Oracle

Is happiness the end of life? Is evolution incompatible with religion? My wife wants to bob her hair--how can I stop her? Should people about to marry confess to each other? What is the soul? Is a lie ever justifiable? Should there be universal birth control? How? Why? When? Where?

Thus asked the New York Herald Tribune News Syndicate in a large advertisement last week in the Editor and Publisher. Knowing that such questions as these have long plagued humanity, the Herald Tribune was happy to announce that it was at last able to answer them. An oracle had been secured who would devote a column a day to dealing with these and other trifling topics. In response to the query "Who?" the Herald Tribune proudly answered:

"DR. S. PARKES CADMAN.

He solves your readers' personal problems on

ETHICS MORALS CONDUCT MANNERS CUSTOMS RELIGION

in a, helpful, human way."

For those who entertained any lingering doubts about the omniscience of Dr. S. Parkes Cadman, the Herald Tribune appended a list of sample questions and answers:

What do you consider the greatest menace to the present generation?

Ans.: The disposition which gives the centre of the stage to things which do not matter.

Do you believe helpless cripples should be legally lethalized?

Ans.: No.

I am doomed to die of cancer and I would like to know what comfort there is for me.

Ans.: If any word of mine can cast a single ray of light upon this dark situation, I shall be profoundly thankful.

Other questions, other answers, were printed in the Herald Tribune's advertisement of its new oracle. But a doubt remained, for although Dr. Cadman's many thousand admirers were quite ready to concede that he must "use his vast store of knowledge on innumerable topics with amazing facility," and that he was, as advertised, "WISE, WHIMSICAL, EDUCATIONAL, HELPFUL," there were some who wondered whether his all-embracing wisdom did not permit him to detect the offense proffered to his personal dignity and to his cloth by the ill taste of that circus-barker advertisement.