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Show Ulffit O JKmhd about Cures for Communism. A NT A MONICA, CALIF. 0 A certain rich man out ; here rich but indulgent I f;ot a letter from his heir, a I Bophomore at one of the big j eastern colleges. j Thejad announced he had been conveited to communism and was i contributing to the cause. So w hat " X '7" about It? :" .-J j Tlie old man t ;.J J wrote back: . , J ; "Son, you have a V-.. f,. j perfect richt to fol- ' low the dictates of i ; your conscience, f; , j But as a consistent p - j communist you nat- ".' ,j j urally would not Jr- '''.' ' i continue to live on - the ill-gotten gains ,rvin g. Cobb of a wicked money- ! grabber. Today I am cutting off j your somewhat generous allowance. ! You will also vacate the luxurious j apartment you now occupy because I'm not paying the rent of same any longer. So go ahead, my boy, and commune freely with my blessings! bless-ings! But from date that'll be about all from this end of the line." i Exactly four hours after the arrival ar-rival by air mail of this ultimatum, j the hard-hearted parent got back a : rush telegram stating that the I young man had been thinking things over and had decided not to take up the new doctrine. The Art of Listening. T I JK HAD a parly at which there appeared what I may call the dumb poets Sam HofTenstein and Ogden Nash. At the studios where they're both turning out epics, there's a rule that neither shall burst forth into poetry while he's under contract no thumbing of the harp, no sounding of the lute. Cinema's Cine-ma's gain is creation's loss. Maybe that explains why they made such good listeners the other night. And isn't a good listener a boon! I don't mind being interrupted, interrupt-ed, provided tlie interrupter chooses the right subject. Mute and rapt, I can harken for hours on hours if someone is talking about me, say, or even reading from my published i works. But these two minnesingers only broke in to ask that the pickled shrimp be passed or gently to suggest sug-gest that another little drink or two wouldn't do any harm. Ogden Nash has attained the highest high-est peak of distinction attainable for a writer. His chief imitator has an imitator who is bringing up his oldest old-est boy to be an imitator. Resurrecting Old Words. X T "HEN a word gets fashionable 1 V especially a new word which some wordsmith thought up right i out of his head it gets too dog-i dog-i gone fashionable. The same applies ' to old words which have been dis-! dis-! interred from their forgotten tombs in the dictionary. I seem to see grave robbers prowling through the unabridged, starting in at "aard-vark," which is an animal formerly common only to Africa but now frequently found in cross-word puzzles; and working on through to "zythum," a very strong beer drunk by ancient tribes. I guess those old-timers imbibed copiously co-piously of the brew and then named it. It doesn't sound like the sort of word a dead sober party deliberately deliberate-ly would make up. Do you remember the run "intrigued" "in-trigued" had? I never got so sick of a word in my life. And then along came "provocative," and it turned out to be a pest. People went around just looking for a chance to work "provocative" into the conversation. conver-sation. The only way to lick 'em was to pretend to be deaf and dumb. And now the reigning favorite is "allergic." Folks spout it everywhere, every-where, whether they know what it means or not. I don't mind saying I'm getting awfully allergic to "allergic." "al-lergic." There must be many others like me. . Campaign Books. LET us not cavil too much because be-cause high pressure salesmen, working on commission, have been unloading upon the faithful, at fancy prices, the gift book put out by Washington headquarters to pay off campaign debts. In fact, 15 cents' worth would cover practically practical-ly all the cavil I personally have used up in this connection. The result tends to prove the gratifying grat-ifying fact that, while more Democrats Demo-crats may not necessarily have learned how to read and write, obviously ob-viously more of us have got money than formerly was the case when the Republicans were in power. Besides, think of what the strain would have been upon the poor postman post-man if the national committee had been stuck with all this bulk literature litera-ture and congressmen had started franking copies out to their constituents constitu-ents with Uncle Sam paying the freight. To give you a further idea about this franking privilege, I may state that it was named for Frank, Jesse's brother and you'll remember remem-ber how careless those James boys ware with the United States mails! IRVIX S. COBB. WNU Service. |