At two o'clock this afternoon there will descend the steep steps of Sever 11 a strong-jawed, stern-faced figure, dressed picturesquely in chaps, boots, broad sombrero, and all the other parapherhalia of the Western plains. His spurs will catch on the stairs and twirl with a merry ring; his lasso will describe lazy circles over the heads of the admiring assembly. Knox Chandler, the Cowboy Professor, will mount the platform nonchantly and present his opinions in the most vigorous dialect of the youthful American language.

Slang, not the weak, evasive variety, but the short, vibrant phrases, bitten off neatly, inseparably linked with a harsh nasal drawl, and dear to every trans-Mississippi heart, such slang will set, many a pair of ears tingling. Frightened men are no longer gravely alarmed; they have the hell scared out of them. Superlatives are no longer the acme of this or that; they are the cat's pajamas.

Strong opinions you will find strongly expressed. Recently, for example, the Texas Ranger was out gunning for Samuel Richardson. It was reported that Richardson's wife died at an early age, and his six children died, and then it was drily added, "--like his novels should have died too." Richardson was supposed to be pathetic, but if Mr. Chandler couldn't be more pathetic than that guy, he'd quit. But that virtuoso of unnatural virtue has been effectively laid low, and today we hear about Tobias (Smelfungus) Smollett, the good-natured ship's surgeon who was exhilaratingly picaresque both in his life and in his heroes, and Laurence Sterne, the scurrilous curate who poured his irregular soul into the shockingly irregular Tristram Shandy.

These two gentlemen are likely to receive much more sympathetic treatment from the outspoken Texan. Unorthodox themselves, they may even find a kindred spirit in their unorthodox apologist. Come, you vagabonds, come to study the Cowboy Professor. You are guaranteed to hear shrewd perception of literary values which the spontaneous language delightfully accentuates.