Life — September 30, 1920 — page 10: what you’re looking at

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

LOCAL GOSSIP Lorenzo Sherman had to kill a hen for dinner, and he tried to run it down. He wuz a-chasin’ it round and round the barn when Sam Whitten come past. seen Lorenzo go ‘round agin, then he hailed him. tryin’ to ketch that hen?” yells Sam. Lorenzo was tuck- cred out, so he stopped, and he wuz mad clean through, “No, you dratted old jackass,” sez he, “I’m just gettin her dizzy so’st she'll lay scrambled eggs. Sam seen he was riled, so he druv otf. Just a Plain Newspaper Man “WW/ELL, what's your business, young man? “Me? I herd sheep for Wall Street shearing. I elect presidents and sometimes depose kings. I make murderers notorious, and I tickle the public with the luscious details of the crimes. I know the score of the game. I'm a journalist, sir, Whatever you say MAY BE USED AGAINST you!” A Scandal on the Slack-Wire N a recent issue of the New York Evening Post, Mr. Hilaire Belloc, writing on the subject of “ Inaccuracy,” tells, by way of introduction, of his own inaccuracy in speak of the Nereids who swim in the sea as appearing in the sixteenth Book of the /liad, instead of the eightcenth Book as he says he should have said. I am far too shaky on my /liad to be certain that Mr. Belloc is really guilty of the crime to which he pleads gui i do I care a tinker’s dam whether the Nereids swim in the six. teenth or the eighteenth Book, or whether they swim at all in the /liad or anywhere else. Indeed, until I read further in his article, I was quite prepared to believe that the author, like a slack-wire performer who, to give an added thrill, pretends to lose his balance, was only trying to terrify his readers. But when this most accomplished performer in the midst of his, as I thought, pretended bungling, actually fell off the wire and landed, with a resounding thud, in the bass drum, I knew and rejoiced in the knowledge that even Hilaire Belloc is not, as I have sometimes feared, incapable of error. In this same article on “Inaccuracy,” Mf. Belloc (unless he can “pass the buck” to the printer) is responsible for the fol- lowing painful lapse from perfect English (the italics are my own): “And inaccuracy is the parent of that still older and still more immutable story about the Pyramids of Egypt.” As regards the “ paternity” Mr. Belloc’s accuracy is not to be questioned. Inaccuracy is assuredly the parent of “more im- mutable”; but, oh, the scandal of it! It may, or may not, console Mr. Belloc to know that G. K. Chesterton in one of his novels once wrote, “He stood there more motionless than a mountain.” Mr. Chesterton, however, makes no pretensions to being a finished performer on the “slack wire” of perfect English, neither, I hope, does Witter Bynner, who was caught the other day singing, “ What is so nameless as Beauty?” But Mr. Bynner, so far from being a subject for blame, is only to be congratulated upon thas rubbing shoulders with the great, if only through a blunder. Oliver Herford. . PROFITE is a man who would have you believe that the higher the price the less he makes. ' “say! conrounp IT! HAVEN'T YOU ANY RESPECT FOR OLD AGE?” comicbooks.con