Fools

Of all the qualities that have won for the Crimson (Harvard University undergraduate daily) high rank among college newspapers, urbanity has not been least. Has the faculty displeased the students? The Crimson editors have not gnashed their strong young teeth and given vent to puerile polemic. Cool satire is the Crimson's mode. Have undergraduates been boorish? The Crimson chastened them with mockery.

But last week, poring over the American Mercury for February, a Crimson editor came upon "Answer No. 62" in Editor H. L. Mencken's "Notes and Queries" department. The paragraph read:

Answer No. 62.(February, 1926). "I would advise 'Manufacturer' to send his idiot son to Harvard. I am a recent Harvard graduate myself, and I wish to assure him that there is no university in the country where it is easier to get by with a minimum of work. It is an actual fact that throughout my entire four years I read no more, in the aggregate, than fifty small pages of large type, and that I skipped 80% of the lectures I was supposed to attend. I not only did not fail to get through; I graduated cum laude! "Harvard, '21, Providence, R.I."

Boiling with loyal rage, the Harvard editor fumbled through a back file of the Mercury until he found "Query No. 62" to which his fellow collegian had made reply. This other paragraph read:

"I have a boy who seems to be a damned idiot, chiefly due to inheritance from his mother's father. He has got through high school and now I want to send him to college, a good one, if possible. Of the big ones, which is the easiest? He has good manners and weighs 165 pounds at 19 but he simply has no sense. Where will he have the best chance to get by? This is no joke. I am a busy man, and serious.

"Manufacturer, Cincinnati, O."

Thoroughly angry by now, the Crimson man determined to republish both paragraphs with a fitting retort. He thought and thought. He did not stop to consider that many a contribution like that of "Manufacturer" is composed or suggested by many a scheming magazine editor to liven up his page and cause comment. He quite forgot the Crimson's traditional suavity in the face of minor absurdities. He boiled and boiled, and boiled his anger down to a single devastating headline, which later appeared above the two paragraphs reprinted on the Crimson's editorial page:

"When fool counsels fool."