O'Brienisms

Last week John Patrick O'Brien became the 101st Mayor of New York City. Before Tammany picked him for its docile dummy in City Hall vice James John ("Jimmy") Walker, resigned, vice Joseph Vincent ("Holy Joe'') McKee, acting,

Mayor O'Brien sat for ten years upon the surrogate's bench. Mayor Walker was famed for conscious witticisms. Mayor O'Brien is already celebrated for humor of another kind. Some O'Brienisms:

"I want my inaugural as simple as we can stand. No blare of trumpets--a little music, you know--but no blare of trumpets. Just the singing of 'The Star-Spangled Banner.' "

"We Irish, Jews and Italians. . . ." "We're all Indians, after a fashion." "What bright little minds kiddies have!"

"I don't want to boast of any Greek training. In school we delved pretty deeply into the classics. I have a few medals at home that I won for a translation from Horace."

"I'm all set for the big job. The nearer I get to Jan. i the more courageous I feel. I suppose I must get it from my own forbears who have set me examples in lion-hearted courage."

"Oh, I'd love to be a newspaper man because I love the classics and I love good literature."

"You're going to have a Mayor with a chin and fight in him. I'll preserve the Metropolis from the Red Army."

"Think of the little ashcan babies being adopted and brought up in homes of wealth and opportunity!"

"If the Mayor of New York can in any way make your lives healthier and sunnier and happier and promote your business and the sending of your sons to college, I'm at your service."

"I'm a champion of women. In every dispute I've been in their 'corner.' . . . I'm a home man and a well-trained husband and have always been for anything women wanted."

"That's what made the Democratic Party in New York--great big lavish charity."

"The lovely little wife's nose was shot off. ... I told her of being at a dinner given by General Gouraud--I've studied French--I don't talk it, though. . . ."

"One night we were in Paris, at the Cafe Marguery. We chanced to sit near two American girls with Armenian escorts. 'Perhaps we'll find their bodies tonight in the Seine,' I said to my wife."

"Harlem, perhaps the garden spot of our city. ..."

"What about my posture? Wait a minute until I cock myself."

"If I can be of any aid to radio, I shall consider this function one of the perquisites of my office."

"What would Washington say if he saw the apathy toward the Stars & Stripes?"

"O'Brien's not a stop-gap for any Mayor. There'll be general acclaim for my re-election next November, in 1933."

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