One of the worst crimes we notice in the daily newspapers is kidnaping. It reeks of American lawlessness. In practically every paper we find a headline on this subject from which some of the most valuable letters have been violently abducted.

As indicated by the pronunciation, the correct spelling of this crime is kidnapping, (to nab a kid) and not "kidnaping" (perhaps to grab a child by the nape of the neck). We feel very incensed about this, and live in mortal fear of the day when the newspapers, not content to leave the extra "me" in program or pogrom, knock superfluous words from the names of the great. Picture to yourself such a headline, "Presidents Rosevelt, Hover, Lowel, Angel, and Con'nt confer with orators Ramsey M'Donald, Graham M'Namee."

We are not nearly so angry about this, however, as is that other champion of outworn traditions in spelling, Professor Charles Townsend Copeland (known as Copey, and to headline writers as Copy or Coppy).

Professor Copeland has been thinking about this orthographical problem since the early days of the Lindbergh trial, and was stimulated into action by a smug letter of justification from the Herald. So whenever students gather in his rooms he tells them about it, and quotes a significant passage from Edgar Allen Poe:

". . . While I nodded, nearly naping, suddenly there came a taping,

Of someone, gently raping, raping at my chamber door. . . Only this and nothing more."

* * *

INHERENT RADICALISM

"But you must not put the horse before the cart. . ."

--Professor Kirtley Mather in Geology 1 Lecture yesterday.