AS THEY LIKE IT

When the average citizen hears Chicago mentioned, a somewhat hazy compound of stockyard smells, machine guns, stool pigeons for King George, and weird government wells up in his subconscious mind. When the same a. c. hears Boston, the subconscious first offers cod, tentatively; then follows up with culture, Concord, and the Tea Party, and closes firmly with censors. In Example One, there is no reaction of "culture"; in Example Two, the main reaction is "culture."

The score of the average citizen is, of course, zero. As if any confirmation of the dismal aesthetic condition of Boston were necessary, after Chicago's opera company came and conquered when Boston had earlier thoroughly snubbed two trembling representatives of its own in that field, Chicago intends to ship east another carload of mid-west Kultur, in the shape of its Civic Shakespeare Company. Boston, too, discovered Shakespeare for a time this autumn, but hurriedly let him drop and went back to the talkies. But perhaps the dominant mid-west will mark up another triumph. It suffered an apparent defeat a year or two ago, when the Chicago Tribune, in the early throes of Boston's censorship campaign, suggested that Harvard should be moved brick by brick, out to where the art begins. Instead, it was found more convenient, and nearly as effective, to send the light and learning cast. Boston is now culturally a province of Chicago; but its cod and its censors are still its own.