Part 58 (1/2)

HIGH, LOW, JACK, AND THE GAME.

Sir: While visiting in a New England family I accused them of being ”highbrows,” and they gave me these modern synonyms for highbrow and lowbrow, taken from a Boston paper:

Highbrow: Browning, anthropology, economics, Bacon, the string quartette, the uplift, inherent sin, Gibbon, fourth dimension, Euripides, ”eyether,” pate de fois gras, lemon phosphate, Henry Cabot Lodge, Woodrow Wilson.

Low-highbrow: Munic.i.p.al government, Kipling, socialism, Shakespeare, politics, Thackeray, taxation, golf, grand opera, bridge, chicken a la Maryland, ”eether,” stocks and bonds, gin rickey, Theodore Roosevelt, chewing gum in private.

High-lowbrow: Musical comedy, euchre, baseball, moving pictures, small steak medium, whisky, Robert W. Chambers, purple socks, chewing gum with friends.

Lowbrow: Laura Jean Libbey, ham sandwich, haven't came, pitch, I and her, melodrama, hair oil, the d.u.c.h.ess, beer, George M. Cohan, red flannels, toothpicks, Bathhouse John, chewing gum in public.

E. S.

A bachelor complains to us that prohibition has ruined his life. His companions have deserted their haunts--all, all are gone, the old familiar faces--and he can find no one to talk to; and he talks very well, too. Now, we have as much compa.s.sion for him as it is possible to have for any bachelor, and yet we do not esteem his case utterly hopeless. As Mr. Lardner has suggested, when he repairs to his hotel at night he can open the clothespress and talk to his other suit of clothes.

Tolstoi's ”Power of Darkness” reminds P. G. Wodehouse of a definition of Greek tragedy--the sort of drama in which one character comes to another and says, ”If _you_ don't kill mother, _I_ will!”

”The jehu of the rubber-neck wagon,” reports a gadder from Loz Onglaze, ”called out: 'We are now in the center of the old aristocratic center.

That palatial residence on our left is the home of Fatty Arbuckle.'”

_MORNING IN IOWA_.

_A cold, rough, gloomy morning!

'Gainst yellow dawn the smoke Of neighbors' chimneys stains the air, Reminding me that yon grim, white-capped cone, Which like a second Rainier stands in my backyard, Like him of ash and cinders built, now calls For more upbuilding. That white bloom Which last night's snow hath left upon His smooth and awful sides must now Be sicklied o'er with more and yet more Ashes._

_What's that I smell--buckwheats?

And What's-his-name's pig sausage?

It is? Aha!

Gee, what a peach of a morning!_

Abd-el-Kader.

AN EVENING WITH SHAKESPEARE.

Sir: Overheard at the Studebaker: ”What's put him off his nut?” Lady, answering: ”He ain't really bugs--it's a stall. The old guy [Polonius]