H. L. Mencken, who has recently visited that South which he has so long belabored, gave it, through the columns of the New York World, a much better grade than the naughty pupil had any reason to expect. What is sentimentally called "the old South," what Mencken calls the late Confederacy, he reports is dying, although the old guard is still hanging on. It will not be long, however, before the doctrine of death to all ministers, Y. M. C. A. secretaries. A boy Scouts and college professor is firmly inculcated. Perhaps the Southerners are even subscribing to the American Mercury.

The South is inestimably grateful for this good news, delivered much in the manner of Queen Marie of Roumania after admiring the local pickle factory. Those citizens who still feel some continuity with the South of Washington, Jefferson and Lee will doubtless now begin to see the light. The rebel yell will be given for the prophet of Baltimore, who is so kind as to lead the backward Confederacy out of its heathen darkness. That great soul, however, should be careful not to carry the reform too far. When he has destroyed the prejudices of the South, and replaced every copy of Thomas Nelson Page and Joel Chandler Harris with a copy of Prejudices, by H. L. Mencken, where will he find victims for his purifying sword? With nothing left to attack, he would be a pitiable object. Perhaps he would ascend to Heaven in a chariot of fire.

It is a regrettable fact, however, that in the South as elsewhere there will always be dusty coves into which the new message--grown a little stale in the East by now--will never penetrate. There are houses where a copy of the Mercury has never been seen; where mint juleps are still to be obtained, but where, on the other hand, the residents have felt not call to assassinate their paster. There may be found the works of Joseph Addison, a social critic who wrote as a gentleman for other gentlemen, and who will be read is such dark corners long after Mr. Mencken has jostled past St. Peter and gone to inspect the boobs of Paradise.