Clowns

Harvard graduates of the class of 1920 listened with zest to the chief speaker at their annual class dinner in Boston last week. The speaker said:

"Of course there are lots of plain fellows like me who've got the idea that Harvard is a dignified and aristocratic sort of joint and that Harvard men are different from the rest of the world."

"We are!" cried one of the graduates.

"You may be in your own minds," said the speaker, "but Yale and Princeton haven't found it out yet. ... If there's anything you birds want to know that Harvard didn't teach you, just get it off your chests and I'll try to wise you up. . . . You boys look all right to me. Talking straight, I hope you like me. Still, if you don't, what the hell! You don't vote in Newburyport, anyway."

The speaker was Andrew Joseph ("Bossy") Gillis, red-headed mayor of Newburyport, Mass.

In the Yale Daily News another mayor wrote last week about his civic duties, which included answering a letter from an English woman describing herself and her charms and asking the mayor to find her a strong, good-looking, young husband. The mayor was James J. Walker of New York City.