P.B.K.T.B.

It has never been said of members of Phi Beta Kappa that they toil not. But sometimes they have been accused of not spinning; of not contributing anything save an air of distinction, or pedantry, to their college community.

From Harvard came news. There those who, by dint of native ability or sustained effort, had achieved the personal triumph of a "key," would now transfer some of their attention to furthering the common weal, and to lining their own pocketbooks. Nothing could be more practical, nothing more just than the Harvard Phi Beta Kappa Tutoring Bureau, for laggard students before the mid-year examinations, announced last week. Many a smart, shrewd Phi Beta Kappan has before this undertaken tutoring as a private enterprise. Never before has a chapter of the national hierarchy of scholarship lent its official seal. The new departure was presumably an evidence of Phi Beta Kappa's intention, announced during its recent endowment drive, to take an active part in U. S. education.

Ely Fire

Fire ate up Ely Court, fashionable school for finishing young ladies, at Greenwich, Conn. Red tongues danced upon a rooftree and gobbled earthward far faster than firemen could pump water from a nearby lake. Fleeing with such midnight garments and belongings as they could snatch up, the owners and principals, Miss Elizabeth Ely and her sister, Mrs. Sara (sic) Parsons, could only give thanks that none but themselves, the housekeeper and some servants were in the long, tall building. The 100 or so young ladies were safely home for holidays. It was just 40 years since the Misses Ely had founded their school, to accommodate the daughters of once-fashionable Brooklyn, N. Y. With the shift of social tides, the Misses Ely--Elizabeth, Sara and Mary Boies (deceased)-- had removed to Riverside Drive, Manhattan. Jews had encroached, apartment houses had towered. In 1906 the school had migrated to its final resting place on a green Connecticut hilltop. Now it lay in ashes, the ashes of $1,500,000, of which only a $500.000 phoenix would arise in insurance. Parents with daughters in need of finishing, friends of all that is genteel and established in private education, waited to see if the Ely sisters, now in their age, would permit fire to terminate a tradition which years and geography could never change.

Partners Again

Two months ago a limp figure, bleeding from ear, nose, jaw, forehead, was carried to a Manhattan hospital, almost dead. They registered him as Lawrence Buermeyer, instructor in philosophy at New York University. He had been discussing philosophy with his friend since college days at Princeton, Joseph Carson Jr. of Columbia University's philosophical faculty. They had been drinking grain alcohol and water as they argued. Philosopher Buermeyer's wounds, inflicted with a shoe, fists, a milk bottle, a broom, were the tokens of a disagreement. Philosopher Carson, having confessed, was put under $10,000 bail (TIME, Nov. 1). ... Last week the two philosophers came to court with their lawyers. Said Lawyer Levy to the Court: "My client does not desire to press the complaint, [felonious assault] and he asks your permission to have it withdrawn." "What had they been drinking?" asked the magistrate. "The usual stuff." "Will you shake hands?" asked the magistrate. Grinning sheepishly, the two philosophers shook hands. ""Case dismissed," said the magistrate, who reflected, as the pair left arm in arm, that philosophy is thicker than alcohol. News writers drew the obvious parallel of Damon & Phintias.--

New Orleans Vice

New Orleans is going to examine itself for vice. There is to be an investigating commission. Meeting last week to indorse this commission, members of the High School Alumnae Association reported conditions in the city's educational system as unusual as they were undesirable..

"Men come around to the schoolyards at intermission time," said President Mrs. J. G. Skinner, "and get the children to gamble away their lunch money. That, and the punchboards, are making thieves of children. They take money that doesn't belong to them from their homes, and I know cases in which children have taken punches on their mothers' bills. My telephone is busy all day and half the night with mothers and other persons who want something done. . . ."

The punchboards referred to are lotteries conducted in drug stores, candy shops, shoe-parlors. The gambler, after paying a fee, punches a numbered slip of paper out of its cell in a square honeycomb. The right number wins a prize. Among the prizes obtainable by school-attending minors were, allegedly, revolvers.

Another vice, reported by a Miss Irene Hannan: "Children are going to school so sleepy [that] their heads fall over on their desks, because they attended the dog [whippet] races the night before."

Badgered

Male undergraduates of the University of Wisconsin, and not a few recent graduates, suffered embarrassment and chagrin last week at dances, stag parties, afternoon teas and other holiday gatherings where they encountered young ladies and gentlemen from other universities. They, bold "Badgers,"-- were badly badgered because of a report of their Dean of Men, Dr. Scott Holland Goodnight. After examining social and hygienic conditions in Wisconsin's fraternity houses, Dr. Goodnight had said: "I believe that resident housemothers in fraternity houses would represent a real improvement in fraternity life, and I hope to see the day when some of the fraternities will give the plan a fair trial." "Har, har!" crowed the bullyboys from Minnesota, Illinois, Ohio, Chicago. "Har, har! House mammies for Wisconsin boys. Har, har!" Grumbled Badger wits: "Oh, that old Goodnight, good night!"

Chivalry

As reported last week by the Boston Transcript, Professor George H. Knight of Ohio State University can find nothing chivalrous in the vocabularies of his students of English. To prove his contention, Professor Knight had catalogued undergraduate terms applied to an unpopular girl: pill, pickle, lemon, dead one, priss, tomato, chunk of lead, drag, gloom, rag, oilcan, crumb, nutcracker-face, flat tire, mess. Ohio State terms for a popular girl: peach, bird, belle, live one, baby vamp, whiz, pippin, star, sweet patootie, choice bit of calico, sweetums, snappy piece of work, pretty Genevieve, thrill, flesh-and-blood angel. Terms which Professor Knight might have discovered had his researches extended beyond the campus at Columbus, Ohio: for an unpopular girl--wreck, piece of bad news, wet smack, foul ball, prune, pig's coattail, washout, sad Sadie, hard-boiled virgin, dizzy egg, teaser, gripe, bug-eyed Betty; for a popular--tidy unit, warm baby, knockout, panic, riot, red-hot witch, cat's meow.

*Oldtime Greek boyfriends; variation, Damon & Pythias. Damon offered himself as hostage for Phintias who wanted to go and kiss his mother a last time before being put to death by Dionysius. Upon Phintias' return, Dionysius, deeply affected by such friendship, pardoned him. *Chosen animal of Wisconsin, equivalent of Yale's bulldog, Penn State's lion, Princeton's tiger, California's golden bear, Minnesota's gopher, Navy's goat, Army's mule, Pittsburgh's panther, Michigan's wolverine, Harvard's porcupine.