The card said
cocktails
DON'T like cocktail parties-and when I say that I have better cause than most of the many who, from time to time, make the same assertion-in unconvincing voices-and eagerly accept an invitation to yet another close-packed riot of shrill- sounding women and thirsty but frustrated men, sipping little glasses of warm diluted gin in a smoky air and spilling their cigarette ash over your olives and jostling shoulders.
There are good reasons for disliking cocktail parties; they are comfortless, noisy, and unsatisfying-usually they provoke thirst without slaking it; they introduce you to people with whom you could talk happily for an hour and snatch you away within three minutes or leave you stranded with a stentorian bore.
me
THE CHINA MAIL, TUESDAY, MAY 3, 1955.
I saw a tall, exquiäita creature, who was the centre of a little circle. ...
ICT They induce you, the elderly woman, a gamekeeper's flattered by the invitation, but but I had to hurry wherr at last of
after me and dreaded having to ge to the I went upstairs, to my cold and make widow, looked of bonhomie, sake
nawrow bedroom, to put on a decent comfort. party. in outrageous statements to semi- kept
I have always been shy, and clean shirt and a better sult strangers, and plague you with (But I have never enten por
suit I was
wearing was of the most ridge since then and venison then I was almost morbidly Thersive even to ne tolerant "half-heard gossip.
shy.
y. "I was a stranger in the coun- engaging. sort from the next only with reluctance.) couple but one. And they spoil, I had a few friends in the try, I was by no means well- eye.
On a visit to the Outer Isles, utterly, the rest of the evening, neighbourhood and one of them off, and these people were not
at was the son
deputy-
society a few weeks before, I had been only very rich but as
at attracted to a roll of handwoven lieutenant of the country, a red was constituted, there and faced man with a domineering that time-truly important. It tweed. In the piece it looked voice who owried several thou- was going to be an ordeal, but very d yellow checks
decorative: a system green and a large imposing I had to face it,
background the calour of oat meal. (It had been designed for export I suppose.)
13
Too weak
All these are "sufficient cause
for avoiding them;
but I have (like I am
too
a stronger reason.
most of my fellow men) weak
to resist temptation, but
I never yield to it without re- membering an occasion it was Jong
brought me ago that
appalling unhappiness. It was
unhappiness
humillation
than the
compounded
and
of
sand acres and
"even worse mystification of a
that I have never been able to explain.
20
than It happened more
nearer 25 years ago it was when, after living in a brist and amusing way in the United Slates for a couple of years. I had found a quiet and sober domicile
in the central High lands of Scalland.
I had taken, for a year, furnished cottage,
and a
Societ
-By ERIC LINKLATER..
●Novelist, playwright, author of war books. He was born in Orkney in 1899, and once stood unsuccessfully for Parliament as a Scottish Nationalist Has travelled all over the world' «and-as he says in this story-spent two YERM
(1929-30) in America. But what of the rest of the story? Did it happen?
on a
bought a length, and had it made up; and as a suit it was- had to admit it quite deplor ably vulgar. But I could afford to throw it away, and was wearing it discreetly, when
interest, Honey-coloured hair gleaming in the light, greg eyes in an oval face, a laugh- ing mouth, and arms and neck
such lovely arms, and a neck magnolia-ammooth-that had been
un deeply tanned by a foreign sun. But talking to her was a man for a moment, loft mo who,
stupe quite breathless with
Stupefaction first, then faction. horror,
He was wearing my suit of vulgar green and yellow tweed to be my or what appeared suit-and his behaviour more vulgar than his clothes.
My double
WES
not
In that
company they conspicuous than
were might
no one was there to see it, in less
the hope that use would sub- have been expected, for a good
due the stridency of the colours many of the guests-there were
on something well over --I had to put
다.
bundred people
dark and respectable for the there were Highland
of
party, course.
dress, and some of the kilts would have put another combination I remember shivering in my hay The weather, on the evening
Bul tar little
I drove along of colours in the shade. increased my of the party,
roads under wind- none the less, the suit was in reluctance to leave the small country
and I remember vile taste, and he who wore it shaken trees, for an comfort of my cottage.
too loudly. artizan gale was blowing my trepidation when a footman was talking much gale thick with driving rain
and in the lower left and my car was a little, shabby,hed the door into a brightly and from what I overheard his
-
Georgian mansion. But his son was a modest gentle person, of whom I was very fond.
Now one day I received
engraved card of
was not im conversation
only handsomely
hall. But almost at their and invitation to a party
draughty vehicle and I had 17 mediately my friend the son of wantonly familiar but familiar- house
house, came to greet me, y wanton, hand corner was the
word miles to go. So to fortify mysel
too were hor His gestures, me, from a table Cocktaila.
I drank a glass of whisky and and gave
a cocktail
ribly free. I saw him put a 1 considered it with mixed water, and then another. Per laden with glasses, a
large red hand on the shoulder ost delectable. most
surt
Dane, and azd of the beautiful stout feelings, for I was pleased and haps a third- cannot be sure, of the
None of your tepid gin time or gin and Imitation though she did not seem to shrink from his approach, I vermouth.
a champagne, shri but cocktail in a generous goblet. found it most offensive. And my And then, before introducing disquiet was sensibly increased I noticed that the back of his head was curiously like fts mine. (My head, though. shape is not handsome, → them distinctive.) I watched with growing perturbation, and my unease reached a climax
he
apparently feeling when she,
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IT-C to some of his friends, another.
The girl
I have said that I had lately been in America, and America, then as now-then as always— was news. People were glad, as they are glad today,
to hear Quips and gossip.
of America; having a good store
of
such gossip I got on very well
indeed with people who, other wist. might not have bothered
to take much notice of me. forgot my shyness and thorough- ly enjoyed the goblet of cham- pagne that was so often refilled. But I was restless, I could not settle down to talk, for I hari heard that my hosts had visitor, a Danish girl of quite exceptional beauty, and I was anxious to see her. So I moved from group to group. looking for her, and presently, in a
a
ja
that an earring was about to fall, made a utile movement to secure it, and my abominable. to help double tried clumsily
her.
She was wearing large, gold earrings fashioned in the shape of a Viking ship; and the deplorable man.
in the awful suit let his gross hand fall on her exquisitely sunburned neck.
Never forgotten
But I
I saw that quite clearly, and I still remember my feeling of indignation and disgust. remember little more till I was driving home again, with indig- anation and disgust to accompany me. They occupied my thoughts too closely indeed, and I was
corner of the room, I saw tall and exquisite creature who was the centre of a little circle
DID IT HAPPEN?
*Fact or Fiction?! steriss
by famous people. Some of
these tales are fact—othera
false. The problem la: Can
OLD VIENNA IS GOING GAY
ADVANCE
you tall the fact from the M
Hetian?
BRUTA
IN
By RICHARD GREENOUGH
Vienna. Across the road
from the
with its ANY of the bubbles Cafe Sacher, which,
shining crystals and is red of the champagne slik damask walls, its latimate that was once Vienna and authoritative Hapsburg now sparkling back. atmosphere, and its art collec
tion, is
is still the hub of Vienna's After ten years of occupa indestrucible cafe life, they are
are
|tion-and a previous seven rebuilding the old Opera House
under the Nazis after Hitler on the Ring
worrying about my dreadful walked in in March 1933- It is to be the finest opera
double and having to live in
so far as stage and
tual size, in the world.
the same neighbourhood with Austria now seems on the. such a fellow when have been thinking about my pendence, driving. For in avoiding a lony
Tabould verge of regaining her indo technical equipment, If not ac-
I was
the
The opening performance will rank among FALTON'S most glamorous social Occasions since before the war.
It should also mark Vienna's 319 the world's music
Two hundred and fifty million schillings (about £3,500,000) with bright headlights I went Although the Russian terms will have been spent on the into a ditch, and being thrown for a peace treaty given to Chan lavish work of rebuilding the against the roof of
my car, was cellor Julius Raab in Moscow Opera House, bombed and knocked unconscious.
burned early in have given Britain, France, and
1945, by the was, as it happened, within
especially the United States- time the 16-ton iron safety-" a mile of my cottage, and I re- the other three occupying Powery
curtain rises on the opening covered my senses in my own severe diplomatic headache, night of Beethoven's "Fidelio," bed; where the gamekeeper's widow who was used to such people here have already started next November 5. accidents, having spent most of to celebrate their new freedom. her life in service to
Soviet Air Force MIG jets still upper without
thout fly over the city, and the wives classes-attended to me undue questioning or much surof Russian officials are already from hurriedly buying up all they can Suffering prise.
and' spent a few before they leave, especially the concussion,
The house has long been sold But the days in twilit misery, but that dwindling supplies of antiques. unhappiness was nothing to the
Viennese, in their ou
at up to £70 a ticket wretchedness that awaited me. usual charming, carefree, some Requests for tickets are never- was on the fourth day after what improvident way, have theless still coming in. Ameri- my accident that I got up, and started counting their chickens cans have sent blank cheques, dressing, I put on my green and long before they are Anally and one party of 30 from New
put my hatched. yellow checked suit.
York have chartered a special watch left-hand waistcoat
in my
They started · doing so even plane.
Herr pocket, a cigarette lighter in the before
Raab flew tɔ other; and there I felt
Moscow. For some months now sharp-edged
and pulling a stricken Vienna has been a little boom it out I
city. amazement, with a perplexity have never forgotten and never resolved that it was gold earring shaped like viking ship.
a
Bustling city a large
WORLD COPYRIGHT EZJEZVED
DID IT REALLY HAPPEN?
YES
NO
Put your tick in the, spoce sborn' and· keep this panel by you until ŝomorrow ・・・・ when the awer will be gives--with another story in this sarima ki a
ELSPETH HUXLEY
• Did yesterday's story-Rings On Her Fingers by Naomi Jacob — really happen? The answar is1 NO.
POCKET CARTOON by OSBERT LANCASTER [During the recent strike, Littlehampton's
knowledre AWAYS KYRİlable to a news- bunity publle.}
“On Tuesday at Clermont- Ferrand a horsemeat butcher of sixty years, rendered foolish by love, made to jump his brains!"
а
THE
und
TRE- people look smart
well dressed, well fed, happy, gay, certainly not the, kind of people who have allowed them.
Boom signs OTHER Signs
of Vienna's
dity
boom include, for example, the fact
automobile that one maker has regularly sold 400 new cars a month in this of fewer than 2,000,000 people since the beginning of the year:
"Bocrae, The
fact that Visina's Stock Exchange, has selves to be inconvenienced by been doing record business,
confidence the Soviet occupation,
with renewed As usual, they have sung and Rested in almost Wall Street drunk their way through the scale rise in prices. miseries of the past.
This has been especially so in There is more furry and the case of the stocks of the bustle than
Company ever down the Dubc Steamship
some cu
of the 293 other Kerntnerstrasse, the city's come and
vir bination of Bond Street, Fifth enterprises, many hitherto Avenue, and the Rue de la Paix, tually
to be handed back by the Rus- There shop-window displays
valueless, but now due
in äll lines once again rival, sans to Austrian control;
those of other
even 'surpass,
is
:
By the fact that Vienna's Eve
capita's in Europe and New Alm studios are now booked York too) in style taste, and up with not any free day until
The of
end the year, melly by at the elegance, Prices are
foreign
companies, de luxe level, too, but a shade To the fact that the building lower.
tcom has recently jumped so far In any case, impact on the ahead that the Government has pocket
always somewhat had to apply an official soft- lessened by the indelible, X-pedal because supplies of neces quisite Austrian manners, still sary equipment and consumer- unaffected by two wars and a goods and fittings for the new Soviet occupation. Salesmen
and apartment homes, offices, and women are gracious with blocks have not kept up with out being obsequious and it is
the pace. the tradition for every woman
Vienna's
established long- customer, no matter how small "Dorotheum," the combination he purchase, to be given the of State-run pawnshop and
"I kiss you hand
auction madame". farewell,
usual
For the opera
THE slender
spire and the
multi-coloured mosaic-like Hles on the steep Gothic roof of St. Stephen's Cathedral, Vien na's heart and soul, have shaken
ction house, reports a steady decrease In the number of people often former well-to-do business folk or from old aris= tocratic familles who brought in their last treasured posses- sions to sell in order to live.
Auctions are still held there regularly during the week, but the tragic quantity and quality off their last winter snow of goods for sale has now more
very late this year, as are the chestnut blossoms and now
shine
or less vanished.
glint in the warm spring sun- Tourists again
hearts of
visitors
further to lighten the the Viennese and their
VIENNA city officials, as well as its cafe walters, with No matter that part of the whom I have talled expect the spice is in splints undergoing conclusion of a State treaty and way damage repairs which may the end of occupation" to "give a take up to ten years.
tremendous flip to the tourist trade here.,
What made Einstein's brain
so different?
by CHAPMAN PINCHER
TWO- teams
of U.S. another sprang into activity-as doctors have
was tuning been though his mind
into them successively in search battling for the right of an answer.
the brain of an Einstein and the
BLOOD SUPPLY
THINKING ABOUT
·THEORY DE RELATIVIST
MIND AT REET
The brain-ware chart of Einstein, the genius 27. Notice the Botivity when he was asked to think about his theory of relativity; how it ispered off when he was naked to relax”
As soon as visitors can reach Vienna without
travelling
through the surrounding Rus slan-held territory, Austria's seems certain, to stage a |belliant comeback. -
to become inevitably again, the у scin- tilating Vienna that was.
But although the graceful,
aging, but still old lady is having yet anther face-lift, sprucing up her cafes and must- cians,
her intimate lible' rem staurante reeking with atmo sphere," and night clubs com- plete with zither players, her crowded "heurige wine cellars and
out at Grinzing, Sievering.
ber thereabouts, restaurants and terraces.
open-air
high
on
the Wienerwald overlookding the dity
her surviving
open
eight course, the gint wheel on the -Prater, all is by no means plane. salling towards a new free and independent Aus
Austria. Chancellor Raab has warned his people 20.
air home-drawn flaeris, and, of
course, the
to examine the brain of Dr The doctors, who will almost Albert Einstein, the scienti- certainly be led by Dr John fic genius, who died in Kaufman at Princeton Hospital, * will Brst measure and weigh the Princeton aged 76,
They believe that a detalled brain.
A few genluses have had dissection may yield some clues about the nervous mechanism exceptionally large brains,
brain of Turgenev, the Russian the "wires of the nervous net- "I once helped to examine which enables a genius to grapple with problems beyond novelist, weighed 14 Cute work. It is the brain cells that Lenin's brain, but we learned
compared with an average of seem to do the thinking. And nothing from
Chief stumbling-block, 0 the scope of ordinary minds.
about 50 ounces. But size is not the examination will also reveal ⠀ And in America, doctors ex-
se, is Western reaction and And they may find some
« examination — at to the question by as important as structure, and whether any particular part of peet the
approval necessary, before a DDSwer
people many geniuses had brains no Einstein's brain was specially Princeton to take eight weeks. treaty can be signed, to Risia's millions of ordinary
rich in cells.
insistence on · Austria's strich What is the difference between bigger than average......
REAL NATURE Most scientists believe that.
neutrality, and promise not to Einstein's brain will keep its Dr Thomas Harvey, whe re-join any military alliance auch There is evidence that the secrets, because its unique moved the brain which led the as NATO and not to permit any From brain-wave tests made brain's blod supply determines, capacity for original thought world into the atomle age, said; foreign military bases,
Einstein was alive the its thinking capacity. Einstein's simost certainly depended on "Externally it looks just like doctors suspect that his been brain may prove to have been the way the nerve cells were anybody else's" was constructed in a peculiar equipped with especially wide-
connected,
'It 14 doubtful: whether kway, NUTR
Such connections are so. Ans. Einstein himself believed that AUSTRIA has asked both the boze blood vessels assuring a The tests showed that when rich supply of fuel and oxygen and so tatricate that they can the doctors would learn much
{from dissecting his brain, th Einstein thought deeply about A new type of TV microscope not yet be mapped.
commit the mlpmatory his theories of reialvity an invented in Britain will count In Bristol Dr Grey Long before he died, the netrality This, it granted, at the reroutionary trend of thought or may of the number of "grey matter Waller, brain expe aceptionally large number separate groups of brain cells cells to show whether Einstein Burden Neurological Institute which he began 50 years ago noutrally by taking action seemed to be focused on the had substantially more than said "I do not think this had proved that the more menginst my country which the ten thousand million that examination will yield much, magnify the stuff which the violated that is fighting; if problem,
As he tried to solve a difficult ordiary people possess. We do not have the techniques world and they themselves are need be, for someone else's mathematical equation one The bulk of the brain is made for making really detalled made of, the more elusive Its right not to be your ally
real rature becomes..
(Contimed on. Pars, 7; Col. 7) group of brain cells after up of white nerves which are examination,
brain of any other genius or,
indeed, of any ordinary mind?
when
Elegant abandon
A. free Western Power "and Rueda
guarantee her
I
T