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Show Commencement oratory is a fearful and wonderful thing, , whether it comes from the graduates themselves or from i the doctors of philosophy who harangue them. Here is an ; interesting bit from the day's grist: J "The public," announces a baccalaureate preacher, "has been nourished upon the sentimentality of sentiment until only the rudimentary urges of undisciplined life remain sufficiently suf-ficiently active to be stirred.' Now, if he'd just say that again, very slowly-!. Yet the orator goes right on a way orators have. Soon, however, tomes a sentence in which we glimpse daylight again. "We have super-heated fiction," he says, "and the Tactions Tacti-ons squawk of the ubtiquitous saxaphone," because this age "has been fed oil red pepper until .its jaded palate refuses to react to any dish unless served with nitroglycerin sauce and garnished with firecrackers." A bit mixed but we begin to get the reverend gentleman. gentle-man. "In every department of life," he continues, "small men, willing to make capital of the public psychoses (there the light fades again) and unsuccessful men, who have tired of being honest at the prevailing price of that commodity, are arrogating to themselves large leadership. "They speak with conviction. They never doubt or hesitate. hesi-tate. They put their dogmas down on the table with a bang and a growl.'' They do they do ! The reverend critic is right. Yet the more we consider such matters, the more we hunch that Tom Marshall knew, and what America needs is a good nickel cigar. |