Evening public ledger. [volume] (Philadelphia [Pa.]) 1914-1942, 1920-03-31

a Gownsman, tempestuously. March
comes at bad time Of the year, and is
Internationally long going out. Every
day in March is impudently longer than
the preceding day. March contains more
unlucky Fridays than any month in the
year and more blue Mondays and wash
days. Besides, the Sundays Of March
are usually raw and clustering, which
makes going to church the greater vir-
tue for the regenerate, but renders cas-
ier the primrose ways of the indolent
which lead-whither, we know, alas,
all too WELL
"NTAD as n March Hare?" What
A'1 sensible hare, bunnie or jack
rabbit would not wax mad in such
month and shake his ears in despera-
ton? Mad as a Hatter?" Doubtless a
March Halter, disbatted. chasing his
vivacious derby as 1t pirouettes coyly
on edge before a brisk March breeze,
hither, now thither, like the goddess
Fortune on her wheel-which, knowing
cycle-just beyond his eager grasp.
What Halter, in or out of Alice in
Wonderland, would not bc mad?
'0THE Halter looked at the March
l. Hare, who had followed him into
the court. arm in arm, with the Dor
mouse. Fourteenth OF March. I think
it was, he said. Fifteenth said the
March Hare. Sixteenth added the
Dormouse. Write that down. the
King said to the jury and the jury
eagerly wrote down all the three dates
on their states and added them up and
reduced the answer to shillings and
pence" ITO shillngs and pence
Americanically, dollars and cents
alas all answers seem similarly reduc-
ible in these days, for veritat1le March
Hare is the II. e. of L.. and this un-
approachable, top-loftcal. ineffable
ruler of our destinies and tyrant over
all is also the maddest of the hatters,
the unacceptable Mad Topper.
MARCH is an ominous month, to
1V4 greatness as we'll as to the small.
Caesar was told to "beware the Ides of
March" He might as well have been
warned Of the Nones or the Kalends
warning, he fell before the statue, of
Pompey, the greatest fall since the fall
Of man. 1t is somewhat strange to no.
tice how many great men have con-
trived to die in March. The English
poets Burns. Southey, Herbert and
Donne; and that titan Teuton, Goethe;
the musicians. Beethoven and Doctor
Arne (if he was a musician) the paint
crs Correggio and Benjamin West
(death consents strange bedfellows) : the
statesmen, generals, potentates. Bell
sarius. Gustavus Adolphus. William
III. our American Calhoun. March was
favorite killing month for Roman en-
perors; Nero. Valentinian and Helioga-
balus were variously murdered in it.
Swedenborg gave up his own ghost in
March, having given up several others
before and Jonathan Edwards sought
realization In this month of that damna-
tion which he had so luridly preached to
KEEP warm the cookies of cold Puritan
heart in the climate of New England,
| which at best is but year of twelve
Marches variously distempered.
TT is even unlucky to be born in
l. March. Marlowe, born in that
month, was killed in brawl at twenty
nine: his rival. Shakespeare, born a
month later. outlived him twenty three
years. This Shakespeare was a clever
dog. He stole March. so to speak, on
fate. when, falling i'll in that accursed
month, he continued in this vale of
tears, in the interests of mnemonic
help to the memory of students. pro-
tracing his demise to coincide with
his birthday. The poetlng, Kirk White,
died of consumption and despair at
having been born in the month of
March; and old CObbett, one of the
economic redoubtables, got most of his
buster and cantankerousness out of
this same month of the thousand winds.
| Clever great men usually manage to be
| born earlier in the year, or later. Thus
Washington and Lincoln both preferred
February. and Shakespeare, as we have
seen, preferred April. Rousseau, prince
of sentimentalists; Hobbies. a wise
philosopher, who once squared the circle,
although 1t turned out to be otherwise,
and John Stewart Mill, arch prophet of
economists, each shared this, Shake
spearean prejudice in favor of April.
And is it for nothing that we, right
here in America, inaugurate new ad-
ministration in MARCH? Our elections
are mostly in November and our con
ventions in the balmy, indolent. judg
ment depriving months OF early sum
mer but it is the dread of the coming
March (Of events, so to speak, which
drives us so often mad. We have had
variable luck in Presidents; but our
luck in senator's is consistent and con
sistently bad. >But for senatorial
courtesy there might come time when
we would have no senator not un-
avoidably detained from Washington.
The Gownsman wonders whether an
inquistion into the birthdays of sena
tors--for even senators must baye been
born somewhere and at some time
might not disclose that the most of
them were born in Marcia good many
of them on the 18th, which even the
Mad Halter in his calculations above
did not reach
Tn ADDITION to all these counts
L against March. we must add that
March is a distinctly dishonest month.
Having thirty one days. the limit of the
law in lengthiness as to months, forty
of its days are Lent, or at least all that
it has is Lent and the rest are stoler
from predecessor or successor. And
who can doubt that there is CRYING
need that in this most damnabe month
of the year frail humanity should be
protected from the wiles of evil by some
such moratorium of the reckoning day?
For these and sundry other reasons
should we hold the now dying month of
March in horror ard detestation. Go,
unluckiest of twelve. thou veritable
thirteenth among decent months. Take
with you your clouds, your gusts, your
hurTes of snow and splashes of rain !.
take likewise your sickly smiles that
only betray the unwary. Take your
shivering st. Patrick, the only green
thing about you; take with you your
March Hare and Mad Halter, your false
smiles that Halter, your wind gusts and
rains that batter, spatter, patter ard
scatter our wits. Much March has
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