WHEN WE WERE RATHER OLDER

Jesters, and all those who find in the world's armor of convention the vulnerable joints through which to prick with tiny irritating shafts and barbs have always been a persecuted brotherhood. When jesters were really in fashion, the indignities were such uncomfortably tangible things as straw-beds, and a monkey or two to share the couch. In latter days, Puritans, police and preachers contrive to make life at least exciting for the Merry Andrews, and, incidentally, to provide further food for fun. But not until now, so far as we can tell, has merriment and its disciples been subjected to the dissecting, knife analysis of the statistician.

An investigation by Dr. Donald Gregg has brought to light the careers of over two hundred Lampoon editors subsequent to their abandonment of the task of tickling the undergraduate risibilities. Journalism and the law have claimed the greatest number of the college humorists, which would appear to indicate that the faculty of favile use, on abuse, of the English language determined the course into which these gentlemen directed their life efforts. Architecture, strangely enough, has attacked the next largest total, possibly, the four years of practice in reproducing the structural designs in the Yard created a mystic urge to imitate, or possibly to surpass, these models for generations of undergraduate artists. Of the two hundred considered, there was a goodly number whose labors in the humorous fortnightly's art department evidently inspired them to further and possibly higher creative endeavors, and they became artists.

Dr. Gregg remarks that with two editors in the Church, and two in the courts, the contribution of the Lampoon to these professions ceases. In an imposing array of exotic psychological terms he attempts to account for this defection. The real reason need not by shrouded in abstractions. From time immemorial, these professions have not been absent, from the stock, in trade of humorists. To remain consistent with their early merry selves, college humorists doubtless steer very clear of legal and ecclesiastical waters. Humorists may be a number of things, but they are not traitors.

Illuminating as these figures may be to some people, it is impossible that they will cause any stir in the world of levity, except as new grist for the laugh mill. Even the awe-inspiring news that tuberculosis takes a large roll of gentlemen graduated from college funny papers will not act as a sedative. Caps will continue to hob and bills to iiugle in the face of overwhelming numbers. After all, is the conforming reflection, these statistics prove exactly what most statistics prove.