The Topeka state journal. [volume] (Topeka, Kansas) 1892-1980, 1921-06-24
ON SECOND THOUGHT
By JAY e. HOUSE
(From Philadelphia Public Ledger.)

The Rev. Wilbur Crafts has an
nounced his intention of stopping the
fight. ut doesn't matter to the Rev.
Mr.. Crafts that the. Forthcoming fistic
contest does not touch or affect him
in any way. 1t doesn't matter to him
that it is a perfectly legal proceeding
conducted under the laws of the
state of New Jersey and that eighty or
ninety millions of his fellow citizens
approve Of it and are tremendously
interested in its outcome. The Rev.
Mr.. Crafts disapproves of fistic con-
tests and is going to stop this one.
Some concern has been expressed as
to the moral state of the nation. We
doubt there is anything fundamentally
wrong with it. We prefer to believe
that it is in revolt against the Rev.
Mr.. Crafts and his kind.
We indite no brief for the prize
ring. 1t is, we take it, a matter of
taste and inclination. But as long
as promoters can induce a million
dollar-gate by bringing two champion
ship possibilities together and as long
as 80 or 60 per cent of the population
is interested in the outcome there will
be some prize fighting in this country.
They're Paging Gene Rhodes.
Sir-Your telling US something Jeff
Bransford said leads me to suggest
you might quote Yves Pringle, Billy
Beebe and Old .MacGregor, too. Yes?
Where are they all, anyway? Not
dead, surely; not grown old, cause did
Alsoran Pringle not tell us he was a
| US rustic Gene into reviving the old
ones. "Stepsons of Light" was all
right, but I missed my old friends.
What do you say? L. o.
Sir-In the Saturday Evening Post
| OF January 8, 1910, a story called,
Good Men and True by Eugene
Manlove Rhodes, contains the trick
| typewriter sentence with which you
finished your column OF Monday of
last week. Mr.. Rhodes makes one of
his characters originate the sentence,
! so ] am just wondering if that is
where your w. E. A. found it. If you
have not read much of Rhodes's stuft,
look him up, as I can't make deci
! sion between most OF his stories and
Whispering Smita." In "The Coupe
ION" Rhodes gave US the best poker
story ever written, not barring any OF
| those printed in the New York Sun in
| pre-Munsey days. r. c.
1t is fair to W. E. A. to say he gave
Jeff Bransford credit for the trick
typewriter sentences that have APP
! peared herein. But since they were
not original with Mr.. Rhodes. but are
a part of the jargon of the trade. we
did not bother to place an Identified
ton tag upon them. Gene Rhode.
paused momentarily beside this desl
in the fall of 1919. He had been liv.
ing in Apalachin, N. Y. and the man.
uscript of "Stepsons of Light" had JUS
been delivered to its publisher
Rhodes was headed southwest; he wa.
on his way to the COW country. And,
he said, Il m never coming back"
And so it is reasonable to assum,
that as the linotyper melds these line
IN molten metal Rhodes sits in TIL,
twilight of an Arizona day lookin,
across some painted desert to III,
spectral buttes beyond He was on,
who n he wrote. None of his COW
boys ever drew a six gun from the hip
i 1t may not have impressed you ii
Just that way, but it struck us as par
, tfcularly appropriate that Mr.. Frank
} lin D. Roosevelt should reappear ii
, the news as supervisor of a toy zach
! regatta on the Hudson river.
It was when Mr.. Roosevelt was run
: ming for vice president that we got tn
: Idea he would make a grand super
visor OF a toy yacht regatta.
We have read the spirit messag
of Milton Our reaction to It is tina
Mr.. Jamess literary style is change
greatly.
From a Lay Humorist
, Sir-You have recently describe
/ the faces of two prominent prohibit
! tionists as respectively roly-poly an
, an-jawed. You don't seem to lik
either. Won't you let us have a print
ed replica of your own countenanc
! entirely untouched and unreformed
!, That is, If Adelaide will let you put
: in the paper. If your photograph ap
/ pears I shall buy two copies-one t