Arts and Manners

To Mencken—In His Spirit

Now Mencken knows. That the greatest (and most biased) reporter of spiritual facts this country has seen in a hundred years cannot file his notes on the ultimate discovery is a loss to belles letters, but not necessarily to the accumulated wisdom of the race. For one cannot be at all sure that Mencken’s journalistic devotion to observed fact would, in this case, triumph over his slightly antiquated sense of humor. There is, on the contrary, the distinct danger that, just for the paradoxical effect of the joke, an ethereal Mencken would deny from the beyond the immortality of his soul.

WS

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William S. Schlamm

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To Mencken—In His Spirit

Now Mencken knows. That the greatest (and most biased) reporter of spiritual facts this country has seen in a hundred years cannot file his notes on the ultimate discovery is a loss to belles letters, but not necessarily to the accumulated wisdom of the race. For one cannot be at all sure that Mencken’s journalistic devotion to observed fact would, in this case, triumph over his slightly antiquated sense of humor. There is, on the contrary, the distinct danger that, just for the paradoxical effect of the joke, an ethereal Mencken would deny from the beyond the immortality of his soul.