Word: humourously
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These are the setiments of Ellis Parker Butler, as expressed in the current issue of "The Outlook", upon the question of the uses of an education. Ordinarily Mr. Butler's name is associated with guines-pigs and light humour, but on this occasion it is better to take him with a grain of the serious; it does not become the recipient of an expensive education to laugh when that education is under fire. Not that the article attacks the "higher knowledge" in any virulent manner; indeed, it is lenient, almost favorable. What it does criticise-which is far more important...
...fight is vivid, and effective. For sheer nonsense, "Hicks the Half Back" is undeniably funny, and the reader laughs shame-facedly in spite of his conviction that the article is rather beneath his notice. And the naive way in which the story stops when the writer's well of humour goes dry is not the worst thing about...
...latest number Lampy has concocted a sort of repressed Christmas medley. As one turns the hushed pages of his humour one somehow cannot recognize it as being really an effect of Christmas. To be sure there is the mild "Sania" spirit; the Yule log sputters over and anon doggedly, but the whole is so very mild and chastened that one cannot help attributing it to sadness at an abbreviated Christmas vacation. Such, at least, is the key-note set by the leading editorial with its pathetic plea for a longer holiday, and each succeeding Christmas thought follows hard...
There is something sacred about a Christmas number which Lampy has been quick to perceive and he has striven to prepare a feast of humour at which Anthony Comstock would not have blushed to sit down. Occasionally a quip becomes recalcitrant and breaks loose, only to be swallowed up again by full page close-ups of the interior of the Lampoon building. But this is, after all, only what is to be expected in a Christmas number, and there are frequent flashes of decided Jevity, such as an unintentional likeness of Professor Rand performing on skiis, a clever whack...
...Humour is the note of the play, but humor does not exclude the gallant swagger of romance, and when the cook sallies out to fight the dragon, and . . . the right note is struck by a master hand; . . . the conversion of the Dragon to vegetarianism is a stroke of genius. Dickens at his best never contrived a better ending than Lady Gregory, or one more in keeping with the tone of the right kind of fairy story...