The Birmingham age-herald., 1921-03-29
M E N, w o M B N
 A ND T HIN G s

| l had a serious word in Mondays paper about Rotary and now I want to l speak about the jazz" end of it, for while it's motto is, He profits most who serves best" there is yet room for plenty of fun.
 + "all study and no play makes Jack dull boy" so all serving unrelieved ty recreation and amusement is apt to make Rotarian go stale and there fore your true "Rote," while willing to pull off his coat and help in any good cause. is just as ready to shuck hin dignity and become a child again. To me one of the pleasantest fea lures of being a Rotarian comes from the fact that at least once week can meet the business and professional man of Birmingham, not so much as pillars of society, but as good fellows, ready to forget office, store, factory, or bank and simply mingle on terms of ease and friendship, showing that they tre human beings and not machines am in hearty accord with that pule which required the dropping of all titles and the use of surnames and simply called a fellow From, Dick or Harry" as the case may be- I'll ad. init that it is sometimes right hard for some of the younger members to address the grave and reverened seig | nors" so familiarly I have merely to cite the fact that Julian Caheen said he preferred to pay fine rather than to call pr. Philips Herbert" Ii was just impossible for young fel- low only a few short years out of high school to speak to the superin- tendent of public schools.
 During the war we were all keyed up and the weekly dinners naturally became tinged with seriousness, but now that peace has come they are talk ing on a bright hue and some of the old stunts which used to be so eager ly looked forward to are being re- vived. Naturally, however, there is no standard by which to govern the meet ings of any club, as each one reflects it's own particular environment.
 
 I have visited clubs out of the state in which the dinner was riot of fun from start to finish, bur no doubt had I dropped in at another time I would have found an entirely different atmos phere. l remember joyous session some while back at Chattanooga, and only recently in Nashville I was pres ent at what to me was the best bal anced programme I ever saw given. A the club did novel thing by ex- Eibiting on the screen the baby pic- lures of the prominent members which they had secured from their wives or mothers and asked the audience to try and name them.
 Important questions of vital interest to Rotary will be threshed out in the various sttings of the body, but my desire now is to call attention to the things transpiring on the outside Take. for instance, the lobby of the Tutwiler and it's veritable babble of voices and has the average midway beat a block when it comes to noise and something doing all the time. The strange part about it being that no one seems to think it anything out of the ordinary for any one to get up and do the most extraordinary things.
 If fellow wishes to burst into song he just bursts forth, if a quartet is moved to melody it gets melodious without any further ado; if some lead CT thinks the time has arrived for chorus to render a favorite piece he just simply takes the floor and leads off and soon the hotel is filled with sound. If there happens to be some charming soloist in the crowd she is rushed to the stairway and favors those grouped about her with a fla vorite selection.
 When got down about o'clock on Monday morning the Boys Industria! band had the center of the stage and looked mighty fine in their uniforms and with their playing had the yisi- tors enthralled. They played a mum Der of familiar tunes and wound up with Dixie, which came pretty near breaking up the meeting as it always does in this climate. Then the Gads- den band, made up, so 1 was informed. l Of Boy Scouts, came on the scene around 10 o'clock and they kept things lively for quite a while. l was. amused at the interest of the East Lake boys in the rendering of some of the airs by the visitors. They were keenly watching the manner in which they handled their instruments. Rotary headquarters was a veritabla beehive of working "Rotes," and, be- lieve me, the various chairmen and their committees have worked with un- tiring zeal to arrange for the enter ta.nment of the guests. Rotarian Don { nelly, the head of them all. has been at his desk sfrom early morn until late at night for days. Rotarian Hen ley has been constantly in evidence as he handled the matters entrusted 10 him, and Rotarian Stevens has put forth mighty exertions to line up suf- Fcient automobiles to handle the visi- tors, while Miss Brown has worked smoothly and efficiently, like the great secretary that she is.
 believe es~however, the busiest spot | in the hotel has been the registration | headquarters, with Rotarian Adams sitting at the seat of customs, while his valiant aids have been working I like beavers to register the local and visiting members. It had the air of money changers. but every one was strictly on to his or her job. It took four typists to Keep up with the de- mands made upon the force to write in the names and fill out the cards for