NO sooner had Vanity Fair—as usual, in a spirit of pure bravado—invited its subscribers to express their unfettered opinions of the magazine, than a cloudburst of letters, telegrams, cables, and post-cards descended upon our head. Stunned by the impact, we take pleasure in publishing a handful of these responses. 

Cupples, Missouri

I have read your challenge to express a frank view regardless of all costs and would beg to say that next to the Gettysburg address W. Shakespeare and Dr. Frank Crane I think Vanity Fair is in every way a better kind of magazine.

I always read it to my pupils (both boys and girls) between the ages of 6 and 19 who find it extra stimulating.

The pictures, too, are pleasing.

Cordially yours,

CORNELIA F. ZERO

Girlish enthusiasm is always welcome, especially when wafted to us from far off.

Zeus, Virginia

What simply marvelous pictures in Vanity Fare!!!! (sic) My heart it just stops beating when I see some of them. That deliciously vague one in your next to the last number of the danceuse with the boyish figure in the distant foreground holding something wonderfully indefinite was perfectly adorable. I want more—more—more— 

SAPHO SMITH

A ringing greeting:

Tangerine, Orange, California

Just a single month without y'our magazine were worse to bear than a whole year without Christmas. How I know not but you always manage to reflect the very internal essence— sparkling, vivacious, electric—of the hour. My husband, with whom I lived for some time, we were separated in 1906, always particularly enjoyed The Well Dressed Man and, as for me, my motto has been and will ever remain in spite of all: Carpe Diem! Keep up your wonderful work!

Faithfully,

(MRS.) ELIZABETH B. ATKINS 

In happy contrast to the preceding, a perfectly soul-mated spouse speaks to us from

Cream, Minnesota

I think your stage department most illuminating. The Dolly Sisters I love. Never having seen them, which is which? Also Heywood Broun. Who runs the Hall of Fame? I dote on it. My husband is a candidate for alderman and he is sure he will be elected. He is thirty-eight, tall, strong, handsome, and worked hard all of his life like anyone else. He is terrible popular with the people. Speaks languages, etc. I enclose a photo Which does not come near to doing Jim justice.

MRS. BUCHEWETZKI

A brief apology for the absence (necessitated by exigencies of space) of Mr. B's lineaments, and we turn our expecting countenances toward the banks of the tranquil Charles, whence emanates this quaintly cultured expression of scholarly opinion—proving that Fair Harvard is alive to the needs of the hour:

Cambridge, Massachusetts

I am a professor, well advanced in years, and, as is, under the circumstances, not unnatural, completely, so far as is humanly possible, absorbed in the inexhaustible possibilities of my endearing subject (Cryptogamic Botany).

Some time ago, the Cambridge police proceeded to enforce an absurd ordinance prohibiting the riding of bicycles on the sidewalks, and I was on several occasions arrested. During the war, my son Richard did very well, as we are told, in the army or navy, 1 forget which. He as well as my wife and I, believe that the menace of the Ku Klux Klan should awaken a throbbing response in the heart of every true American, be he man, woman, or child.

Faithfully yours,

N. G. BAXTER

P. S. My wife, whose knowledge of such matters is irrefutable, informs me that your valued periodical has been on our parlour table for a number of years, and I look forward to perusing it in the near future.

A lady dentist says:

Quidnick, Rhode Island

To the Editor of Vanity Fair

Dear Sir, or Madam,

as a bibliophile of standing I naturally resent your unnecessary illusions to authors of undying reputation which, from time to time, you permit a superficial mind to incur. Life is not a mere flicker of the butterfly's wing, as you seem to think. It is (as the hymn says) Earnest: then why slight the more sober and enlightening aspects of humanity at large? Despite all your limitations you do well to feature Douglas Fairbanks and Mary Pickford each month. I would also criticise (since you demand a candid judgment) the preference for a scantily, over the normally, clad Human Form Divine, a symptom of the neurotic industrialism which has run rampant amongst our era. What the Creator designed is, truly, too beautiful to be lightly dealt with. "Witness the Venus de Milo, etc. (The Greeks knew this better than we.) I merely suggest, in the hopes that you will take seriously what I have felt called upon to say.

(DR.) GERTRUDE L. CONLY

Refreshing:

Big Lump, Texas

Go 2 it!

Willie Merangue, Y Bar O Ranch P. S. the fellows out at Chew, Bobo, and Big Paint, all say the same. *

With which brilliant specimen of vers libre should be immediately compared a prose poem, the voluptuous simplification of whose spelling and the luxurious paucity of whose syntax (not to mention the small eye) would indicate that E. E. Cummings, the modernist poet and orthographer, is writing to us, under an olfactory pseudonym, from the scented quietude of

Sugar, Idaho

i will not be apt too like yr pichurs butt the articels is grate ps my aunt rote this as i do not rede neither right inglich ownly frensh

very truely.

JACQUE ROQUEFORT

And while we are on the subject of modern art—the inobvious obscurity of the following synthetic ecstasy makes Ulysses, by James Joyce, seem nearly intelligible:

Oxketzcab (sic) Yucatan

dears sir:

never possible to enjoy more of pure spectacle high life wine with real bouquet of New World you are read hear in english school by Lovingly, 

PEDRO MANYANA

Written in lead pencil on birch-bark:

Ishawoo via Cody, Wyoming

dear gents

i was only once to n. y. with the 101 ranch wild West and no what i am saying. That was enuf! out here the fiyz is fierce &

I don't hardly reckon the boys could stick it out without Vanity Fair. Wel, a 1000 pardons for this intrueshun. bye bye 

Jo SMITH

Here let us pause a moment. So far, we have inspected responses whose principal interest unquestionably lies in certain formal peculiarities: a second class now claims our attention—viz., communications from subscribers to Vanity Fair who are also world-renowned names. It is indeed a tragedy that spacial limitations (before referred to) inhibit the reproducing of more that a trio of these Gracious Missives From Great Minds—but let us, instead of reviling the unavoidable, get down to business and decide which masterpiece shall have the honour of appearing on this page. It may as well be this brief but stirring tribute. Translated from the German by Kenneth Burke. 

Gentlemen—

The manifold activity of the second dream system, tentatively sending forth and retracting energy, must on the one hand have full command over all memory material, but on the other hand it would be a superfluous expenditure for it to send the individual mental paths large quantities of energy which would flow off to no purpose, diminishing the quantity available for the ululation of the sex cells.

SIGMUND FREUD, L.L.D.

Other more or less celebrated personages, who responded with enthusiasm to our invitation are: Lloyd George, Edna St. Vincent Millay, H. R. H. The Queen of the Belgians, Zip (the What-is-it?), Ma Ferguson, Paul Painlevé, Paul Manship, Paul Rosenfeld, Paul Morand, The Grand Duchess Cyril, Al Jolson, Einstein, Trotsky, Governor Charles W. Bryan, Jack Dempsey, Charles Chaplin, Dorothy Dix, Tristan Tzara, King Hakon of Norway, Barbara La Marr, Henry Ford, Cholly Knickerbocker, General Ludendorf, Lita Gray, Aunt Prudence Heckleberry, William Wrigley, Thelma Morgan Converse, Ezra Pound, The Answer Man, Paavo Nurmi, Texas Guinan, Ring Lardner, C. Bascom Slemp, Lionel Strongfort, Elizabeth Arden, the Four Marxes, Frank Crane, Gilda Gray, Edsel Ford, Mathilde McCormick Oser, Paul Swan, Joe Leblang, and everyone who has ever contributed, in any way, shape or manner, to Vanity Fair, including a tousle-headed mite of a sub-errand boy inappropriately entitled Albert Rose.