There are no Adonises To-day

Evening Post, Volume CXIV, Issue 92, 15 October 1932, Page 23

There are no Adonises To-day

The Greeks would have the laugh on us. Praxiteles would leave his '.'Hermes" unfinished if he looked for models in the United States.

In the American Museum of Natural History, New York, stands a figure ,of the "Average American," fiat of chest, round of shoulder, and protuberant of paunch; and he is the sublimation of 100,000 Americans who returned from the World War.

This is the story as given in the .New York "Evening Post" in an imaginary monologuo with the hero of the old 80110 books resurrected as a listener:—

"This flat-chested young gentleman with round shoulders and incipient paunch, Kollo, is your papa at the time of. Ins return from the war.

"The war was a great thing, Eollo, because it gave scientific gentlemen a chance to measure 100,000 —no, you can't count them—soldiers.

"No, it isn't a statue of papa, really, Rollo. It is a statue of the average of the 100,000—a sort of composite of all the young men who became papas of all the Eollos.

"What did you say, Eollo? What

good is it? Oh, Eollo! Haven't you heard of science? . • .- :

"Well, anyway, Eollo, that's the*way your papa looked, under that great uniform which made brothers of the cab driver and the. banker's, son. His shoulders were rounded from sitting at a desk. His tummy was beginnin" to expand from eating rather more food than a man of sedentary occupation requires.

"A sedentary occupation, 80110, is the pursuit of a living with pen and telephone.

"Science, 80110, has perceived that shoulderbladcs which slope like these go with, intellectuality. Intellectuality, 80110, is what you have too much of, and if you have any more questions, go up to tho Museum of Natural History, where the statue has just been placed, and ask somebody else. "Will you get to bed?" "What has happened to the lusty Americano of whom Whitman sang?'*' asks theßaltimore "Evening Sun." "Civilisation, so the eugenists say has caught him'and gobbled him up! No Adonis was ever raised on office work."