Books: Just History

THE OLD-TIME SALOON—George Ade—Long & Smith ($1.50).

Funnyman Ade's theme-song in this backward-glancing booklet: "Not wet—not dry—just history." No believer in the saloon's return, he can call up visions of its past with a dry eye, a drily humorous tongue. Though he gives a fair imitation of a man straddling the Prohibition fence, on p. 162 he drops over on the Wet side, admits to membership in the Association Against the 18th Amendment.

Author Ade pokes heavy fun at those who sentimentalize over "the poor man's club," says the brewers brought Prohibition on themselves by the abuses consequent on their forcing the sale...