Life — August 26, 1915 — page 20: what you’re looking at

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

LTFE “vHaAT’s ONE ON ME!” to speak before the grammarians get hold of them, so that these gentlemen cannot utterly spoil them afterward ctical purposes. Hence our best writers have risen sidious grammar and frankly confess they know little about it and care less. There are many devoted people who firmly believe that a political economist represents the lowest form of human intelligence. We respect them for their opinion. There is, indeed, much to be said in favor of their view. But give us the grammarian. For one thing, there are more grammarians than there are political economists, so that, considered by mere volume, the grammarians have the best of it. Then, again, the grammarian is more active and covers a broader field, and everybody seems to have a more sublime confidence in his unintelligence. One of the most curious paradoxes in human life is that nobody would even take the time or think it worth while to dispute the word of a grammarian; yet grammar is accepted as a matter of course, just as if it had some remote bearing on poetry, drama and other real literature. It unfortunately happens that the teaching of grammar as it is practiced in our schools makes everybody who is not abnormal hate it sincerely and cordially. If this were otherwise and it got to be attractive, like the “movies,” for example, think of all the additional harm it could do! At present we have come to accept it and endure it without question and without knowing the reason why. But our better instincts still survive, and who knows but that that day will come when by popular edict every grammarian will be compelled to ese up his present job and go out and earn an honest living? T. LM. Reassuring Information LL those who fear lockjaw as a result of vaccination should read a report of Dr. John F. Anderson, Di- rector of the United States Public Health Service. Dr. Anderson claims to have made a wide and impartial in- vestigation of this subject. He found that “authentic cases” of tetanus following vaccination had been invariably due not to the introduction of the vaccine poison, but to the subsequent infection of the wound. In the same way we can prove that aviation is absolutely safe. Nobody was ever killed by falling out of an aero- plane. The trouble always comes later and is due to making too violent a contact with the ground. A Dangerous Experiment HE politicians are looking with grave concern upon Warden Osborne's efforts to lift Sing Sing out of the sixteenth century and introduce something of humane intelligence into its management. Penal institutions in this country have always been relied upon to supply nu- merous remunerative berths for party minions who were well trained in and loyal to those particular kinds of service and corruption that make political machines efficient. If now we are to embark on a new policy of putting our penal institutions in charge of men who possess some sort of fitness for the work and who have evolved an idealism that promises aid to the prisoners and benefits to society at large, it is clear that our political machines must suffer correspondingly. Hence it is quite natural for the politi- cians to bid us pause in our mad struggle for betterment and reflect upon all they have done us for. HURCH rows scem to be natural. Any going church which has not got them will develop them internally. Unless too violent they seem to be useful stimulants to religion, Leite oe FISHERS OF MEN “YOU OUGHT TO HAVE SEEN THE ONE THAT Cot AWAY!” comicbooks.com