10
STORIES OF READERS & READING SIR William
Robertson Nicoll
believed that great readers are few, and the dictum may be sound;
libraries despite the run upon the
for certain classes of books. A real lover of Bterature is not to be found in every street.
A lady said to her cook, "Cook, read?" would you like this book to
The reply was, "No, mum, I have more than I can do as it is and I.
Which won't be put on any more."
reminds us of Venables, one of the
"Cambridge Apostles," who asked un Lansdowne Earl who he met 1st House if he ever saw Punch. "Why, no. To say the truth. I'm-er-not much of a bookworn."
sur-
Dr. Thomas Guthrie, In an early! parish, had a congregational library at his house. He was rather prised that so many enquiries were made for a Puritan volume which Private hore the title of "Ador's Thoughts, and he took an oppur tunity of asking one of the readers what made him so anxious for this particular volume. The answer he received
Just "Oh, sir, was, wondered how they could mak' out) what the first man's private thoughts would be aboot."
'Scott's "Lies"
Professor
[
Campbell Fraser's schoolmaster repeatedly warned hini against reading Sir Walter Scott on account of the books of lies which the devil had templed him to pro- duce.
Talking of Sir Walter, Thomas | Davidson, the "Scottish Probationer," when a lad would sit far into the!
novels tight reading Scoll's
late One night, after XL .poems.
reading, he was on his way to bed when he trod on some matches which exploded under his feet. The house was roused by his cry. "Oh, muther. mother there's fire lying from my heels," and the anxlous mother re- piled, "Oh, laddie, laddle, if ye dinna stop reading Sir Walter, he'll turn your held."
. There are those to whom books are the staff of ilfe. Alphonso, King of Arragon in the fifteenth century, was asked one day who were the counsellors he liked best and who the best advice. "My gave him
books," replied he, "because they tell me without passion, and without any view of Interest, what is requisite for me to know,"
Memories of Youth
Hazlit said that even if his life had been inore full of calamity than it had been, he would be willing to Ilve it over again in order to rend the books he read in his youth.
Lord Lyttelton, who married Mary Glynne, the sister of Mrs. W. E. Gladstone, used to be seen nt cricket matches in the playfields of Eton. lying on his front reading between the overs, but never missing a ball.
When Prank Buckland, who be-
naturalist, came famous as a
was born, Sir Francis Chantrey, the sculptor, offered to give the child a library. The father said, "What is the use of a library to a child on hour old?" to which Sir Francis retorted. "He will live to be sorry for that answer," and the library was never given.
F. J. S.
THE HONGKONG
TELEGRAPH. THURSDAY, JULY 22,
1937.
Queer New York!
BY
HAROLD
BUTCHER
N
EW YORK! Stupen- dous, gigantic, magi- cal, ultra-moderní All these, yes!
But also-QUEER.
Father Divine, the Negro "God," miraculously feeding the multitude." Miraculously," from the point of view of his "angela"; incredibly from the. viewpoint of hard-headed busi- 11c55 mien, Because the black "Delty's" finances are a my- stery known only to himself. It takes money to run his king- doms," but his heavenly book- kepping. If it exists, is not for vulgar inspection. The faithful Are housed and fed by faith.
While Father Divine was tem- porarily falled on an assault charge a white man had been alabbed when "God's " angels had rushed to his defence after a process server attempted to hand him a paper-a crowd of Negroes stood outside his jail and sang," He's God! He's God! Father Divine is God!" to the tune of the" Battle Hymn of the Republic," the hymn sung by the soldiers who had freed their forbears.
P
ICTURE a New York street in the twentieth century, alive with a mass of singing Negroes-oh, how they can sing!-religiously, rhythmically, joyously sup- parting their little Negro "God." who had fallen into the hands of tough New York "cops."
But even those hard-bolled cops had a smile and a laugh for the little man. If Aimee Semple McPherson can have her Temple In Los Angeles, why shouldn't Father Divine have his Heaven in New York?
Harlem, New York's Negro metropolis, is the home of 200,000 Negroes, for the most part hard-working. decent, fairly well educated citizens able to hold their own in the City of Seven Million, despite race ex- ploitation,
They have to find relaxation like the whites, and some of them enjoy the necromancy and voodoo touch.
And do not imagine it's the Negroes only who like magic. Bank presidents, stockbrokers, lawyers,
college. professors,
society women, seek out fortune- tellers for advice and guidance. The offices of those who claim to read the future are as luxuri- ously equipped as those of the
SOME FRESH NEWS
financial barons who sway the destinies of nations.
"Sophisticated " New Yorkers eagerly buy up the flood of astrology and horoscope pam- phlets and magazines, Numer- ologists thrive. Telling fortunes In tea-leaves is it big business.
While skyscrapers, so authen- tically real and modern, push their steely, stony audacity Into the sky, curious, credulous New Yorkers turn aside from the stark reality of twentieth cen- tury living to the consolation and fascination of ancient and medieval practices.
These may, they think, throw light upon the mystery of their lives as it presses upon them in the ferce, grotesque and astounding city of New York.
In a really good year New York spends about £5,000,000 on 100,000 fortune-tellers of all kinds-crystal gazers, numer- ologists, palmists, phrenologists. card manipulators, tea-leaves renders,
T is a common sight to sce men with all kinds of good luck charms selling them from trays around their necks in the streets. Superstition? Maybe. But let's buy one to be safe. Bafety first! And the charm is cute, anyway.
You can find leagues and associations for everything in New York. There's a Save-a- It Life League; quite useful. Saves would-be suicides. Before swallowing polson, pulling the
pistol trigger, or jumping'off a skyscraper, the person con- templating suicide telephones the League or pays a personal call.
Yes, really! And, strange but true, the League is a check on New York's tendency to suicide.
T
'HERE is the League for a Woman President and Other Public Offices. A woman President of the United States sounds strange at this time, and Mrs. Roosevelt says she is not a candidate. Some day it may succeed.
American leagues have a habit of succeeding because people laugh so much while they are gathering strength. The Anti-Saloon League suc- ceeded for quite a long time. introducing the wildly fantastic Prohibition Era.
Gangsters, gunmen, racket- eers, without which New York would not be New York, cáme In with Prohibition; but we will not chalk up all the crimes of bootleggers to a league which honestly sought to make America God's Own Country by driving out Demon Rum
The autograph Bends have formed the Autograph Guild of America. They aro celebrity- chasers, They watch the trains and ocean liners. When Errol Flynn, or Charles Laughton, or Mary Pickford, or Marlene Diet- rich, or Sylvia Sidney, or
ABOUT MEDICINE
By John Langdon-Davies
Drug That Dispels Inhibitions
...al
NOME weeks ago mention was being Injected with X this patient made of a new drug which has told the doctor that she was quite remarkable psychological effects, sure that her husband was trying to making people more self-confident poison her,
20,000,000 Days' Work Wasted
[MPORTANT facts about influenza
MP
are to be found in the report
By 'Flu
Issued by the Medical Officer for J. WAR GOD'S
Lyons and Co., the caterers.
Out of 6,334 people on the Lyons'
and energetle, and thereby helping This phobla, which was complete- them through crises such ex ly without foundation, explained the payroll no fewer than 1,214, or 19 aminations, interviews, trying situ- nausea, and the drug X proved a per cent,, got 'flu last December ar ations.
short cut for psycho-analytic treat-January, They lost over
Ever since, people have written to ment ask for the name of the drug, even offering to buy the information.
ly used.
show to
how
Aid For Mothers
►
that
twelve
n result. thousand days' work as Girls got it more frequently than men, and the young than the old.
Two points arise out of the figures.
***
DEADLIEST WEAPON
onc
Of course, such information must only came through the individual's
First, 70 per cent. of the sufferers WHATEVER else must be sold medical attendont, If he thinks At to
were the first victims of Influenza, In about the Abyssinian war, one give it; these drugs, are still in their
their respective familles. This astonishing fact is that so few Italian means that 'fu is n brend-winner's soldiers died of disease. Typhold, experimental stage and the very fact THE
complaint is often that so many people feel that they against doctors that they can cure and taken home to the family.
made disease and that it is caught at work typhus, malaria, dysentery: these need them goes
have been the deadly weapons of the dangerous they may be when wrong- il sorts of rare discases but
The god of war hitherto,
winning they seem helpless against common
general na usually been the everyday allments. It is monstrous,HE reason for this is that the who could keep his troops healthier. for example, that a seafaring animal waltress or office worker is in But in Abyssinin there were half DOCTOR who is using one of like man should be at the mercy of constant contact with many people, a million Italian troops and only these drugs has just had a very seasickness. Medicine seems help so that the risk of infection is for 509 died of disease compared with interesting case. A patient, a young less, too, against Public Enemy No. 1, greater than in the home.
over 1,000 killed in action. married woman, came to him suffer- the Common Cold.
Second, gurea stow that those ing from uncontrollable nausea,
The same great change is to be that who went to work in public con- noted in the Spanish civil war, One such everyday misery She was unable to retain any food at has been successfully attacked at veyances did not get 'flu more often is astonishing that there have been all and yet there was no sign of lost is the depressing nausea so often then those who walked or went in no epidemics in Madrid, where only a physical cause,
experienced by expectant mothers. private cors. The doctor injected her with n A doctor has just reported that Lyons workers lost on the aver even in normal years, substance which we will call X. He out of two, hundred consecutive age ten days' work per case of 'Alu, know that X acted on the nerve enses he has succeeded in relieving and if that is an average that holds ledge is, of course, responsible for The advance of scientific know- centres in such a way that patients no fewer than eighty-five per cent. good for all wage-corners in Ex- this. Thus we now know that the
inhibitions tand to lose their
on His mothols to adminliter a pre-land, It means that 'Au destroyed deadly typhus is caused by lice and talking and to "pill out" whatever paration of the secretion of the twenty million days' work this last lice only; and armies are carefully comes into their heads. Soon after adrenal cortex.
deldübed hời; metely for comfort.
winter.
It
a short Ume ago typhold was endemic
0
TO
sample-
Here's Prometheus, mpihi- cal God of Fire, allhouetted against a seventy-story sky- teraper, world's tallest once.
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13
Oracle Fields, or Walter Huston -any big celebrity-is arriving or departing the autograph- hunters, by team work, capture out signatures. They ferret where celebrities are going, where they are staying: if one falls another will succeed.
New York is a city where one can elimb to the dizziest heights on a. big nose, We are thinking of Jimmy (Schnozzle) Durante,
And there is that East Bide boy who made good on pop-eyes-- Eddie Cantor. Al Smith 'sot all New York singing East Side, West Side." because, among other things, he wore a Brown Derby. He does not make such a hit these days in a High Hat. Too much Liberty League!
Gone are the picturesque days of Mayor Jimmy Walker-grandiose, musical comedy-ish, but Hitler- balting Mayor Florella La Guardia
little, but, what a fighter!-keops New York adequately in the world's sensational headlines.
His suggestion that an offigy of the "brown-shirted fanatle" might suitably be included in a chamber of horrors at the New York World's Fair, 1939, will never be forgotten or forgiven by the Nazi chieftains of Berlin.
R
ACKETEERS are begin- ning to look queer in. Now York-very queer. Dutch Schultz-dead since 1935 by gunmen's bullets-hatched a swell scheme to måke up for the loss of bootleg dividends when Prohibition was doomed.
He and his henchmen used to extract something like £400,000 a year from Broadway night spots, cafeterias, restaurants, which pre- ferred to pay him tributo rather than have employees beaten up or customers driven out by stink bombs.
But Special Prosecutor Thomas E. Dewey is death on rackets, and by his brilliant massing of evidence in court he is sending racketeers whining to prison. They are feel- ing very queer in the pit of the atomach. Ho out to grab all racketeers-vice, gambling, truck- ing, poultry, baking racketeers.
One of the queerest birds in queer New York these days is the racketeer scaddling from Dewey.
N
́EW YORK, home of the striptease and of cock- tail parties that last for days; New York, where the mur- der of a glamorous artist's model fa the signal for scores and scores of nearly nude pictures in the tabloids and "yellow" Press.
New York, where the brightest of Broadway's million lights ad- vertise chewing gum; New York, where a Bowery barboz apccialises In disguising customers' black
ryca.
New York, where a self-service shop permits women to handle and try on umpteen dresser and walk out without buying any.
New York, where dogs have -" nursemaids,” men who take them for a daily airing at so much a week, and caterers who bring them choice meals.
New York, the crazy, the exclt- Ing, the amazing city where the air in electric and all the citizens are young-or seem young.
Queer New York! Buret But would you not just love to visit It and discover all its queer streaks for yourself?
+
To-day's Thought- WHAT is experience? A poor Ititio hut constructed from the ruins of the palace of gold and marble called our Hlusions. JOSEPH ROUX,
WOTD
no
but for safety. It is said that the chief reason why there typhus velims in Abyssinia WAS that the soldiers were stripped lo the walst vil fherefore cleaner:
THE
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Agents:
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..249 ...£53
G. E. HUYGEN Canton.
OUR BRITISH CROSSWORDS
ACROSS
2 Rather like Aunt Maud upset
and very caustic.
8 To boot.
9 Nothing beyond the outfit in the
source.
10 Unable to sleep.
11 Possibly first in rank.
12
Lending ones may not be lan-
terns.
13 Sort of speak-casy, there being
Afty-one In Great Britain. 14 Alliance.
16 Goddess who seems to lend a
double existence.
17
The Inbour
we delight in- pain." (Macbeth.)
18 A pretty one won't necessarily get you through the mountains. 21 Mosi casterly part of Carmar-
. then.
22 Behead the business that is this for good and you'll find the pro- bable reason.
24 The town that is in father.
25 A Thackeray novel,
28 Puts an end to more sentences
than free pardona do.
29 A queer-looking affair,
31 Put us two in the Navy, and see
the wreck that would result. 32 This of Ireland has
0 neat finish.
33 Sort of pill for a favourite about
45 inches in length.
34 Cant about this hot place results
in solemn agreement. 35 This is but a part.
DOWN
1 A nice" word that costs nothing. 2 A lot unpaid as the gardener
often is.
25
136
27
3 He's no angel, but invaluable
to the croupler. 4 Very, or very very.
5 Ring bells by contract for a crossing that will cost you a trille. (Two words, 4 and 0).
6 Fish in the Hebrides for a man
of many tongues.
7 Alter the hue of a clan with an
outburst.
15 Chemical lapses.
19 Shakes,
that reforms most (Two words, 5 and 5.).
20 Bad place for the builder to lose
his head.
23 Should straighten out things. 20 Spoil the French word for fur. 27 A liner. (Annng.),
30 Pretty sort of pass for the con-.
stant traveller,
Yosterday's Solution
BP ROMAL F M SEVERE AIREFU Lİ HENANT NOT LI DENIAL INNATELY
■NTIN NELE METERS ENTREAT B [U]NTE ERŐNE PENTUDE SW18HED
8 ORUTINY NAPKIN INNE PODLO RECEIVER FAILED
OʻLIENT BLOGMANË SNEA BELU BUNG