Take any life you choose and study it.
Take Edgar Lee Masters':
He is a lawyer and a poet;
Or perhaps it is best to call him
A lawyer-poet,
Or a poet who was never much at law,
Or t'other way around if you prefer.
Whichever way 'tis put, the fact remains
He wrote a poem that now sells
For fifty cents plus four beans.
Think of it!
Four dollars and fifty cents,
Or, if you prefer,
$4.50.
And Elenor Murray did not have a cent on her
When they found her body on the banks
Of the Squeehunk river.
And the poem is out of stock at half the stores.
And Villon starved and Keats, Keats--
Where am I? I don't know.
Yseult Potts.
* * *
The headline, "U. S. to Seize Wet Doctors," has led many readers to
wonder whether the government will get after the nurses next.
* * *
We have always been in sympathy with President Wilson's idea of
democracy. He expressed it perfectly when he was president of Princeton.
"Unless I have entire power," said he, "how can I make this a democratic
college?"
* * *
The complete skeptic is skeptical about skepticism; and there is one day
in the round of days, this one, when he may lay aside his glasses,
faintly tinted blue, and put on instead, not the rose-colored specs of
Dr. Pangloss, but a glass that blurs somewhat the outlines of men and
things; and these he may wear until midnight. The only objects which
this glass does not blur are children. Seen through blue, or rose, or
white, children are always the same. They have not changed since
Bethlehem.
* * *
A very good motto for any family is that which the Keiths of Scotland
selected a-many years ago: "They say. What say they? Let them say." It
might even do for the top of this Totem-Pole of Tooralay.
* * *
A frequent question since the war began is, "Why are there so many damn
fools in the faculties of American universities?" Chancellor Williams
of Wooster turns light on the mystery. Eminent educators who are also
damn fools are hypermorons, who are intellectual but not truly
intelligent. He says of these queer beings:
"The hypermoron may laugh in imitation of others, but he has no original
humor and very little original wit. The cause for this is that original
wit and humor require unusual combinations of factors; but the very
nature of the hypermoron is that he does not arrange and perceive such
combinations. When the hypermoron does cause laughter from some speech
or action, usually he resents it. But when a normal man unconsciously
does or says something laughable, he himself shares in making sport of
himself. Though at times amiable, the hypermoron invariably takes
himself so seriously as in a long acquaintance to become tiresome."
* * *