THE HONOR OF THE ARCHITECT

That amusing and quite frivolous weekly the New-Yorker, has reached journalistic maturity--for it is being sued for "defaming the name of a citizen". The gospel of the sophisticates took occasion to criticize the structure known as the Delmonico Building, comparing the grace of the tower to that of "an over-grown grain elevator", and found that legal complications ensued. The Delmonico Building, unfortunately for the New Yorker, did not "just grow" a In Harriet Beecher Stowe, but was designed by an architect, one no less than Mr. H. Craig Severance, who appears to be extremely sensitive to derogatory remarks about his work. At any rate he believes that the New Yorker should pay him $500,000 for the slander to his professional name and so firm is his belief that he has taken the matter to court.

If everyone whom the New Yorker criticized sued the magazine it would be blessed with untold press notices and hounded with several hundred warrants. Most metropolitan actors and authors, and even some metropolitan architects, consider one slam in the New Yorker worth two favorable notices in less fashionable journals, for standards of criticism vary and what brings comment from Dorothy Parker and her playmates usually becomes the season's rage. Mr. Severance should not take offence--he should not even take $500,000. If he were to go to the corner of Fifth Avenue and Forty Fourth Street tomorrow, he would undoubtedly find people gazing intently at his tower "like a grain elevator", who had previously passed it by, ignorant of its artistic crudities, ignorant even of H. Craig Severance--but not ignorant of the New Yorker.