The Topeka state journal. [volume] (Topeka, Kansas) 1892-1980, 1922-01-07

week by the young people at the same
rooming house where he stays. The
story goes that the teacher is matri-
monially inclined but no one seems to
exactly measure up to the standards
which he has set. During Christmas
he went home and before returning
TO Topeka sent a card stating that he
and his bride were arriving at a GER
tain time The girls and men at the
house received the card with glee AMI
they set to work with a will, worked
one whole day preparing the house,
table ard the mans room for the ar
rival. They tied the chairs to the fur
niture, tied old shoes everywhere, and
arranged canopy of hearts over the
table at which he ate. When he ar
rived alone, expecting the joke to be
on the boarding house bunch, ne
found that the whole joke had right
about faced and was on him.
While we are speaking about brides
and br:degrooms, we might as well
tell you. Elizabeth, that the out of
town man who came from the east
last week to marry one of our promi-
nent Topeka women was absolutely
the handsomest person this depart
men! has had the pleasure of meeting
for some time. FRANCES.
- y
Miss Gracia Pope Wood, formerly
society editor of the Topeka State
of New York's magazines. Miss Wood
is a Washburn girl and a member of
Kappa Alpha Theta sorority. She
| made her home here while attending
school and later during the year she
was connected with the State Journal
Several of Miss Woods very clever
stories have appeared recently in New
York papers, ne of them Mr.
Scrooge Reclaims a Girl Reader from
Pseudo Mod ernity," being published
last week in the New York Evening
Post.
\ The story is as follows: My good,
kind parents have been standing
around wringing their hands for the
last few years over their child's wild
dissipation in the saloons of modern
ism. They have besought me to come
home to the fireside of wisdom as
they see it; while I have gone my
| wicked, needless way, guzzling modern
poetry by the five-foot shelf, quaf-
fling realistic novels without shrinking,
| soaking myself in Freud and looking
with covetous eye upon the froth of
bodied hair and loud dresses.
But tonight a number of things
happened, and I heard something else
calling me! 1t began when 1 over
heard two school girls conversing
| They weren't the happieSt sort of
| school girls; not the ones you like to
point to as representative of young
America" They were either too fat
or too thin, and they were wearing
much perforated, three-strap patent
leather pumps, altho it was a sloppy
night. heard the expressions: COM
pick and repression and incest-taboo.
After this I caught realism" Vic
torian school, 'Imagist verse"
I was on my way to see a woman
to whom had an introduction-a re-
markable woman whom I should en-
! joy. Modern, with unstylish clothes,
short hair, etc. No doubt she is re-
| markable, but she needs a manicure,
and short hair isn't becoming to her
and she spells it for other people,
too. I doubt if 1 ever cut mine.
Not long ago I stayed in the office
until it was time for the stenographer
! to go. Two of her friends came in to
wait for her. They were going to
dinner together and then to a lecture
| on Socialism. They are good, hard
working girls, whom I admire and
respect But they talk with the mimi
table New York accent-and I don't.
This is heaped up evidence that the
adventure in modern thinking which
attracted. only the bold, the sturdy,
the restless. few short years ago is
now becoming commonplace easy
| experience for the less thoughtful
A year, perhaps two years, more and
the members of women's clubs in the
! conServat tive middle west will be bend
ing bobbed heads over modern psy-
| cnOlOSy ana Will De SoSS1plng not
about the woman who has an affair
with the chauffeur, but about the one
who doesn't.
| Doubtless I am a hateful, intelIec-
/ tual snob. But am weary of COM
plexes when every one knows what
they are. That probably argues a bad
one in me. But want something new
and hard and uncommon and dan
gerous, or else
This same evening I picked up
Dickens's Christmas Carol" a n d
opened it carelessly. just to glance
thru paragraph perhaps. 1 recall
it only dimly. I read about tho door
nail (you remember) and how dead it