Rhymester Funk

People who contribute to newspaper columns are very free with their signatures. Some make free with great names, sign themselves "Napoleon," "George Washington," "Calvin Coolidge." Others make free to be funny and call themselves names like Oscar Zilch, Wilton F. Cassowary, Ivan Offalitch. Conductor Harry Irving Phillips of the "Sun Dial" in the New York Evening Sun, did not think one way or another about the signature attached to some contributed verses he printed in early April, entitled "To a wife about to start on a shopping tour." The last stanza read: So when you dare declare to me You will not buy a hat Today--yon lie and know you lie!--I will not credit that! The signature was: "WILFRED J. FUNK."

Contributor Funk soon contributed again. His next piece to get into print was "A Defy" to all the poets from whom he was frank to steal phrases because they "steal more than a plenty from me." In anyone but a colyum conductor that last line might have aroused curiosity. But Colyumist Phillips, discreetly dense, let things go along and two weeks later published the following, again signed WILFRED J. FUNK: WALL STREET WAILS

Ding, dong bell, Market gone to hell! Who put her there? Little Tommy Bear! Who'll geeva pull? Little Johnny Bull! What a naughty little pup To eat the paper profits up. Contributor Funk was obviously a man of substance, conscious of the stockmarket. His subsequent contributions would have revealed him, to any between-lines-reader, as: a fatalist; a hedonist conscious of women, tobacco, liquor; a bad golfer; a married man whose thoughts sometimes stray afield; a middle-aged married man whose thoughts always return homeward. Wilfred J. Funk dutifully summed himself up, in fact, in his opus for May 9 entitled "Symptoms," as follows: SYMPTOMS I am a sort of a cynical cuss, Mellow and mildly sarcastic. My sensibilities hardly will muss Any more; they're elastic. I have aversions--God knows it--a score-- Motor trips, talkies, recitals, College reunions--they all are a bore Paining me deep in my vitals. I dislike dancing--at least with a And only when I am drinking; Cabarets long ago lost their appeal-- Awful, to my way of thinking. Night life? Man, for it I never was strong ; Really, I'm not a bit sporty; Yes, you are not in the least degree wrong--I am a shade over forty. Not until last week did Colyumist Phillips suspect that WILFRED J. FUNK might be neither a great name taken in vain nor a nom de plume. A casual but curious reader informed Colyumist Phillips that Wilfred John Funk is the name of a 46-year-old, married resident of Montclair, N. J. (Manhattan suburb). Montclair's Funk answers Contributor Funk's self-description in all important particulars, with the added particular that he is Publisher of the large, middle-aged Literary Digest. Publisher Funk last week evaded inquiries but did not deny that Publisher Funk and Contributor Funk are one & the same man.