it clear that the new ministry will receive an ample support. An adjournment was made with universal congratulations.

Fall of the French Ministry

Paris, 3.30 p.m.

The new French government, which was formed by Mr. Poincaré with the support of Mr. Painlevé and Mr. Briand fell right after lunch. Details are yet lacking. Apparently it came into the chamber after lunch and fell. There is a general consternation. The Bourse is wildly excited and all the exchanges reacted sharply. It is said that the Governor of the Bank of France will be arrested and perhaps the Archbishop of Paris. It is whispered that the fall of the ministry was occasioned by Mr. Joseph Caillaux, who seated himself in the chamber and looked at the ministry with that inscrutable look which he has, till it fell.

The Caillaux-Poincaré-Painlevé-Briand Ministry

Paris, 4.15 p.m.

A certain measure of calm has been restored in Paris by the announcement that an entirely new ministry has been formed by the union of Mr. Caillaux--Mr. Poincaré--Mr. Painlevé and Mr. Briand. In a statement to the press Mr. Briand said that the old government had outlived its usefulness and that he welcomed the addition of Mr. Caillaux. A new budget would be made at once and would constitute, he said, the best budget of the last three weeks. This budget, which will absolutely ensure the stability of French finance will be based on a vote of National Credit supported by a Universal Loan and guaranteed by a Public Debt. Mr. Caillaux, whose financial genius never shone more brightly, is working out a tax, to replace the proposed capital levy and the income tax, and to be called the Tax on Somebody Else.

It is said in well-informed circles that if the government can be widened to include a royalist element and to take in a few communists and a bloc of socialists, its success will be assured. If it can then pursue a policy which will be sufficiently clerical and conservative while at the same time strongly socialist, with a touch of opportunism, it may last till Saturday.

Meantime the theatres are all open, work is plentiful, everybody is happy, Paris is bright with spring flowers, the hotels are full of Americans dripping with money, the new fashions are said to be simply charming, the skirts don't reach anywhere, the watering places are wetter than ever--so what does a little thing like a government matter?

"The House of Commons," says the well known Guide Book to London of Today, "not inaptly called the Mother of Parliaments, is undoubtedly the most august, as it is the most venerable, of the great representative assemblies of the world. It is with something like awe that we penetrate into the stillness of Westminster Palace, and find ourselves presently looking down from our privileged place in the gallery upon the earnest group of men whose measured tones and dignified formalities are deciding the fate of an empire."

That is what the Guide Book has been saying about the House of Commons for some two hundred years. But in reading over the press reports of the debates of the House within the last year or so as they come across the Atlantic, one is inclined to wonder whether the cold dignity of the dear old place is not getting a little thawed out in the warm times in which we live.

The proceedings in the later days sound a little too suggestive of the Cowboys Convention of Montana, or the meeting of the Literary Philosophical Society of Dawson City, Yukon. Take in illustration the following report of the proceedings of one day some months ago, taken verbatim from the London Times and the London Morning Post or the Labor Herald--I forget which. At any rate, those who read the debates of the house will recognize it at once as genuine.

"The House of Commons resumed its session yesterday at three o'clock. The Prime Minister in rising from the Treasury Benches to present his bill for the introduction of Buckwheat into the Tanganyika district of Uganda, stated that he would like first to refer to the fact that some member of the House had just thrown a banana at the Speaker. He would ask members to realize that throwing bananas at the Speaker impeded the business of the House. He would go so far as to say that it was bad manners.

"At the word 'manners' the House broke into an uproar. Cries arose from the labor benches, 'Manners! Yah! Manners!'

"Lady Luster at once leapt to her feet and said that there were members in the House whose manners were not fit for a stable.

"Joseph Dockside, M.P. for the Buckingham Palace district, asked if she meant him. Lady Luster called out that she did. The Speaker rose to a ruling against personal mention quoting a precedent under Henry VIII. But another banana hit him and he sat down.

"Mr. Dockside began to cry. He asked the House if it was fair to let an idle woman like Lady Luster tell him that he had no manners. He was only a poor man and had no schooling, and how could he even get a chance to pick up manners, even fit for a stable. Here he broke into sobs again while the labor benches resounded with the cries of 'Shame!' and the blowing of horns.

"Lady Luster then said that she had gone too far. She would take back the word stable. She meant 'Garage.'

"The Speaker, quoting a precedent from Edward the Confessor, said that the debate might go on--a pineapple hitting him in the waistcoat just before, and as, he sat down.

"The Prime Minister then said that as quiet had been restored (loud cries of 'Rah! Rah! Quiet!,') he would resume his speech on the proposal of the government to subsidize the growing buckwheat--and, he would add, buckoats--in the Tanganyika district.

"At this point he was interrupted by Colonel MacAlpin MacFoozle, independent member for the East Riding of the West Hebrides. The Colonel wanted to know how the Prime Minister could speak of Tanganyika if he was fully aware of the condition of Scotland. Did he know of the present distress among the crofters? Was he aware of what was happening to the Scottish gillies, and the laddies and collies?

"Did he know that three more men had left the Hebrides? The Colonel, who spoke with violent passion, to the great delight of the House, said that he didn't give a curse for buckwheat or for Tanganyika and that personally he could lick the whole cabinet.

"At this, loud shouts of 'Attaboy! You're the hot stuff,' were mingled with cries of 'Put him out!' Lady Luster called out that if the Scots would quit drinking Scotch whiskey they would all save enough money to leave Scotland.

"For the moment, the transaction of public business was seriously threatened when Lord Pintop Daffodil rose and asked the Speaker's leave to tell a funny story. Lord Pintop, who is rapidly gaining the reputation of being the third funniest member of the House, was greeted with encouraging laughter and applause.

"The Speaker having ruled that a funny story had been told under Queen Anne, Lord Pintop then related a story of how a Pullman car passenger was put off at Buffalo by the porter. The House, which is easily moved from anger to merriment and which enjoys nothing (except its lunch) so much as a good joke, was convulsed with laughter.

"The Speaker, in thanking the honorable member for the story, said that he believed that it was the same story as was told under Queen Anne.

"The Prime Minister then said he would resume his speech on buckwheat. He was about to do so when Mr. Ilyitch Halfoff, member for the Russian district of Westminster, said that he would like first to rise and present a resolution for the immediate introduction of communism into England. The House was in a turmoil in a minute.

"Cries of 'Russia for ever!' were mixed with the singing of the 'Marseillaise' and the countersinging of 'Scots Whoo Hoo!' It was said afterwards that the singing was the best ever heard in the House this month.

"At this point in the debate the yeoman usher of the Black Stick rushed into the House and called--'Hurry out, boys, there is a circus procession coming down Whitehall!' The whole House rushed out in a body, only the speaker remaining behind for one minute to adjourn the session."

People who read the newspapers regularly must have noticed that the reported Interviews are getting to be much brighter and more interesting than they used to be. Till recently, when the press interviewed travellers, distinguished visitors and political emissaries, they talked to each of them about his own particular line of life and the things about which he was supposed to know something. The result was fearful dullness. A director of the Bank of England was interviewed about currency, an actor was interviewed about the stage and a bishop about religion. As a consequence every one of them got prosy and unintelligible.

Nowadays the thing is done in exactly the other way. Each distinguished visitor is asked questions about something that is outside of his own line of life. A vaudeville comedian gives his impressions of French politics and an English bishop gives his views of women's skirts. The result is a freshness and a charm which lends a new attraction to our newspapers on both sides of the Atlantic. Here are a few examples taken from the current press and drawn, as appears at once, indifferently from England and America.

Ball Player Visits St. Paul's

London, Friday: Ed Lanigan, star outfielder and manager of the Tuscaloosa Base Ball Nine, passed through London this morning and expressed himself as delighted with it. After he had had a run round town, Ed gave his views, on some of the things he had seen, to a crowd of assembled admirers at the Hotel Cecil. "What did you think of St. Paul's, Ed?" asked one of the boys. "It's certainly big stuff," said Ed, "and it gets me. Those old geysers certainly knew how to build. And I want to tell you boys that there's something about that building that you don't get everyday. I doubt if there are a dozen men in New York to-day who could duplicate it."

"How does the political situation in England strike you," he was next queried. "Fine!" answered the big man. "They've sure got a lot of taxes here. But then mind you there's a lot of wealth too. Of course things are pretty bad, but you've got to remember they were bad before, and anyway they're not so bad."

Movie Star Sees Riviera

Menton, Monday: Gus Phinn, the well-known movie star who is said to command a salary of anywhere from half a million dollars, was a recent visitor at Menton. Gus is enthusiastic over the Mediterranean sea. "I want to tell you right now," he said to a representative of the press, "that there is absolutely nothing wrong with the Mediterranean." "What did you specially notice about it, Gus?" asked the pressman. "Why, what gets me hardest is the colour of the water. Say, I don't think you can beat that blue anywhere. You might try but you can't do it." "Do you think," asked another of the group, "that the tone of English Social Life is deteriorating?" "No, I don't," Gus replied. "I think the tone is good. I think it A.1."

"What about the relations of England and France, Gus?" was another question. "They're all right," the star answered. "We met a lot of French boys on the boat and certainly nicer boys you wouldn't want to meet. Well, they're gentlemen that's what they are. The French are gentlemen."

"What about Germans, Gus?" one of the reporters ventured.

"All right!" answered the movie man heartily. "We had a German at our table in the hotel and they're all right. Mind you I think we were perfectly right in crushing them because they needed to be crushed. But they're all right."

Copper King Looks at Oxford

Oxford, Tuesday: E. J. Slagg, the multimillionaire owner of mines and president of Slagg Consolidated Copper, visited Oxford yesterday and was shown round the colleges. The big copper man whose quiet taciturnity and power of silence has made him the terror of the stock exchange, looked about him at everything with the same keen shrewdness with which he detects a vein of copper under a hundred feet of trap rock. Only now and then he darted a shrewd question or let fall a short comment.

"This place," he said, "is old." On the threshold of the Bodleian Library he paused a moment as if rapidly measuring the contents with his eye. "Mostly books?" he asked. The copper king also paused a moment before the monument erected to the memory of Latimer and Ridley. "What's the idea?" he asked.

But--as I said up above this new and brilliant flood of light is not only turned on Europe. By a similar process it is let loose on the American continent too.

British Lord Sees Jersey Tugs

New York, Wednesday: Lord Tinklepin who arrived from England on the Aquitania yesterday was taken for a trip up and down the harbor in a fast tug. His lordship expressed himself as amazed at the commerce of New York. "I had no idea of it," he said. Passing by one of the car ferries of the Erie Railway, Lord Tinklepin expressed the keenest interest.

"What the devil is that?" he asked. On being told what it was, the distinguished visitor who is well known for his interest in physical science, at once asked "Why doesn't it upset?"

Lady Visitor Discusses American Banking

New York, Thursday: Lady Mary Messabout, President of the Women's Federation for Universal Mutual Understanding, was shown round financial New York yesterday as the guest of the Bankers Association. Lady Mary expressed the greatest wonder at the Sub-Treasury of the United States. "Is it possible" she said, "that it's full of money?" Lady Mary was questioned by representatives of the press as to her opinion of the American banking system. "It is really excellent," she answered, "so little delay and such civility everywhere." "Do you think,"--it was asked by a member of the press--"that the deflation of American currency would check the expansion of business." "Oh, I hope not," Lady Mary answered warmly, "surely it would never do that."

French Baron Visits West

Saskatoon, Saskatchewan, Friday: The Baron de Vieux Chateau, who is visiting Saskatchewan with a view to seeing whether the richer parts of Canada would be suited for the poorer class of Frenchmen, was taken yesterday on a tour of inspection of the grain elevators of Saskatoon. "But they are marvellous!" the Baron said to a member of the press on his return to his hotel. "They seem to me absolutely--how shall I say it--enormous." In further discussion the Baron said the whole system of distributing the wheat seemed to him excellent. When asked what his impression of the Farmer's Cooperative movement was, the distinguished visitor again spoke with enthusiasm. "But your farmers," he said, "they are wonderful! What courage! What tenacity! To have come here and stayed here! It is wonderful."

It has recently become the habit to send out and circulate all sorts of special information in the form of "services." The schools of commerce send out "financial services" with a forecast of business conditions six months before they happen and some times even six months before they don't happen. The departments of agriculture send out crop reports even before the grain is planted. The meteorologists keep at least a fortnight ahead of the weather. Political forecasts are now ready for all the elections up to 1928. The hard winter that is going to begin about Xmas time has been definitely prophesied, in fact promised by the squirrels, the groundhogs and the makers of fur garments and by the West Indian Steamship agents.

It has occurred to me that a useful extension might be made to these "services" by adding an Advance European Cable Service. By this means all readers of newspapers, instead of having to read the cables day by day, could get them in a lump a month at a time. Anybody who has studied the newspapers of the last three or four years recognises at once that the cables run in a regular round, quite easy to prophesy. In the modest little attempt appended below, I have endeavoured to put in merely the ordinary routine of European public life for one month without prophesying anything of an exceptional or extreme character.

German Revolution Coming

Berlin, Monday 1: A monarchical wave is reported as having swept over Germany. The wildest excitement prevails. A hundred persons were trampled to death in Berlin the other day. The return of His Imperial Majesty the Kaiser is expected at any moment.

And Going

Berlin, Tuesday 2: A republican wave has swept over Germany in the place of the monarchical wave of yesterday. Another hundred people were trampled to death. William Hohenzollern is reported as still at Doorn in Holland.

And Has Gone

Berlin, Wednesday 3: Germany is quiet. Christmas shopping is beginning already. Everywhere there is cheerfulness and optimism. Nobody was trampled to death all day.

Frenzied Finance in France

Paris, Thursday 4: Following on the sensational statement of Monsieur Caillaux that France would pay her debts to the last penny, the wildest excitement prevailed on the Bourse. The franc which had been fairly steady all yesterday, rose to its feet, and staggered right across the street where it collapsed in a heap. Gloom prevails in financial circles.

Paris, Friday 5: Monsieur Caillaux has issued a supplementary statement to the effect that France will pay all her debts but it may take her a million years to do it. This assurance has restored universal confidence and Monsieur Caillaux is hailed everywhere as having redeemed the honor and credit of France. A tremendous ovation was given him today when eating a sandwich at the lunch counter. It is now said that Caillaux, who is recognised everywhere as the financial saviour of France, is working out a plan for wiping out the whole debt of France by borrowing it from England.

Home Life in England

London, Saturday 6: England is face to face with a coal strike of such magnitude that in twenty-four hours every fire in England will go out. If the transport workers and the public house keepers join the strike the whole industrial life of the nation will come to a full stop. Meantime the Archbishop of Canterbury says that if he can't get a satchelful of nut coal tonight he must close the cathedral.

London, Monday 8: The coal strike was called off at five minutes before midnight--one of the closest shaves of a total collapse of England that has been reported in the last six months. Meantime with cloudless skies and bright sunshine the whole attention of the nation today is riveted on the champion football game between the Huddersfield and Hopton-under-Lime. The Archbishop of Canterbury will kick off the ball.

Italian Upheaval Heaving Up

Rome Tuesday 9: The Italian Fascisti have broken loose again. Yesterday a man climbed up to the top of the Duomo at Milan and waved a black shirt, shouting EVIVA ITALIA! The whole nation is in a ferment. Anything may happen.

Rome, Wednesday 10: It is all right. It transpires that the shirt was not black, it was merely very dirty.

Austria in Chaos

Vienna, Thursday 11: Mr. Edward Edelstein, vice-president of the Canned Soup Company of Paterson, New Jersey who is making a ten day tour in central Europe to study business conditions, describes the situation of Austria as one of utter chaos. Trade is absolutely stagnant. Business is almost extinct while the currency is in entire confusion. In Vienna unemployment is everywhere, even the rich are eating in soup kitchens; the theatres are closed and social life is paralyzed.

Complete Revival of Austria

Vienna, Friday 12: Mr. John Smithers of Smitherstown, who is taking a five days vacation in Europe reports that the economic situation of Austria has been reestablished on a sound basis. The restoration of the currency this morning by the establishment of a new and easier mark, is working wonders. The factories are running on full time, the shops are crowded with visitors, the hotels are bursting with guests and the theatres are offering Shakespeare, Grand Opera, and Uncle Tom's Cabin.

Vienna, Saturday 5: Austria has collapsed again.

Dear Old Russia

Petrograd (otherwise Leningrad or Trotskiville), Monday 15: Reports from the Caucasus say that Red forces made a drive at the Caucasians yesterday. The latter just got out of the road in time.

Tuesday 16: Word has been received that the Reds made a fierce drive at Semipalatinsk. They only got half of it.

Wednesday 17: Wireless despatches say that the Reds are preparing for a drive against the Persians. Most of the Persians have already climbed up Mount Ararat.

Thursday 18: It is reported that the Council of Workmen's Soviets of Moscow have passed a resolution declaring that universal peace has come.

International Goodwill

Tokyo, Friday 19: Viscount Itch is reported in the Japanese Daily Hootch as saying that the time has come when Japan can not tolerate the existence of the United States on the other side of the Pacific. It will have to be moved. Wild excitement prevailed after the delivery of the speech. Enormous crowds paraded the streets of Tokyo, shouting "Down with America!" An American missionary was chased into a Chinese restaurant.

Tokyo, Saturday 20: Viscount Itch has issued a statement to the effect that Japan and the United States are sisters. Wild enthusiasm prevails. Great crowds are parading the streets, shouting "Attaboi Coolidji!" The missionary has come down again.

Yokohama, Monday 22: The business section of Yokohama was destroyed yesterday by an earthquake.

Yokohama, Tuesday 23: The business section of Yokohama has been propped up again and nailed into position.

From the Far Away South Seas

London, Wednesday 24: Cable advices received via Fiji and Melbourne report the Marquesas Islanders in a plebiscite have voted for prohibition, direct legislation, proportional representation and the abolition of cannibalism. Some more votes will be taken next week.

There comes a time every year when all the hundreds of thousands of people who have been over to Europe on a summer tour get back again. It is very generally supposed that a tour of this kind ought to have a broadening effect on the mind, and this idea is vigorously propagated by the hotel companies at Schlitz, Bitz, Biarritz, and picturesque places of that sort.

It is not for me to combat this idea. But I do know that in certain cases at least a trip to Europe sets up a distinct disturbance of the intellect. Some of these afflictions are so well defined that they could almost be definitely classified as diseases. I will quote only a few among the many examples that might be given.

I

Aristocropsis, or Weakening of the Brain from Contact with the British Aristocracy

There seems to be no doubt that a sudden contact with the titled classes disturbs the nerve cells or ganglions of the traveler from America, and brings on a temporary enfeeblement of mind. It is generally harmless, especially as it is usually accompanied by an extreme optimism and an exaggerated sense of importance.

Specimen Case. Winter conversation of Mr. John W. Axman, retired hardware millionaire of Fargo, Dakota, in regard to his visit to England.

"I don't know whether I told you that I saw a good deal of the Duke of Dumpshire while I was in England. In fact, I went to see him at his seat--all these dukes have seats, you know. You can say what you like about the British aristocrats, but when you meet one like the Duke of Dumpshire, they are all right. Why, he was just as simple as you or me, or simpler. When he met me, he said, 'How are you?' Just like that.

"And then he said, 'You must be hungry. Come along and let's see if we can find some cold beef.' Just as easy as that. And then he said to a butler or someone, 'Go and see if you can find some cold beef.' And presently the butler came back and said, 'There's some cold beef on the table, Sir,' and the Duke said, 'All right, let's go and eat it.' And he went and sat right down in front of the beef and ate it. Just as you or I would.

"All the time we were eating it, the Duke was talking and laughing. He's got a great sense of humor, the Duke has. After he'd finished the beef, he said, 'Well, that was a darn good piece of beef!' and of course we both roared. The Duke's keen on politics, too--right up to date about everything. 'Let's see,' he said, 'who's your President now?' In fact, he's just as keen as mustard, and looks far ahead too. 'France,' he said to me, 'is in for a hell of a time.'"

II

Nuttolingualism, or Loss of One's Own Language after Three Weeks across the Sea

Specimen No. 1. Verbatim statement of Mr. Phin Gulch, college student from Umskegee College, Oklahoma, made immediately on his return from a three weeks athletic tour in England with Oklahoma Olympic Aggregation. "England certainly is a ripping place. The chaps we met were simply topping. Of course here and there we met a bounder, but on the whole one was treated absolutely top hole."

Specimen No. 2. Information in regard to French restaurants supplied by Miss Phoebe McGinn, winner of the Beauty Contest Ticket to Europe and Back from Boom City, Montana. "The Paris restaurants are just charming and ever so cheap if you know where to go. There was one we used to go to in a little rue close to the gare where we got our dejeuner with croissants and cafe au lait for soixante-quinze centimes.

"Of course we used to give the garcon another quinze centimes as a pourboire. And after dejeuner we'd sit there half the matinee and read the journaux and watch the people go past in the rue. Always, when we left, the garcon would say, 'Au revoir.' Regular French, you know."

III

Megalogastria, or Desire to Talk about Food

Specimen Case. Mr. Hefty Undercut, of Saskatoon, Saskatchewan, retired hotel man, talks on European culture.

"I don't mind admitting that the English seem to me away ahead of us. They're further on. They know how to do things better. Now you take beefsteak. They cut it half as thick again as we do, and put it right on a grid over hot coals. They keep the juice in it. Or take a mutton chop. The way they cook them over there, you can eat two pounds to one that you eat here. You see they're an older people than we are.

"Or take sausages--when I travel I like to observe everything; it makes you broader;--and I've noticed their sausages are softer than ours, more flavoring to them. Or take one of those big deep meat pies--why, they eat those big pies at midnight. You can do it there. The climate's right for it.

"And, as I say, when I travel I go around noticing everything and sizing everything up--the meat, the lobsters, the kind of soup they have, everything. You see, over there there's very little sunlight and the air is heavy and you eat six times a day. It's a great place."

IV

Introspexosis, or Seeing in Other People What is Really in Yourself

It appears that many people when they travel really see nothing at all except the reflection of their own ideas. They think that what they are interested in is uppermost everywhere. They might just as well stay at home and use a looking glass. Take in witness:

The evidence of Mr. Soggie Spinnage, Secretary of the Vegetarian Society of North, Central, and South America, as given after his return from a propaganda tour in England:

"Oh, there's no doubt the vegetarian movement is spreading in England. We saw it everywhere. At Plymouth a man came right up to me and he said, 'Oh, my dear Brother, I wish we had a thousand men here like you. Go back,' he said, 'go back and bring over a thousand others.' And wherever I spoke I met with such enthusiasm.

"I spoke, I remember, in Tooting-on-the-Hump--it's within half an hour of London itself. And when I looked into their dear faces and told them about the celery in Kalamazoo, Michigan, and about the big cabbages in the South Chicago mud flats, they just came flocking about me! 'Go back,' they said, 'go back and send those over.'

"I heard a man in a restaurant one day say to the waiter, 'Just fetch me a boiled cabbage. I want nothing else.' I went right up to him, and I took his hand and I said, 'Oh, my dear friend, I have come all the way from America just to hear that.' And he said, 'Go back, he said, 'go back and tell them that you've heard it.'

"Why, when you go to England you just see vegetables, vegetables, everywhere. I hardly seemed to see anything else. They say even the King eats vegetables now. And they say the Bishop of London only eats beans. I heard someone say that the Bishop seemed full of beans all the time.

"Really I felt that the cause was just gaining and growing all the time. When I came to leave, a little group of friends come down to the steamer to say good-bye. 'Go back,' they said, 'go back and send someone else.'

"That seemed to be the feeling everywhere."

About fifteen years ago somebody invented the word Attaboy. At first it was used only by the urchins on the baseball bleachers. Presently it was used by the college students. After that it was taken up by business men, lawyers, judges and congressmen and it spread all over the world.

It was said that when King George of England welcomed home General Allenby after his conquest of Palestine, he put his hands on Allenby's shoulders and said with deep feeling, "Attaboy!"

The General, profoundly touched, was heard to murmur in return, "Some King, what!"

This story may or may not be true. It is possible that King George used merely some such dignified English phrase as "Not half bad at all!" But the story at any rate illustrates the tremendous change that has been creeping over our language.

I am not here referring to the use of slang. That of course is as old as language itself. The man who uses a slang word and, let us say, calls a man's hat his "lid" or calls a woman a "skirt," is unconscious of using a metaphor and of trying to be funny or peculiar. But the man who uses attaboy language in speech or writing is really trying to say something; he really thinks he is using English. It is not merely the words that he uses but the way in which he uses them.

Let me give you an instance--that is much quicker business than trying to explain the whole thing in a methodical fashion.

Attaboy Letter of Invitation

Here, for example--to illustrate the old style of writing and speaking--is a letter which I received almost thirty years ago inviting me to attend a gathering of my college class. In point of dignity and good form the letter speaks for itself.

TORONTO, Feb. 1st, 1896.

DEAR SIR:

I beg to inform you that a reunion of the graduating class of 1891 will be held on the 5th of February in the form of a dinner at the Queen's Hotel. The guest of honor on the occasion will be Professor Baxter, who has kindly consented to deliver an address to the class. It is confidently expected that all the members of the class will take this opportunity to renew old friendships. The price of the dinner, including wines, will be seventy-five cents. May I ask you to send a reply at your earliest convenience.

With sincere personal regards,

I have the honor to be

And to remain being,

Yours very faithfully,

JOHN SMITH.

Now it happened that just the other day I received a letter from the same old classmate inviting me to attend a similar gathering of the class--thirty years later. But here is how he has expressed the invitation--

Mr. He-Man from College!

This is You!

Say! what do you think? The real old He-Boys of 1891 are going to gather in for a feed at the Queen's on February 5th. Songs! Speeches! Fireworks! And who do you think is going to be the main Big Talk! You'd never guess--why old Prof Baxter--old nutsey Baxter! Come and hear him. Come along right now! The whole feed--songs, fun and smokes included--is only six bucks. So get down in your pants and fork them out.

Yours, Attaboy! Hooroo!

Rev. John Smith,

(Canon of the Cathedral)

An Attaboy Dictionary

Let it be noted that the great point of the Attaboy system is the terrific desire for emphasis. A man is not called a man. He is called a he-man. Even that is not enough. He has to be 100 per cent he-man. And in extreme cases he must be called a "100 per cent, full blooded, bull-chested, big-headed, great-hearted man,"--all of this to replace the simple old-fashioned word gentleman.

Indeed, one could write quite a little dictionary of Attaboy terms like this--

Gentleman--(See above.)

Lady--a big-hearted, wide-eyed, warm-chested woman, a hundred per cent soul, and built square.

Friend--a he-man with a hand-grip and a jaw that means that as soon as you see him in front of you, you know that he is back of you.

Senator--far-sighted, frog-eyed, nation-making he-man.

Criminal--no such word. Try "hold-up man"--"yegg"--"thug"--"expert safe-cracker," etc., etc., etc.

In the same way when the attaboy language turns from the nouns to the verbs there has to be the same vital emphasis. The fatal step was taken when someone invented the word punch. Since then every form of action has to be described as if it occurred with a direct physical shock. A speaker has got to hit his audience with a punch, he must lift them, throw them, in short fairly kick them out of the room.

A book is said to be arresting, gripping, compelling. It has got to hold the reader down so that he can't get up. A preacher has got to be vital, dynamic; he must put his sermon over; he must pitch it at the audience; in short, preaching becomes a form of baseball with the clergyman in the box.

In other words the whole of our life and thought has got to be restated in terms of moving things, in terms of electricity, radio and all the crackling physical apparatus of the world in which we live.

Macaulay and Gibbon in Attaboy

It is quite clear that if this attaboy tendency goes on all the books of the past will have to be rewritten or nobody will understand them. Somebody will have to re-edit them so as to put into them the necessary "pep" and "punch" to make them readable by the next generation.

We can imagine how completely unintelligible will be the stately pages of such dignified writers as Macaulay or Gibbon. Here, for example, is a specimen of the way in which Gibbon's Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire will be revised. I take as an illustration a well-known passage describing the action of a heroic matron of Rome in rallying the wavering citizens after a retreat. It runs:

"A Roman matron of imposing appearance and striking countenance stepped forth before the hesitating citizens--"

Translation:

"A pre-war blonde who was evidently a real peach skipped out in front of the bunch--"

"At the sight of her the citizens paused--"

Translation:

"As soon as they put their lamps on her all the guys stood still--"

"Reluctant cries of admiration arose from the crowd--"

"'Some doll!' said the boys."

"'Cowards!' she exclaimed."

"'You big stiffs,' she snorted."

"'And would you leave the defense of your homes at such a time as this!'"

"'Do you mean to say that you are going to fly the coop?'"

"'To your posts all of you!' she cried."

"'Beat it,' she honked."

"Inspired by her courage the citizens with shouts of 'Long Live Sempronia!' rushed to the ramparts."

"Full of pep they all shouted, 'Attaboy, Lizzie!' and skipped up the ladders."

Rome was Saved

Epitaph on an Attaboy

Even the epitaphs on the grave stones will have to be altered. The old style used to run, "Here lies the body of John Smith, who was born on February 1, 1802 and departed this life on December 1, 1861. He was a loving son, a fond parent, a devoted husband and a patriotic citizen. This stone has been erected by his mourning widow to commemorate his many virtues and in the expectation of his resurrection."

But that kind of thing will have to be replaced by an epitaph with more "punch" in it, something more "gripping," more compelling. Try this:

"Mr. Passerby! Stop! This is for you--you careless HOG.

"Read it.

"Here lies a cuckoo, John Smith, one of the real boys. He opened his lamps first on February 1, 1802. He stepped off the big plank into the dark stuff on December 1, 1861--But when the big Horn calls 'ALL UP,' oh, say, ATTABOY!"

"I beg your pardon," said a man sitting opposite to me in the smoking end of a Pullman car. "Do you happen to know the name of an Arabian Feudal Ruler in five letters?"

"Yes," I said, "a sheik."

He wrote down the word in a notebook that was spread out upon his knee. Then he said,

"And what's the Hottentot house on the move in five letters?"

"A Kraal," I answered.

"Oh--yes, Kraal!" he said. "I could only think of a bungalow; and here's another that's a regular bowler, what is an extinct graminiferous lizard in thirteen letters?"

"Ichthyosaurus," I said.

"How's that?" he asked. "My, I wish I'd had a college education--let me write it down--wait now--I-c-h-t--say, I believe it's going to get it--yes, sir, it's getting it--By Gee! It's got it. It all fits in now except there's a dirty little hitch in this corner. Say, could there be any word in three letters that would be e-k-e?"

"Yes," I said, "'eke,' it means 'also.'"

"Then I've got the whole thing--just in time--here's my station. Say, I'm ever so much obliged. I guess I will have one on the wife when I show her this. That's a peach, that ichthy-what d'ye call it. Good-bye."

He left me and I knew that I had been dealing with another of the new victims of the crossword puzzle mania. I knew that as soon as he got into his house he would work the ichthyosaurus on his wife; indeed he would probably find her seated with a paper and pencil trying to figure out whether the Icelandish skol will fit in with a form of religion called "Tosh." The thing generally runs in families.

This crossword puzzle is said to have originated in Tibet. From there it was transferred to the Mongolians who introduced it to the Hairy Ainus of Japan, who were delighted with it, as they naturally would be. From them it crossed the ocean to the Siwash Indians who passed it on to the Dog Ribs and to the Flat Heads, and in this way it got to the American Colleges.

The mania has now assumed international dimensions. It is estimated that if the crossword puzzle solvers were stood up in line (either horizontally or vertically, they wouldn't care which), they would reach half way to Havana. Some might even get there.

But the greatest thing about the crossword puzzle is the way in which it is brightening up our language. Old words that had been forgotten for five hundred years are being polished up as bright as new. A man no longer says, "Good morning. How are you?" he says, "Good morn. How fare you?" And the other man answers that he feels yardly and eke his wife, especially as they expect eft soon to take a holy day and make a cast to Atlantic City.

Before this thing began there were lots of people so ignorant that they didn't know what "Yost" meant, or what a "farrago" is, or which part of a dog is its "withers." Now these are family words. Anyone would say quite naturally, "Just give that dog a kick in the farrago and put him out."

I notice especially the general improvement in exact knowledge for the names of animals and parts of animals. Who used to know what a marsupial was? Who could have told where the dewlap of an ox is? How many people had heard of the carapace of the mud turtle, or knew how to give a proper name to the east ear of an elephant?

Many crossword puzzle experts go further. When engaged in conversation they don't even need to use the very words they mean. They merely indicate them in crossword puzzle fashion and the expert listening to them can solve their conversation at once. Here is a sample of the new--

Crossword Puzzle Conversation

"Good morning, Short-for-Peter."

"Hullo, Diminutive-of-William. How do you experience-a-sensation in four letters this morning?"

"Worse than a word in four letters rhyming with bell and tell."

"Oh, I am sorry to hear it. What is the substance, body or cubic content of space in six letters with you?"

"Cold in the bronchial tunnels, passages, or English name for a subway."

"Possessing or exhibiting grace with the personal adjective! Who is treating you?"

"Only the woman in four letters bound to me by law for life!"

"Indeed! Surely you ought not to be an adverb in three letters in this weather."

"No, I ought to be a preposition in two. But I have to go to my effort, energy or mental or bodily exertion undertaken for gain in four letters."

"Well, take good care of yourself. Good remain with you as a form of exclamation used in parting in seven letters."

There are evidently large possibilities in this form of speech. I think that a lot of our literature could be brightened up with the words of romance and mystery by putting it into crossword puzzle language.

Crossword Poetry

Even our poetry would be none the worse for it. Here, for example, is a once familiar bit of Longfellow's verse turned into this kind of dialect:

Under the spreading chestnut tree,
The village smithy remains erect, upright or in a vertical position common to man and the apes but not seen in other animals,
The smith, a mighty man, is a personal pronoun
With large and sinuous extremities of his limbs in four letters,
And the muscles of his brawny arms
Are as strong as a company of musicians.

Admirable! Isn't it? It only needs a little industry and we can have the whole of our classical literature translated in this way.

But unfortunately the results of the new craze are not always so happy. I heard last week of a rather distressing case of the ill effects of puzzle solving. A man of my acquaintance was at an evening party where they were solving crossword puzzles and he was brought, with the rest of the company, to an absolute full stop by one item: what would you rather be out of than in, in twelve letters? The thing absolutely beat him.

He thought of it all night but with no result. He was still thinking of it as he drove his car down town next morning. In his absolute preoccupation he ran into a man on the street and shook him up quite badly. He was arrested and tried for criminal negligence.

The judge said to him: "I regret very much to have to impose a prison sentence on a man of your standing. But criminal negligence cannot be tolerated. I sentence you to six months in the penitentiary."

On this the puzzle-solver threw up his hands with an exclamation of joy and cried, "Penitentiary, of course, penitentiary! Now I've got it!"

He was scribbling on a little bit of paper when they led him away.

Now that the bright tints of autumn are appearing on the trees, the season for the luncheon clubs is opening up again. Personally I think our luncheon clubs are one of the most agreeable features of modern city life. I have belonged to several luncheon clubs in our town ever since they started, and I never miss a lunch.

When I look back to the time when men used to be satisfied to sit down all alone in front of a beefsteak and a bottle of Budweiser with only just some apple pie and a cup of coffee and a cigar after it, and without singing a note all through--I don't see how we did it. Now, if I can't sing a little as I eat, and call "hear, hear" every now and then, I don't feel as if I could digest properly. So when I offer a few suggestions about our luncheon clubs, I don't want to be misunderstood. I am not criticizing but merely pointing out how we can make them brighter and better still.

Take the singing. After all, quite frankly, do we need to sing at lunch? Our clubs--and, I think, the clubs in most other towns, too--generally sing very slow, dragging melodies such as, "The . . . day . . . is . . . past, . . . the . . . sun . . . is . . . set. . . ." The effect of that kind of tune as intoned by a hundred men with a pound and a quarter beefsteak adjusted in each of them (125 lbs. total dead-weight of music) is, very frankly mournful. It sounds to me like the last of the Tasmanian Islanders leaving home.

Or else we sing Negro melodies. But why should we? Or we sing "Annie Laurie." Who was she, anyway? In fact, to be quite candid, I can eat lunch splendidly without asking to be carried back to Tennessee, or offering to lay down and die, either on the banks of the Doon or anywhere else.

Without the singing there could be a pleasant atmosphere of quiet which is now missing.

Take as another slight point of criticism the chairman's speech, introducing the speaker. There I do think a decided improvement could be made by cutting out the chairman's remarks altogether. They are misleading. He doesn't state things as they are. He always says:

"Today we are to have a rare treat in listening to Mr. Nut. I need not offer any introduction to this audience for a man like Mr. Nut. When we learned that Mr. Nut was to address us, we felt that the club was fortunate indeed."

Now if the man told the truth what he would say would be this:

"Gentlemen, I am sorry to announce that the only speaker we have been able to secure for today is this poor simp who is sitting beside me, Mr. Nut. You never heard of him before, gentlemen, but then neither did your committee. But we have hunted everywhere for a speaker, and we simply can't get any except this guy that you see here. He is going to talk to you on 'Our Trade Relations with Nicaragua.'

"I am well aware, gentlemen, that this subject seems utterly without interest. But it appears to be the only subject about which this poor shrimp knows anything. So I won't say any more--I'll let you judge for yourselves what you are going to get. Mr. Nut."

Then, of course, there is the vital question of whether, after all, a luncheon club needs to listen to speeches. Could it not perhaps fulfill its functions just as well if there was no address at all? The trouble is that one never gets time to study up the question beforehand and the recollection that is carried away by what the speaker said is too vague to be of any use.

I will give as an example my own recollection, as far as it goes, of the address that we had at our club last week, to which I have just referred, on the subject of our "Trade Relations with Nicaragua."

Let me say at the start that I am not quite clear whether it was Nicaragua or Nigeria. The chairman seemed to say Nicaragua, but I understood the speaker once or twice to say Nigeria.

I tried to find out afterwards from other members of the club whether it was Nigeria or Nicaragua. But they didn't seem to care. They hear so many people lecture on so many queer places that it runs off them like water. Only a few meetings before they had heard a man talk on "Six Weeks in Bangkok," and right after that another man on "Seven Weeks in Pongo Pongo" and the very next week after that the address was called "Eight Weeks in Itchi-Itchi."

But let it go at Nicaragua, because it is really just about the same. Before the speaker began to say anything about Nicaragua itself, or Nigeria itself as the case may be, he went through a sort of introduction. All the speakers seem to go over about the same ground in beginning. I tried to write this particular introduction down from memory but I am not sure that I have it correctly. It seemed to run as follows:

"I feel very much honored in being asked to address this club. It is an honor to address this club. And I feel that addressing this club is an honor. When I was invited to address this club I tried to think what I could address this club about. In fact I felt very much like the old darky. This old darky--" Here follows the story of an old darky, which has been told to our club already by six explorers, seven professors, and two clergymen.

It will just about stand repeating in print, but not quite. We always know that when the speaker looks round and says, "There was an old darky--" we are going to get it again. Some of the members can still laugh at it.

But even leaving out the introduction, there are other troubles. The addresses are, no doubt, full of information. But you can't get it. There's too much of it. You can't hold it. Here is what I got, listening as hard as I could, from the address of which I am speaking.

"Probably very few of us realize what a vast country Nicaragua, or Nigeria, is. It extends from latitude (I didn't catch it) to latitude--I'm not quite sure, and it contains a quarter of a million or half a billion square miles. The principal product is either logwood or dogwood--it may have been deadwood. Sugar either grows excellently or doesn't grow at all--I didn't quite catch which.

"The inhabitants are either the mildest or the wildest race known on the globe. They are polygamous and sell their wives freely to travelers for a few glass beads (we all heard that as plainly as anything). The whole of the interior of Nigeria or Nicaragua is dense mud. All that Nicaragua or Nigeria needs is richer soil, a better climate, a decent population, money, civilization, women, and enterprise."

So upon the whole, I am much inclined to doubt whether the speeches are worth while. It is so hard to carry away anything.

And anyway, having speeches means getting too big a crowd. A hundred men is too many. A group of fifty would be far better.

As a matter of fact, a more compact luncheon of, say, twenty would be better still. Twenty men around a table can all converse, they can feel themselves in actual personal contact with one another. With twenty men, or say, fifteen men, you feel you are among a group of friends. In fact, I am not sure but what ten, or eight, would be a cosier crowd still.

You get eight or six men together and you can really exchange ideas. You get a real mental friction with six men that you can't get with a large number. And moreover with six, or four, men sitting down like this day after day you get to know one another and in point of service and comfort there is no comparison.

You can have a luncheon served for four, or three, men that is really worth eating. As a matter of fact, if it comes to that, two is a better number still.

Indeed the more I think of it the better I like two--myself and a darned good waiter.

I suppose that everybody who reads the newspapers is aware of the change that is coming over the thing called the Children's Column, or the Children's Corner, or the Children's Page. Forty years ago it was made up of such things as letters to little boys about how to keep white mice, and letters to little girls about making crochet work in six stitches. But now, what with the radio and progress and the general rapid movement of the age, it is quite different. Here are some samples that are meant to illustrate the change.

Anno Domini 1880

Letter to little Willie Weakhead telling him how to make a Rabbit Hutch.

DEAR WILLIE:

So you want to know how to make a rabbit hutch for your white rabbit? Well, it is not very difficult if you will follow the directions carefully. Get from the nearest joiner a large empty box and some boards about 4 inches wide. (You know what an inch is, do you not?) Then lay the boards across the open side of the box with a space of about two inches between each and nail them in this position. Good nails can be bought in any drugstore but see that you are given ones with good points on them.

If you find it hard to nail on the boards, get your father or your uncle to help you. Be careful in using the hammer not to hit yourself on the thumb, as a blow with a hammer on the thumb is painful and is often followed by a blow on the fingers. Remember, if it starts to rain while you are working on your hutch, come in out of the wet.

Let us know how you get on and whether your bunnies like their new home.

Your's etc.

UNCLE TOBY (Editor: Children's Column)

But contrast with this the modern thing which in these days of radio and modern science has taken the place of the rabbit hutch correspondence.

Anno Domini 1926

Letter from the Editor to little Willie Wisebean, grandson of the above, in regard to the difficulties which he is finding with his radio apparatus.

DEAR WILLIE:

You write that the other night in attempting to call up Arizona KQW on your radio, you found an inordinate amount of static on your antennae. We quite agree with you that the trouble was perhaps due to purely atmospheric conditions causing a fall in the potential. You can easily find out if this is the case by calculating the differential wave length shown by your variometer.

As you rightly say your apparatus may have been put out of order by your allowing your father and your grandfather into your workshop. If you are wise you will keep them out. As you say yourself, they are too old to learn and they may meet some injury in handling your machine. You say that your grandfather used to be very fond of carpentry and once made a rabbit hutch. Why not let him set to work now and make a rabbit hutch to put your father in?

By the way, if it turns out that your trouble is in your magnetic coils, we advise you not to try to remedy them but to buy new ones. You can get excellent coils from Messrs. Grabb and Gettit, for $100 a coil, or even more. On this your father might come in useful. With thanks for your interesting letter,

PROFESSOR I. KNOWIT, Ph.D. T.K., D.F.

Oxon, Harvard, Oklahoma.

Or let us turn to another part of the same field--the feminine side. The change is even more striking. Compare the two following letters to the Lady Editor, making enquiries in each case about the way to arrange a children's party for little girls.

Anno Domini 1880

Letter to Dollie Dollhouse, aged 14, who has asked for advice about a party.

DEAR DOLLIE:

I am so glad to hear that you are going to give a party to your little girl friends for your fourteenth birthday. Of course you must have strawberries, great big luscious ones with lots of cream all over them. And of course you must have a lovely big cake, with icing all over the top of it, and you must put fourteen candles on it. Do you see the idea of the candles, dear? No, perhaps not at first, but if you will think a minute you will see it. It means that you are fourteen years old and that there is a candle for every year. Isn't it a pretty thought, once you understand it? I got it out of an old Norwegian book of fairy stories and thought it so sweet.

You had better not try to light the candles yourself, but get your papa or your mama to come and do it, if they do not like to, then send for a man from the hardware store.

You say that after all the girls have eaten all they can you would like to have some games and ask what you can play. There are really such a lot of games that it is hard to advise, but among the best of the new games is one called Hunt the Slipper, which I am sure you would like. All that you need for playing it with is an old slipper, one without any tacks sticking out of it being the best. One of the girls sits on the slipper and then the player who is chosen to begin has to go round and roll over all the girls and see where the slipper is. You see it is quite a clever game and can easily be learned in half an hour. But remember that your play must never be rough. In rolling over the girls pick them up by the feet and roll them over in a ladylike way.

After the game if you can get your papa to come into the room and read a selection of poetry, such as a couple of cantos from Paradise Lost, the girls will go away delighted. With best love and good wishes for your party,

AUNT AGATHA

Lady Editor Children's Column.

Here is the other sample which is the same thing, brought up to date.

Anno Domini 1926

Letter to Flossie Fitz Clippit, aged 14, granddaughter of Dollie Dollhouse, in answer to her request for advice about a party.

DEAR FLOSSIE:

The right number of covers for a luncheon to your girl friends is certainly eight. Ten, as you yourself seem to think, is too large a number to be cosy, while eight gives exactly the feeling of cameraderie without too much formality. Six, on the other hand, is a little too intime, while seven rather carries the idea of oddity, of something a little louche, or at least gauche, if not hootch.

For table decorations I find it hard to advise you, as I do not know the tinting of your room, nor the draperies or the shape and shade of your table and the complexion of your butler. But if not unsuitable for some special reason what do you say to great bunches of scarlet ilex thrown all over the table? Either that or large masses of wisteria and big bunches of Timothy hay?

I don't think that if I were you I would serve cocktails before lunch, as some of your friends might have views about it, but a delicious coupe can be made by mixing half a bottle of old rum with shredded wheat and then soaking it in gin.

For the menu, you will want something light and dainty, appealing rather by its exquisite taste than by sheer quantity. What do you say to beginning with a canapé of paté de fois gras,