It is, except for occasional lapses into the usual journalistic disrespect for privacy, a decent art, andif it never rises to the polish and wit of such an outstanding colyumist as LaFourchardiere of 1'Euvre, it never sinks to the pretentious pseudo-intelligent vulgarity of the English counterpart. The colyumist is, to begin with, a newspaper humorist, and there are times, when questions of art and letters are discussed, when one wishes he had remained one. You do not have to be in the secret to read him. His usual manner is to take a notable or obscure item of news and play with it, in the manner of Mark Twain. Understand he has stated publicly his opinion that John McCormack is greater singer than Caruso.
People are near uprising.
There is, also, a considerable number of colyumists of the Phillips type in other cities. I make no apology for not knowing them, for a colyum correctly conceived is written for the readers of its paper. It ought to be partly private, and wholly provincial. Even Mencken when he ran the colyum of the Baltimore Sun, and gathered much material for The American Language, and told of each new consignment of German beer after the blockade began in 1915, even he was not all things to all men. The last man who kept his colyum balanced between the high and low comic touch was Bert Leston Taylor.