The midland journal. (Rising Sun, Md.) 1885-1947, 1936-05-08

feet; and only too fire. u
quently, alas, the eff N
feet was that Of a u n
new tin roof on va kz1@zs@4''
cant attic. irwin S, Cobb
Now, by the great
gross, the stylish ones are going red,
reddish or redder. Today, within half
a mile, counted ten redheads, and
not white horse in sight, to prove
the anciert saying.
Waning Presidential Booms.
XXTHAT with cyclones and floods
w down south, the daily press some
how failed to record among our spring
casualties the untimely end of the
Governor Talmadge boom. Poor little
thing, 1t passed away at its home in
Atlanta, Ca, just as it was learning,
In prattling accents, to lisp papa"
Still the shock did not catch some
of us unawares. We had feeling it
wasn't going to live. The second sum-
mer Is so frequently fatal to those
incubator babies.
For instance, you take the Ham
Fish boom. Or Of you didn't take it,
somebody certainly did, because it
hasn't been seen, or even heard Of for
months and months.
Gridiron Club Dinners.
EXCEPT the obituary column, moth
IL ing could be sadder than the news
paper account Of a gridiron club din
ner. Yet gridion club dinners aim to
be satirically amusing and frequently
are.
Turning them out must be ire
mendously hard job, because they deal
with the national political scene, and
any producer. Of farces will tell you
you can't burlesque a burlesque. In
other words, you can't be very funny
on a subject which already is so much
funnier than anything you can think
of-and that's what the fellows at
Washington are up against.
This business of trying to be comic
Is serious business anyway, especial
ly since all comedy is predicated on
distress. A fat man falling down
makes US laugh because he suffers both
In spirit and flesh. But If he Is a
pallbearer, say, at funeral and falls
down on his own high hat and maybe
breaks up the services-well, now then,
you've got something that's really
funny.
A definition of comedy could be:
Tragedy standing on its head with its
pants torn.
Sell dchasen Landon Aids.
OvERNOR LANDON must feel
~ awfully fractional, not to say
badly scattered, what with being levied
on by so many comparative strangers
all at once. Every Gay or two. with an
altruism rare in this selfish age, some
gallant volunteer elects himself by ac-
clamation as the governors eastern
manager or his western manager, or
his northv estern-by southwestern man.
ager or somethir'. 1t makes no diff
ference that he b Y never have heard
of these parties efore; up to six
months ago, they'o never heard of him
either.
He's like a previously neglected or
phan child who suddenly comes into
prospects and finds everybody in town
trying to adopt him. Maybe better
smile would be that of lone Thanks
giving turkey at tableful of hungry
boarders, with this one snatching the
drumstick and that one grabbing the
second joint-and Mr.. w. X. Hearst
clinging, with a grip of iron, to the
wishbone.
Folly of Parole System.
THE perpetrators of the kidnapping
L case of a few months ago up In the
state of Washington were both chronic
offenders who, despite their records,
had been paroled.
The fiend who recently committed
the most hideous child murder that
California has known In years was Il
convict out on parole. The degenerate
who has just confessed to numbering
that poor defenseless gentlewoman in
New York the other day was-yes,
you've guessed 1.-THE was convict on
parole.
And all over the Union the work of
turning loose criminals who have not
completed their terms of punishment,
indeed, in some cases hardly have be-
gun them, goes merrily on.
! IRWIN s. COBB
Copyright-WNU Service.
Forest of Arden