HEDGING

The time seems to have come when the promise of publication can force odd follies from the lips of churchmen. Advising the male delegates at a diocesian conference of the Methodist Church to grow mustaches as the final gesture of a masculinity truncated by the fell strokes of female fashion, Bishop Collirs Denny remarked, "That's all the women have left us. They cut their hair and wear men's clothes, but they can't wear a mustache. It is your badge of masculinity."

Thus does a southern churchman suggest a new criterion for the eternal masculine. By advocating the wholesale growth of hirsute appendages as the final hedge about manhood--the final hazard for women to jump in her pursuit of virility, the bishop, insures himself a place in the category of reforming saints. At last a defender of the faith has been found--a crusade under the flag of "man and superman." But unfortunately for the contention of the bishop, there was buried last month--though not in Carolina--a lady whose sole attraction and main achievement had been a luxuriant beard.