Page:The Sunday Eight O'Clock (1916).pdf/142

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few weeks ago his experience at the meeting of an undergraduate technical society organized presumably for the purpose of furthering educational progress, where the papers and the talk, and the illustrations were filled with suggestions that were unspeakably vulgar; and the worst of it all was that many fellows seemed to look upon this as clever and witty. It often takes a discriminating mind to sense the difference between that which is foul and that which is funny, and sometimes, I am ashamed to admit, the older man and even the teacher is as serious an offender as is the undergraduate. "We need a few snappy ones," the fellows say, "to liven up the crowd," but it is a poor crowd that requires vulgar narrative to animate it.

I was not long ago at the funeral exercises of a man old in years and wide in experience. There were present to do him honor and to speak words of praise of his life, statesmen and teachers, and business men prominent