"Ask Me Another"

A small boy with a bat and a batting eye who can find someone to pitch to him, will bat for hours, will cry, "Chuck us another! Watch me knock it outa the lot!" Joy is his. Among adults, the same joy is experienced by the woman at a church social whose seamstress has told her just why Mrs. Jiggetywig left her husband; or by the male dinner guest in Sedalia, Mo., who took his vacation under the auspices of Thos. Cook & Son. These, to squeeze the last drop of bliss from omniscience, will hint: "Ask me another!" Two youths lately turned out by that small incubator of great men, Amherst College, have entered this fertile vale of psychology and in it, after proper experiment, planted a book.* Before publishing they went calling. They called on President William Allan Neilson of Smith College and on Colyumnist Heywood Broun of the New York World; on Advertiser Bruce Barton and President Emeritus Arthur Twining Hadley of Yale, Sport-Writer W. O. McGeehan and Actress Genevieve Tobin, Dr. Frank Crane and Critic Baird Leonard of Life. At these, in the pairs named, and at other notables, they directed a rushing stream of questions: "What style of writing did the early Babylonians use?" "What is coral? . . . a centaur? . . . a Bunsen burner? . . . the longest bridge in the world?" "How do kangaroos carry their offspring?" "What is a morganatic marriage ? " "Who was the 'Wild Bull of the Pampas'?" Each pair of experimentees answered a separate set of 50 questions. The lowest score, 61%, was made by Dr. John Broadus Watson, on a test which included the question: "Who is the leading authority in the modern school of psychology known as 'Behaviorism'?" Novelist Alice Duer Miller batted out the highest score, 97%. Professor George F. ("Than") Whicher of Amherst and Editor Holland Thompson of The Book of Knowledge tied for first place among the men, with 96%. But the editors dedicated their volume to a 95% man, "who," they said, "might have dictated the answers to these questions and spared the authors the trouble of looking them up." This 95-percenter was energetic Editor Herbert Bayard Swope of the World, among whose favorite pastimes is sitting, a sharp-witted, rufous Zeus, among lesser immortals of his metromundane Olympus, being "it" (all alone) in a game of Nebuchadnezzar. When Ask Me Another! was published last week it contained 30 general quizzes and 10 special ones. Editor Swope did better on "Current Politics," getting 96%. Grantland Rice produced an immaculate 100% on "sports." Dr. Harry Emerson Fosdick tallied no errors on "The Bible." Criticism issued freely--from Colyumnist Broun to protest that "one might score a perfect tally and remain an oaf," from a World editorial writer to protest that "a man who treasures up a piece of information like the height of Brooklyn Bridge has a screw loose somewhere."

* ASK ME ANOTHER--Justin Spafford and Lucien Esty--Viking Press ($1.60).