The sun. [volume] (New York [N.Y.]) 1916-1920, 1919-06-15

ALoYsIUs MEXICAN, Traffic Cop, of the traffic
squad; JOHN F. E,L.N, Mayor, of Brooklyn; and
ONE ROUND WASHINGTON, athlete, Of San Juan Hill,
have most enjoyed in the reading line during the
last six months.
Thot will be the true microcosm, the Claude Lor-
rane glass held up to the literary taste of the Man
in the Street!
WHAT HAS BECOME OF MIRTH7
"HERE is Laughter holding both his
w sides"i Where are the brains, in America,
that are rills of humori Where is the mirth that
is rollicking gleeful, high with the animal spirits
of careless YOUTH
OF humorous" books there is no dearth Our
writers still "crack jokes, make puns and satirize
the foibles and weaknesses of human nature, which
we all admit we love no matter what the day best
crouch is. But the humor of our humorous"
books to-day is too selfconscous, too labored, too
taskladen. So much Of our "humor' is filled with
messages, problems" and propaganda Of all
kinds slyly inserted, camoufaged with brassy
haw-hawl
But the blithesome style is lacking. There is
nothing mirth provoking written solely for the sake
Of the mirth. And the purest humor, which seems
gone quite out of our natures, is that which sets
up the Smile for the sake of the smile alone and the
Grin Just because a thing is funny.
We have read one book lately that was written
because the man who wrote it did so merely for the
pleasure of setting down the grutesque and feathery
side of life in the New York streets 1t is Mr..
ROBERT CoRTEs HoILDAY's Walking Stick Papers.
Mr.. HOLIDAYS humor is neither socialistic, Boil
shevistic, capitalistic sinister, Aristophanical or
usual It is Just the record of merry brain and
Pucklike eye.
There is too much effort to keep up our spirits"
The humor of the music halls and the humor of our
books is machine made. The laughter that they
evoke does not explode it only crackles and fzzles.
The great American book, the great American
author is he who will revive in our souls Hlarity.
The world is as young as it ever was; there are
more contrasts to-day in our daily life than at any
time in the history Of the race. But where are the
pens with the sportive heart behind themi
Perk up, America! Our career has just begun.
We need the gleesome mirth of Rabelais without
his dirt; the books that viii "split our sides"
OF SHARKS.
III OW long is the largest shark on recordi Ad-
miral Sir CYpR1AN BRIDGE of the British
Navy in his entertaining RecoHections just pub
lished by Murray in London tells us of record
shark" forty-eight feet long! "Once when we
were cruising between Jamaica and Hayti," he
says, between noon anu L. M. we SlgnLeQ an
enormous shark. It came near enough to the ship
to allow Us to make a rough measurement of its
length. Marking on the bulwsrks spot opposite
the point Of its head or nose and another spot OPP
posite its TAIL we measured the distance between
them and found it forty-eight feet. 1 had never
seen or heard of shark Of anything like this
length"
According to the Encyclopedia Britannica, the
largest Of all known sharks is an inhabtant of the
Indo-Pacifc Ocean (Rhinodon typicus) called the
chagrin. 1t exceeds fifty feet in length. A more
formidable shark however, belonging to the genus
Carcharodon and living in all tropical seas, at
tains length of forty feet while fossil forms have
been found ninety feet long,
The length of the well known thresher shark is
given at fifteen feet, including the tall but the
present writer is confident that thresher shark
which he saw in combat with whale off the coast
of Brazil in 1914 was at least twenty-five feet in
length. Threshers are also numerous off the coast
of Peru; BRYCE in his South America macmillan,