The Press

Some faithful hearts hereabout must have gone pitapat last week. Dark rumors about the Harvard Lampoon were heard from Boston. It was said to be far from an prosperous as its highbred with its delicate humor, the felicity and urbanity of its occasional hoaxes, its sedulous devotion to the high standards set by its founders--such men as Judge Robert Grant, former Ambassador Stimson and Edward S. Martin--entitle it to be. Fortunately, those apprehensions were groundless.

Our esteemed daily contemporary, The Crimson departing from its usual purpose of stabilizing, solemnizing and advising the universe, burnt into unexpected capera worthy of its skittish rival. With great particularity and ponderosity it told of the alleged financial straits of The Lampoon, printed a supposed confession from its president that it would have to shut up shop unless it got help. Especially affecting was the gravity with which "The Crime," as the wicked call it, shed tears over the thwarting of The Lampoon's efforts "to maintain a high standard of clean, wholesome humor." The Crime must be trying to hide its own financial difficulties by inventing some for The Lampoon. He quotes from a letter which he attributes to the business agent of The Crimson:

"If you have Christmas present blues, The Harvard Crimson has been able to obtain wholesale prices on Christmas fruit cakes. They are packed in colorful Christmas tins which are enclosed in attractive packages all ready to mail. Although we have no special interest in your buying these cakes, we suggest your Aunt Minnie may be a little tired of receiving handkerchiefs regularly every Christmas. Here is something new and darn good to eat, too."

Undaunted, The Crimson returns to the attack. It hopes that The Lampoon may regain solvency. If it doesn't, "the present crisis may well constitute a warning to other undergraduate publications." These mutual attributions of disaster may faintly indicate the loss that threatens the republic of letters if such precious manifestations of the undergraduate comic spirit are to vanish. In "college humor" there is a subtle, ethereal quality that differentiates it from all other brands. What, for example, could be sweeter, gentler, more Lamblike than the intimation of The Brown Jug, Brown University's jester, that the Holy Cross footballers dug their teeth into the corpuses of the Brunonian eleven? Evidently college education softens the manners and clothes academic drollery with incomparable grace. The New York Times.