Professor Lowes Raises Eyebrows as Freshmen Overlook "Pilgrim's Progress"--"Film Fun" Replaces Better Pursuits

"I wonder what you read," said Professor John Livingston Lowes, Francis Lee Higginson professor of English, to a Freshman class recently. "I'm just wondering." Professor Lowes was some-what perturbed when he mentioned a familiar incident from "Pilgrim's Progress," and from a class of two hundred received not a single sign of recognition.

To satisfy Professor Lowes' wonderment the CRIMSON reporter went to C. L. Jackson'34 at the Harvard Union, reasoning that most of the reading material is purchased from his stock, inasmuch as most of 1936 has not learned as yet the art of getting a book out of Widener Library. Jackson, who used to be a Texas cowboy, keeps careful watch of the number of each magazine sold at his newsstand.

As might be expected, the weeklies "Collier's and the "Saturday Evening Post" sell best. The third most popular magazine is "Film Fun." Their sale each week is practically unlimited; the supply runs out two or three times weekly. The stand is arranged, however, with a view to encouraging the Freshmen to purchase magazines of a high literary value, for every day the "Film Fun" pile is hidden, or clothed, beneath a few copies of the "Atlantic Monthly."

While of "Forum," "The Nation." "Harper's," "Scribners," and "Current History" only four or five copies each week are sold, the Freshmen purchase forty of the weekly "New Yorkers." As for college humorous magazines, the first-year men demand more "Yale Records" than "Harvard Lampoons." Several hundred of the regular monthly illustrated magazines, such as "Cosmopolitan" and the "American," are bought each month; and in the "quality" class, "Vanity Fair," "Sportsman," and "Yachting" are the most popular.

The newsstand now displays copies of the "World Almanse," but considerable improvement in the Freshman classes is imperative before informative material supplanis in popularity the latest jokes from "Film Fun."