On the inside back cover of the freshman issue of the Lampoon is an advertisement for Springs Cotton Mills which is by far the most amusing thing in the entire magazine. But this is not said in disparagement of the new Lampoon, which is as far above the quality of last year's issues as Springs Mills ads are above the general level of American huckstery.

This time the Bow Street humorists have turned out a nonparody magazine directed at people in general--the student body, the masses, or what have you--and done a very good job. The stories, cartoons, and poems are amusing and highly diversified, even though there are only seven different initialed signatures to be found throughout the issue.

In the poetry department, ditties about President Conant and a television-oriented housewife by Clement Despard and J. H. Updyke, are both witty and lively. Charles Osborne's introductory lament over the nothingness to say about freshmen is a cleverly expressed bit of circular thought, while David Graham's soliloquy on "burgers" suffers only from overextension.

Probably the best of the longer prose works is Douglas Bunce's tale of Joseph Catchpenny, who picked his wives according to the rigid rules of romantic fiction. Bunce strikes a nice balance between slapstick and satire to keep his story amusing to the end. "Mrs. Fabian's Little Joke," by Michael Arlen, applies a ridiculous ending to an inane plot, and remains humorous in spite of it all. But a short piece on "Answers to the World's Most Famous Letters" falls down badly at the end. The purposely uninformed commentaries by Thomas Edwards, on quantum mechanics and chess, collapse en route, the former from overelaboration of one idea and the latter from complete abandonment of the original theme.

Of the remaining three stories, Arlen's "The Literary Life" is a very witty treatment of a magazine advertisement that was literally true, but Graham's attempt to apply the style of "Lifemanship" to a description of the Harvard Activities Man falls rather flat. A Pooh-style description of Registration by Osborne rounds out the issue in a sprightly manner.

If Lampy can keep his humor at this level for the rest of the year without surrendering to snobbery or parody, he will not only surprise a great many people but will go far in rebuilding his damaged reputation.