OH LORD, HOW LONG?

One of the favorite outdoor sports of summertime is doomed. Soon the aesthetic plaints of the motorist will be ended, for the loathsome billboard is going. The traveler must then confine his remarks to those queer flowers, that old house, or those funny people. On Sunday afternoons, when the clouds of gasoline smoke hide all these possible objects of observation, comments and curses must be reserved for the dust and the numbers of miles to the gallon. The art of conversation, which has been lagging since the days of Emerson and Holmes, seems about to suffer an extensive mutilation.

A number of auto tire companies have already retired from the field of billboard advertising, and two large producers of spark plugs and flour are preparing similar retreats. In some of the eastern states, the removal of these hideous and obstructive signs is being hastened by restrictive legislation. Women's clubs and other civic organizations are earnest supporters of the movement for their abolition. And the extension of prohibitive legislation will certainly hasten the withdrawal of manufacturers who in general are more weary of this expensive and unproductive competition.

The change along the highways can hardly be estimated. When long lines of malted cows no longer straggle across the deep-blue meadow, the autoist may find line to admire the bovine sedateness of the brirdled cow. When the sad white pup ceases to moan up into the victrola, when the tire twins stop rubbing their eyes and get to bed, when that inexecrably good-looking rounder stops boasting of the mile he never walked, when the world has used up all that good gulf gasoline, then the tired eyes of city dwellers may no longer be tortured by the garish extravagances of color, and their consciences will no longer be troubled by curt, unanswerable commands.

There is just one objection to turning up all the billboards. Motoring, in such a case, will become so pleasurable a pastime that the highways must be doubled in width, and relaid every year, and the public will be switched by three Mr. Goodwins instead of one. But such calamities, like the removal of the present pest, are remote possibilities, always pleasant to anticipate.