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tional comments, please do so on a separate card or paper. From time to time we shall publish the results. Kindly lose no time in sending in your answers. Address all communications to '^Statistics Editor, 175 Duffield Street, Brooklyn, N. Y."
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Those who are saying that there should be a State board of censors perhaps do not recall the days of Mayor McClellan, of New York, in 1908. On Christmas Eve of that year this distinguished Tammany mayor issued a blanket order revoking every Moving Picture license in New York, and Los Angeles, Providence and other cities soon followed example. It is not clear whether the proprietors of the regular theaters used political influence to bring about that state of affairs, but it is quite clear that even at that early date the regular theaters saw a dangerous rival in the Motion Picture.
The recent agitation in New York City over some immoral stage plays, in which the theater managers were arrested, indicates that censorship, when in the control of the public, does not sleep. There is no censorship of the regular theater in New York other than that of the general law which prohibits improper shows, and that seems to be sufficient. When an indecent play appears, the newspapers and public soon get together and suppress it. All systems of official censorship are dangerous, and they inevitably end in throwing the Motion Picture business into politics. But, more on this important subject later.
I fear that this department is found rather dry by some. Once, when I first began it nearly three years ago, they told me that it must be solid and heavy, for it was really the editorial backbone of the magazine. The other day somebody had the kindness to say that my writings were too dull, and that I should be more witty, like our inimitable Answer Man. Would that were possible ! Taine says that ' ' Wit is the art of stating things in a pleasant way." That being true, every writer should strive to be witty, and more's the pity that we are not all witty. Wit is the perfume of literature — ''The flavor of the mind," as Sydney Smith puts it. Nearly all our great men were witty, whether orator, statesman, poet or warrior, among which might be mentioned Caesar, Aristotle, Alexander, Descartes, Bacon, Demosthenes, Cicero, Shakespeare, Pope, Dryden, Dr. Johnson, Cowley, Solon and Socrates, not to mention those who are particularly noted for their wit, such as Swift, Sterne, Addison, Goldsmith, Cervantes, Le Sage, Holmes, Washington Irving, Butler, Lamb, Hood, Saxe — but hold ! there is no end of them. The only trouble with wit is that it is near related to humor, and to be humorous means rarely to be taken^ seriously. Since I am burdened with the ponderous title of "Philosopher," perhaps I should appear as profound as the mighty deep, lest, in an attempt to be witty, to please my correspondent, I become as shallow as a puddle. No man can please everybody, be he fool, clown, jester or philosopher — not even the Answer Man.
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