FINDS CURRENT LAMPOON ISSUE NOT STARTLING

The following review of the current number of the Lampoon was written for the Crimson by W. D. Edmonds '26, former president of the Advocate.

For its final number, the outgoing board of the Lampoon has produced nothing startling: but that is as it should be. As soon as the Lampoon startles anybody, it is certain to find itself in trouble. A humorist should never startle his public. Whenever that happens everyone (often including the humorist) get very angry without quite knowing why. It is only when the dust of recrimination has subsided that some people (sometimes including the humorist) discover the cause of their anger. The humorist has managed to be funny.

In an editorial the outgoing board make the following remarks:

"Having started our year with so progressive a platform as this (one involving humor, reviewer's note), we are humiliated to end it with the following confession. So far from having taught anything, we seem to have spent all our time learning things. (Reviewer questions this.) All sorts of things, such as that perhaps Prexy knows more than we do about the business of being Prexy, that the reading period is just as well off, maybe better with reading assignments, and that Radcliffe girls like to look that way. Further that a large majority of College Comic editors eventually commit suicide (an exaggeration, note by reviewer) to evade reading proof (grant the evasion N. B. R.), and that a predominance of tight wad stories took their inspiration not from Scotchmen, but from College Comic Treasurers. (The good dog hunts ....? N. B. R.) (Editor of the Crimson please pardon four dots. Tact compels me. You may cut it to three, but no less. W. D. E.)

"Lastly, it is getting increasingly hard to overlook one more truth. That is the net results of our regime are not all that might have been forecast from the precocious aptitude with which we detect the shortcomings of our predecessors. In other words we find we aren't so darned funny as we originally considered ourselves to be ...."

The editorial goes on to wish a left-handed success to the successors; but that is not the point. In their nostalgia, the retiring editors are unaware of the essential humour of their remarks. They have found the Jester to be a sorry creature; but they forget that a sorry creature; conscious of his sorriness is pretty amusing to watch. Without their knowing it he has been sorry all along and I for one, have been amused by him. His imaginary figure fitting over the incubus of the proposed chapel or the Yale-Harvard scoreboard is as actual as any greybeard or official waistcoat in the yard. He is a loveable, tragic figure, walking hither and yon, like the inevitable canine, on the heels of a great idea. That his idea may fail to take tangible form bears little weight; for in the unending pursuit, he has produced some very pleasant by-play.

Now, conscious of his defects, he produces a pansy from his shirt-bosom to lay it tenderly on his annual bier--and behold it is an excellent flower!

The cover is one of the best, including the recognizeable figure in the L and the ibis, wearing an expression of maternal anxiety, hatched baby deans out of University Hall. There is a pretty thought for you! One of the questions in "The Little Known Courses" might be, "Have any ever broken the shell?" And the insides of the number are good. "Another Prowler" by LCJ, who has also a cartoon, not so powerful as his Hickman cartoon (which deserved more notice than it got), is the best of the drawings. But Personalities No. 5. is good also. And anyway who cares if the drawing is not on a par with what the Department of Fine Arts has been able to produce? The sketches also struck a responsive chord in me--particularly a small sketch hidden away on page 289, untitled, unadorned. There is no use in going over the whole number in these columns, they suit better their natural habitat. Let the Jester mourn. When he does, we can smile; it is only when he is rioting in mirth that we cannot appreciate him. He has done a good job--let him mourn