Judge — October 2, 1920 — page 12: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

Putting Ginger into Old Spave Pegasus By Bexyawtn De Casseres Owen Wister: Matchmaker r HE international matchmakers and divorce having the time of their lives. The Sociali polygamous; they want each country to marry a other countries, so that we can all live in one universal flat contentedly, dividing up the ice and the milk bottles ly all’around. is the Serious Thinker who fears Germany is going ry Russia. There is the poet who wants John Bull to La Belle France for 999 years, with a renewal clause in Your good Irish friend sets up a little Reno of his own wherever he gocs trying to separate England and America. Matchmaking is too slow for rough-neck Gabriele, so he just married me to Italy with a blunderbuss. Greece wants to divorce Turkey from Europe and get a bunch of alimony for doing it. China is trying to get a divorce from Japan, but has applied to some court or other to keep Baby Shantung with mamma. It may yet be necessary for an Eskimo-Hottentot Conference to bring about peace on earth and good will toward French bondholders. Meantime our own Owen Wister (‘A Straight Deal. or the Ancient Grudge”; Macmillan) takes a kat it. He takes Columbia by one hand and John Bull by the other, and says, “Now, look here, you two big overgrown babies, why are you always nagging at one another? Why don’t you make it up. forget all the old household rows, and become as one? Don’t you know that all your neighbors are itching to see you get into a scrap, and don’t you know that if you ever do, it'll be the end of both of you? Come along, kiss and make u| A bally good idea, by Hick! Mr. Wister traces all our squabbles with England since that little affair at Lexington right down to the threatened world- war over Miss Laurette Taylor. Nothing to it. Everybody in the world who is not an American or an Englishman wants to see America and England licked to a frazzl I! we give them the ha! ha! or commit suicide by licking one another? Pete Among the Philistines ETE, the hero of Claude C. Washburn’s “Order” (Duf- field & Company), is a man after my own hi and yours, too, gentle reader, if you'll only look into the mirror of your Suppressed Desires and face the truth. Pete was an enemy of order, system, pay-as-you- nd all the other things in the family album. Romantic, brilliant, ys letting the cat out of the bag, he created a Big Buzz wherever he went. This combination Doug rbanks and Eva Tanguay broke into Marville, a decent, orderly, hand-picked Western town Marville represented Order, which means nothing ever hap- pened there. It obeyed the Ten Commandments and the Vol- stead law to the letter. ‘ Pete and his loaded Psyche upset all this—he was the Man that Corrupted Hadleyburg; and when he quit everybody was looking at one another and whispering, “Give us another guy like that and we'll be almost human!” He left Elsie behind when he went to Europe to be killed in the battle of Neuve-Chapelle. Elsie looked at her strawberry festival program, her little Ford that rolled her to somnolent picnics and the little gray church-steeple. and regretted that she had not followed him—that Peter Pan—into the Land of Dis- order and Romance. Moral: Bounce the boss. Order. once in 2 while and take a holiday The Super-Laugh POETRY that is not mere words that rhyme and _tinkle is rare. Poetry that makes you think and fecl and Hie back in your seat with closed eves, trying to hold a magical image in your mind, is unus Poetry that sings beautifully of the evanescence of all things is always. treasure-trove. On the book reviewers’ shelf it is like unexpectedly finding a ten-dollar gold piece among a handful of pennies. Such a little book of free-verse poetry is * Vanitas,” by Paul Eldridge (the Stratford Co., Boston). It is the humor of the brain, the laugh at the end of things, the tolerant smile of the en- lightened pessimist. Isn't Life in our vouth a sort of Ponzi? We put all our hopes in its hands, expecting our capital to come back to us in a few years doubled or quadrupled. Pouf! In middle age our capital has suddenly disappeared, and we are yelling bad names at Signor Life. Happy if vou can, like Mr. Eldridge, turn your disiltusions into beautiful pictures and ex quisite funeral marches and radiant fancies. Almost every poem in this book is perfect. Take “My Thoughts” “My thoughts are little clowns, Irreverent and merry, That stick their tongues To Sun and Moon And laugh at Men and Gods. “My thoughts are red hyenas That dig within my heart And munch its memories, And laugh.” It is only the healthy pessimist who can make of his bitter laugh a sublime melody. If this be Vanitas, Mr. Eltridge, play on—we'll have more of it! 12 comicbooks.com