Mump Canard

Few diseases are more undignified in adults than mumps and few adults are more dignified than U. S. Senators. It was with sympathy not unmixed with glee that readers of The Club-Fellow, jaunty "national journal of society," read last week that "Senator Joe Robinson has been suffering that undignified disease . . . and Senator Hiram Johnson of California has the mumps too." These two gentlemen sit well apart in the Senate Chamber, on opposite sides of the aisle. Mumps being most contagious, there was prospect of more mumps among the Senators. Near California's white-crested Johnson sit Indiana's paunchy Watson and Michigan's comfortable Couzens, in either of whom a case of mumps would wreak a startling transformation. Senator Taylor Robinson is the Democratic leader and he might have transmitted mumps to any or all of his nonimmune colleagues in the course of his whispered conferences. A great mump scare, perhaps a mump epidemic, seemed imminent.

But it was all a gross canard. The Senate's mumps did not exist outside of the irresponsible pages of The Club-Fellow. Senator Joe Robinson had, it was true, a bronchial cold which kept him from his seat for five days. Senator Johnson, too, was briefly indisposed. But both were quite unmumped. Persons with respect for Senators viewed the gossip-swollen Club-Fellow with alarm. The sheetlet's irresponsibility was further revealed by its evident confusion of the Senate's two Robinsons. Still talking about "Senator Joe Robinson" The Club-Fellow said: "At any rate they [mumps] have kept Robinson quiet for a while about the oil scandals. Perhaps some of the Democrats are glad something stilled him, if only temporarily."

As everyone knows, the oil-scandalous Robinson is Indiana's Arthur R. Robinson, Republican.