90 YEARS OF NEW YORKER WIT.

The New Yorker is celebrating its 90^th anniversary this year, so I looked at the first four issues. Here are some lines that caught my attention:

• On general principles, this magazine expects to take a firm stand against murder. But we don’t want to be bigoted.
• Broadway has no end of actors out of work. But as a rule they refuse to admit the truth of their unemployment.
• Re the exhibit at the Grand Central Art Galleries: If you care for anything later than Ingres, stay at home.
• Better a third rate artist and a first rate publicity man than a first rate artist and no publicity man at all.
• Re prohibition: The bootleggers are cautious. They always suspect a customer of being a prohibition agent, unless some taxi driver is willing to vouch for them.
• The transit situation in New York City which for many years has been a problem and a nuisance is rapidly becoming a menace.
• The Last Laugh – Cameo Theater. An imported German film and a milestone in the progress of cinema. Superbly acted by Emil Jannings.
• Burning witches at the stake was a grand sport in its day and much more sportsmanlike than the modern game of censorship.
• The New Yorker wishes one and all an Ideal Ides of March. Tax vobiscum.
• Re Ziegfeld Follies: It isn’t drama. It’s osteopathy…The girl was admirably undressed. I do not mean that the costume was bold. Far from it. It was positively shrinking.

(Source: February/March 1525 issues of The New Yorker)