PESSIMISM--PRACTICED

A little knowledge has often been considered dangerous--but as yet the "little" has been qualified by censors and critics to mean the anti-Puritanic. Now it appears that Mr. Sumner and his friends must include the treatises of pessimistic philosophy in the category of the proscribed. For there is danger in even a momentary glance at their gloomy thought.

Miss Evelyn Nesbit was "feeling slightly blue on New Year's eve." Instead of trying radio or reminiscences--of which she probably has sufficient--she picked up a volume of Schopenhauer. After a few chapters--Miss Nesbit tried suicide.

But luckily--or unluckily, depending on one's philosophy--the suicide failed. So she lives to point the moral to a new version of an old story. And the readers of many a paper throughout the country are going to tune in for the future on more cheerful subjects. Since as yet the radio maintains the doctrine which the lady now expounds--

"A little learning is a dangerous thing; Drink deep, or touch not the Pierian spring."