ME AND MY GAL

There are a few simple pleasures that make one's life livable no matter how black the times, such as cigarettes, an occasional movie, a luscious chocolate milk with ice cream in any House but Adams, a bedtime story over the Crimson Network by A Member of the History Department. Among these harmless and ever-so-precious diversion might also be numbered leafing through the latest issue of Esquire, with its luxurious layout, its smooth ads and smoother women-especially since the Petty girl has returned. But simultaneously with the return of this lovely creature came a decree by the Boston police banning it from newsstands in Cambridge and the Hub, amid, weeping and wailing and gnashing of teeth.

"It was the pictures," the censors said. Oh cruel words! Oh cold, cold world! WHAT'S THE MATTER WITH THE PICTURES? Isn't the aforesaid vision the successor to the Gibson Girl; isn't she as typically American as a corner drug store? If she can be crushed out by blue-noses at will, to "satisfy them Back Bay Puritans", as a character on the Square affirmed, won't cigarettes, Coolidge specials, and bedtime stories be next? And anyhow, is that any way to treat a lady?