FEW FAULTS IN CURRENT LAMPOON, POWEL FINDS

The following review of the Christmas number of the Lampoon was written for the Crimson by Harford Powel '09, former president of the Lampoon, present editor of The Youth's Companion, and author of the Virgin Queene.

Lampy's bender is a matter of history, now.

As a baby, under the care of men like E. S. Martin '77, and Owen Wister '82, Lampy was the best-behaved little creature you ever saw. He grew up safely into manhood under Gluyas Williams '11 and Robert Benchley '12. There wasn't a whisper against his reputation until he was about forty, and then--

And then Lampy proved that there is a dangerous age for comics, as well as for men.

He hung around the post office a great deal, insulting the people who came in, and the postmaster kicked him out twice. Then he got gay with Princeton, and was surprised to find he had a tiger by the tail. But others persuaded last year's editorial board to take the big job of cleaning him up.

This year a new president and keeper has come along, Alan R. Blackburn, Jr. '29, and the cure has been getting better every minute. Witness the Christmas Number, how--as the saying is--on sale.

Gardner Cox '28 supplies the front cover of the Christmas number of the Lampoon. It is one of those Santa Claus covers which are the curse and cross of magazines, but the little readers cry for them, and so do the Greek newsagents--so if you don't, you can take a run to the Art Museum, and pick out what you do like. You will run a long way before you find in any December magazine whatever a better idea than Hichborn has found for his full page cartoon, "The Three Wise Men." That is Punch, at Punch's best--not in technique, but in idea.

There is a capital hit at "art moderne" in the page headed "Gift Suggestions in the Modern Spirit." There is perhaps a little too much flattery of Fougasse--three pages of small, serial drawings are rather a big dose, even for those who have formed the habit Blackburn's drawings are a good corrective: he wields a broad brush, and his humor is not thin.

The only place where taste wabbles in this number is in the hymn parodies Nobody yet has made sacrilege funny though all have tried; and while these parodies aren't sacrilegious, they aren't funny either. Otherwise, there is many a gleam of the old Lampy in this number; and there are improvements, tod. It is a very encouraging sign of the times; quite as encouraging, in its own way, as the events of November 24 at Yale Field. Magazines are men, as much as football teams or colleges either.