Life — May 19, 1910 — page 23: what you’re looking at

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

° LIFE" “INSTEAD OF SWEARING EVERY TIME I ASK YOU TO HOOK MY GOWN YOU OUGHT TO THANK YOUR STARS I'M NOT A DACHS- HUND.”” An Almost Forgotten Stylist EARNING that the Times has engaged John L. Sullivan to report the Jeffrics-Johnson combat at San Francisco on July fourth, our neighbor the Evening Post professes to be perplexed as to whether it should congratulate the Times or Mr. Sullivan upon this engagement. It is not necessary to devote space to felicitation of either of them. It is enough if our neighbor shall be glad on its own account and for the sake of American readers in general that the engagement has been made. Many things have happened to the Evening Post in the last ten years, and it has lost from its staff an unusual pro- portion of the older members. There may be no one in its office now who recalls the great and triumphal visit of Mr. Sullivan to England and his adventures there and his trating and discursive comments on British sport and c tion, all as conveyed to his admiring fellow citizens with the assistance of Mr. Arthur Brisbane through the columns of the New York Sun. No one who remembers those letters needs to be told that Mr. Sullivan's point of view and powers of lingual expression are almost as unusual and remarkable as were his old-time abilities in fistic attack and defense. Why those letters were never republished in a book is one of the mysteries of omission. The only master of the kind of lan- guage that Mr, Sullivan excels in who could fairly be com- pared with him was Captain Devery, once Chief of Police 927 in this town, Both of these gifted men had great energy of mind and a, considerable native appreciation of the value of vocal sounds. Their language did not always conform in its details to the conventions of the grammarians. They are both Celtic impressionists and outside of ordinary rules. But both, and Mr. Sullivan in particular, had very unusual powers of vivid and picturesque expression. Mr, Sullivan also had very picturesque and individual turns of thought. When his natural talent was duly supplemented by the more disciplined powers of Mr. Brisbane the result was not to be forgotten. Few ingredients are so indispensable to the make-up of a good writer as vigor. Mr. Sullivan had lots of vigor. He was as active on his head, so to speak, as on his feet. Mr. Devery also had vigor. A contemporary of the same type and endowed with analogous talents and energy is the Hon William J. Conners, of Buffalo. Mr. Conners has vigor, too, and it may be noticed that his current comments on affair when served hot and not too much refined by meddlesome commentators, fall upon the ear with an impact that is very stimulating to the hearer. How much of his old-time literary power Mr. Sullivan still retains we have no means of knowing, but if his mental faculties are in good orde*, and are working well at the time of the fight—if there is any fight—and are properly supple- mented and assisted, the Times should get a story which the rhetoricians of the Evening Post will delight to read. These Socialists HESE Socialists are doubtless not wishful to incur the im- putation of disloyalty, but what can they expect when they persist in taking the brotherhood of man so seriously as to be proof against the politician’s appeal to racial and na- tional prejudices? It is laid’ to the Socialists that England and Germany, in spite of such a flapping of flags and an emis sion of patriotic hot air as perhaps never was, have thus far becn unable to involve themselves in a war about nothing— a situation most injurious to the honor of both parties; and while the accusation may be for the present unjust, there is hardly any denying the dangerous tendency of a cult which cries “ Peace! Peace!’? when half the Dreadnoughts built or building are already obsolete. PHYSIOGNOMY MADE EASY NOSE ALWAYS OTR MENTAL VIGOR AND GRESSIVENESS ? DOES A LARGE comicbooks.com