I have been studying my little booklet on regulations for students in Harvard College. The one you get at registration. Some of it is awesome.

Under "Discipline" they have something called "Dismissal." That's pretty bad. You get booted out by the vote of the Faculty of Arts and Sciences, and its not likely that you ever get back in.

But they have something even worse. They call it "Expulsion." The booklet says that "a student who is expelled can never be readmitted and his name is expunged from the records of the University." This surely is a ghastly punishment, but what does it mean? If someone's name is expunged, and then somebody walks into University Hall and wants to know if you ever went to Harvard, what happens? Do all the deans look blank and say they never heard of him? Do they say, "Yes, but we can't utter his name--it was expunged from the records!"

And what do you suppose the expunging process is? I have a theory. Late one night last spring, returning from Radcliffe, I saw a group of people bending over a bonfire in the Cambridge graveyard. They were throwing torn I.B.M. cards into the fire, and making weird sounds, and dancing a strange dance. Suddenly the wind fanned the flames, and the eerie light shone up into their faces. I recognized several deans and at least one House Secretary. I couldn't figure it out at the time, but looking back, I feel sure they were expunging some poor chap's name. God rest his soul.

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We shall now have this week's spelling lesson, courtesy of Sunday's New York Times. Question: How do you spell "circus"? Answer: p-s-o-l-q-u-o-i-s-e. Explanation: Pronounce "ps" as you would in psychology, "olo" as you would in colonel, "qu" as you would in bouquet, and "oise" as you would in tortoise. Put them all together, they spell mother. Or possibly cholmondley.

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Speaking of mother, mine has always said that I'm not sophisticated when it comes to politics, so usually I keep my mouth shut. But every so often I can't hold back any longer. Like now. I have here before me a little release the Democratic National Committee sent to the press over the weekend. It insists that the Democratic Party "is in complete agreement" with a number of things Dewey has said. Things such as these: "Our streams should abound with fish," (Denver, Sept. 21); "Everybody that rides in a car or bus uses gasoline and oil," (also in Denver); "You know that your future is still ahead of you," (Phoenix, Sept. 23); and "Ours is a magnificent land--every part of it," (also in Phoenix).

The release says that "it is not reassuring to our friends in other lands to see what appears to be a debate raging over such statements. . ." and hopes that "they can be removed from the realm of partisan politics." It calls all this "an effort to encourage national unity." Now I can see well enough that it's nothing of the kind. It's an effort to poke fun at Dewey's speeches, and a silly effort at that. Almost anybody this side of Dogpatch knows that you could get the same results out of Hamlet if you removed single sentences here and there.

But there's something I can't see. Maybe it's because I'm not sophisticated when it comes to politics, like my mother says. But when I put those sentences back with their fellow sentences, and read them in the order that Dewey said them, I can't see any improvement. Take his speech on inflation in San Francisco last Saturday. A major part of it was an outline of six "steps" that would beat inflation. Most of them are about bringing "able and honest people to Washington, "men and women of integrity", or about "vigorously supporting our American system of free opportunity." I've pondered on those steps awhile, and I don't think they mean much, in or out of context. But then again, you know what my mother says.