A Start

U.S. parents who keep a vigilant eye upon the reading matter set before their offspring had a start last week as they scrutinized the table of contents of that whole some publication for boys and girls, the Youth's Companion.* What was this? A story by d to subject themselves to a shocking experience in defense of their children's innocence.

The title of the story was dreadful in its simplicity: "The Defeat of Alfonso." What iniquities might not that conceal! There was a drawing of a scowling man in a white jacket with his knee pressed on the stomach of a prostrate victim, into whose agonized countenance he was simultaneously thrusting some hideous instrument of torture. A third man, baldish, smiling dangerously, looked on. The caption sounded distinctly criminal. It read : " 'Go through his pockets,' said Ellicott, after a while. 'I've got him dead.' '

The first paragraph allayed suspicion somewhat. It told of dentists, two U. S. dentists, itinerant in Ecuador. The next paragraph was rather dull description of the dentists. But, ha! another dentist! an Ecuadorian of no high ethics. He filled teeth with tin and copper instead of gold. Trembling with apprehension the parents read on, ons not a long storyd for reasons which were not explained had been allowed to accumulate the dust of a quarter century. It had not been written by H. L. Mencken, colyumist, lexicographer, magazine editor, the man who named the Baptist Belt and who derides his less accomplished countrymen as "snouting yokels." It had been written by an H. L. Mencken, aged 20, reporter on the Baltimore Morning Herald; a lad who had informed the Youth's Companion that he contemplated working up a series of boys' stories; a lad who three years afterwards had the city editor's desk on his newspaper, in five years the head editor's desk of the Baltimore Evening Herald, in 25 years the title (con- ferred by Critic Ernest Boyd): "foremost U. S. publicist."

Close examination of Reporter Mencken's short story revealed traces of the cacophonous word-mongering that was later to become so characteristic of Publicist Mencken's literary style. Youth's Companion readers were obliged, in this tale of dentistry, to cope with jawbreakers such as "apocryphal," "masticators," "lagniappe" (gratu-ity).

* Weekly circulation ca. 325,000.