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LUCE'S PRESS CLIPPING BUREAU
157 CHAMBERS STREET, NEW YORK
CLIPPING FROM 6/14/39.
Cincinnati O. Prof.

Cincinnatus
Alfred Segal

In Which Some White Collars Gaze Into the Future and Ask Some Questions

Cincinnatus hears about troubled white collar people. It has been hard enough to keep the white collar clean and fresh through these years. They don't ask for much beyond meager living they have had--about $20 a week which was enough to keep the wolf form the door. (You can't do much more than tha ton $20 a week.)

So they were grateful to be on WPA which has employed them as teachers, writers, actors, musicians and artists. What troubles them dreadfully is the fear of losing this fragment of livelihood. (There is an opinion among comfortable people in Washington and elsewhere that a stop ought to be put to their work.)

It isn't as if they worked to no purpose except to earn a livelihood for themselves. The teachers have been spreading adult education; the writers have been making books that bring more light to the history of Ohio and of the City; the actors have been giving good plays at nominal admission prices; the musicians have been playing for the poor in shelter homes; the artists have been decorating school houses and other public buildings with murals. (Is American life only a matter of eating and sleeping? they ask. Has it no other values?)

These white collar people are having a meeting Saturday to protest: What will be gained by the social economy if they are thrown jobless into the streets? What will they contribute to prosperity if they can't buy anything? What is the gain of civilization if they must stop their teaching, their writing, their music, their play-giving and their painting?

A Pallbearer

Cincinnatus was a pallbearer at a funeral yesterday and learned what pallbearers feel and think and say on the way to the cemetery. (He had often wondered at the emotions of pallbearers.)

Well, pallbearers are full of life; death is the remote stranger who rides in the hearse behind them. They don't acknowledge death; even the dead man remains the smiling fellow he was. They repeat his jokes.

There's the joke he used to tell in tribute to his doctor. Long ago when the dead man was still quite young he went to his doctor who told him he must cut out all liquor. (Though he never did drink much.)

"If you keep on drinking liquor you will die a young man and have a large funeral; if you cut it out you will live long and have a small funeral," said his doctor. The dead man had preferred to live long and had been abstemious to the end of his days.

(Yes, that's the way it is, all the pallbearers agree; if you die at a ripe age most of your friends are gone and your funeral isn't so big. The pallbearers laugh at this irony.)

Who's going to be nominated for Council? a pallbearer asks. And who's going to be the new probate judge? Eager life rides with the pallbearers. The business was at 10 and at 11:30 Harry Gilligan's handsome limousine has them downtown. And so the story's over, they say as they part and go their various jobs.

Jeanie

Jeanie, the Zoo's girl chimpanzee, has been presented with a high chair, as Cincinnatus observes. Long afterward, Jeanie's keepers will look back at Jeanie's high chair period as the happiest time of their lives.

Jeanie will grow up and have dates and telephone calls. In fact, it will seem that the telephone was invented solely for Jeanie, in order that she may talk for hours to the boys.

Dates! Dates! Dates! ... "isn't there one evening you could stay home?" she will be asked. "Your lessons, Jeanie!"

But the boy chimpanzees are forever calling her ... to the dances, to that hayride, to the skating rink, to the marshmallow roast...and Jeanie seems forever on the go. Her keepers will lie awake through the night waiting for Jeanie to come home.  They hear an auto door slamming at 2:30 ... "thank goodness," they sigh, "Jeanie's home."

(They had thought of giving Jeanie a piece of their minds but all they can say is to thank God. They roll over and sleep. Their dreams are of the happier time when Jeanie was safe in a high chair.)

Without Profit

Their book never can be a best-seller. It may not even pay the expenses of printing it. Certainly, it will never produce a nickel of profit.

With two other scholars, the late Prof. Allen Brown West and Prof. Malcolm F. McGregor of the University of Cincinnati, worked on it for 15 years. If other people work that long with the hope of paying of the mortgage or having enough for their old age, or of accumulating enough to get into the best country club, these scholars dug and wrote for 15 years in the hope that after it was all over there might be a gleam of knowledge added to the sum.

There were fragments of ancient records to decipher and to put together; there was indefatigable searching in the dust of time. Their book has at last come from the press - a 650-page report on the fiscal affairs of Greece 2500 years ago--a gleam added to mankind's treasure of light.

Cincinnatus (who idealizes the rare dreamers who are troubled more about giving than getting) salutes Professor McGregor and the luminous ghost of Professor West.

For Miss Lee

Cincinnatus looks at Miss Ya Ching Lee smiling in the newspaper pictures (Mayor Stewart at her left) and wonders at first that there is anything left for a Chinese to smile about.

But, as Cincinnatus guesses, because the Chinese have lived so long in history they must know a great deal to smile at: They know the ultimate fate of the arrogant whose power in good time falls to the dust; they know that the meek do in time come back to something of their portion.  They have seen this in their times.

The patient smile of Miss Ya Ching Lee must derive from this knowledge. To her Cincinnatus sends $2 that comes from "A Friend" who desires that it be applied to Miss Lee's fund for the hungry, the wounded and the homeless of China. It is a contribution or the encouragement of Miss Lee's philosophical smile.

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