Current Lampy Shows No Mercy

In the present number, Lampy offers its own compendium of Cantabrigian notables; a sort of Almanach de Gotha (or de Goats); a miniature Burke's Steerage of Cambridge. The Ruling Classes of the University are there, from the President himself down to the office attendants, and from George Washington Cram to George Washington Terry. No mercy is shown; the Horrible Truth has been divulged. Whispers have run about already that a certain professor was a bit dull, that another loved the truth better than the American revolutionists, and that a certain young lady connected with U9 excelled in personal pulchritude. The facts, however, are now for the first time set down in print.

The Peerage is decidedly the cleverest contribution to a clever number. Another feature is the second instalment of a sort of Baedaker of Sever Hall, known as Moments With the Courses, in the present number of which English 10 is belabored. Of the rest, one notices the verse as much above the standard of past years. Browning and Wordsworth supply the matter for two successful parodies; Austin Dobson inspires a graceful "Linguistic Lamentation." The best of the prose is a Russian tragedy known as a "Takeov of Tchekov" (it is); the best drawings are Merwin's individual and amusing sketches.

All this jesting is local, which is something very pleasing, and moreover decidedly intelligent--a great deal to say of a humorous paper in these days when Life exists only by virtue of fat Germans and suffragists, when Puck is little more than Semitic propaganda, and when Judge is pabulum for the barber-shop devotees. Lampy's quips, in addition, are courageous and independent.

A disgruntled graduate, writing in The Forum some years ago, distinguished the Lampoon as the only paper in the University which wasn't afraid to tell the truth. His statement was a rank libel, but it has its germs of fact. One reads the CRIMSON to read about local events, and the Illustrated to see pictures of them; the Advocate is a sample of what the undergraduates are writing. But if one is hunting for the quintessence of the University, the thrice-distilled spirit, the punch, as it were; at present as in the past, one goes to the Lampoon.