PAC TWO

THE MICHIGAN DAILY

SUNDAY, JANUARY 13, x.923

PAGII TWO TH~ MICHIGAN DAILY SUNDAY, JANUARY 13, 1923

EGO
By SCOGAN

"Of course men's affairs are awfully whatever you like, and look pleasant.
dull, but they don't like you to talk It does flatter them, and they think
about them, so it's really very easy. they are interesting, and you charm-
All you have to do is to listen, stare ing!" Clyde Fitch, "Girl With the
them straight in the eyes, think of Green Eyes"

Tired and bored by boarding-house gropings in the depths. My Gargan-
meals and chatter, tonight I break tuan worries become Lilliputian for
the long chain of three-meals a-day here, I am happy. I watch myself
by taking dinner downtown. A shrimp grow petulant over the idiosyncracies
omelette, hot biscuits and tea and an of my room-mate. I peevishly bite
article in The Adelphi by D. H. Law- my lip when he speakswith a char-
rence so thoroughly established a acteristic nasal intonation, and then
mood that out in the valley fog a curt I laugh at the small school-boy, me.
hail from a lady acquaintance almost For now, in big ways, I am happy.
went unheeded into a catastrophe. 1 In these hazy fall days I am happy.
stepped in at a bar, on the way home * a a
and there secured protection for a The above I found crumpled away
spell. It sufficed over the distracting in one corner of the table drawer and
street car ride, only to drift on the I read it with much condescending
fog as I walked to the room. But disgust. How could I have been so
here in my dim-lit room alone, 1 do gullibly content to lean back on the
not need it. tawdry and worn green cushion of
My corner of the room exudes an this adjustable backed, golden oak at-
atmosphere most dear to me. Ram- rocity. and sing of my happiness in
pant stacks of books on an inadequate "big ways!"
table, littered also with papers, cigar- With but one more incipient friend-
ettes, pipe, tobacco and chocolate; a ship slowly developing through the
brass desk lamp hanging askew from fog and smoke of a pride-born reti-
an eight-penny nail in the window cence and a snobbishness born of past
casement; on the wall, two ritualistic disillusionment, I am alone. It has
designs in black and white-one by been my arrogant opinion that I was
Blake and one by Wallace Smith; a of passing self-sufficiency. But that
White Horse label in a gold frame and now lies shattered among the bone-
a portrait are my corner. dust of other illusions. It is but for
Here it is mine to sit back in a soft me to content myself that I might
cushioned morris-chair and dream. have been sufficient within myself had
That sounds ideal, but do not envy I been left alone-spared the small
me for it will soon be broken by a talk of shop and boarding-house.-
stark realization of the practical. I Thus I kiss this cut and croon: "Now
am living too near earth to take such it is better."
flights into the rose-hued ethereal. But I am daily thrown into con-
In the shops, during the day, the tact with girls and men doing their
men speak casually of "the woman." clerical duties in a lackadaisical man-
One man does not report one morn- ner while they carelessly chew gum
ing ;this morning his woman has died and emit great clouds of vaporous in-
of the typhoid. Another man asks to sanities. Then I am distraught for
get off another afternoon; his woman these periods of liesure toward which
is going to bury her old lady who died I looked with thirsty eyes in those
of pneumonia. And on the street car days before; but they are mirage.,
I hear that the conductor's woman Therefore I cling to moments with
has weak kidneys! my new friend. Unknowingly, I threw
But here, for a short while, it Is the seed of 'interest in reading' onto
mine to explore, humble-bee like, into fertile fields-some which were bar-
the dark crevices in the walls which ren because of the lack of the proper
surround the mysteries. But never seed; for there the magazine story of
may these crevices penetrate into the the herd received no nourishment. 'I
light of the inner side, from where 1 -to slightly change the phrase of
might shade my eyes and see the daz- Remy de Gourmont-'I "diverted
zling radiance. For then it might only thoughts" from their stream as one
be the fence around the ash-dump; diverts rivers to throw them athwart
and what I expected to be glittering the barrenness of the moors where
gold but dark-grey ashes with a few frail and pallid ideas blossom badly.'
Irrudescent clinkers. But it does not Unknowingly I did these things but
happen-here. not unknowingly do I already begin
For here it is my world-a Utopia to reap-if you will allow such a
for me and I even enjoy the morose' hackneyed figure. Thus I cling to m-
ments with my new friend.
These moments of still weak pleas-
F. L. Tilden.............Editor tre are dwarfed. Our mutual inter-
Donald E. L. Snyder ......Books ests are still few and sometimes ne-
Normand Lockwood......Music cessity of devising amusement is pain-
Robert Bartron Henderson... ful. But these times come less often,
. Drama no.
Gordon Wier.............Art no
Lisle Rose, Halsey Davidson And again I am pounding pink op-
Lisle Rs sey David Itimisminom cleg-rdcyca"
Newell Bebout, Samuel Moore, into my college-bred, cynical
Jr., Maxwell Nowles, Philip Wag- soul. I dislodge the facts that disillus-
ner, Dorothy Sanders. ionment has so often shown I am
The Sunday Magazine solicits about to sing again in the light shin-
manuscripts from all persons af- ing from a new friendship that I am
filiated with the University. Man- happy in the "big ways."
uscripts must be typewritten, ( But believe me, I am not. That
triple spaced and written on one would be shamefully disloyal to my
side only. ** * * battered ego!
The Sunday Magazine acknowl
edges The American Secular Un-
Ion review service for "The Un-
official Observer" department.

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It u thep olicy of this magazine to
publish artiles of opinion by both . t
students and faculty members if, in
th e dsment ef thes editor,,thes ati-t
I"ar's;f/ntinsie valuea ndine ea t.
This does not mean that manuscripts
solicited or voluntarily offered are
necessarily in accord with editorial
opinion either in priple .or form

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