Page:The New Yorker 0004, 1925-03-14.pdf/9

 in Senate and Assembly, do hereby enact as follows:

Section 1. The Police of the City of New York and the Police of the State of New York are hereby authorized to shoot on sight and kill or maim any and all persons even suspected of referring to the slight local disturbance in New York City on the night of February the twenty-eighth, 1925, as an earthquake or anything other than a fire. A bounty of $1,000 shall be paid to private citizens producing the charred body of anyone making such a treasonable statement.

Section 2. This act shall take effect immediately.

Gutzon Borglum is a rare figure among workers in marble and bronze, He is not a member of the Sculptors' League, which condition does not appear to worry him much; Gutron Borglum nor, to be impartial, the league. The only parallel suggesting itself would be that of a prominent writing person, resident in New York, who never had lunched at the Algonquin.

It may he gathered that Mr. Borglum is possessed of that fine scorn for things and persons apart which is known as (a) independence of spirit, or (b) boorishness, depending on the point of view.

Destroying models in the course of a dispute is not a new experience to Mr. Borglum, He has all the contempt for lay supervision evinced by Benvenuto Cellini during his residence in the fortress of St. Paul—or was it St. Peter? Twenty years ago, Dr. Sutherland of the Cathedral of St. John the Divine contended that there were no feminine angels, that being before women became what is known as a Power. So Mr. Borglum up and smashed the two figures he had completed for the decoration of the edifice.

Perhaps Messrs. Randolph and Co., of Atlanta, do not know it, but in New York's art circles it is being said they are lucky Stone Mountain is as solid as it is.

It was so in old time that a poet called Bunthorne clad himself in rich silks and carried a sunflower. And people who saw him said thus and thus.

In later day arose another, speaking bravely of fair ladies with tiger tawny hair and the sons of blonde earls, his own face and coloring like unto those of the villain in a Drury Lane melodrama. Black, he was, this Michael Arlen, of whom the ladies spoke greatly.

He was forever commanding special cloths to be woven for his weskits; and the greatest of all great coats were fashioned to his young form; and the shiniest of shiny top hats adorned his head. To Paris he flew by specially chartered airplane to keep rendezvous. In London none so Mayfair as he.

And people who saw him said thus and thus, of Bunthorne and of press agentry. But, as to that, that is as it may be.

However much one may disagree with Tammany's policies, one cannot but admire its politics. The Fourteenth Street General Staff was first in the country to recognize the value of women as political field marshals. Mrs. H. Moskotwite Out of that recognition, the shining light risen thus far, though well hidden under the bushel-like dome of the Capitol in Albany, is Mrs. Henry Moskowitz, who bad held various offices under the Smith regimes.

She has been, since genial Al start led the orthodox by proving the first well-dressed Governor of New York State, his closest political adviser. Not even the late Tom Foley's judgments carried more weight than did hers; nor were they any wiser in the ways of the political world. On only one major occasion did Mr. Smith depart from her opinions-when he signed the repeal of the Mullan-Gage Act. This is said to have cost him the Democratic nomination for President, which denial was, remembering Mr. Davis's experience, perhaps Tom Foley's greatest achievement.

It is amazing how many reputations New York creates without knowing anything about them. In this instance, Edith Ellis. For years—or perhaps one should not say years when a lady is under discussion—for an appreciable length of time, then—she has been toiling in the theatrical vineyards; and her vintages have not been among the poorest, either. She can dash off an acceptable play manuscript, or direct a play, or perform those skillful operations which sometimes save laboring dramas from Mr. Kane's graveyard. Not only can she do it, but she has been doing it for-an appreciable length of time.

California seems to have discovered her first. It was there her play, "White Collars" ran a year before making its New York debut. And even New York cannot laugh off a year's run, without recourse to Editk Ellis some crude quip about the climate.

The lady gives off that distressingly efficient appearance of the woman who directs affairs, as opposed to the lady who merely has them. Never, never, in your wildest dreams could you imagine even the most flip chorine asking Miss Ellis where she bought her lip stick. And if this isn't a picture, we give up.