Letters: Able Allen

Sirs:

Did I not read in TIME some time (and several TIMES) ago, that Allan Hoover would not graduate this year because he was away from his studies on his father’s South American good-will tour? Yet notice the picture and legend which I clip from the Boston Herald of June 30. Explain please.

C. B. HUMPHREY A 13-year-old reader Sakonnet, R. I.

Son Allan, able, studied hard, caught up, was graduated with his Class. — ED.

Scarlet Sister

Sirs:

On page 54 of the June 24 issue, TIME, is an item of Ethel Barrymore’s new play.

With all due regard to editors & their right to interpret Webster in various ways; I cannot see how anyone—if they read Scarlet Sister Mary—could by any chance call Scarlet Sister Mary a prostitute.

In no sense of the word was she a prostitute. I’m sure Julia Peterkin, the author, of the book had no intention of presenting her heroine in the light of a prostitute.

Evidently the person writing these briefs of “People” either knows nothing of the very remarkable book with all its beauty and philosophy, or he is prejudiced and meant to slur the character which Miss Barrymore will portray in this play. . . .

LAURA E. CARSON Oklahoma City, Okla.

No slur on Actress Barrymore was intended or contained in TIME’S report. Scarlet Sister Mary’s publisher advertised her as “The harlot of Blue Brook Plantation.”—ED.

Columbine v. Wild Rose

Sirs:

Enclosed you will find a slip, “Choosing the National Flower. . . .”

As far back in years as 1888 or ’89 I, then a teacher in a public school in a small New York town (Bernhard’s Bay) near my home town, became interested in this subject, and when my school of two rooms was polled it was learned that the children, to a soul, voted for the columbine. Since then at different times, I have endeavored to interest people in this subject of the columbine as a national flower; and just happening to read the May Nature magazine, I discovered that the subject of a national flower is being brought forward by that magazine and in the poll of votes printed the wild rose was running far ahead of the columbine.

Now, in my estimation, the reason for this popularity of the wild rose, is because of its aggressive assertion of itself. It is thorny and disagreeable to the touch, a thing we do not want in a national flower. If it is picked, it wilts in a few minutes. It comes out a beautiful pink, but before it dies it has faded to a colorless existence. Farmers root it out, as its luxuriant growth soon ruins the fences over which it sprangles. Not one of the phases of its short life, is connected with our desires in a national emblem. The only claim it has upon us that it is fragrant, and pretty, whereas the columbine from the beginning to the end is emblematical of our American standards.

. . . I feel that this is a subject every American should thoughtfully consider.

If the columbine were our national flower, every little immigrant even could have one growing in a tin can. . . .

OLA C. ATKINSON Eaton, Ind.

Turkey’s Djenany Bey

Sirs:

As an interested reader of TIME there is little that escapes my attention and interest, and on p. 13, col. 3, of the current number (July 1) of TIME, you made comment of the mistake in the arrest of Djenany Bey, the dark-skinned Second Secretary of the Turkish Embassy in Washington, while under the photographic likeness . . . you refer to him as “Egypt’s Djenany Bey.”

Please tell me whether he is the Second Secretary of the Turkish Embassy or whether he represents the government of King Fuad I of Egypt.

J. M. ZlNMAN Atlantic City, N..J.

Slender Second Secretary Bjenany Bay belongs to Turkey. For TIME, a fat error.—ED

Alabama’s Smith

Sirs:

I have been very, much surprised in reading the Milestones portion of your magazine for the past few weeks and noting that you have failed to mention among the deaths that of Mr. Gregory L. Smith of Mobile, Alabama, on June 6, 1929, after a short illness.

Mr. Gregory L. Smith for 54 years graced the Alabama Bar and for over 40 years was recognized as not only the leader of the Bar in his own State, but was generally regarded throughout the South as one of the most outstanding lawyers of the time. No abler lawyer or nobler man ever lived than Mr. Gregory L. Smith. . . . I was his secretary for many years. . . .

ROSA GERHARDT Mobile, Ala.

Grillos

Sirs:

I am sending you a sketch of the “Grillos,” the shackles worn by many Venezuelan political as well as criminal prisoners.

The bar weighs 50 pounds and the shackles are fastened almost rigidly by bending them over the bar with a hammer. The weight is so great that those who wear the device attach a rope to both ends of the bar to keep it off the ground when shuffling inch by inch across the floor. If no rope is available a tobacco box or little block of wood may be placed under it in the center to do service as a caster.

The grillos are banned by Venezuelan law, but their use has been revived in recent years. Frequently gangrene with automatic amputation of feet or death from gangrene result from ulcers produced by the shackles.

Some prisoners . . . have had two and three pairs of grillos applied.

C. LEIGH STEVENSON New York, N. Y.

Argot

Sirs:

. . . Who wants to ride the rods or who does? The motorcar marked the passing of the trainride-stealing American bum, with his curious lingo. That there have never been a dozen masters in this profession is proved by the confusion of terms. To the next generation, the argot of the American hobo will be as incomprehensible as that of Villon’s thieves, because apparently there is no one capable of setting them down now. Why doesn’t TIME, for a time, open its columns to authoritative bum’s language, so that the poets and novelists of future days will have something to go by when mooning over the curious existence of the trainride-stealing American hobo, circa 1900?

But why worry about anything so trivial? Not yet have the front-line trenches of the World War produced anything faintly resembling a good novel, nor to my mind will they. I don’t suppose we shall even have a story by a real soldier describing exactly his emotions at the front, pleasure and excitement—the exultation of coming alive to the end of a day and of an action—as well as the pain and horror.

MAX FECKLER San Diego, Calif.

To U. S. hobo argot, for historical purposes, TIME’S columns are open. For a World War novel, let correspondent Feckler try All Quiet on the Western Front by onetime German Soldier Erich Maria Remarque. (TIME, June 17)—ED.

Miscellany

Sirs:

I missed TIME’S entertaining “Miscellany” column in the June 17 edition.

The following might have been sensational news had the tragedy taken place, for instance, in Chicago:

“In Mexico City, one Nicanor Valdés, while riding in a street car, went suddenly insane, drew out a gun, fired six shots, seriously wounded three passengers. When arrested, disarmed policeman, shot himself.”

Incidentally, I was sitting two seats behind the man who did the shooting, reading your most interesting magazine.

JUAN MORAN Mexico, D. F.

Warrior Nation

Sirs:

In a footnote, page 13, TIME, June 24, you write: “And of course foreign Negroes—officials from Liberia, Abyssinia, Haiti—present their credentials in the Blue Room.”

You might remove Abyssinia and substitute Dominican Republic. The statement will then be correct.

The Abyssinians, self-styled Ethiopians, are not Negroes and never have been. They have Negro slaves, and in Shoa, Kobbo, and Amuru many are distinctly negroid, with tumid lips, small nose broad at the base, and frizzly black hair, just as we have Negroes in the south of the United States.

The majority of the people are of the Eastern Hamitic family mixed with cultured Himyaritic Semites from South Arabia. The prevailing color in Amhara and Gojjam is a deep brown, which shades northward to a light olive (Tigre, Lasta) and even to a fair complexion. The vast majority belong unquestionably to the Caucasic division of mankind.

I make this statement in fairness to a nation of great warriors Their present ruler, Taffari, descended from King Solomon and the Queen of Saba, is of older royal lineage in Ethiopia by at least five centuries than the Emperor of Japan, who claims to be descended from a goddess who flourished circa 660 B.C.

LOUIS ESTELL FAGAN II Major, U. S. Marines. Philadelphia, Pa.

Ethnologists say Abyssinians (Hamito-Semitic) are Caucasians with generous admixtures of Negro, Berber, Semite. — ED.

Jack-the-Snipper

Sirs:

In this week’s Miscellany (TIME, June 24) you recount the incident of a “snipper” in Boston. You were so prompt and authoritative in identifying the recent case of transvestism that I wondered why you failed to spot this case of a snipper who did not know why he snipped girls’ hair off, as body-fetichism. I was long a victim of this peculiar aberration, and only beat it when I identified it, as I did by chance when a copy of Krafft-Ebbing fell into my hands and when, shortly afterward I found that two months before I was born my mother had been accidentally shorn of all her hair by a stupid maid. I cannot remember a time when the cutting of girls’ hair did not excite and thrill me. At the San Francisco Exposition in 1915 I joined in the crowds with a safety-razor-blade and destroyed at least two dozen heads of hair, fortunately avoiding arrest although I was almost caught once. Several years later I was an entire Jack-the-Snipper epidemic in Dallas, all by myself, and was in a fair way to go all to pieces when I found the true explanation. At once my weird longings came under control. My hair-fetichism has since then been only speculative, though I doubt whether I will ever lose it. The bobbing epidemic afforded me the greatest possible joy, for I was able to see and list in a diary with all attendant circumstances over 500 “first bobbings” without revealing the circumstances at all. The rapidly increasing popularity of the boyish bob gives me almost as much (purely mental) pleasure. I certainly would have become a barber and so permitted myself constant association with this dæmon of mine did not California have a license law requiring four years of study of shaving and men’s haircutting (neither of which interest me). Lest you think I am a degenerate let me say that I am married, have two children, am 32 years of age, an army veteran with Croix de Guerre, a poet of local fame at least, and a successful businessman. My wife has never had the slightest inkling of this peculiarity—for, fortunately, I identified it early. And furthermore, we enjoy a certain social position in the community. The name I am signing to this letter is not the one which appears on my business letterhead, as I use this one only in connection with an endeavor in which my “alter ego” is known. This is the first time I have ever written the facts of my little peculiarity for publication. Fortunately I was able to find out what had bitten me before it drove me into difficulties. Let us hope that the young man in Boston is not sent to an insane asylum—for I am sure a psychiatrist’s services would straighten him out. Incidentally, there are two fine short stories which have been written on the subject— one, by Thomas Burke, appeared in the O’Brien anthology of Britsh Short Stories for 1923; the other, by one Frances Hammond (I think) in Snappy Stories in August, 1923. The latter was a genuinely fine piece of literature, and it is too bad that its subject matter condemned it to a magazine much looked down upon. It’s title was “The Souvenir.” In The Mill on the Floss George Eliot says: “I speak to those who have felt the delicious resistance of hair to shears,” or words to that effect. I wonder if she, too, was a fetichist?

A. Y. COOKE. San Francisco, Calif.