The Bridgeport times and evening farmer., 1919-10-08
YANKEE DOODLE CAME TO TOWN
 WITH A LARIAT IN HIS HAND

There is an old tradition that one tall, lean, bewhiskered individual came to town riding on a pony. stuck his feather in his cap, and called it some absurd name generally associ- ated with Italian table q hotes. The tradition is all wrong. As a matter of fact, Yankee Doodle came to town as a pedestrian, and wore no whisk- ers-either on his face or jokes. In fact, his mirth was so fresh, so new, that it was soon the talk of the town, and clever young men earned repu- tations for cleverness by repeating his jokes and forgetting the copy right line. This shows that they were destined to ultimately edit com tc magazines.
 There is no doubt that Will Rog- CTS is the party of the first part in the celebrated Yankee Doodle legend. It was natural that his coming to town should create a sensation. He came, tall, not stout, keen-minded, blue-eyed; the first real yankee to settle in New York city since Hen rik Hudson arrived in his flivver. He possesses a rare sense of humOr and a quality of wit all his own-a quail ity peculiar in general to the great yankee testers, to Mark Twain, Bret
 
 CTS That humor has for it's most marked characteristics lucidity and exaggeration. Thus in one of his most famous quips, Rogers said that he would have written a book about the war, but I heard a, feller already did it. Only an honest-to- god yankee, in fact, only Yankee Doodle, could have been guilty of that inverse exaggeration of the number of current war-books.
 His Featherless Cap
 When the ultimate jester at the court of King z1egfe1d and later star of the Go1dwyn Pictures heav- en blew into town (New York, of course,) he denies that he stuck a feather in his cap. He says that he learned while cow-punching that 1t is not good taste to stick q feather in his cap. So he waited for others to do 1t for him; and his wait was rewarded, for it was not long until people were telling one another that ''you must go and see him." which people did They listened to the most iniritabIe comments on pub lie and private events since the la 1nented Mir Dooley of Archy Road explained to his friend Hennesy that the duties of the Vice-president are to rise early and inquire of the pres tdent has he had a good night They listened to the man who ob- served that q see by the papers where Admiral Dr. Grayson stood his maiden voyage weu,'' and to other things equally as good, and subtle For like all genuine low-brow en- tertainers, Charlie Chaplin by no means excepted, the most distinct tendency of Rogers is to make fun of thing in a way which requires you to roll the idea around in your head Gone should allow plenty ot space there for such purposes) until suddenly the light breaks. And this quality is the essence of what a man named Meredith called ''thoughtful humor''-the kind that makes you think even while you laugh
 One Card, Yiease
 If Yankee Doodle is anything in the world, he is Verstaile-traditior says. He is a jack of all trades and master of all of them except buying on margin and trying to fill in 8 middle" straight Here again MT Rogers proves that Yankee Doodle was strangely similar to Mr. Rogers