Alphabetterer

"A" is for adenoid, the cabbage that

grows

In sickly young children, just back of

the nose.

"B" is for bacillus, a bug that will bite Little oafs who refuse to brush teeth every night.

Etc. to "Z," which, of course, is for a famed five-letter African skunk.

To express the 48 fundamental sounds of the English tongue, the English alphabet has, as every one knows, only 26 letters. Whence it arises that the vocal chords of various parts of the English-speaking world have fallen into various habits of rendering the letter combinations reported to them by their colleagues, the optic nerves.

A state of affairs to be lamented, thinks Dr. Frank H. Vizetelly, managing editor of The New Standard Dictionary. Last week, he proclaimed, before the American Phonetic Society, that there should be a symbol for each and every sound, i. e., an English alphabet of four dozen, instead of two baker's dozen words.

Then, said Dr. Vizetelly, the language could be "standardized" making easier the lot of the lexicographer. "We have earned the reputation of being a mumbling, jumbling, whanging, twanging, whinnying people."

At Bowdoin

While more southerly states were enjoying early crops of asparagus, Maine was the first to produce an institute for the 1925 season. At Bowdoin College (Brunswick), in celebration of the centenary of the graduations of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow and Nathaniel Hawthorne, the Institute of Modern Literature last week burgeoned forth, with a specialist on every branch and juicy speech-fruit for all the world to cull from the press. In Bowdoin's mellow Memorial Hall, the first to speak was Poet Robert Frost. He read Longfellow's Flight Into Egypt, dwelt a while on his own favorite theme of "vocal imagination" --"Longfellow, you see," said Poet Frost, "used no figures of speech. Our poets today, a lot of them, are metaphor-crackers. They crack metaphors as other people crack jokes"--and concluded: "The idea that the only literature is the literature of the past is wrong. This meeting, the Institute, might well be the beginning of a renaissance." Sprightly Miss Edna St. Vincent Millay was present. She contributed no theorizing, merely read from her poetical works and acted a play with three characters, by herself. Hatcher Hughes, a Columbia professor whose youthful mien belied his pedagogical calling, conquered a certain diffidence and told how he came to fashion the lives of Kentucky mountaineers into Hell-Bent for Heaven, the 1923 Pulitzer Prize Play. The chairman at the next session called the roll of the states and found that one and all were fondly familiar with The Awakening of Helena Ritchie, The Iron Woman and Old Chester Tales, whose author, Mrs. Margaret Deland, then took the platform to declare that fiction is footless unless founded in fact.

"Twaddle"

There is a theory that it is better and cheaper to subsidize needy widows than to support pauper children in public institutions. The Child Welfare Committee of America holds this theory ; and lately issued invitations to a conference on the subject in Manhattan.

Among the replies was a letter from President Coolidge to say that uniform child welfare laws in the states would be desirable.

There was also a telegram from Governor Roland H. Hartley of Washington to say that he would on no account appoint a Washington delegate to the conference. Declared the Governor: "Child welfare--what is the matter with our children today? In my opinion, they are being made to pay the penalty for an overabundance of altruistic twaddle. Too many mothers and fathers are giving their time to having their neighbors' children, while their own children are left to shift for themselves and do as they please. "What we need is to get back to the simplicity of the oldfashioned, truly American family circle, and to stop a lot of this uplift gush, this indiscriminate spending of money in social and charity and welfare work. In short, while welfare clubs, organizations and societies are meeting, conferring and resoluting, the home and fireside, the bulwark of good citizenship, is left in charge of the cat and canary. "Can we wonder that our children go wrong? Petted, pampered, educated at the expense of the State, robbed of self-reliance and independence, we send them forth as weaklings to take up the rugged path of life for themselves."

Tennessee's Viper

Having fashioned a maul to viscerate the vicious viper Evolution (TIME, Apr. 6), the state of Tennessee, last week, rolled up it's sleeves for a trial swing. The viper was placed in a convenient viscerating position by one George W. Rappleyea, business man, who complained that one J. T. Scopes, Science teacher in the Rhea High School (Dayton), had "taught Evolution." The charge particularized that Teacher

Scopes had continued, after the evolution bill became law, to use a text-book previously approved by state authorities.*

Evolutionist Scopes was arrested, held for the grand jury. His counsel, led by Dr. John R. Neal, lately deposed evolutionist Dean of the Law School at Tennessee University, gave notice that they would fight the law's constitutionality. It was understood that the defense would be supported, even unto the Supreme Court, by the American Civil Liberties Union.

Anti-militarists

Several dark forms moved near a chapel in Washington, D. C. Others joined them, vanished within the edifice. Came more dark forms, loitering, hurrying, in quiet pairs, in loud-talking squads. All passed into the edifice. Two hours later, the chapel opened, the dark forms poured forth an impromptu parade. Song burst out, punctuated with shouts, as the paraders marched. Placards were hoisted aloft, reading: "What is this going to be-- an army or a university?"; "Before we will be slaves we will be in graves"; "Don't be an Uncle Tom."

The paraders--some 400 strong--students of Howard University (for Negroes). After their deliberations in the chapel, they had voted to discontinue their attendance at classes until their President, Dr. James Stanley Durkee, should give them some satisfaction for representations they had made to him in protest against compulsory physical and military drills/- They demanded reinstatement of anti-militarists dismissed by Dr. Durkee, swore to "cut" their classes a beyond the allowable number of 20 as was necessary to "adjust their rights."

Over-Specialized

The loud chorus of What's Wrong With U. S. Education? was swelled last week, by the voice of Dr. Livingston Farrand, President of Cornell University: "Overspecialization. . . . I mean spending so much time on the mechanics of steam engines that we have no time left for studying the mechanics of life. . . . It breaks the country up into different groups. Each group has an absolutely different point of view. They fail to understand each other. This creates animosity and ill will. It is said that if the Germans had not devoted all their time and energy before the War to specialization, they would not been so blind as to have started . . . . We are just beginning to the effects of this over-specialization."

* After signing the anti-evolution bill in March, said governor Austin Peay: "After a careful examination, I could find nothing of consequence in the books now being taught in our schools with which this bill will interfere the slightest manner."

/- Howard University, in common with many other institutions, maintains a Reserve Officers' Training Corps.