The Richmond palladium and sun-telegram. [volume] (Richmond, Ind.) 1907-1939, 1911-11-28
~ ESTHER GRIFFIN WHITE.
What is a practical joker"
And XhY is il SO funny?

And why is it SO funny?
Sometimes practical jokes end in
the bastile like the Kansas tar party"
For. after all, that was a sort Of
sublimatcd practical joke. Practical
jokers are apt to think they are very
cute, very astute, very shrewd, very
clever, very adroit, and always enor-
mously and overwhelmingly funny.
Never forget the exquisite humour
of the thing.
The hazing party at well known
college few years ago, the members
of which tied a boy to railroad track,
where they left him to be run over
and killed by train, were very in
dignant when they were denounced
from one end of the country to the
other for this abominable outrage.
Why, they were only in fun, they
said.
They only intended to scare the boy
little.
They hadn't studied the timetable
and didn't know a train was due about
that time.
They were awfully sorry-but haz-
ing has always been practiced in their
college and they couldn't be expected
to spend their time studying train
schedules and the weather reports to
see that all was favorable.
The faculty were very much grieved
over the unfortunate affair but far
more grieved over the attitude of the
public They regarded themselves as
having been unduly censured.
One Of the star stunts of the practi-
cal joker Is performed after wedding.
It is thought to be hugely and
shriekingly amusing to badger the
life out of the young couple"-to load
them on drays and cart them about
town, to the accompaniment of tin
pan orchestra. To parade them in a
carriage or automobile up one street
and down another placarded in in
tensely humorous but grossly often
sivc fashion.
To chase them to the station and
into the car and herald them with 1--WE
are Just married" signals.
To stuff rice down their necks.
To make them the object of ridicule
and the center of derisive attention.
To, in short, follow what should be
beautiful sacrament with a program
of vulgarities that turns it into some
thing common, indecent and lewd.
oh, people will say-it is not intend
ed that way.
Possibly not consciously. But il
;rf4 hot &c
the expression of an attitude toward
marriage that takes from the latter's
sacredness.
One half the trouble with marriage
is indeed, the levity with which it is
regarded.
At the theaters and in the vaudeville
houses marriage is constantly made
the theme of the coarsest jokes, the
most suggestive songs.
Men are constantly depicted trying
to get away from their wives through
lies and subterfuge. Women as de
ceiving their husbands and leading a
gay life on the side.
People laugh and scream and ap
plaud this to the echo.
To be honest and decent and honor
able is to be stupid and banal and 9
: bore. To be faithful to the marital re
lation is sneered at more or less deli
cately. Generally less.
| A man in love with his wife is made
! to appear a poor, silly, unsophisticatet
ass.
A woman in love with her husband {
CALLING milestone round his neck
sort Of vampire sucking his life:
blood"
Marriage is, in short, brought into
disrespect and contempt by those yer,
ones who loudly declaim against it,
general failure as demonstrated in thu
divorce court.