Show ic olat in about cures for communism ANTA MONICA CALIF A s SANTA certain rich man out here her L rich but indulgent got a letter from his heir a sophomore at one of the big eastern colleges the lad announced he had been converged to communism and was contributing to the cause so what about it the old man wrote back son you have a perfect right to fol low the dictates of Z y your 0 u r conscience but as a consist consistent ent communist you nat aurally would n not 0 0 t continue to alve on the ill gotten gains irvin irvins S cobb of a wicked money grabber today I 1 am cutting off your somewhat generous allowance you will also vacate the lumur luxurious IOUs apartment you now occupy because I 1 in not paying the rent of same any longer so go ahead my boy and commune freely with my bless ings I 1 but from date that 11 be about all from this end of the line it exactly four hours after the arrival by air mail of this ultimatum the ha hard rd hearted parent got back a rush telegram stating that the young man had been thinking things over and had decided not to take up the new doctrine the art of listening wr vlee E HAD a party at which there appeared what I 1 may call the dumb poets sam HoSen stem 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 gain is creation creations s loss maybe that explains why they made such good listeners the other night and a good listener a boon I 1 don t mind being interrupt ed provided the interrupter chooses the right subject mute and rapt I 1 can harken for hours on hours if someone is talking about me say or even reading from my published works but these two minne singers only broke in to ask that the pickled shrimp be passed or gently to sug gest that another little drink or two wouldn t do any harm ogden nash has attained the high est peak of distinction attainable for a writer his chief imitator has an imitator who is bringing up his old est boy to be an imitator resurrecting old words HEN a word gets fashionable W WHEN especially a new word which some wordsmith thought up right out of his head it gets too doggone fashionable the same applies to old words which have been disinterred from their forgotten tombs in the dictionary I 1 seem to see grave robbers prowling through the unabridged starting in at aardvark aard which is an animal formerly common only to africa but not frequently found in cross word and working on through to a very strong beer drunk by ancient tribes I 1 guess those old timers imbibed copiously of the brew and then named it it doesn doean t sound like the sort of word a dead sober party deliberately would make up do you remember the run intrigued I 1 had I 1 never got so sick of a word in my ife and then along came I 1 provocative and it turned out to be a pest people went around just looking for a chance to work provocative into the conversation the only way to lick em was to pretend to be deaf and cumb and now the reigning favorite is allergic I 1 folks spout it everywhere whether they know what it means or not I 1 don t mind saying I 1 in getting awfully allergic to allergic I 1 there must be many others like me a campaign books ET us not cavil too much be L LET 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 all the cavil I 1 personally have used up in this connection the result tends to prove the gratifying fact that while more democrats may not necessarily have learned how to read and write obviously 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 it if the national committee had been stuck with all this bulk litera ture and congressmen had started franking copies out to their cons titu ants with uncle sam paying the freight to give you a further idea about this franking privilege I 1 may state that it was named for frank jesse s brother and you 11 kemem ber how careless those james boys were with the united states mails I 1 IRVIN S COBB a 0 service |