Mike

Prince Mike Romanoff, alumnus of Princeton, Harvard, Oxford. Eaton, and several sister institutions, has disappointed his host of admirers. This lightning witted gent who rose from a New York orphanage and sundry reform schools to be lionized by social registries here and abroad has belied his career.

After out-Romanoffing the Romanoffs and frowning on every sort of bourgeois endeavor, Prince Mike, alias Harry Gerguson, has sold out on his numerous menage. Those who read with delight the spritely lines of Alva Johnson in The New Yorker, sketching the miraculous biography of this elegant phoney can hardly believe that Prince has gone the way of Channel swimmers and flag-pole sitters by accepting vaudeville contracts and writing his life story for the tabloids.

It is impossible to associate such cheap tactics with one whose conduct heretofore was strictly noblesse oblige. A characteristic prodigality has always been the Prince's distinguishing trait. A good illustration of this was the time when, having only fifteen dollars between him and the park bench, he dined on caviar. Strassbourgh goose liver, and champagne to the tune of twelve dollars, left a three dollar tip, and then stalked royally out without a cent in his pocket.

His appearances on the stage of the Palace Theater are a better a enough pill to swallow. But the last punishing touch of perfidy are the lines alleged to come from his pen. A strange and altogether alien person seems to tell how he took the "400", in to camp, wallowed in their silk sheets, sipped their wines, smoked their expensive tobacco, and regaled them with his glittering conversation.

The old Prince was reputed to be a friend indeed. He was loyal and polished. What if he did sell paintings from the municipal museum walls, shower the country with rubber checks, run up staggering accounts at the swankiest stores? He did these things with a regal elegance that seemed to remove the sting common to such machinations. How such a figure could descend to the tawdry level of plain grubbing seems incomprehensible.

The Prince Mike of the post-war decade will take his place with the truly great imposters of history. But the shadow that Arcades as Prince Mike in the headlines of today's newspapers will in ages yet to come have to slink in the company of Judas lscariot. Joseph's eleven brothers. Delilah and other wretches who have sold their kin for a handful of silver. Cornell Daily Sun.