The Birmingham age-herald., 1922-03-26

miliar apparitIons who inhabit these pleasant walks and tinker with our
 destiny"
 From that time on the fun begins i with the President (of course) as the first victim, with this comment:
 T have noticed that people who
 come in contact with him (Mr. Hard ingl cease now to speak to him or judge him detachedly; they say good humoredly, when his name comes up. But after all, he is a good scout, he
 wants to do what Is right; give him
 @ chance; he's got q hard job to fill and he Is doing his best !"
 Which reminds me of little in-
 cident when a bunch of girls got | together one day and raked an ab- sent victim over the coals good and proper, saying that she was stupid and homely, unattractive and inef- l ficient, when someone in the crowd said:
 But aside from that she's a pretty nice sort of a grill"
 One of the most amusing chapters | in the 27, to my way of thinking, is Coolidge, Foster-Child of Silence" /, It is excrutiatingly funny-espe- | eially the picture that MT, Lowry paints of '"rhe Vice President as the 1 official diner-out of the adminls- tration," declaring that his dress ] clothes are his working clothes, the overalls of the administration" MT. Lowry places MT. Coolidge and 'ithe potted palms" as essentials to every social function in Washington. ITO big dinner being complete with l out both of them, the palms being | the back ground and the Vice Presi dent the foreground"
 MT. Lowry adds:
 The Vice President always sits on 1 the right of the hostess and is the chief figure at every feast, the palms are supposed to be decorative, the l Vice President seldom is." From what Mir. Lowry says, Mir. 1 Coolidge might easily be the proto- l type of the one of whom 1t was said: 'fHe can be silent in seven different i languages" for at these de1ectable l dinner parties when he and the ''potted Palms., like the poor, are all ways with us, the ladies who sit next l him find him the despair of con- versational activities.
 ''No soup however thick, deters him, no fish. however disguised by 1 the pallid, viscous, goo, the chefs seem to like, daunts him, and thence l bouln lnTOuBH lne eHllTb menu IO lne ice, and all in perfect silence"
 ''No hammer fell. no ponderous axes rung,
 Idke some tall palm the noiseless fabric sprung.
 Majestic silence"
 "one agreeable woman was the nine days wonder of Washington" 1 says MT. Lowry. "because she made him tMr. Coolidge) laugh one night 1 at dinner. She would never give the recipe away, or tell what she said; i; l I am going to use it again next win l ter she declared thriftily."
 I have sat beside so many men of this type at dinner parties myself that I can readily sympathize with 1 the futile efforts that those poor women put forth to draw such a one l out.
 Vice President Coolidge looks ac- l cording to MT. Lowrys diagnosis, like he is not 'the kind of eonversa- 1 tional parsley that Is so often needed at dinner party to garnish a well known intellectual vacuum" and re- minds me that while I've never heard whether the deleotab1e Vice Presi- dent is fond of the brimming cup or not but if he is. the ladies might 1 resort. as one whom I knew did in the case of famous Kentucky Colonel who was as silent aH the i sphinx. to a cork-serew, as being the only way to draw him out"
 Once l wearied myself to death for
 three hours at deadly dull dinner party, my hostess placing me next | to one of those majestic silences" and finally in desperation, after try ing to get the man to talk---to utter l just one word-I said frantically:
 Please say something Mister even if you have to take 1t backr
 Bryan: Gayly the Troubadour" is deliciously entertaining with his 'Chautauuua' proclivities and his "Commoner" pose, Hiram Johnson: a Herald with a Trumpet Is very clever, while one of the very best chapters in Washington Close Ups" is Lost in the Mists."
 It tries to answer the question, why the House of Representatives has shrunk so low in popular esteem, One reason the author gives is that the politicians hate new ideas and rew men with new ideas. He is right when he says that in every other country in the world where there is a parliamentary government the war has brought new Iife into politics. With us, on the contrary. the old order still remains; and, in the opinion of 8 growing majority of the people, the "one good custom Is corrupting the world The House today represents the average unin- telligence of the country, the aver age indifference of the country, and,