Undergraduate Literary Taste Leans to "Saturday Evening post"--Students Habitually Read All the News Fit to Print

Everyday there appear on the newsstands new, gay-colored magazines with pictures of pretty young ladies gracing their covers, Daily there arrive also fresh stocks of somber, dignified-looking periodicals with a position and wild-eyed, excited magazines with a Cause.

A tour of the prominent newstands of the Square brought forth some interesting facts on undergraduate taste in periodical literature. The most popular magazine is the "Saturday Evening Post", even though its stories have to fight for breath in a sea of advertisements for hosiery, automobiles, and canned soup. "Liberty", in spite of its attempts at publicity, sells only one copy to every three of the "Saturday Evening Post", although it leads the other prominent weeklies, the "Nation" and the "New Republic", those two tin pins sticking into the fleshy side of conservatism.

Among the so-called "light-fiction" monthlies, the "Cosmopolitan" is supreme, with the "Red Book" following close behind. The "American" and its how-I-became-a-successful-clothespinking stories trails a poor third, "College Humor" sells more copies than any other monthly periodical. With its collegiate cullings from all the college humorous magazines of the country except the Harvard "Lampoon", it stands in a field more or less its own.

Of the type of magazine which take themselves more seriously, that green-backed child of H. L. Mencken and George Jean Nathan, the "American Mercury", is easily, the best-seller. "Harpers", a periodical which has made great gains in many ways during the past twelve-months, now ranks ahead of the "Atlantic Monthly", one of Boston's best by-products. Other magazines which draw quarters from the pocket of undergraduates, are "Scribner's", the "Century", and the "Golden Book".

Quite surprising, the New York papers, the "Times" and the "Herald-Tribune" have nearly as large a circulation around the Rotunda as the Boston newspapers. The "Times" leads in copies sold, with the "Herald-Tribune" and the "World" following in that order.