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Show 1 THE FIXED IDEA j i m ? t By THOMAS ARKLE CLARK I Dean of Men, University of Illinois. t ? -o...... ...... of .... ci.....o.... .. .. There has been .running in New York and Chicago in recent months with a good deal jipiii illliil of success and interest a play which alleges to reproduce in a realistic manner an evening in a metropolitan newspaper office. There is much disorder about the place, as it is represented, much profanity and vulgarity, and chewing of tobacco and references to booze fests among the habitues of the office, for in some way these things picture the fixed idea of what a modern newspaper office is like. Now the facts, if looked into, would seldom, if ever, bear out this idea. A newspaper office is neither more disorderly dis-orderly nor more profane than other business offices, but it would be hard to make the genera) public believe so. I noticed a statement in one of our local papers the other evening to the effect that one of our fresh young citizens citi-zens had been vigorously slapped in the face, as he deserved to be, for making advances to a young woman with whom he had no acquaintance, and who was acting in one of our local lo-cal theaters. The fixed idea is pretty prevalent that, all actresses, being of easy virtue, court attention from strangers and welcome invitations from anybody who is willing to spend money on them. A good many young men have been slapped in the face for erroneously assuming such a point of view. It is a long exploded idea In the minds of those who know anything about the matter that chorus girls and actresses are less moral, less balanced, bal-anced, and less regular in their lives and habits than other professional women. The frock-coated, ' long-whiskered, absent-minded, near-sighted college professor has for decades been represented rep-resented in humorous magazines and on the stage. So long and to such an extent has he been thus pictured that it has become a fixed idea in the minds of a majority of people who have never been to college that that is the sort of creature he is impractical, imprac-tical, improvident, ill-dressed, a man of one Idea, and that one a very narrow nar-row and unbusiness-like idea. Now the college professor is in fact not so very different from other normal nor-mal people. I am not infrequently aked, when on a railroad train I get into conversation with traveling salesmen, sales-men, what line I am carrying or what business I represent I have even been taken for a lawyer or a bank president at times and have not re-, re-, sented the suggestion in the least, and I am sure many of my colleagues would pass as representative business men, though there is a fixed Idea against such a possibility. There is the fixed idea in the minds of many people that all Italians work at hard labor, that all Greeks run restaurants, res-taurants, and Scotchmen are all stingy, and that plumbers continually rob the public and eventually grow rich. The fixed idea is the surest indication in-dication of inexperience and ignorance. igno-rance. Our ideas are set upon the subjects about which we know tin? least. (. 1023, Western Newspaper Cnlon.l |