CASTING THE STONES

A flurry of magazine slams on the nose has left Boston for the first time since the landing of the Pilgrims with a sadly shaken sense of its own civic virtue. While the other cities of the Republic smile with relief that the black spot has been presented to the Hub and not to them, the local city fathers run about distractedly hiding this and that issuing arrest warrants for authors, and crying libel before the public. It is a rather dreadful spectacle.

But while "Plain Talk" is selling its extra editions and other periodicals are playing follow the lewder in the same field, Boston has lost sight of one essential fact. The mud that has been thrown at it could be hurled with equal and even more exactitude at the other metropolises of the East. It is absurd to say that Boston is the bawdiest of cities for it ranks only eighth in population. Unless "Plain Talk" can produce per capita statistics for indulgence in vice showing that five out of five in Boston deserve the scarlet letter, one should continue to believe that it is in precisely eighth place and no higher. For the city fathers to keep clapping hands over their rubrous noses and shouting their innocence before the Lord is ridiculous. They should demand that only those without sin themselves should cast boulders in their direction, and then, certainly then, martyrdom might be averted.