LIFE

a fine boy-friend, I'll say!...Well, you could YOU'RE of looked it up in the book, couldn't you?...Oh, go home and tear yourself a herring! I wouldn't wait more than fifteen minutes for the best man on earth!... Yes, and I bet you didn't even show up at all....Oh, dry up, you're all wet!

...Is that so?... Why, you-wait a second, I got a call.... I'll go out with who and wherever I please! I suppose you think I'm going to kill an evening at a Prohibition lecture or somethin', just because you get conveniently absentminded!...Is that so?...Well, he's not one of the hoypolloy, anyway, and I bet he can give you some fine points on how to tip the waiter and the soup-plate!

...Oh, no, I'm not angry...just terribly, terribly hurt! ...Yes, you sound it!...You hate yourself, don't you!...

You're so optimistic I bet you must hang around backstage of the movie theayters and wait for the film queens to come out!

... Wait a second....No, ma'am, but there's one on the fifth floor front, two rooms and a kitchenette....Hello.... Oh, I thought you'd hang up on me....Don't you try to green-hat me! You can go out with all the dames you want! That's kosher with me!...Mutual!

...Hello.... Peggy?...This me.... Yeh, I certainly laced it into Oscar for that stand-up last night. He won't get any more dates with me-not even if he promises to buy me a lot in Palm Beach!...When-to-night?... Sure thing! ...Has he got a car?...I don't go out in nothing less than a Packard these days!.... All right, dearie, I'll bring my roller Max Lief.

skates!

-w!

Maybe, but this is a good deal larger country than it was in 1816 and there are more crops in more parts of it, and, possibly, if we have a summerless year, our tropical portions can be put to raising plain food like potatoes.

But after all that may not happen, though last month was cold enough to justify arctic anticipations. But consider the problems that are really here -what to do with the motor cars? what makes some of the young people so bad? how to make a better man of Borah? how to settle the debts Europe owes us without incurring an immoral amount of payment? All these matters are difficult and are actually in our hair. At this very writing the Italian Commissioners have come to talk a little finance. Heaven help them!

As to the bad boys and the bad girls, and particularly the bad boys who turn into gunmen, a New York magistrate says that one considerable reason for them and their badness is the current system of public education which concentrates on the mentalities of pupils and does not prepare them for self-support. The magistrate says the boys come out of the schools with

something, but the reasons for young gunmen are complex. The war taught the use of firearms to four or five millions of young men, and the boys that immediately followed after them got much of the same knowledge. The motor cars multiplied, and provided a convenient means to get robbers to the scene of crime, and to get away after its commission. Prohibition, involving a vast deal of law breaking, has had no doubt a bad moral effect upon a good many of the younger generation, and

enforcement of it has diverted both the courts and the police from timely concentration on robberies and crimes of violence. All the same, the fights between the gunmen and the police make wonderful reading and keep the prevailing insecurity of life and property constantly in the public mind.

WE

Our current civilization is predominantly a product of machinery.. When the experts have offered us such suggestions as they can for its amelioration, most of them fall back on the remark that the only real cure for the world is religion. What they mean by religion they do not define, but what they want is something to bring better minds to the froward. Every Monday

E really do not know much about the state of the world we now live in. We see that we are living by mechanisms, but we do not realize what they are doing to us, and have very little notion how to medicate them so they won't destroy us, or medicate ourselves so that we can stand them. Regard the motor car problem in cities and thickly settled neighborhoods like those parts of Long Island and New Jersey that are close to New York! There is a problem that engages many minds and much money. Is it being solved? Very slightly. It will have to solve itself. Most of the problems of mechanism will in the main have to solve themselves. If people can't live in cities as they are they will have to move out of them. Does it tire you to go in the street in town where every time you cross an intersecting street you have to watch out and see that you are not killed? If it does, go to the country and climb a tree.

The mechanisms are wonderful. One cannot imagine giving them up, but there is proceeding an immense job of adjustment to them the details of which still belong to guesswork.

THE verdict of the election in New

York was that, on the whole, Tammany nowadays is about as good as anybody. One compared Judge Olvany with Mr. Koenig, and Senator Walker with Mr. Waterman, and the election figures tell what the conclusion was.

There are a great many able Tammany men in office and it does not look expedient to turn them out. Give city government a better direction, and it ought to go on pretty well without any drastic changes in the rank and file of the workers. The election of Walker is a very different matter from what the election of Van Wyck was.

Governor Smith is a winner among others and that is important.

E. S. Martin.