The Topeka state journal. [volume] (Topeka, Kansas) 1892-1980, 1922-01-12
ON SECOND THOUGHT
BY JAY e. RousE
tErom Philadelphia Public LedEer.l

Sir-Your search for some one to
write your column on January 2s ana
the way your readers fall for it re-
minds me of the reply our rector
made when one of my daughters, at
a con lntirHnl party, asked him why
Moses took no horses into the ark with
him. The rector fell for it and re-
piled he had always supposed that he
did take horses into the ark.
G. w. d.
We'll, we've looked over the papers;
we have read the lucubrations OF the
various colunsnists; we have talked
with divers and sundry persons, and
We have searched the recesses of
memory. We reach the conclusion
there is nothing left IN the world to
write about. If this business retains a
single wallop, it fails to communicate
itself.
We could write a jape about the ar
rest of a prohibition director in New
York: Thoughts concerning the Incl
dent leap and frivol at heel Two rea
sons restrain us. One of them is that
we should Immediately grow serious
and undressing. The other is that
we are writing too much about pro-
hibition and the possibility that we
might overdo it fingers always in
mind.
A page of pictures in the Outlook
momentarily intrigues us. The paga
is entitled Types of Professional
Drawn and Brain" and discloses half
tone presentments of Babe" Ruth.
Jack Dempsey, Rogers Hornsby and
Young Jake" Schaefer. At first
glance it came to US that we might
wrest humorous paragraph from the
Outlook, which is by way of being a..
unprecedented feat. After more ma
ture elaboration, we decided no 1ape
we could spring would equal the out
looks unconscious>>whim- wham, and
SO, in the language ofthe Babe" him
self. we decided to leave it lay
Again we were inspired to jest with
the language of "Heinie" Groh. who
is quoted by the New York papers as
saying: 'Mr. McGraw has, 1 think.
built up one of the finest teams he has
has had some pretty good ones in the
past. There is some incentive to hus-
tie in New York"
We could hardly keep our hands off
that. 1t seemed to us to be made to
order for our peculiar style. And then
it came to us that those who know Mr..
Groh will get the joke without any as
sistance from the column, and those
who do not know him would be I'M
able to get it in any circumstance.
So We acknowledged failure and set
out on new search.
There is an able whim-wham in the
news that Thimble win" a race In
New Orleans; but it isn't our kind of
stuff, and we pass it along to the lads
in New York who specialize in that
sort of thing.
There are, of course, many reasons
why we should not write on the Irish
question. One of them is that we
wrote on the Irish question one day
last summer. We incubated what
seemed to us to be a perfectly HARM
less paragraph of four or five lines
Since he passed it, the censor APP
parently took the same view of it. On
teen telephone calls, thirty-six letters
and 1877 epithets. The mildest epithet
il the lot was "bIackguard.,'
That is one reason we do not write
on the Irish question. The Others DO
not matter.
An evening at the theater usually is
provocative of two or three good para
graphs. But the only reaction we got
from 1.-The Bad Man. not already ex-
pressed by the theatrical commenta-
the quasi-expletive. Gosh durn It'll"
much too frequently. No man ever
lived who said Gosh durn itl' as
often as Uncle Henry says it. But that
is nothing to write about. Nobody
would laugh his head off at our reac-
tions to Uncle Henry's desiccated
vocabulary.
One gentleman has written to- say,
You're a heIuva columnisti" incIos-
ing with such communication seven
one-cent stamps-five cents for the
privilege of abusing us and two for the
profanity in which his opinion is
clothed. But we can't establish the
fact that we're not a 'hcluva column
ist." and it seems useless to go into
1t at all.
A friend has sent US a. copy of
Conrad's Victory" with the request
that we read it and expfess our deep