FIRST STRAWBERRIES OF SPRING ASSUAGE IBIS

The following review of the current Lampoon was written for the Crimson by an editor of the Advocate. In the usual Advocate manner, he signs himself with one of the names chosen from the Advocate's communal stock, Montgomery Higginson.

There is a sort of humor, somewhat fantastic pleasantly inconsequential, of which the undergraduate is a past master. The Lampoon often indulges in it, we know, especially, it would seem late in May. Perhaps the Ibis has been well assuaged with strawberries, or has found the evenings along the Charles pleasing, in any case, his satire is not barbed and he passes by, smiling slightly, as if he realized how absurb college becomes before the June cataclysm.

The great fault with the Lampoon editorials, we have always thought, is the excellence of the little initial vignettes that introduce them. In stopping to admire their designs we inevitably forget to read the subject matter, and presently pass on to see whether there is more good drawing in the body of the paper. As a rule there is not, though inevitably the illustrations have a certain flair. There are one or two bad spots, this time, especially the various essays at horses, but on the whole the drawings seem fairly creditable. The page by Wood and C. F. F. is perhaps the most finished thing in the number, though smacking almost too much of the professional sophisticate.

Usually we take delight in the Inkling page, but this time we felt rather disappointed. The authors of the longer prose pieces, for their part, have mostly directed their efforts at the University, an excellent thing, for supposedly they know it well. And after all, a place filled with absent-minded professors and collegiate sheiks are distinctly strained, but the Tribute to a Passing Profile by an Artist Who Could Draw Only Full Faces is a pleasing fancy.

After all, one cannot effect and certainly does not desire to find in the Lampoon the night-life brilliance and paid by the inch satire of the professional humorous publications. The Jester is a genial soul, his irony is gentle, hand-wrought, not cast, his fancies are his foibles and not his bread and butter. Life, especially college life, to him is a thing to be enjoyed, and not exploited. It, is possible, he has found through observation of his neighbors, to pass the time in all manner of absurdities, but he prefers to laugh and that late in May, gently.