CULTURED CHOPS

Butchers and bons mots, liver and literature are seldom paired except inverse libre, at least until the advent of a genius. Such a genius is Bennie Sabitino of Long Island City. Saturday morning he opened there an "Intellectual Meat Market" where the cultured customer can enjoy "a conversation with him on any question involving scientific, philosophical, artistic, and literary considerations". Thus for once arts and the crafts are in harmony, and a criterion for future artists who find art ill paid, and future savants who find saving sage bulks from the building where Bennie works. Like the man who first invented sleep, he has done a novel and helpful thing.

But beyond all this the Intellectual Meat Market has proved already something else. For Saturday found crowds in that market and Saturday night found its coffers filled and its counters empty. Indeed, it has proved the modern craving for intellectual esteem. Language even of the crudest is now flavored with references to the cultural. And the intellectual ten minutes of reading a day raise multiple new literateurs. A new literature is springing from Penlmism and the literary aspirations of char women. Bennie merely guessed and guessed well. Anything intellectual, meat market or morgue, will draw a modern crowd. Fashion is for the moment bowing to culture, so colleges and conversation must suffer accordingly.