DONALD OGDEN STEWART SPEAKS AT UNION TODAY

Mr. Donald Ogden Stewart will speak in the living room of the Union at 7.30 o'clock tonight on the subject "Life and the Pursuit of Happiness."

Mr. Stewart's fame as a lecturer is only exceeded by his reputation as a writer of parodies and humorous satires. Many of his writings have appeared in "Vanity Fair", "Life", and "Scribner's" and he is also well known for his longer works, "A Parody Outline of History", "Perfect Behavior", "Aunt Polly's Story of Mankind" and "Mr. and Mrs. Haddock Abroad."

Tells of His Life in Third Person

In a brief autobiography, written in the third person, be has set forth his qualifications as a lecturer. His humorous nature has apparently doomed him to a life of reverses which began while still a child.

"At the age of 11." Mr. Stewart writes of himself, "he was sent to Phillips Exeter Academy because it was a good preparatory school for Harvard. In the fall of 1912 Mr. Stewart entered Yale."

After leaving Yale, he entered business and was engaged by a large corporation first in Birmingham, Alabama, then in Pittsburg and Chicago. He was in Chicago at the outbreak of the war and promptly joined the navy. Having never been on a ship or the ocean before, he was at once appointed an instructor in Practical Navigation, Seamanship. Naval Ordnance and Signals. "This experience," he declares, "was invaluable and Mr. Stewart came out of the Great War a deepened man."

He definitely abandoned business for a literary career in 1920, he says, after reading his first volume of the Alexander Hamilton business course.

Little Stranger is Another Satire

Mr. Stewart has lived abroad for some time and he describes the production of one of his books there as follows: "In the middle of October he began to feel strangely uneasy and as his condition grew steadily worse, he consulted an authority and learned to his surprise and delight that he was going to have another book. . . . He prayed with all his heart that it might be a novel, for he had never had a novel although he had wanted one all his life. But early in February, 1923, Mr. Stewart discovered that the 'little stranger' was to be another satire, and although it was a bit of a blow at first, after a few days he got over his disappointment at not having a novel."

His epitomized characterization of himself at the close is: "Mr. Stewart is unmarried and very near-sighted. He is fond of Beethoven, Scotch, and Max Beerbohm."