"WHEN I had to sing in a recent picture," says Carole Lombard, "I considered giving up smoking. But my voice teacher said I needn't if I'd select a light smoke-Luckies.
"I soon found that even when singing and acting 12 hours a day, I can smoke as many Luckies as I like without the slightest throat irritation."
The reason Luckies are easy on Miss Lombard's throat is because the process ''It's Toasted" takes out certain throat irritants found in all tobacco-even the finest.
And Luckies do use the finest tobacco. Sworn records show that among independent tobacco experts- auctioneers, buyers, warehousemen, etc. -Lucky Strike has twice as many exclusive smokers as have all other cigarettes combined.
In the honest judgment of those who spend their lives buying, selling and handling tobacco with men who know tobacco best ... it's Luckies -2 to 1.
*Star of the new Paramount production "True Confession"
A Light Smoke
EASY ON YOUR THROAT-"IT'S TOASTED"
, 114ER S COG-RAI WISI--I WE UPON IT, E ,IRED
0-0-01--17"HIS BALANCED ROCK GIVES MEA SCARY FEELING
PIKE'S PEAK
WELL, IT 1S BEEN S"TANDING HERE A LONG TIME - I DON'T 7"HINK. IT WILL FALL 10DA'/
A STRANGE LOST RACE KNOWN AS T1--1E'L11TLEPEOPLE'. WE DON'T KNOW WHERE TI--IEY CAME FROM OR WHERE" 1HEY WENT. AND JUST ,HINK., THESE DWELLINGS WERE ACTUALLY MOVED HERE INTACT FROM •HEIR ANCIEt-lT SITE
LD, MELLOW SMOKE.YOU NS, 1HE LONGER A MAN T PRINCE ALBERT. "THE MORE I-IE APPRECIATES OWGOODITIS.17' ALWAYS Ok'ES S<;:,COOL, Wl"TH
Smoke 20 fragrant pipefuls of Prince Albert. If you don't find it the mellowest, tastiest pipe tobacco you ever smoked, return the pocket tin with the rest of the tobacco in it to us at any time within a month from this date, and we will refund full purchase price, plus postage. (Signed) R. J. Reynolds Tobacco Company, Winston-Salem, N. C. ALSO TRY ROLLING YOUR OWN WITHP.A.
tobacco in every 2-oz. tin of Prince Albert
THE MESSENGERI
UNIVERSITYOF RICHMOND
GEORGE SCHEER, Editor-in-Chief; J. H. KELLOGG, Richmond College Editor; LAVINIA
WINSTON, Westhampton College Editor; STUART GRAHAM, RICHARD L. SCAMMON,
ROYALL BRANDIS, MARTHA ELLIS, MARIE KEYSER, EUGENIA JoEL, Assistant Editors;
R. M. C. HARRIS, JR., Business Manager; JOHN S. HARRIS, Assistant Business Manager.
OutENEMYWITHIN*****
OUR LEAD ARTICLE may evoke -\ some little comment and perhaps a ques- \ tion as to its place in our book. Having stumbled on a cracking good story and a deplorable condition that exposure to the light may rectify, we are reluctant to split hairs over editorial propriety. The matter, furthermore, far transcends any petty squeamishness.
It will be wondered, then, why we did not dramatize so big a story. The answer is simply that we publish it with as much shame as indignation. It is regrettable that such an expose has to be made. While the bare facts cannot adequately convey the wretchedness of the conditions, we were too ashamed of them to do more than bring them to public notice. For what we have done we of the editorial staff assume full responsibility. It is our resolution to fight buck-passing until improvements are made. We _ are sick of "hollering down the rain barrel."
By BEN McCLURE
JUST A FEW WEEKS AGO a visitor to this campus paid us the high compliment of saying that the University of Richmond has one of the most beautiful campuses in the entire country. Underneath this outer veneer, however, lies an amazingly threatening condition
that destroys all the external charm of our campus for those who are aware of it. It mocks the phrase found in our catalogue, "Everywhere attention has been paid to safety, health, and comfort."
On assignment by the editors of this magazine, I made an exhaustive investigation of the living conditions in the dormitories of Richmond College. I was astounded to find that not only had comfort been disregarded, but safety and health absolutely end::mgered by the inexcusable negligence of those responsible for the care of Thomas and Jeter Halls. I had been forewarned of this state of affairs and will present exactly what I found.
Upon walking into Thomas Hall, I was shocked by the horrible stench permeating the entire dormitory. Tracing the source of the odor, I came on a disgraceful sight in the basement lavatory. Strewn on the floor were bits of paper, cigarette stubs, other odds and ends, all lying in a puddle of water that overspread almost the entire floor. Dirt was splotched in many places over the washstands and flies congregated in the room, due to the lack of screening. This dank, smelly room was a picture of absolute neglect and ·1ack of sanitation. Even its walls, damp and slick, had not been cleaned for many weeks, judging by their appearance.
Undoubtedly, this unfortunate state is a directresult of the lack of proper janitorial service and supervision. The number of janitors is
patently inadequate. It 1s ne~ess~~y_to , ~ean Gothic motif or keeping disease-breeding ineach lavatory, as well as the sinks·in the fialls, sects out? a;tleast once a day. With tb.e present janitorial With the idea of determining the location personnel this is not being and cannot be done. of toilet facilities, I retraced my way through And the very fact that cond1.tiohs such . as I the dormitories. To my surprise, I realized that have described exist is proof' enough tliat our all toilets· are now in the basement. Imagine men do not know how to dean properiy. the discomfiture of one who must use the lavaResponsibility for this cleaning should be tory, when he is rooming one, two, or three placed on someone. If the janitors do not have floors above. He must descend often as many some competent person in charge, who sees as three flights of stairs in a cold, unheated that the work is dcine, then these duties w1ll hallway. He cannot even shave without using not be handled in a proper manner. It is nee- the basement washstands. essary that the men cleanse the lavatories thor- } The college can remedy this situation. oughly each day, use deodorant, disinfectant Three years ago, there was no lavatory in the cakes in all toilets, and clean up generally. A tower room of Thomas Hall. Due to the need little soap, water, and brushes would certainly for one on this fifth floor, the administration help! installed a washstand, toilet, and shower in a It was an overcast day on which I visited room not over six by six feet in dimension. It Jeter Hall. In one section, I found one· feeble serves three boys very satisfactorily. This plan 25-watt bulb seeking' to illuminate ·a lavatory is adaptable for each floor of each dormitory. containing three sinks, two showers, and three For_ instance, _ th ere is, on the third floor of toilets. By this light, ridiculous as it may Thomas Hall, a closet measuring five byfive sound, the· students are expected to wash and feet that may easily be converted into a sh~wer shave. One small ·expenditure could provide bath. At present this doset is empty and _ is not ample lightfog and shaving comfort: · being used for storage. Just west of the stairs
Although this may not be the proper t1me of on lhis same floor is a space that ·could be conyear to discuss screening, .it is well to show verted into a 'lavatory, in ~idth _ ~ix to eight how badly students need screens. One warm feet, and, in length, at least twelve feet. - In night in September, I visited a boy to see if this two washstands, two toilets, and a paper lack of screening inconvenienced him. Be was receptacle could be accommodated. This, then; sitting at his window studying; his light rtatu- would provide ·alr1avafory' facilities for this rally attracted myriads of insects. They swarm- floor and relieve congestion in the basement, ed through the window, around the light, and in addition to giving further comfort to stufell on the study table and papers. Nor was 1.t dents. easy to sleep on those nights, he told me; mos- In one section of Jeter Hall with ten rooms, quitoes and other insects proved most bother- seven of which are double, there were three some. All this might be remedied by instal- washbowls, two showers, and two toilets. -At ling window screens for the early summer and each end of the washstands, which stood in a fall months, and removing them, if so desired, close row, was one small mirror, one of them ,in the winter period. There are only a very , removed some three feet from the end of the few scr:eens in the two buildings. After all, row. Seventeen men are expected to shave which is more important, preserving the here each morning, and that under one 25[ 6 .}
watt bulb, as we have shown elsewhere. Accommodations like those suggested for Thomas could be provided for in Jeter Hall, for I discovered much unused space there.
One of the MESSENGERstaff members visited the domitories of William and Mary for me to see if conditions similar to ours existed on other campuses. William and Mary was selected as a model for both its modernity and proximity. In Monroe Hall, a fairly new building, he found on the first floor a large lobby, with tables, lounges, overstuffed chairs, a telephone, many table and bridge lamps, and mail racks. Adjoining this central lobby were two rooms, set off by French doors. In the left-hand room was a large radio and ample furniture, in the right-hand room, an upright piano. All three of these student rooms were tastily outfitted, and each had magazines and urns of flowers. Five or six study rooms were located on this ground floor, one of which has a typewriter for student use. A first floor lava-
tory accommodates those desirous of using it. Each floor above had ample toilet facilities, scrupulously clean. All were well lighted. Each dormitory room has a sink, with hot and cold running water. This is not a new dormitory . The newest one has sound proof sections, with four rooms to a section.
All this damning evidence points to the fact that our dormitories are antiquated. We need some few things to make them decently livable. But, further, there can be no excuse for the unsanitary conditions and poor lighting and discomfiture that prevails. We lay great stress on the teaching of hygiene and sanitation, while fostering conditions diametrically opposed to all principles of good health. The university is responsible for the health of its students; this is a grave charge. Students are susceptible to disease and, above all, fall into poor health habits by the example set for them by the administration. Outmoded , antiquated, and unsanitary, our dormitories stand accused!
See the silver birches sway, Bended, and frail in the wet wind's spray, Caressing each droplet as they carelessly roll From leaflet to limb till they cover the whole.
Then the firm north wind in a fit of glee Purges the rain from a dripping tree. How now, aloof, and tall she stands Hallowed by Helios ' saraband.
But stands there no tree alone as she, Fragile, strong, and firm: a living tree; A tree that's weathered six score and ten And still holds faith in fickle men?
DONALD E TRUMP. [7}
Dea'LDia'L~
April 20th-
Dear Diary:
WOE IS ME! Oh Diary! Am I desolate? Of course I have been going around all day holding up my chin just like my mother told me to do no matter what the circumstances, but if 'the aforesaid chin quivered a bit, could I be blamed? Just to think of it, Bess has a fraternity pin and she wears it everywhere, and I don't have one. Of course, I love Bess like a sister and I'm glad she has it, but I want one too. I made inquiries of her,-tactfully of . course, as to her technique, but she didn't know what it was caused Jimmy to break down. At least, if she did, she is keeping it a secret and I keep asking myself, "What does Bess have that I don't have?" And I think I can say without conceit-"not a thing, old girl"-except of course, now she has that fraternity pin. Taking stock of my possibilities, there are just about six fraternity numbers that I might get if I really tried, trotted out the old line in earnest, you know. I must toy with this thought during the next lecture class and maybe something will come of it.
April 22nd-
Still no luck-no fraternity to grace my maidenly shirt front. But I've not been idle. Sounded out three prospects who phoned me last night-just casually of course, but I got results from those three anyway, and I have reduced my number of prospects by exactly three-oh definitely!
When I jokingly asked Waddy what he had done with his pin since Sally gave it back to him, he growled out-"Locked it up in Dad's office safe and I don't know the combination
and besides I made Dad promise to stop my allowance if I ever got soft enough during my college career to give it to another woman." Prospect No. 1 gone. Even if I got him to the point of giving up the pin, what good would he be without an allowance? Oh Diary! I ask you, isn't it heartbreaking? Then Buddy called up. Now Buddy wanted me to wear his pin last summer, only he told me if I did I would have to date only h1mthat it really was a serious matter, so quite airily I refused him. We let the matter rest at that and nothing has ever been said of it since. I still go places with Buddy, but with five or six other people besides, and he has the same privilege. Therefore, Buddy seemed a good bet if I could just talk him out of that "cross your heart and hope to die if you are not my only boy friend" idea. Buddy listened most attentively it seemed while I told him about Bess' fraternity pin and I added coyly that I might have been wearing his too, if I hadn't been such a little goose. Buddy perked up at this last remark and said "Well you know, my love, you could still have my pin and all that goes with it, except I lost the pin last week and I won't be able to get another one until summer." Prospect No. 2 down. I want a pin now, not next summer, but it was nice to know that Buddy would give me one if he had it. Then Harry called up. Now Harry and I have really been going places together
and I sort of have a yen for him-just a. shade more than I have for three of the other six, and I thought he certainly would be easy. Imagine my surprise when I told him about Bess' pin. He just guffawed and guffawed (not a pretty word but the only one that describes how how he sounded) , and when he finally regained his composure he said" Well of all the suckers-I would just as leave have a girl wearing my scalp as my pin. The fellows will kid Jimmy to death . about Bess. Certainly am glad you are a sensible kid, Midget, 'cause if you wanted my pin it would be just too bad - for you ." Prospect No. 3 in the discard.
This business is becoming serious. Guess I w ill have to take advantage of the moonlight at Saturday night's dance.
f f f
April 25-
Sunday- Oh! Oh! Oh, how I detest Sunday! Had to get up to go to church, ate too much breakfast when I got home and this pin business is still hanging fire-absolutely no luck at the dance . There was no moon, worse luck- it rained, one of those cold, wind y, drenching all night April rains Now I ask you, what is a poor girl going to do? Partners cut in too fast to get on confidential terms with anyone on the dance floor, and one simply cannot stroll in the rain . Song writers may laud it in song-well, let them As for me, to keep my mind active and clear I must keep my feet dry.
f f f
April 26th-
Played cards today with Zoe, Helen, and Bess. Tried to inveigle (good word that-two and a half dollar variety) Bess into giving us a line on how she got that pin. I had suspected all along of course that it happened the night of the dance-that dance when the moon was
so big and bright, but she told us in the most matter of fact way that Jimmy gave it to her when they were coming home from a picture show one sunny afternoon. Sort of lacking in romance, if you ask me, but I wonder if she is keeping anything from us? Zoe doesn ' t think so, because she says that she has been aided and abetted by all the atmosphere possible , moonlight, soft music, alluring frocks and what have you, yet the nearest she has ever been able to get to a frat pin is to be allowed to gaze at one decorating her date ' s shirt, but it has always stayed there, held on no doubt by a safety catch, with never a thought on the male ' s part of transferring it to her. Perish the thought! Could we girls be losing our sex appeal?
f f f
April 27th-
Am I thrilled-fresh pastures, new territor y to explore Oh, Diary, I'm going up to Virginia for the dances this weekend. Have to break tw o dates, one with Harry and one with Buddy - but who knows, maybe I will come home with that fraternity pin .
f f f
May 3rd-
I did it! Oh, Diary! I did it! I got the swellest fraternity pin and am I sporting it. The girls were simply stunned when I came in, and were they impressed! Virginia's fraternities rank so well, very exclusive and all that, don't you know. Bess acted really pleased, but I bet even she is envious. And to think that I got it from Willis Johnston, that grand looking senior, Varsity three letter man and all that. It fairly makes my head swim. I went up to the dances at Fred Baldwin's invitation and the first person broke me was Willis. He re-· membered me from the beach last summer. When he suggested a stroll in the moonlight, why of course, I went just to renew an old [9}
acquaintanceship, and really I hadn't the slightest idea of even getting on the subject of pins with him. However, he seemed so glad to see me and so anxious to talk to someone that I gave him my most melting look, told him to confide in me-and began to feel just the slightest bit hopeful myself. Then he told me that the girl he had been engaged to just jilted him and he was thinking of ending it all until he saw me, but that somehow by just looking at me, he had given up the idea and wanted to live. For a girl who thought she had lost her sex appeal this was like feeding catnip to a red Persian kitty-and so after about an hour's confidences, he gave me his pin. No, it positively was not the moon, I know it wasn't. He loves me, Diary. Isn't it just too romantic? And to think I came along just in the nick of time, to save him from a watery grave. He says he has almost forgotten his old girl's name. Of course, I don't want to be high-hat -I wouldn't for the world, but very few girls would have been able to bolster up a dying man in so short a time. And I was foolish enough just a week ago to want to hear about Bess' technique, when my own is literally dynamite
P . S. Mother was catty about it when I told her She merely smiled and said, "A heart on the rebound is easiest caught." Like the Chinese she deals largely in proverbs and I think some of them are terrible.
i i i
May Sth-
W ent to the dance last night with Harry and he seemed quite remote, if you know what I mean-and he didn't ask me for another date. Seems to have a chip on his shoulder, but why? I should worry! I had the loveliest letter today from Willis and he promises to write every day, if he can.
May 13th-
Buddy called me up tonight and said he was taking Virginia to the dance on Friday night and Harry is taking Eileen. Harry has not phoned this week and Buddy was very reserved. Waddy went home for the weekend and my other two cavaliers have gone away on trips with the teams. For the first time in history, I am without a date to the dance. Haven't heard a word from Willis either, for five days. Wonder if he is sick. Poor dear, how my heart bleeds for him, having all that trouble with that old girl and then having to be separated from me when I could be such a comfort to him. Dear me, Diary-life is so complex. i i i
May 17th-
W ell, I went to the dance after all, but I didn't enjoy myself-not even a little bit. I got a rush all right, but all of the boys constantly ribbed me about that Virginia frat pin, and I am inclined to believe that they were not kidding entirely-they seemed a wee bit peevish. Could it be that the pin given to me by my marvelous Willis is going to be my undoing here in town? Oh well, women have suffered before, so I will just be a martyr and stay at home if they don't want me at their old dances here, and I will think about Willis and look at his picture. I'll have to remember to get a new set of tubes for the radio to cheer my lonely hours.
i i i
May 25th-
Diary, Oh Diary !-why is it that we women must suffer so, and in silence? Willis has not written to me for a week. No one asked me to the dances last week-even Buddy has deserted me. I saw him at school today and when I asked him why he hadn ' t called up he said"Sister, you parked your popularity in storage [ 10]
just as thoroughly as you did your fur coat when you got yourself that Virginia frat pin." Buddy, of course, is one of the intense, romantic type and he thinks a fraternity pin means a great deal more than I do. I am sort of coming to 'the conclusion that it is not much fun to have a pin from a boy who is miles away and who does not even have time to write you letters. Maybe I should stop wearing it-not much use having it if you have to sit around and look at it, with no one else to admire it.
i i i
May 29th-
I must cry and cry and cry. Helen has a bid to the dances up at Virginia and Willis hasn't asked me, but Fred Baldwin has. Willis hasn't even written to me. Well I think I will accept Fred's invitation and when I see Willis I will turn on my personality or not, as I think fitting. Wonder if someone has · been talking about me.
i i i
June 7th-
A beautiful dream is ended and I don't seem to be unhappy over it-only stunned and strange to say, relieved. Maybe the great hurt will start aching when the newness of it wears off. How can men be such beasts? When I went up to Virginia to the dances last weekend I learned quite a lot about men and I hope I am a wiser woman. At the Inn where I stayed I had to room with another girl and right on top of her clothes when she opened her suitcase, was a picture of my Willis ( at least, I thought he was my Willis, though I was beginning to have my doubts). I had an identical picture in my own bag, but I kept it there and started asking her questions-tactfully, of course, about Willis. She was so thrilled over him, the poor kid-told me she had saved him from a watery grave, etc., etc. Just like I did, you know. Oh yes, she had his frat pin too. I
was simply boiling and when I asked Fred about him, and sort of hinted at what I suspected, Fred just laughed and said that Willis was majoring in psychology-that he had six frat pins scattered about, just for opportunity it gave him to chart the emotions of his "victims." Fred said he thought it was rather mean, but that Willis was a good student and was in reality engaged to a fine girl up in Boston; that the invitations to the wedding were even then in the mail for the event which was to take place right after his graduation. Was I a sucker? I am not asking you Diary-I'm telling you.
i i i
June 10th-
Well, I told all the girls in school today that the affair of mine with Willis was off. Of course, I had already stopped wearing that old pin but I am wondering what I shall do with it. I wouldn't give him the satisfaction of sending it back to him. He might use it to have one last fling on some poor lamb like I was.
i i i
June 12th-
My, my, how news travels! Just everybody called me up last night to find out about my romance. If I embroidered the details a little, who can blame me? A girl must save her face, as the Chinese say, and Buddy made me promise to go to both of the finals with him, and I'm all dated up for three weeks. How nice it is to be back in the swim once again-but what shall I do with that old pin? Speaking of pins, I raise my right hand and swear that I shall never again wear anyone's pin. The responsibility is too great-besides there are other reasons.
i i i
June 15th-
The pin is gone and so are my troubles. Buddy and I stood on the bridge last night
[ 11}
and he dropped it into the mighty, or rather only." As I believe I have written before in muddy James. Somehow wearing a pin sort these pages, Buddy has such beautiful blut: of gets to be a habit and while I thought I eyes and such taking ways-I'm almost sure would never wear one again, perhaps I was I'm in love again. I might add also that he wrong. At any rate, I promised to wear Bud- doesn't major in Psychology and chart one's dy's when he gets it next summer- for a while emotions. Why even you, Diary, wouldn't do at least, and probably let him be my "only- that. LENOREDINNEEN.
I'll drink of the wine of adventure. I'll taste of the dregs of despair. I'll hold in my hand the cup of a man Brim full with a wanderer's share.
I' 11start at the wonder of finding The vigor and strength of the draught. I'll wash from my lip with ravenous sip The dust which my freedom has bought.
I'll glow with the fullness and body The richness and tang of the cup. The strong flowing flood invigors my blood And murmurs the words, " Bottoms up. "
Then even the dregs at the bottom, The worst of the greatest of wine, Are welcome to me, for there always will be The taste and the cup which are mine.
ROBERT]. MARTIN,Ill. [ 12}
AGAIN THERATSYSTEM
By J. H. KELLOGG
ALONG ABOUT THIS TIME of the year we chosen few of the nation's colleges are being subjected to a spectacle of alleged adult conduct while the sophomores discipline the freshmen. This manner of action is known locally as the "rat system" and elsewhere similar systems are known perhaps by other names calculated to be appropriate. It seems that some suitably anonymous person long ago selected the rodent in question as the prototype of members of the recalcitrant first-year classes and thereupon drew a rather uncomplimentary comparison as to character, intellect, and other personal attributes. Possibly a more scholarly investigation would reveal a more dignified etymology of the term "rat" used in this sense. In any event, freshmen are rats and they function under the rat system.
Discussions pro and con of ~his mode of wholesale intimidation have been numerous and heated. They have been also somewhat empty, for the only points that either side ever was able to establish beyond contradiction are 'Tm for it " and, equally as profound, 'Tm against it," all of which proves little more than that east is east, and west, undoubtedly, is west. Apparently no one has considered the matter important enough to merit a studied evaluation. Insofar as world affairs are immediately concerned, the rat system and its implications are dismally unimportant, but since we collegians have never been greatly bothered by the ridiculous doings of the insaµe world , outside, we feel no compunction for our microscopic inquiry into the constabulary activities of our second-year brethren.
Reminiscent of the egg-chicken debate is the how and why aspect of the origin of the
rat system. Did some anti-social sophomore of years past immaculately conceive that freshmen needed dressing down? Or does the practice exist merely as a device for disgruntled sophomores to redeem themselves, in some mystical way, of treatment received as freshmen? Be that as it may, the vicious circle is made complete by the assumption by the sophomore, as an inalienable right, of the privilege of satisfying his grisly inclinations in perpetuating the system.
Said system is founded upon the basic fallacies that freshmen will overrun the campus and besmirch alma mater unless the sophomores kick them around awhile and that sophomores are endowed with rightful police powers. Even though the citation of one case may prove nothing, we can offer the knowledge that one prominent Virginia college in good standing manages its freshmen quite successfully by ignoring them and thereby putting them in what is considered to be their proper place or at their gentlemanly ease, depending on your point of view. Granting, furthermore, that freshmen of two schools differ in type and thought does not lessen the truth of an old platitude which points out that more flies may be caught with molasses than with vinegar.
Standing solidi y behind the venerable rat system we find its parent, the sophomore mind. In the past there has been demonstrated as invariably true the curious, but understandable, fact that the sophomore's acquisition of knowledge, tolerance., broadness of outlook (generally considered to be among the pri-
[ 13}
mary aims of college education) has proceeded in an inverse ratio with his time spent in col\ege. Actually this condition better fits him for the arduous task of making the rats behave. The sophomore, then, has been hanging around long enough to learn everything except what college is really all about. This shortcoming by no means applies to all second-year students, just as the juvenilities (is there such a word?) of the abused administration of the rat system can not be laid at the feet of all sophomores. We are dealing herein with types.
As the sophomore views the onrush of freshmen at the beginning of the school year, he is impressed by a general state of over-selfconfidence on the part of the newcomers, which observation leads him to the conclusion that the erstwhile high school seniors are much too overbearing. They need to be taken down a peg or two Could he and his fell ow sophomores have been so obnoxious in their time as freshmen? Certain! y the present crop of neophytes is the " cockiest" in the history of the school. This, then, is the reason for the rat system . Freshmen must be made to realize their state of inadequacy and unimportance.
When all the freshmen first assemble at the beginning of the school year, student leaders and faculty members extend to the babes just emerging from the woods a most hearty welcome and assorted claps on the back. Shortly thereafter the usually bewildered freshmen assemble again, this time at the behest of sophomore leaders, who proceed to outline the high spots in the freshmen's duties, restrictions, ad nauseam. The individual freshman sees no course but to obey the dicta of those who pose as his betters After all, he and his fellows are strangers in the school and are without forceful organization.
The new members of the student body don
cute little caps which brand them as virtual outcasts-"rats," a leperous class to be disciplined In various ways is this accomplished. The principal purpose behind all the indignities which the rats must submit to seems to be to provide amusement for the sophomores. If the rat violates any of the regulations or does not obey every stupid command of a sophomore, the rat is reprimanded. If he persists in his indifferent disobedience, some of his sophomore mentors, accompanied by a few of their more stalwart cohorts, take him out on a dark night and paddle his derriere de scelerat. Usually this treatment is sufficient to show the rat the error of his ways and, incidentally , to engender in him the determination to act in much the same brotherly fashion toward next year's freshmen
During the freshmen's period of apprenticeship to the intricacies of college education and the prior rights of undergraduate classes, the sophomores who make themselves most objectionable in their punitive attitude toward freshmen are only a few, are those of lesser quality and worth to society and are the ones who received the same childlike treatment when they were freshmen Because of this, the rat system produces the one good result of exhibiting to all and sundry the petty characters and minute mental equipments of the small group of sadistic sophomores who administer discipline to the rats and black eyes to themselves. Vigilante methods are successful, because who can deny the safety of numbers? If the freshmen would gang up and, on some stormy evening, beat hell out of the offensive sophomores, the latter gentlemen would be sobered and made better citizens. Gangster tactics are bad, but sometimes only mob action is effective against mob action.
At this point some one will ask if we favor allowing the rats, insolent pups that they are,
[ 14}
to "run over" the upperclassmen, ro ruin a fine "tradition," to "take charge" of everything. Anyone naive enough to foresee such a condition as the result of abolishing the rat system in its present form is welcome to do so, but we decline to be misled by smug heroics. The "system," by the way, is little more than organized hoodlumism in a mild and puerile form. Whether or not the outstanding sophomore protagonists of it carry over its doctrines into their lives after college is not under consideration here. But why risk graduating from our colleges more and more dolts whose perverse senses of humor dwell on seeing others in the ridiculous and sickening situations which the rat system produces?
The system, though, has its good points, you say. Perhaps, although there is much to be said in favor of establishing order in college without the absurdity of allowing ~ophomores to attempt it. At the moment it appears that what we most need is a "sophomore system," by means of which the seniors or juniors would silence the sophomores' ravings and regulate the freshmen at the same time. Even now, just about the worst thing that you can say about an undergraduate is to term him sophomoric.
In place of the time-dishonored and bullyragging rat system as it is today we suggest a plan modeled after this form: Have the freshmen meet together under the leadership of a senior, preferably one who has never favored a typical rat system. Let him explain to them the discontinuance of the old methods and the new objectives, namely, the abolition of organized browbeating and the establishment of conduct commensurate with use of the term "gentleman." Ignore the freshmen from then on and defer fraternity pledging until the sec-
ond semester. Have them wear inconspicuous badges carrying their names. If not every one among them responds favorably, he may get the idea before he has finished college; if not, it won't make much difference anyway.
The college whose students do this will gain, not only in reputation, but in self-respect as well. Much of the future of every college now afflicted with the rah-rah spirit will be determined by whether it decides to be a hayseed institution with provincial notions and wild-eyed standards of conduct or to come out of the backwoods into something resembling a place for higher learning. Encouraging the demoralizing antics of sophomores ( or of any other class; it happens to be sophomores at present) is going more and more to stamp schools with an odious trademark. Why permit anything as intrinsically trivial as a rat "system" to prolong the growing pains of a school? It's hard enough to grow up without added obstacles.
Perhaps we have been reading non-existent dire results into the cunning behavior of our country's over-zealous sophomores. Perhaps the system produces no psychopathic cases. Perhaps it's just "good clean fun." (We don't know what that means but we aren't for it.)
Against our better judgement we grant these assertions for the moment. Even so, the smell of the system is getting rather strong. We suggest consigning to the collective junk heap of the nation this system if for no other reason than that it's too silly to have a place in contemporary collegiate life.
A final word of praise may not be amiss. About the only unreservedly good thing that can be said of the rat system is that it makes bigger fools of the sophomores than of the freshmen.
By RICHARD L. SCAMMON
No, MY HEAD WASN'T
SPINNING;
it only sounded as if there were four or five domestic appliance motors running at full speed and making a chorus of humming tones. Sometimes the buzz reminded me of a bee among hollyhocks. That was the first thing I recalled, that strange, slightly variant, monotonous hum-m-m.
In an effort to become conscious-not fast, just slowly and easily-I smiled inwardly (I was too weak for the use of external facial muscles) , I smiled as I discovered that I must have been unconscious. I had always wondered what it was like, and now, I was actually having to extricate myself from that state of mind. Where I was or what I had been doing did not seem to matter. I only knew that I wanted to "wake up." With great joy of discovery I suddenly knew that I possessed legs, a discovery made known to me by a reactionary twitch of a muscle in the calf of one of them, and sympathetically, a twitch was felt in the other leg, like an echo. And as the warm rays of the sun emerge from behind cotton clouds, I sensed that I was a complete person with legs, arms, and a body: I had only been aware of my mind before.
I moved my head which at once told me I was lying on my back. One of my hands I found placed on my chest. I lifted that hand, the other followed, and with the two of them I rubbed my eyes. The massage extended to my cheeks, to my nose, and finally into my hair, which I ruffled slowly. Next these same hands felt for my hips, and from there they gently stroked my somewhat numb thighs,
until the rest of my senses began to hold my attention more dominantly, and I soon forgot what my hands did thereafter. Simultaneously, my ears tuned from the buzzing sound to a strange musical reception, and my nose received a peculiar foreign incense, unlike any odor my nostrils could recall having experienced before. In quick order my eyes focused directly above me on blackness with a minute diffusion of amber light entering my visual perception from the left. I deliberately turned my head over toward the light, at the same time turning my body. As I did so, my left arm butted against a thin board; then I realized my absolute position. I was now apparently fully conscious.
It seemed I was lying in a bunk-like bed, the mattress of which was thin and stiff, like a pad filled with straw. There were no coverlets or pillows in this strange box- like affair. The open side of the bunk was masked on all four edges by thin, flexible boards which made the opening a picture frame. Stretched across the top edge of this frame was a loose cord on which was threaded an old turkey-red woolish cloth. Right now, it was bunched over toward the foot-end of the opening. I could easily figure that there was enough cloth to cover completely the open side of my den, but where was I, I repeated to myself again? I sat upright, rather sprightly it seemed to me for as dull and numb as I had been but a moment before, and viewed what there was to be seen from my window frame opening. It was so hazy it took some adjustment of my eyes before I could determine anything except the same dim amber glow I had already noticed.
[ 16 J
My first impression showed that I was in a small, low-ceiling room whose walls were black, whether from dirt or decoration I never knew. My eyes were immediately attracted to the source of light which seemed to be the only tangible thing in view. I looked to my left and up, and there hanging but an inch from the ceiling was an old silk shade about the size of a pail for diameter, and half as deep. The lamp frame looked to be of carved wood with frayed, thin fabric stretched on the inside. The color of the cloth was the same as the light, except for occasional blotches burned from hot bulbs.
Through the light drifted layers of smoke, but it was not the smoke of cigarettes because there was not that whitish cloud quality. It seemed to be thinner and darker than tobacco smoke, and it drifted ever so slowly. Directly below the lamp on the black floor sat a figure in dark clothing with a skull cap tightly glued · to his head. The figure, in profile to me, was small and cross-legged with a little round pillow placed on the floor close to the intersection of his legs. In the middle of the pillow was a small shiny orange-red bowl no bigger than the cup part of a cocktail glass. In the dish was a burning substance which sent up an almost imperceptibly small rod of smoke. The curious individual sitting there held in his dark brown hand a long thin pipe with a thimble bowl at the end. He was chanting a monologue-half music, half voice. My natural inclination was to crawl out of my coop and leave this strange oriental place. With comparative ease, I swung my legs out the frame opening, ducked my head out from under the top margin and stood upright. The little man on the floor did not move. I extended my hand out towards him and uttered a sound, a clearing-of-the-throat sort, but still he did not move. He hardly seemed to breathe.
In accompaniment to this queer chant I then noticed a far away chorus of tones in higher pitch which sounded a shafty aperture like a chimney draft. I turned around and saw a stairway. It was almost miniature-like. When I reached the foot of it, after ducking my head to avoid a low beam, I saw more light through the door at the top of the stairs. How had I ever come to be in this strange place? I thought of Alice in Wonderland as I started to ascend the steps. I took short breaths the more I became awake to restrain myself from inhaling any more than necessary the stifling, sickening incense. Barely touching the walls with my finger tips to keep balance, I climbed the stairs cautiously and slowly. When I emerged at the top, which opened into a room somewhat larger than the one from which I had just come, I saw in the middle a small round table around which were hovered five or six smaller than average men, all in: dark robe-like gowns. These men were talking in rapid, monosyllabic tones very highly pitched without much vibration in timbre. They were Chinese! Yes, I could easily discern that now. Before I had finished looking around to orientate myself, one of the members of the group hurried to me, his face so wrinkled I could not tell whether he was smiling or remaining simply natural. In his choppy little voice he inquired: "Feel better, feel better? Nice aroma make you forget ... forget ... forget?" And he finished his .speech with a giggly drool. His slender smooth hands attracted my eyes. One was overlapped on the other, and he held them both next to his body above his slightly protruding abdomen. The first finger nervously jutted up and down beating the hand beneath it. I automatically twisted my hands together and felt a ring. I lifted my hand, glanced at the ring, and thought of Velma instantly-Velma! That was it! She had given
[ 17 J
me my nng back. Now l knew where I was, what I had done!
"How much do I owe you?" I shouted at him.
"Dolla' fifty sen', dolla fifty sen'," he piped back.
I paid him and ordered him to show me out
quickly. I needed air, fresh air. I was panting for air. I toppled through a maze of small rooms and doors, around curios, and many paneled screens, still the incense infesting the air. I kept repeating in my mind, so this is an opium den! But I hadn't forgotten what I came to forget.
He sat forlornly by the way, The fevered blush of dying day In splendor filled with crimson light A world now vibrant with the night.
His figure lengthened on the ground, And evening shadows flowed around. Night stooped its sable cloak to lay About the shoulders of the day.
The stars came out, the moon arose. They clad the world in silver clothes. They bathed the skies with liquid ray, And cleansed the chamber left by day.
The sun arose, alight, anew, And bathed itself in morning dew. It brushed aside with fiery fan The night, returned the world to man.
ROBERT J.MARTIN,
[ 18}
Ill.
A Gentleman From Philadelphia
THE CANDLES in their niches along down the worn stairs paled and sputtered, as the little group of men in their shirt sleeves, stocks flapping, dove past. Tumbling into the dark, empty street, they fanned out from the lighted doorway and ran in different directions over the clacking cobblestones. Above stairs, from whence they had just come, a man lay dying on the floor of the game room. With smoking flintlock still in hand, another knelt over him and made apologies for the murder he had just committed. It was all so shocking and devoid of reason that some of the players still stood with billiard cues in their hands.
The story behind this killing was indeed strange, so much so that when it finally reached Londontown in the Mother Country, it " made" page one of the three-columned, eight inch by eleven, eight page newspaper, The London Chronicle. To this day, if you read page one of this little metropolitan journal, for December 4th, 1760, you will find the story "by a gentleman from Philadelphia," · dated October 20th. Here is that unique news story of yesterday:
rrAmerica ... New York) Oct. 20. By a gentleman from Philadelphia we are informed that John Bruluman, who was executed there on the 8th instant, for the murder of Mr. Scull, was by trade a silversmith; which business he left and went into the army, where he was an officer in the Royal American Regiment; but was discharged on being detected in counter£ eiting, or uttering counter£ eit money: he then returned to Philadelphia, and growing insupportable to himself, and yet being unwilling to put an end to his own life, he determined upon the commission of some crime, for which he might get hanged by the law. Having formed this design, he loaded
his gun with a brace of ba.lls, and asked his landlord to go ashooting with him, intending to murder him before his return; but his landlord not choosing to go, escaped the danger. He then went out alone, and on the way met a man, whom he was about to kill, but recollecting that there were no witnesses to prove him guilty, he let the man pass. He then went to a Publick House where he drank some liquor, and hearing people at play at billiards, in a room above stairs, he went up and sat with them, and was talkative, facetious, and seemingly good humoured; after some time, he called to the landlord, and desired him to hand up the gun. Mr. Scull, who was at play, having struck his antagonist's balls into one of the pockets, Bruluman said to him, 'Sir, you are a good marksman, and now I'll shew you a fine stroke:' he immediately levelled his ,piece, and took aim at Mr. Scull ( who imagined him to be in jest) and shot both the balls through his body. He then went up to Mr. Scull ( who did not expire nor lose his senses till a considerable time after) and said to him, 'Sir, I had no malice or ill will against you, for I never saw you before, but I was determined to kill somebody, that I might be hanged, and you happen to be the man, and as you are a very likely young man, I am very sorry for your misfortune.' Mr. Scull had time to send for his friends, and to make his will. He forgave his murderer, and, if it could be done, desired that he might be pardoned."
THESUBTLE ART
By ROYALL BRANDIS
IT ISTHEASTONISHINGRAPIDITYwith
which the average college student can seize one ideal, embrace it, then discard it for an entirely different one, that lays him wide open for propaganda. To classify modern propaganda is not difficult. The observer cannot fail to see it ' though "investigators" for tabloid magazines like to think that cults, secret organizations, and what have you are sowing "insidious" propaganda in the student mind. Such is not the case.
The first and most deadly propagandist that the student meets with is the college professor. He is a man who has a stock of knowledge that far exceeds that of his pupils. He will present these facts to his class in two ways. Either as an out and out supporter of one side or the other, or as an uninterested person setting forth the facts freely and allowing the scholar to choose his own side, the professor makes his point. In the latter method certain facts are over-emphasized to the resulting under-emphasis of others so that the student's first attempt to "reason" it out results in a victory for the professor's stand.
Is this propaganda on the professor's part intentional? I don't think so. The truth is probably this: When he first made his own
»Don •t believe anything you hear, and only half of what you see I««
decision, it must have been by assigning certain facts to more important positions in the case than others. It would be too much to expect of the greatest teacher that he could separate his own thoughts from his presentation of the question. Intelligent outside reading will counterbalance propaganda of this type.
There should naturally follow here a discussion of the effect on the student's mind of his associates. First, however, we would have to settle the question of whether friends choose our convictions or our convictions choose our friends. This answer is beyond my scope and so by the little bit of propaganda above, I evaded the question. From the campus let us turn to the outside world from which we never completely isolate ourselves.
Modern propaganda had its beginnings in the newspaper which was its most important agent until modern invention brought new fields of opportunity for the spreader of prethought-out ideas. The man who stands out in this line of work is unquestionably William Randolph Hearst. To judge Hearst is to express one's own political convictions, for to those who agree with his propaganda he is the light of truth while the opposition has things not so complimentary to say about him.
The methods used in the newspaper have changed from generally un-read paragraphs on the editorial page to three or four cleverly chosen words in a front page streamer headline. This new development, the art of headline writing, could very well be discussed in a complete article of its own. Let a candidate be forced to deny embezzlement of public funds in one-inch type all over the front page of a tabloid and enough voters will think where there's smoke there's fire to swing a close election. Reading the news stories themselves is of ten misleading. A good many reporters
[ 20]
nowadays belong to a journalistic union and the result is not likely to be uncolored news from the labor front.
An attempt to get away from propaganda in reporting news has been made by the news magazine whose purpose is to sum up the affairs of a week and present them impartially. These have been, in the case of Time, at least, rather successful. Too often, however, such a magazine can remain neutral only by attacking both sides. The idea behind such magazines is good and it may be that they are a step towards impartial news reporting.
The hardest kind of propaganda to resist is probably the newsreel. It has been a large influence in throwing our moral support to China in the present war. Newspaper stories full of figures on the number of Chinese killed and wounded by Japanese bombings have nothing like the effect of a motion picture of mutilated bodies being hauled away or a bloody child receiving first aid . Americans, being Americans , jump to defend the weak against the bully. Neutrality laws are forgotten One militant speech against aggressors and we will be nearer war than we have been since 191 7
In this field also, we find a monthly newsreel presentation of recent events in a supposedly impartial manner. This is remarkabl y unsuccessful as compared to the news magazine. The pictures are greeted with cheers and boos in the appropriate places, and it is extremely doubtful that anything but prejudice is generated. Certainly the pictures do not encourage reason. They make the case too real for reasoned thinking to be done on the subject.
Haile Selassie put his hope of getting the world to fight to save his kingdom on speeches before the League of Nations and newspaper stories of the bravery of his natives. That he
lost is history. On what might have happened if, during those tense days there had been released atrocity newsreels of bombed native villages and women and children, we can only speculate. It appears that clever Chiang Kaishek observed and learned a lesson from Selassie's failure.
But, of all the forms of propaganda, the most widely used and the most powerful is the radio. After only seventeen years of commercial broadcasting we find a man noted for his radio voice in the White House and a Demosthenes of the airways dictator in three of the greatest countries in the world. In Italy, Germany, and the Soviet Union there is a controlled press, a controlled motion-picture industry, and a controlled system of higher education, but, most of all, there are widespread facilities through which almost every man in either of these countries may hear when the dictator sounds off.
At home, we have seen that the people are much more likely to believe, and vote according to that belief, what they hear in golden tones than the cold facts and figures of a treasury report. And what is the result? The voters have become accustomed to cheer , not what is said, but the manner in which it is said. Another fact has recently become apparent. The broadcasting companies, who live by the adage, "Time is money," find it unprofitable to give the same facilities to an opponent that are offered the president. Thus , though we still have the right to free speech, it can easily be seen that unless we have the radio facilities we might as well be muzzled . So long as the radio is managed as it is now, such will be the case no matter who or what is running the government. If there is a remedy, I do not know it. Perhaps we must be content to keep the radio from governmental control, for that will keep us from dictatorship.
[ 21)
For a college student to attempt to eradicate these briefly discussed types of propaganda would be ludicrous. For any person or group of persons in the world today to try it would be useless. We must resign ourselves to propaganda and, by training ourselves to see it and see through it, keep our minds on an even keel. Unless all the signs of history point awry, the next few years will be crucial ones and the part that we allow propaganda to play in our lives will be the deciding factor of our fate.
DECOY
PERHAPSTHE LASTWORDin "bring-' emback-alive" fraternity rushing is the decoy system. Since every bona fide system must have parts, the parts of this system are the decoy part and the system part. We might have put in a part for the rushee, but two parts are enough for this paragraph, and besides the two parts sound more sarcastic, which is the effect we are trying to create.
The decoy is of the female sex, age not less
than seventeen and not to exceed twenty-two, and she must be beautiful. She must also be loyal to the fraternity, for reasons which we shall explain later. It is preferable that she be pinned up to a member of the fraternity, although the pin must never be in evidence. It may be worn on her evening-slip, if she is nai:ve enough to wear one to the dance.
Now for the system. It's simple as all get out. It consists of the lady's employing all her tricks ( and she must know plenty if she has a pin from your frat) to make the rushee fall for her and fall hard, so that all she has to do is to tell him to pledge old Gamma Eta Pi and it's as good as done. The loyalty part comes in to prevent cases of campus cuties talking Beta Mu Omicron at a GEP party, which has happened before and with fatal consequences.
The only trouble with this system is that it might backfire and your girl might fall in love with the part of a horse's anatomy of a rushee, in which case there are two alternatives: You may either drop the guy's pledge, or you may drop the girl, which is probably best, because, fellow, if you can't hold her against a freshman, you don't deserve her anyway.
STUARTGRAHAM.
22 J
OF ALL THE MEN I have ever known, he, if anybody, is most largely responsible for the complete disintegration of my optimism and steady decline into what left me a profound pessimist. He was my official haunt. His eye was never off me. Constantly he shadowed me. He was persistently peeking around corners, peering from under the sofa, hiding behind the radio, even staring out of some one of the relics which stood in almost every untasteful position about that mad house. They called them antiques, I always said that was just an excuse for not buying any new ones, and they were really just old If anything was antique it was his musty convictions about an exploitation of the "younger generation." The way he played me I'd like to have given him a piece of my mind . . . many times, but what could I do, after all he was her old man. It wouldn't have been so bad if he wasn ' t such a paltry little kernel. He had a nut-round nose which buried itself between the rounds of his cheeks, from right to left , and from north to south; between the folds of his forehead ( which he constant! y squinched at me) and his rusty-red mustache. His eyes were nothing more than two charred holes, deep and expectant. Physically he wasn't much of a he-man. He knew it. He fought vainly to conceal his envy of younger specimens of masculinity. Mentally he was narrow and afraid. Afraid I'd steal his precious daughter ... she WAS precious, and I'd made up m y mind that she would have me, and I was determined.
His nose was red, not from alcoholic pampering but from staring. He was miserably afraid the "Young Imps" were going to do him Anything from nineteen to twenty-nine
demanded his constant watch. What they needed was a public chaperone; what he needed was a personal body-guard. The blood had a habit of rushing to his face when he gazed forward. The deeper and more forcefully he gazed the more and more fiery his nose became.
He led that litter of brats like Hannibal crossing the Alps only instead of crossing the Alps he crossed me. Not one time, but many Once, when I was clean out of patience, he framed up with those six snorting hyenas to set in on a very "particular date" ... (I was so serious) and giggle can you imagine that? ... just giggle and act simple . You wouldn't believe it but it's a fact I'd swear to it ( if I swore) It was our anniversary sort of . . . I . . well, that is to say we'd been going together for four years. I was oh, so serious. I did so much want to be alone with Anne for just that night, anyway. It didn ' t do much good to attempt evasion by abdication into another room or on the porch That madhouse was something like a dormitory . He had enough kids to keep every post covered. Something like a college fellow's room. Did ' ja ever see a college fellow's room? Well, it look ' s like a barn with clothes slung over and under everything. Only, in this case it was kids in-
[ 23}
Sometimes marriage, paradoxical as it may seem, is 'Cet'Cea.tfrom the field of battle
stead of clothes. Honestly, I never knew that six kids could look like so many, or commit so much destruction. It was more like Grant's army. He, himself, sprawled cater-cornered across the sofa, the only piece of furniture in the house that more than one person could sit on safely, to say the least comfortably.
Anne's mom was a plain, calm sort of woman. She scarcely made an illustrious entrance or exit, but the homeliness of her life and faith made a picturesque character demanding infinite respect. Anne took after her mother.
The other inmates were reproductions of the old man, in one or more traits at least. There was Henrietta, ten years old and every one dynamite. I'd have to cut out paper dolls, imitate Benny Rubin, play house, play mama and papa, chew rags (to impersonate a Billy goat), cut up disgusting antics for a young man nearly twenty, and answer all sort of embarrassing questions about, "Why the old rooster in the back yard didn't lay eggs." It got so I'd have a fainting sensation every time I saw Henrietta coming.
Jane was twelve ... wild, and wooley. A tomboy in every respect. She wore breeches boy's breeches, and carried G-Man guns or rocks in her pockets. She had all sorts of rustic, rough, adventurous day-dreams, all about being marooned on some desolate island ... she wished she COULD be ... so did I. When she got impatient or lost her temper, she was a real problem.
Boy crazy at sixteen, that was Jeannie. She was a daring sort of girl. A romantic nut . . . read cheap love stories ... (you know the kind printed under loud-colored covers on that dirty, smelly newspaper bond). Most of her time she spent :flirting or packing up to leave home, the rest she spent unpacking.
June was naturally cute but suffered ex-
tensively from spoiledness. You could expect her to appear at any moment stark naked to make a show. Such occurrences as this would painfully unclothe my boldness and cause my cheeks to glow heatedly. Maybe she was a sweet little kid, but at five she used little discretion.
Emmie was the problem child of eight. She was characteristically fretful and disobedient 1 selfish and unruly; she liked to agitate me. I could expect sarcasm, tease, interruption, or rudeness from her at almost any minute. She was always the last of the children to afford Anne and me any solitude.
Lilly was sweet and simple . . . mostly simple.
Anne was the completely out of place angel. She was pretty, in a beautiful sort of way. The kind of girl who doesn't have to rely on packaged complexion. She was sweet and sedate. I loved Anne always had as long as I could remember ever since I'd met her four years ago. Gosh, I loved her. She felt the same about me. Gee, we loved each other.
Not so long ago she said sorta calm like, "Honey, I wish I could get away somewhere with you forever I'm impatient, Darling."
I thought to myself, if I had to live in that tornado trap I'd leave too, and I woudn't wait to get impatient either. I didn't tell her that though. She was so serious. She was a stenographer down at BRITCHARD'S, and they had taught her business. She had to THINK, but I'm just a college guy and I didn't have much use for thought. After all, the professors were supposed to do that. I never did have much use for repetition.
Hers was a kinda funny position. You see, out of all those brats she was an angel, and the first to grow up.
On this particular anniversary, after the old [ 24]
man and his six kids had determined to run me crazy, I decided I'd let him run me off the place first. The mischief that combination could conceive was humanly impossible this side of barbarism.
While Anne went upstairs to get her coat, I retrieved my hat from the rubbish can where Jane had left it carelessly, after playing the part of G-Man Holmes with the kids next door.
It was a beautiful June night, with a brilliant almost-full moon flickering through the low fat clouds which looked more like herd of slothful sheep. It WAS beautiful.
Anne tried to settle herself comfortably on the scantily covered seat springs of the flivver while I broke a stick to test the gas level. The resulting statistics forecast the extent of our journey. The water-off-a-duck's back effect revealed by my test told me it wouldn't be a long one. That is, if I didn't want to walk home. I'd almost as soon WALK home, as ride in that omnibus. I scurried up front then, and cranked, while Anne wrestled with the throttle and choke on the steering wheel. It did more harm than good, and I had to crank twice as long and hard to get the darned thing started, but Anne wanted to help. I couldn't make her feel unappreciated, so I just humored her.
It was a comfortably hot night, and Anne loosened the coat about her. She always wore the thing when we drove, hot or cold. To keep the dust and oil off her, I expect. It was a trivial matter; so I never said anything to her about it.
After driving and not saying much for about ten minutes, we came to a little country river a half mile off the main road. I drove off the road, along the bank and stopped. It was a beautiful scene. I didn't notice it much, though. We were eight miles from Meadow-
bridge. Eight long miles lay between just us, and that colony of interruptions.
I didn't know whether to or not at first, but I finally got up courage enough to try to tell Anne just what I thought of the whole mess and what I intended to do. I laid my arm on the back of the seat behind her and then after a moment of silence and hazy thought, I lost energy and let it slowly rest on her shoulder. Then, looking in the direction of the river across her, but yet barely a glance played directly upon her, I began to assert my proposition.
"Anne, Darling," I said, reassuring myself of her attitude, "You . . . you know, your family ( of course she did, but that wasn't what I meant) well that is everything is a mess, Anne."
She looked at me in a half-understanding, half-questioning manner. "Honey, we just can't let your . . . please try to understand and don't be angry until you see what I mean: It's that bunch of brats and your old man they' re making us miserable . . . You. "Brats? . . . old . . . Man. . . .
I'll never forget the battle that followed I really was miserable after that. I know I didn't use much strategy, or good English, or anything like that, but I thought she ought to understand. Well, I had to drive her straight home. She didn't say anymore than, "Don't come back," but I was in such a haze, I didn't hear it until I got home, and I wasn't sure I heard it then. I'll never forget that night. We HAD gone too far and I had to walk two of the five miles between my house and hers. I didn't feel it so much though because I wanted to talk to myself. I wasn't fit company for anybody else after that scene.
All the time what I wanted to tell her was that with all the kids and everything over at her house we couldn't be happy together or [ 25]
rather we never were together . . . that is really together. I'd figured out a plan so that we could get married and go down to Ellersonville and rent a little apartment. Anne was making twenty-five dollars a week, and I had been promised a job down in Ellersonville paying twenty-eight. .I knew we'd be happy . . . I didn't mean to insult her people. Somehow, I knew I'd feel a whole lot better towards them after we were married. It wasn't them I disliked after all, it was having to live with them whenever I saw Anne.
The next four or five days passed without a stir in the soup. On Saturday I went down to Ellersonville, to talk to Mr. Fawcett about the job I'd spent a miserable, sleepless night, the night before. My anger was wearing off, and, for the first time, I was really feeling the pain of absence. Far into the wee hours of the morning, overcome with weariness, I fell asleep. I didn't wake until almost nine. I had to skip breakfast entirely. The old flivver was laid up with a crippled distributor, and I almost missed the only bus for Ellersonville.
I had a pretty busy day in the city. The week before I'd let most everything go. My first engagement was with the barber; I hadn't had a haircut in almost two weeks; I'd been rather careless those last few days. I hated to let anybody other than Ole Barney back in Meadowbridge cut my hair, but this was an emergency; I was in Ellersonville, on business. When I left the barber shop, I was the next thing to a convalescent. I'd been sheared slick as a new penny.
I had to buy some new points for "Napoleon"-! called the old bus that sort of sentimental I guess. I roamed around restlessly, then I went up to see Fawcett about taking me on. I found him busy, so I insisted on coming back later in the evening.
I was uneasy and very unhappy that morn-
ing. Restlessly, I pushed through the shops trying hard to forget Anne, half way; the other half, I tried to recapture some of the sweeter things that had passed between us. Passing the furniture displays, I thought all sorts of things. The counter of baby things made my cheeks warm with a silent flush. I wasn't aware of the nature of the merchandise until it was too late; I'd gone over to speak to the girl behind the counter. I wasn't a prospect or anything like that I had known her in high school. I had a terrible time shoving, nudging, and twisting my way out of that bunch of female auction hawks.
All the time I couldn't get Anne off my mind. I finally decided to go down to the Palace for the matinee. Had a show there they called "Horace Comes Across." It was a pretty • rotten excuse for a show made me sick . . . all that mushy, loathsome hugging and kissing . . . bored me stiff. I got up and left, just about the time he had swept her out of her window and started down the ladder . . . routine stuff in all cheap pictures, Prof. Grigg said so once in one of his lectures.
I got to thinking, after I started down town again, that maybe old Horace had some good ideas after all, but he couldn't be right, so I dismissed all those thoughts, and, besides, I wouldn't think of . . . or would I?
When I got back down to the central offices, Fawcett was there alone . I went in assumingly optimistic; came out with tangible disappointment. I got the job all right, that is if I wanted it. The drawbacks were disillusioning. First of all, I'd have to live in Ellersonville. Then, I wouldn't make but twenty-two fifty a week . . less than Anne . . . I couldn't ask her . . . not on that.
All of this hurt a little and made me want to talk to Anne just so bad. That evening late, going home on the bus, I made up my mind
[ 26 J
that I was going over and straighten things up with Anne, even if it did mean injury to my pride and that I'd have to do my explaining publicly and in that powder horn.
By working a little after dark, I got the old gasoline incinerator percolating. Then I went up and shaved. I hadn't let that city butcher shave my tender crop -of chin weeds. A young man's proud of his first few harvests ... and I figured that with proper cultivation a sooty looking chin helps to give one a matured countenance. My face was slow to heal. So, I didn't want to risk any mutilation.
After dressing all proper, prim, and spruce for a college upstart, allowing my imagination to run wild all the while, as I hummed, whistled, and synchronized bits from almost every conceivable familiar melody, I excited the horseless carriage and started over to Anne's house. I smiled as I passed the place where Napoleon had exhausted the week before. Waterloo, I called the spot after that.
When finally I drove up to Anne's house, I could see that clarion flock of runts gloating over the prospects of the pending evening's entertainment I was to afford them. This was pretty disheartening. After knocking on the door for nearly fifteen minutes, Emmie let me in, snickering to herself. I could see her fun had already started. Yes, they were all there. All except the antogonistic old man, commander-in-chief, in charge of all military operations. Anne was upstairs. Dressing, I suppose. All women like to make spectacular, triumphant, or nonchalant entrances . . . so did Anne. That's why they always make it a point to keep their callers in suspense prior to their appearances. I always hated to be left alone amid that six ring circus. I couldn't understand why Anne always let me suffer so_. Anyway, I always felt better when she was by me. I loved Anne.
It looked as though it was going to be sorta quiet for awhile. That is, nothing more than the usual giggles, whimpers, whispers, and silly, simple mannerisms common to all nitwits.
Then it started, as sharp and quick as dyna: mite, when Henrietta spotted my newly sheared hair. She made some impish remark about my having enough hair cut off at one time so I wouldn't have to go back for another month ; and I'd save money so's I could take big sister to dances or bring candy or something. I knew it did look somewhat like I might have done just that, but I wasn't going to sit there and listen to those idiots get tickled when the joke was on me. You just don't have any idea to what extent those kids would go. It made me furious; so I ups and smacks the little brat wit~out thinking much about it. I could feel the whole sofa shake. When she let out a howl that could be heard amile and a half av\:ay,I was a little embarrassed · and half scared. I had a feeling of mixed shame and relief when Anne finally appeared.
I told Anne all about it first thing when she came down; she was glad in a sort of quiet way, that is, glad for some kind of an opportunity to break the ice between us. She protected me and I liked it. Anne told her mom, had the whole tribe put to bed. This flattered me. I though at·last thi fam.ily was b~ginnirig to see my way. Anne assured me, however, that the kids had been unusually ro~dy that evening with the neighbor's brats, caused considerable damage. The early-to-bed punishment was for the afternoon episode. They picked on the neighbors, probably because they had missed their regular Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday nights' practice on me during that past week. This set me back, but I could see Anne felt sorry for me. I could see she loved me more than she had courage to show.'
After everything was quiet, Anne and I just looked at each other breathlessly, almost fearingly, for a moment, and then well, then after I'd convinced myself that for once we were alone in that house? it was impossible. I still wasn't sure. I looked at Anne. I could see that she, too, felt that it was a sort of impossible situation . . . but yet . . . we were alone. Then I began to feel sorry and kinda ashamed of myself. I made some sort of muddled, feeble effort to apologize for what had happened last but I could see she had suffered from it; that we were both wiser and more than ever in love . . . in love with each other.
And then I tried to go on and explain just what I had meant. W couldn't carry the plan out now, not while I was making less than her, but I wanted her to know; anyway.
"Anne, I wanted you and I well that is," I began, "that is, I thought with me and you both working that we could be married and run away from this mess." The whole couch trembled, it was a tense moment. Then I inserted rather quick-like "but we can't do it, Anne." I'd rather have said it than to let her. 'Tm not going to make as much as you . . . besides" . . . she broke me off here. While I was telling her all that, something had taken hold of her. She was turning all sorts of colors and staring out in space at nothing at all. From the look on her face I couldn't tell whether she was angry or happy.
She turned to me in a nervously bitter-sweet manner, and said in that sweet, convincing sort of way ( funny how a fell ow thinks up so many pretty words to describe it when she's saying things to him, and then forgets them all when he goes to write about it), well anyway she said, "What you' re making . . . that is how much. wouldn't make any difference.
"You mean you would . . 1 " "No, I couldn't, not with all the children here. I'd have to help mom keep them straight for awhile yet anyway." (As if an army could keep those brats straight, I thought to myself, but I didn't tell her, not just then). "There's dad too; he thinks it's my duty to stay here with mom till the little ones are grown up. He's funny that way" (Nuts I'd say)
"I do love you so much, I'd almost. "
All this made me feel pretty mean. I didn't even feel it when she kissed my cheek. I was hot under the collar and my face was frozen stiff with the numbness of aggravation. I quenched and grumbled to myself. Then I just couldn't stand it any longer, I was seeing cockeyed. So I just ups and says plain out, "You mean to tell me you' re going to let that petrified litle fossil and those six runts come between us and. "
I didn't get any further. The chesterfield shook, the "1850" lamp at the end fell to the floor with a resounding crash. Before I was aware of what was happening, Old Hawkeye, himself, scuffled out from behind the debris and started after me with a cursing glare and one of the kids' baseball bats. I was never sure afterwards just what happened during those frantic, mad seconds that followed, but somehow I managed to ask Anne if she really loved me as much as I wanted her to and get some kind of answer, and then, even at that, get six paces ahead of that lunatic. I kept him off the trail by leading him around the house for some five laps. By that time Anne had old Napoleon fired up . . . good old Napoleon.
I shook him off about a half mile down the alley in back of the school house, then I ran back to Anne, I didn't know what we were going to do. All I knew was that we did love each other more than all the world put together,
[ 28]
and that we were going to do SOMETHING. I'm not sure I cared what just then. We did do something. I never will forget that night. We drove to a little town called Bridgeport, across the border, over in Maryland. Spent the night up together, and were married the next day by a Justice of the Peace. We never said a thing about the episode of the preceding evening. We not even so much as thought about it until we got ready to come home some three days later. We had to come THEN, our money was giving out. The guy who said that "two can live as cheap as one" must have been nuts. We found out at the best, we couldn't live any cheaper than three . . . ordinary people.
I expected, when we pulled in the old home town, that there would be some particular
thunder raised. I'll never forget the preexecution I suffered just before I saw her old man. When finally I did come face to face with him, he seemed to be in just as much misery as I was. This time his whole face was on fire. I couldn't tell where that noise of his stopped and his cheeks began. Then after a painful silence, during which time I was a martyr to my own expectations, the old man choked a little then mumbled something ( native to his disposition) about another $400 income tax discount. The idea seemed to brighten with possibilities and reflected itself in a corresponding brightening of the old man's face. It tickled me through and through when that cavalcade of brats was made to apologize to their big, fine, brother-in-law. Boy, they hated it!
The poem TO ONE I LOVE in the June, 1937, number bore the incorrect byline, G. Motte Martin. Jean Searing was the author. We are glad to make this correction .
[ 29]
CHILDREN OF STRANGERS.
By
Lyle Saxon Houghton Mifflin Company. Boston. ·
294 pp. $2.S0.
An exotic story, poig!1ant writing, and sympathetic understanding are combined to make this novel one of rare beauty, a tale of the Deep South that is new , sincere, and magnificently told. Devoid of the usual starkness, Saxon's style is nevertheless realistic, nor by this "romantic realism" does it become sentimental or ineffectual.
The story is about Famie. · Famie stood somewhere between the blacks and whites in the social scale of 190S Louisiana, one of a proudful and crumbling race, the descendants of grand-pere Augustin, son of an opulent French planter and an octoroon beauty. The inaccessibility of their jsland home in the Mississippi River, Isle Brevelle, and their adament pride helped the mulattoes retain their racial differences and ideals. As a traitor to tradition, Famie became a tragic outcast.
Her devotion to an illegitimate child by a white fugitive from justice, who was shot in the swamplands, was deeper than that to her cousin, Numa, whom she married after the child was born. After a few years of marriage, Numa died of consumption, coughing out his life in the cotton fields. After his death, Famie sacrificed precious heirlooms from grand-pere Augustin and finally the old home itself, so that she might support herworthless son, who passed for white in the city of Chicago. She lost caste among her relatives for so lowering herself and not treasuring that which was hers to preserve
Becoming ostensibly shiftless, she even labored side by side with the Negroes, scorned by them and ostracized by her own people. Neither her illicit affair with the red-haired white man nor her marriage to Numa had evoked ill favor. But the disposition of grand-pere Augustin's things and association with the blacks did. Her culminating degradation came in marrying Henry Tyler, husky, kind Negro field-hand. This act seems, however, bitter triumph, though she does sink into a race from which her forebears had held themselves aloof.
A minor theme, the puzzlement of Henry Tyler at having to work out his years in one narrow fur-
row and his yearning for a more purposeful existence, the promise of education by Paul, a wh it e painter, lonely, sickly brother of the plantationowner, for whom Henry worked, and the crash of this dream-escape with the death of Paul, strikes an emotional chord and adds dignity and power. Children of Strangers' atmosphere and thought, anguish and victory, and ·its artistic presentation stamp it a true American epic.
THE SEVEN WHO FLED. By Frederic Prokosch. Harper and Brothers. New York. 479 pp. $2.S0.
In the recent publication of The 5 even Who Fled, Frederic Prokosch reached high literary achievement in winning the Harper Prize for the best novel by a new American author.
The writer catches in his description the wild scenic beauty of Chinese Turkestan, from the torrid wastes of an unlimited desert to the splendor of the frigid mountains where human life cannot exist when winter grasps the land. - It echoes the primitive, unbridled instincts of the natives and contrasts them to the seven worldly cosmopolites, who undergo mental changes as the plot deepens. Here the vital elements of man's make-up are strikingly depicted when the cru~ial point of each man's life is attained. Then after each man has faced the test, he meets inexorable fate, the doom that is sure to overtake him. Youth, clamoring for self-expression, fights against the forces of nature, seeking a chance before old age comes.
Seven widely different characters are assembled; one is an English aristocrat, one, a fugitive from France, another, an exiled Russian, then a bored cosmopolitan gentleman and his beautiful wife, and two young, German engineers. Destiny overtakes each o_ne.One faces death amid the unresting, · powerful wonder of the Turkestan mountains, capped with an unbroken blanket of snow shaped into weird, ghostlike forms : Another is doomed amid the squalor and filth of the Chinese dwellings, where human life reached a state of near decay. The others find the desert holds terror for men and beasts. Keenly one feels the surge of a desert storm with rolling clouds of dust that smite the kneeling travellers. With due faithfulness, Prokosch shows Fate dealing death to all, rich and poor, man and beast; and even the loneliness of being that a dying man feels is brought home graphically.
As his end overtakes each character, the reader [ 30]
catches a kaleidescopic picture of the individual's previous life, his trangressions and his joys, his loves and his hates. One final note is struck; as each person nears death, he feels that he has discovered the ideal solution to life, the answer to his problem . And each leaves the world content. A powerful book by an author of great promise.
BEN McCLURE.
1' 1' 1'
ONE LIFE, ONE KOPECK. By Walter Duranty. Simon and Schuster. New York. 333 pp. $2.50.
"Dzizn Kopeika," Mr. Duranty tells us, means, "Life is a little kopeck; or, as we should say, 'not worth a rap.' " Hence, the title of his first booklength fiction. Certainly, life, as lived by his characters is not worth a rap-and one wonders if his book is!
Duranty has a two-fisted, aggressive news style and, after seventeen years among them, a fine knowledge of the Russian people and their country. He has definitely established himself as one of the world's best informed writers on Soviet Russia through his intensely interesting, vivid best-seller, I Write As I Please. In this new novel, he writes as he pleases and with his customary sureness. But he fails to produce a satisfactory work. As a morbid etching, full of desire, passion, and revulsion, or simply a glossy, thrilling story, One Life , One Ko peck is a finished book. But its plot is trite, its characters unconvincing, its psychology shallow, where it is not lacking altogether.
Ivan Petrovitch, with whom Duranty deals, is a peasant lad, whose first remembrances include seeing his mother, who felt that children were the devil's own nuisance, murder his father with an ax, while the man was sleeping. One night, when he is fifteen years old, Ivan assaults a police officer to protect his "young master." So Ivan is exiled to Siberia. Here he finds and reads an incendiary document, Karl Marx's Das Kapital. Voila! A Bolshevik, rabid and determined to introduce the new order.
But the commandant bars the path to freedom. Therefore, Ivan rams a corkscrew into his breast. His flight carries him into the Czar's army for the first two years of the war. Then the party arranges for false papers in order that Ivan Petrovitch might be transferred to a munitions plant to spread the gospel of Bolshevism and study organization. Interwoven into the story of his adventures is his hopeless love for a White Russian, Nina, who
represents all oppression. The metamorphosis ot Ivan Petrovitch from servile peasant boy to leading revolutionary, merciless and strong, is the central theme, but his love for Nina brings the too dramatic climax.
Nowhere is Ivan described; one cannot picture hir;n. Nor are his thoughts considered, only his deeds. Consequently, the reader's sympathy is not aroused for Ivan Petrovitch and without it the tense events have a superficial sort of appearance, somewhat like the affairs of puppets. As a novelist, if we might indulge an acknowledgedly hackneyed expression, Walter Duranty is a first-class newsman.
1'
1' 1'
HENRY CLAY: SPOKESMAN OF THE NEW WEST. By Bernard Mayo. Houghton Mifflin Company. Boston. 548 pp. $4.50.
Cleansed of the floridity and blind eulogizing characteristic of the outmoded biographical form, Bernard Mayo's new estimate of Henry Clay retains nonetheless some of the essential features of the ageless pattern. While this is distinctly not one of the "dry-as-dust" tomes for the student, it is long, full, and slow reading; for it is a scholarly volume, the first of a trilogy, quite fascinating as it traces the ascent of the "Star of the West" from the humbleness of a Virginia farm, not far from Richmond, to a high place in Washington politics at the age of thirty-five.
Evidentally there has been no attempt whatsoever on Mr. Mayo ' s part to prepare modern biography in the sense of streamlined, swift-moving writing. But this soberly-paced book presents an entertaining, as well as an accurate portrait. The conclusions drawn from prolific source material are in themselves worthy of praise, but coupled with the elaborate, interperative backdrop the author uses against which Clay performs, the resulting whole is most eloquent.
Moving from Richmond, the office of Virginia's "revered chancellor," George Wythe, and the gay affairs at which he passed his leisure moments, Clay rode into Kentucky at the age of twenty. His one material possession was the horse on which he rode. But the young lawyer brought with him to Lexington six years of training under Wythe and the brilliant attorney-general, Robert Brooke; a gifted tongue; a clear, quick mind; ease of manner; and the ability to make people like him.
It did not take Henry Clay long to establish himself. At twenty-three, he was engaged in a lucrative
[ 31]
legal practice , had acquired a famous hostelry , acres of land, and was married to the daughter of one of the town ' s first citizens. Those early days in the "Goshen of the Western World" were fraught with hot controversy; his interest in and knowledge of public affairs already portended a magnificent career in the service of the nation. All his flair for the dramatic is brought out. He appears witty and deep in the courtroom , witty and light at cards. Once he pled a case, only to be told by his client that he had presented an argument for the o ther side. Immediately, he sprang to his feet and said to the court that he had just presented what he imagined would be the argument of his opponent. He would now, he declared , point out the fallacies in this brief. So he broke down his own dissertion and won the trial for his client. In this volume of Mayo's trilogy, Henry Clay is carried to speakership of the House of Representatives, where , as chief of the War Hawks, he propelled this country into the War of 1812 ; which Mayo chooses to call , " M Cl ' W " r. ay s ar. .
An engrossing work is this " serial " life of Clay, and with its admirable footnotes, fine illustrations, and adequate bibliography, it will take its deserved place among solid, long-living histories.
FORBIDDEN ROAD - KABUL TO SAMARKAND. By Rosita Forbes. E. P. Dutton & Company New York. 289 pp. Illustrated. $3.50
Although written by a widely-travelled and talented English woman and about an intriguing region, Afghanistan , this volume, somehow , is only commonplace as travel -books go. It was with difficulty that author Forbes obtained a visa from the Russian government to enter her "military frontier. " Having done so, she began her trip at Peshawar , proceeded through Khyber Pass and to Kabul, capital of Afghanistan, that "has a beauty like nothing else on earth." From here the " forbidden road" to Samarkand was followed.
While there are flashes of color, reflections of the East, in her book, other admirable qualities, such as the map and index, as well as compactness of writing, and lightness of style, it lacks deepness of observation, thoroughness, and punch. Nevertheless, it is not fair to place it below the level of good books of its type; it is definitely removed from the Halliburton kind-and that will attract for it many readers.
YleAindtPieY3,tf-£ine
LENORE DINNEEN dropped in the other morning to cha t about writing, and we had an opportunity to ask how Betty , the second part of whose dia r y we publish this month, came into being. Almost accidentally, we were told. "It had always been my ambition to be a writer, " Miss Dinneen said, "but I had always fancied myself writing weighty editorials, biographies, with perhaps a problem play thrown in for good measure. But in college one sheds his illusions as he sheds his baby teeth. My attempts at heavy writing were stilted, ponderous, and very definitely immature. I was advised to touch on those subjects of which I had more knowledge and so the ' Dear Diary' stories were born " Betty, she told us, really is a fictitious character, though after the first diary story in our April number, Miss Dinneen's life was scanned by those who knew her in an effort to establish the identity of Betty and her friends. BEN McCLURE, sports editor of the Collegian, gladly consented to take time from his editorial duties to make his survey for us, an admirable job in its completeness and restraint. . . . ROYALL BRANDIS does a weekly column on current affairs for the Collegian and is an assistant editor of our book. When we asked RICHARD SCAMMON for a word or two about his interests we were given these facts: " Enjoy writing most about people of lower levels of life. " . .. He is the author of "Dolla ' Fifty Sen'. " Travelled three years with professional marionette company wrote article on marionette work on this campus for February MESSENGER . . . is another of our assistant editors . . . teaches classes in dramatics. . . . Hopes to write play or novel some day, but does not aspire to life of writer, as he has too many ambitions in other arts J. H. KELL?GG, Richmond College Editor of the magazine, will be remembered for his article in the April number on "Virginia's Responsibility ," which was reprinted on the editorial page of the Richmond Times-Dispatch VIRGINIUS GOODMAN, :-7hose"courting days" are over, says his story is all m fun-even his wife hasn't objected! .. . STU!1-RT GRAH_AM, Editor-in-chief of the Collegian, is also an assistant editor of the MESSENGER. The poetry in this initial issue is by senior DONA~J? ~UMP, who has been studying poetry and wntmg smce a remarkably early age, and freshman ROBERT MARTIN, book-collector, rifle marksman.
[ 32]
LIKES a few fast rounds of squash racquets during his lunch hour "When I'm tired I get a 'lift' with a Camel, " says Theodore Crockett, business man.
"A SALESGIRL can't afford jangled nerves, " says Maxine Hollen. "I've chosen Camels - once and for all. Camels don't upset my nerves or irritate my throat."
FOR
IN1929, Mulford Scull became National Amateur Champion. This year he made a clean sweep of the Class "A" Outboard events at the Miami Regatta. The trophies he's won in his years of racing fill a room.
Jolts, vibration, nervous tension - are all part of what an outboard driver undergoes. In Mulford Scull's own words:
"The way these outboards bounce knocks the daylights out of digestion. Yet when chow comes around, I'm right there -all set with Camels They help keep my digestion on an even keel. And they never jangle my nerves."
JACK OAKIE IS BACK ON THE AIR!
Tune in on rhe fun-making President of Oakie College and his college variety show, including Benny Goodman's Swing Band, chis Tuesday night ar 9:30 pm E. S T., 8:30 pm C.S.T. , 7:30pmM S.T.,6 : 30pm P S.T.-WABC-CBS.
