The Topeka state journal. [volume] (Topeka, Kansas) 1892-1980, 1922-04-17
ON SECOND THOUGHT
BY JAY z. HOUSE
tFrom Philadelphia Public Ledger.)

tFrom Philadelphia Public Ledger.)
Are you paying much attention to
the news about this young Miss Baker
who is again threatening to marry the
equally young Mr.. Allison McCor-
mick? Well, thru strange coinci-
dence, neither are we.
We trust the Shakespearean fans
who are tearing their hair in irnpotent
fury may profit by the example set
by Mr.. Sothern. Mr.. Sothern not only
is vastly amused at our liability to a.p-
preciate his art. but he has obligingly
offered to teach US to love Shakes
peare.
Says Sherwood Anderson in 1.-The
Testament of the Two Glad Mem"
fence in a field. The morning sun is
shining. There below me, past those
trees and down that dusty road, is a
town with factory chimneys pouring
forth smoke. There have been hot dry
days. The fields are brown and the
corn ripens. Sweaty men are between
me and the fields, toiling in fields,
covered with dust. In the town are
houses in long rows. Tired women
are standing by kitchen stoves. They
are standing in doorways. looking off
over fields, toward me-"
We think Mr.. Anderson has been
misinformed. We had not previously
observed him; we doubt that the tired
women were looking at him. But,
granting, for the sake of avoiding
argument, that everybody saw him,
what of it?
And, at any rate and in any event,
the toiling men and the tired women
are doing something that needs doing.
The HOch-ing of Mr.. Hoch.
Sir-I know of course you are an
adept at writing yourself down an ass.
but 1 never knew what a damphool
you were until read your article on
the Shakespearean drama in Sundays
Public Ledger. Maybe you will now
feel like telling us what you think of
Dante, Milton. Goethe, Keats and
Shelley.
Or, peradventure. you will feel more
inclined to earn your pay as col
umnist by continuing to show the
venom of your spleen toward strikes,
union labor and radicals in general.
A shoemaker should stick to his
last, and you have no license to air
your views on the great literature
geniuses of the world.
H. c. HOCH.
Perhaps we do write oursef down
an ass. That has been suggested to
US a number of times In any event.
we pretend to no such calm and de-
Lucrative wisdom as that possessed by
Mr. Hoch, who, according to his own
confession, quit his job a year ago in
sympathy for certain workmen who
were striking for the forty-four hour
week, and who hasn't worked since.
Likely we shall not mediateN dis
cuss Dante, Milton, Goetheg Keats and
Shelley. The reading public is not in
terested in them. Dante, we believe,
is dead. Goethe and Milton virtually
are retired and no longer cumber the
tide of affairs. Keats hasn't written
a line in years and Shelley's recent
lecture tour in this country was a fall
ure, due to the fact that the Tive
wires who make or break lecture
tours were not much interested in him.
This is a snappy, up-to-date column
war.
But-we say but-in the event that
we do conclude to discuss Dante, Mil
ton, Goethe. Keats and Shelley, who is
going to stop us? We ask somebody,
'Laddie Boy" we CLEAN from the
White House wire, has learned to spot
and retrieve the balls driven by his
master. The president, we gather, is
driving more accurately this year. 1t
efficiency is due to the substitution of
a brassev for a. driver, which, you
will recall, we last year advised.
Mulling the matter over in mind, we
are no longer sure Dante is dead al
ceding paragraph. But We haven't
time to look it up. If we go now we
can play nine holes before darkness /
descends.