The publication of a selection of S. J. Perelman's "best" pieces is the most ominous note in American history since the first arrow of the Seminole War whizzed through the Florida night air and found flesh. There is no mistaking the implication of the event. Perelman is turning his eyes to the past, and the future is lost. Secure behind a bastion of twelve million dollars, which he made in Hollywood in six weeks, he has begun to tear up his college notebooks, give away old sweaters, swear off opium, pay up his bill at the dry cleaners, and buy the French maid an annuity for her young son. In short, the old master—absit omen—is preparing to retire. Why else would his publisher give out with this forty-six course banquet, complete with dedication, title, and numbers on the pages?

The immediate effect of the retirement of S. J. Perelman on a nation whose predominance in the world depends squarely on muscles and laughter, is apparent and appalling. The muscles can get along without him—he has been getting along on borrowed muscles for years, and moves most of the time on wire springs. But the laughter of the country is another matter. Perelman is America's funniest man, and those who grew up with him, through Judge and College Humor years, depending on him for strength to endure prohibition gin and speakeasy air, sustained by him throughout the potato famine of the early thirties, cannot quickly find another such singer of heart songs, another so expert at lashing the blood-stream into a wild, Kirghiz frenzy. If no more new Perelman pieces are to appear, what excuse will this ragged little band from the fringes of schizophrenia have for rolling in the gutter and throwing harpsichords through the studio skylight?

Perelman's humor has always been therapeutic, a penicillin for the wounds which society inflicts on the ego and consciousness of the common man. Just as Fielding, when the reading world was sick to death of the scourge "Pamela," healed it instantly with a single application of "Joseph Andrews," so Perelman, as we reel to our bare pallets after a bout with Hollywood B pictures, a session with the latest batch of novels, or a fast look at the fashion magazines, comes with magic herbs and healing opiates. Soon we are hanging out the window again, leering at the passing school-girls. Soon we are able to face, again, the girls in the advertisement who point the certain way to embonpoint; able to hear, again, the unctuous voice of the radio, softly inquiring for our peristalsis.

Of course, the present volume of alchemical ointments may be the Philosopher's Stone; it may continue to work, in all emergencies, against all social bacteria. It is designed for some such epic service. It contains old and new favorites, and such supernal bits of satire as the pieces on Hollywood and the slick magazines—"Scenario," and "Second-Class Matter" (but there should be more like them, many more). There is the one that gets the old man so bad we have to send for the inhalator—"Hold That Christmas Tiger!" There is mom's favorite—"To Sleep, Perchance to Steam." There are those we all agree on—

"The Body Beautiful," "Sweet and Hot," "Somewhere a Roscoe," "Sauce for the Gander," etc. (See .)

But one thing is certain, and in that fact lies hope for the coming generation, saddled as it will be with debt, mesmerized by electronics, transported by helicopters: Perelman's pearls wear well; in fact they improve with age, which for humor, a perilously temporal commodity, is extraordinary. His is, indeed, rare stuff, which is all the more reason why there should be more of it. As a citizen of the United States Perelman is a free man (providing he has twelve million dollars) and can do as he pleases. But in a democracy the people is sovereign, and the people, in an emergency which concerns its good, may sacrifice one of its number lest the whole be imperiled. Thus there is but one thing to do.

Perelman is the funniest man in America. Seize him, place him in a white-walled room, and put him to work, that in these hard days, and in the parlous times ahead, we shall have a handkerchief for our tears, and strange, mysterious lightning that strikes us in the street or in the home, so that we fall flat on our face, laughing, and have to be dragged out to the barn, to sleep with the swine and the hired man. We would do as much for him, if we could, and if he didn't have twelve million dollars.