1949-01-22 — Page 11

DAB and FLOUNDER

by Walter.

prompts

FROM HERE AND THERE :

A LUCKY BREAK FOR UMBERTO

21

Florence: Umberto Mazzini, a casual worker in a factory, was down to his last sevenpence. He lived with seventeen other people in four dark rooms in a Bologna slum, and as he wanted to be by himaclf he took a walk into the town. Grop ing his way through the fog-blanketed streets with the temperature below zero, he passed the brightly lit window of a shop where race tickets are sold. As sevenpence, with the cost of living what it is, was not much good to him anyway, he went in and slammed sixpenco on a double. That evening he had won over £600. His only comment was: "I can now pay my debts and live in a room by myself."

Tough Senator

.

GILUMAT MUUUTA. MYLEVAAT THE HONGKONG TELEGRAPH, SATURDAY, JANUARY 22, 1949.

A BOOK AS FRESH AS DAISY

The

Of Tyres

Scream

At The

Pines

AND THE WOMAN WHO WROTE IT

11

ONE BOOK MADE

HER FAMOUS

BETTY MACDONALD, 40 With her husband

she took

years old, with auburn hair up chicken farming in, the and green eyes, is the daughter mountains. They pooled wed- of a Colorado mining engineer, ding gifts, savings and a small Born Anne Elizabeth Campbell legacy and paid £110 for a Bard, she did not become Betty farm. MacDonald until her second. For four years the led a primitive BETTY MACDONALD.

Her day began at 4 a.m. and marriago to Scotsman Donald life. MacDonald-In 1942.

sho kept house without electricity President of the United States. He

ar running water. She did car- pentry, cleared felds, took care of: did not get that distance, but he. spent more fortune for the public. patients. Eileen drenches herself in than mostmo in the White Hou spent in rugged 'mining towns her bables and the chickens,

men have done,

She never of North-west America. But couldn't cally liked the chickens. her parents arranged instruc- sically or spiritually," she said. "Surrender and awaits hopefully

get close to them phy- the arrival of the new young cut only a favourite can be. Enemies French, dramatics, callisthenics, I hated everything about the chicken Het was reviled and courted as tion in singing, ballet, piano, "By the end of the second spring

THE PLAGUE AND I, By Betty MacDonald. Hammond Hammond. 10. 6d. 224 pages, ITTERE is a piece of good

as fresh

GEORGE

MALCOLM THOMSON,

Her earliest childhood was

H

The author of The Egg and I has written another book

Minna brings from the South à as a daisy and

45 charming accent and an instinct for said he played the part of Svengali diverting as Danny Kaye. It betraying her fellow-victims to the in Roosevelt's life. Hopkins himself cooking, shooting and roof but the egg." is also a gallant book: the kind staff. She calls that

#great

big sald he was the errand boy. Neither painting.

In depression year 1931 she and of book that sends Its readers Sweetie-plo, and she discloses the

handsome husband of mine" account is reliable.

When she was nine her father Betty moved back to Seattle and her husband decided upon divorce. away feeling gayer and perhaps fact that Eileen, unlawfully, reads companion of the President, at times the State of Washington. There directed by sister Mary," First she He was the closest counsellor and moved the family to Seattle, in entered D theetle bizarre carcer better, citizens of a brighter movie magazines under the bed- world.

clothes. Ellcon calls Minna a stinker, his counsel was completely ignored. Betty stayed (later studying art was a secretary. Then she became and many other things a great deal. There was an unpredictable and at the University), until at 19 the only woman labour adjuster in

eel-like quality about Roosevelt which baffled even his shadow, just he married an insurance sales. likely source of honest fun. It tells Pines and deflates the hopes of as there was a ruthless element In

a body who thinks she may be going "goftie."

the man who called himself a of an attack of tuberculosis and stay in a sanatorium. Belly Mae- to recover quickly or at all. When Donald was the victim of this at- Betty is allowed an hour's "occupa tack, which she bent off with the tonal therapy.e, crochet-work help of medical selence, nursing care Eleanor says, "Sounds to me like and

a native resolve to live and they were strengthening you for

surgery." *

The theme of The Plague and I worse. would not strike everybody ne

which she is matched from her

M Elcanor loven

staying

at The

any.

crowd of spectators, Burma's most laugh again. famous snake-chormer-Saya Tin, Washington: Washington thinks it from the snaketown of Popa In the has found the man to meet Joo

Myingyon distrlet-w36 severely Louis in its okiest Senator Kenneth bitten by a 14 ft king cobra,

and THE PINES, the sanatorium to TT takes all sorts to make a sang- McKellar. McKellar, aged 79, has Inter

died in hospital. These

torium; most of the specimens been knocking down people who ask Burmese snakecharmers gain a cer-

sorrowing family, is conspicuous for are captured and oxhibited in The him his age. His first victim by tain amount of inmunity by inject-its iron discipline and its ley sheets. Plague and I. Betty tells her story right to the jaw was the editor of ing a closely guarded secret antidote its patients will be cured whether with a brisk eye for character,

Tennessee. His newspaper in

lls in the form of a tattoo on their they like it or not. As for the saucy shrug for pain und danger second, a reporter for Drew Pearson, arms.

sheets-"I stuck my feet timidly and her well-known 'gift for apt if the Washington columnist, whom he

down Into the ley regions at the foot extravagant, simile. kicked out of his office. Apologising:

of the bed and thought longingly of A doctor, examining her throat but not without a trace of pride,

delightful hot-climate diseases like with a flashlight, goes so far down McKellar made this excuse "Every..

leprosy, cholera and jungle-rot.” that "It was like using a stomach one is always trying to put me in my grave picturing me as an old

Betty's companions in her arctic pump to diagnose dandruff."" ordeal are no wilting Dames aux Camellias. Kimi la beautiful, witty and Japanese. Her chief trouble in life is that, being ift. Gin. In height, probably find no husband. At The she is a giant among people and will

Fines, Kuni keeps clear of the other Jap patients. They are girls of no

man who is decrepit."

Party Went Flat

Madrid: Three Inmates of the Santander gol broke out to steal provisions for a luxury dinner, and then returned to their quarters. The police found several hams and five bottles of brandy in their cells; they fed on bread and waler instead.

All In Vain

Johannesburg: Philemon, a farm labourer, of Harrismith, bought a

One Woman

America's only. woman Senator, Mrs Margaret Smith, arrived Washington from Maine viven comforting news for men-that she is not establishing an Amazonien benchhead In Congress. Said she: didates just because they are women, Women do not become politient can-

no-one

but

rather to show that should be barred from public office Just because she is a woman,

And Anothor

And in San Francisco

the American women invaded yet na preserve. A middle other male aged woman described as little and

got away,

character.

to

Elleen, a cinema usherette, brings

sanptorium the

A rebel- four disposition, a ferocious line in slang, and a stock of the more glamorous perfumes.

Discovering that, to reach the

new pair of shoes. When he found dumpy held up a bank for £800 and dentist, a pallent must be wheeled

they would not fit, he cut off his two little toes. The shoes were still too small, so ho started to pare the edges of his feet, but found this too painful. So he sold the shoes-and is now temporarily unable to walk.

The Kiss Of Death Itangoon: Performing the kiss of -death act in Rangoon Zoo, before a

Nest-Egg For Britons

Johannesburg: It has been found that if ostrich eggs are holled for an hour they keep fresh for a month, so South Africans are now sending ostrich eggs by air to friends in Bri- inin. Each egg is equivalent to 24 hen's eggs.

Special days, like Mothers' Day, affect her emotionally, while the big full-bodied holiday's like Christ- I can get tears in my eyes mas fil me so full of feeling that Just looking at a fruit cake,"

In The Plague and I, the feeling is kopt in its place by the fun. But the feeling is here just the same, Betty's story ends happily with the return to the outside world of her- self and her companions.

This book is going to be read by a great many delighted people.

told a remarkable story, Sherwood, Had Hopkins lived he would have

with the papers at hla disposal and with his own knowledge of the Roosevelt court to draw upon, makes a valiant effort to give life to the documents.

Inevitably, Roosevelt takes the centre. Inevitably, there are chap ters in which the focus wanders too far from Hopkins.

*

:

man.

New Look At The 'Angels'

"MISS NIGHTINGALE'S LADIES," by Charles Terrot. Collins, 86. Gd.

THE Miss Nightingale in the title THE

of this novel is Florence Night- ingale. She is not exhibited as the legendary Lady of the Lamp, but as a shrewd organiser.

the Government's National Re- covery Administration. Two and a half years later she moved to the United States Treasury Depart- ment. 'JUST TWO MORE'

RY September, 1938, still working BY

for the Government, she dis- covered she had tuberculosis and went to a sanatorium, After nine months there she took a job as publicity agent for America's Na- tional Youth Administration.

She kept it for three years (1 her marriage in 1042 to Donald MacDonald. But before returning to the status of housewife, Betty could not resist trying

"just two. more Jobs," as Government pur- chasing agent and bulldor's clerk. YET, if the narrative in diffuse, it

In 1043 she began The Egg ond has its own virtues. Here, for

11, her story of life on the chicken The nurses"Miss Nightingale's farm. example, is an admirable account of Ladies"

It was her first book and the Beaverbrook-Harriman mission respected, but were sometimes re- copies in América.

as they were called It made her famous, selling 1,300,000 to Moscow, tions between the Western. Powers emelency. They, inlled to seu that been filmed.

turning point in rela- sentful

It has also of. her administrativo she could not relax her discipline if LOG HOUSE she was to cope with the unscrupu- lous intrigues of the Army medical start at Scuters, and the open enmity W ITH her husband and the two of politicians at home,

and Russia.

But, of course, the maid interest is the Roosevelt-Hopkins association, Roosevelt employed his friend on many matters, not all of them high business of State.

!

young daughters of her first marriage, Mrs MacDonald now lives Part of this unedifying chapter of in a log house on Columbia River history is told by Mr Charles Terrot, in Washington State. It is fronted salmon-Ashing For example, in the weeks before a descendant of Sarah Anne Terrot, by a beach and Pearl Harbour, Roosevelt was try- who was one of 38 women to accom- Brounds, and surrounded on three Ing, through Hopkins, to buy

Other members pany Florence Nightingale on her sides by tall trees. an island of Florida, where he pro- mission.

of her household, che says, are "a posed to build a hurricane-proot

He has made use of Sarah Anne's dog that sleeps on the beds and a through

THE the men's ward, Eileen

house designed by himself. Hopkins diary and letters, and has had access cat that always jumps in the laps WHITE

HOUSE plainly thought litle of the idea to ather unpublished material bear-of people who disilke ents." complains of toothache and sprays PAPERS OF HARRY L. But It remained a recurrent dreaming on the appalling conditions and traits of children and to eat, talk She likes to make crayon por- herself heavily with "My Sin." But HOPKINS. By Robert E. of the President's throughout the the official obstruction with which and drink coffer the nurse puts on speed passing the

the Sherwood. Eyre and Spottis- war.

these hard-working danger zone, or, to quote Eileen-

25. 491 pages.

squeamish angels had to contend. "My daughters," said Betty Mac- "The old dame went so fast the woode.

The lively record of a man who, Judged as a novel, "Miss Nightin- Donald, "have not made up their tyres screamed, but I saw two real

it was said, "had the purity of Sigale's Ladies" is not without flaws.minds yet whether writing is an cute fellahs down near the dentist." HARRY HOPKINS was a secre- Francis of Assissi combined with the As a story, or as a "documentary," other glaring fault of mine which tive man who at one time in sharp shrewdness of a racetrack it is an adroit piece of work. they must correct, or, whether it is Ing of little notes to tho male his career thought he might become tout,"

-DANIEL GEORGE. just a form of senile diversion."

Alas The Pines forbids the pass-

VIGNETTES OF LIFE

BANG PUTT PUTT PUTT PU

AHNNG BANG

WANG

'PUT

SLAMB

and

"Noise"

un-

BU. KEMP. STARRETT

WHAT WOULD YOU EXPECT AFTER EIGHT YEARS

THE RICKET OF A LEAKY FAUCET CAN BE A WONDERFUL EXCUSE FOR LETTING OFF A LITTLE STEAM.

SQUEAK

CLANK

Ledger Syndicate

THE ONES WHO THINK NOISE IS THE SAME THING AS LOGIC AND REASON.

Fas

UNK

ANOTHER RATTLE .......

MAKING"

37 IN ALL... NOT COUNTING THE CQUAVKS FROM THE FAMILY.

THE ONES WHO MOVED TO THE COUNTRY TO ESCAPE CITY NOISES AWAKEN TO THE BEDLAM OF SIX A.A: A TRACTOR IN THE NEXT FIELD, PLANES, A NEIGHBOR SINGLING INC BARN, TRUCKS UP ON THE ROAD NOT TO MENTION THE COVS AND ROOSTERS

"WE'RETOR NOISE ABATEMENT...ESPECIALLY AT TABLE.

SOME FOLKS ARE IMMUNE TO NOICE:

SOME ARE NEVER HAPPY UNLESS THERES DIN FOR DINNER.

NOISE - THATS MUSIC TO. OIR EARS THESE DAYS".

WOULD BE

QUIBITED,