TITTERS IN OBLIVION

Four out of five get it. That is a truism. Yet the fifth merits a certain amount of consideration. Take any ordinary morning in any ordinary classroom at any ordinary university-or Harvard, and see what happens. In the course of the fifty-five minutes or more, or less, the kindly professor tells that famous joke. And, as has been suggested, four out of five get it.

The fifth, being a philosophere,-a man who has some clarity of vision does not worry. He is not dumb. Because he fails to join in the titter which floods its liquid way about the platform of learning, the Parnassus of dulness, never believe him uneducated in humor. Rather he is too well educated in humor. Four out of five get it because they lack one of two things, good taste-or good grades.

So the poor old fifth just sits there and sees into the future when his sons and his sons' sons will hear that joke; he looks back into the past and sees all his ancestors laughing at that joke. And he doubles up with the pain of the cumulative sorrow. "Why must", the words ring in the somber chambers of his brain, "why must a professor tell the same story for thirty years, a hundred years?" Titters in oblivion! And four out of five get it.