Letters, Oct. 11, 1937

South’s Exception

Sirs:

I am sure that it is a very foolish thing for me to expose myself in a discussion with such a learned gentleman as Leslie White of the Department of Anthropology of the University of Michigan [TIME, Sept. 20].

However, the records on “spittin’ image” should certainly be kept straight. I don’t think that the expression has anything to do with saliva.

It originated, I believe, among the darkies of the South and the correct phrasing—without dialect—is “spirit and image.” It was originally used in speaking of some person whose father or mother had passed on—and the colored folks would say—”the very spi’t an’ image of his daddy.”

We in the South are guilty of taking scant notice of the letter “r” and naturally the phrase has come to be spoken as though it were “spittin’ image.”

JOEL CHANDLER HARRIS JR.

Atlanta, Ga.

Stigma from Sullivan

Sirs:

I wish to make a correction of a serious error in your report on the death of John William Navin Sullivan in TIME, Aug. 23, at top of p. 26, since your statement attaches an undeserved stigma on his family. Mr. Sullivan was under my care at the London Hospital shortly before his death, when he was suffering from complete paralysis of both legs. But it was not due to or associated with syphilis, nor was the clinical picture hardly suggestive of syphilis.

The examination of the spinal fluid showed a normal cell count and protein content as well as a negative Wassermann reaction. The diagnosis of Disseminated Sclerosis of the Spinal Cord was made and concurred in by two eminent London neurologists. Unfortunately a post mortem examination was not permitted.

MAX T. SCHNITKER, M. D.

Cushing Fellow in Neurosurgery London Hospital

London, England

Gum Man’s Custom

Sirs:

What the devil do gum manufacturers do? Mr. Bowman [TIME, Sept. 13] drinks beer in a topper and a bare chest. Is this the custom? What does it say on his hat?

MITCHELL SANGER

Chicago, Ill.

Sirs:

TIME readers will wonder why Bubbleman Bowman drinks top-hatted, barechested. In this picture Mr. Bowman is attending a fancy dress party, to which guests were required to travel by air. With two friends Mr. Bowman represented the famous three little men, which advertise Atlantic gasoline. On his hat is “Flash.” The three men—”White,” “Flash” and “Plus.”

B. FRANKLIN ESHLEMAN Benjamin Eshleman Co.

Philadelphia, Pa.

Business Like Ours

Sirs:

As a TIME quoter and cover to cover reader of your magazine, my confidence was completely shaken after reading under Business & Finance your analysis of the penny chewing-gum business in the articles “Bowman’s Bubbles.”

In a business like ours, a certain amount of exaggeration is expected, but when you state that Gum Inc.’s Blony “for eight years has been the most popular, and comprises at least 60% of that delicacy now sold in the U. S.” you are guilty of an unwarranted statement and one that even the most prejudiced Blony salesman knows is untrue, as much as they would like to believe it.

When you dignify such fantasies by further stating that Gum, Inc. is “the biggest firm in the U. S. catering exclusively to the penny gum trade,” you are guilty not only of an error but you have innocently damaged the reputation of the firm that is entitled to the very statements you make for Mr. Bowman’s company. . . .

WM. B. HUNT

Sales Manager Frank H. Fleer Corp.

Philadelphia, Pa.

TIME was misinformed on the first count, right on the second. According to the best impartial estimates in the chewing gum trade, no single company does so much as half the total bubble gum business. Frank H. Fleer Corp. (“Bubble Bubble”) and Gum, Inc., are each credited with about 30%, the Goudy Gum Co. of Boston with slightly less. The Fleer company is older and larger than Gum, Inc., but it does not cater exclusively to the penny gum trade.—ED.

Ontario’s Power

Sirs:

Didn’t you drop a decimal point in your interesting story about “Mitch” (Canada) in the Sept. 20 issue?

In col. 1, p. 17, you state the Ontario Hydro-Electric Power Commission claims “the world’s lowest electric rates”—about 9¢ per kilowatt hour in Ottawa.

Down here in Birmingham I pay a maximum of 6½¢ which scales down as low as 1½¢. Last month’s average rate was 2.78¢. That is not a TVA rate either, but one supplied by the Birmingham Electric Co., which distributes current it buys from the Alabama Power Co. at the city limits.

Either the O. H. E. P. C. is trying to get away with murder or your decimals are screwy.

PETTERSEN MARZONI

Birmingham, Ala.

Ontario’s power is priced on a sliding scale but most consumers pay about .9¢ per kilowatt hour.—ED.

Bigger?

Sirs:

While Feigenspan (Pride of the Nation) saltwater fish (TIME, Sept. 20) were getting smaller and smaller, Fitger’s (He-Man’s Nordlager—Naturally Better) fresh-water fish were growing bigger and bigger, as disclosed by 14-weeks’ contest conducted throughout States of Minnesota, North Dakota, Wisconsin and Michigan.

Scales (Toledo, not fish) showed 8,751 pounds of game fish put up for prizes in 770 separate entries, including muskellunge, northern pike, black bass and walleyes, average for all classes of better than 11 pounds.

After 175 weekly prizes had been claimed, following quartet reached over the gunwales for grand awards:

Muskellunge, 53 lb. 2 oz., Roosevelt Lake, Charles Leitsch, St. Paul, Minn.

Wall-eyed pike, 15 lb. 2 oz., Burntside Lake, T. J. Pekkala, Ely, Minn.

Northern pike, 34 lb. 9 oz., Leaf Lake, Hank Cummings, Detroit Lakes, Minn.

Black bass, 9 lb. 12 oz., Lake of the Woods, Lawrence Saurdiff, Warroad, Minn. .

GEORGE H. BRADLEY Judge of Contest Fitger Brewing Co.

Duluth, Minn.

Blowout

Sirs:

In TIME for Sept. 27 I read: “. . . performances such as one he heard of Mozart’s Eine Kleine Nachtmusik. . . . ‘Here now the orchestra is well into it; here is that sforzando where the flutes blew out a gasket last Saturday night—they have taken it at 45 miles an hour without a quiver.’ ”

While Amateur Flautist Gerald White Johnson (quoted above) may be leading us toward a more picturesque musical speech— which assuredly can stand improvement— I have very grave doubts as to whether he actually heard the flutes make that explosive sforzando in Mozart’s well-mannered suite; or that they took “it at 45 miles an hour.”

A hasty glance at my score of Eine Kleine Nachtmusik was hardly necessary to remind me that the instrumentation calls for violins (1st & 2nd), violas, celli and bassi. There is no suggestion of a cue for flutes or any other wind instruments. In fact, every intelligent listener knows that this Mozart work is one of the few outside the composer’s strictly chamber pieces which is solely for strings. Furthermore, a speed of 45 m.p.h. is rather dizzy for such romantic Nachtmusik (night music—nocturne).

Perhaps it was Mr. Johnson’s speedometer which blew out.

SCHIMA KAUFMAN

Author, Mendelssohn: A Second Elijah.

Philadelphia, Pa.

3.2% True

Sirs:

Under Music in the Sept. 27 issue of TIME, you say that H. L. Mencken asked and was given permission to lead an NBC orchestra when he was interviewed on beer after 3.2 became legal four years ago. This is 3.2 percent true. He did some capable batoneering in the studios in rehearsal, but lack of time prevented the Mencken music from going on the air.

Another request, however, NBC was only too glad to accommodate. The Baltimore sage asked for permission to swig beer during the broadcast, whereupon an order went out for several bottles. Before the beer arrived, glasses to drink it with were brought to the studios by none other than Owen D. Young and Merlin H. Aylesworth, then president of NBC. But Mencken in the meantime had sent for and received steins from Bloomingdale’s.

For realism’s sake, as well as the sentiment attached, Mr. M. quaffed of his subject matter the while discussing it with his interviewer.

EMIL J. CORWIN

NBC Press Division

New York City.

Fingerless Tennists

Sirs:

Your ”Champions at Forest Hills” article in TIME, Sept. 13 together with cover-photo of Germany’s von Cramm, were both excellent. You give interesting data concerning von Cramm. Photo also shows interesting detail of Champion No. 2.

Right hand grasping racket in photo appeared strange to me in finger detail.

Today at Lake Forest’s Onwentsia Club doubles match—von Cramm & Henkel v. Budge & Mako—seated a few feet from von Cramm, I noted his right hand. As TIME’S photo would indicate, right forefinger is missing at first joint.

To me this is newsworthy. What would appear to be a handicap to the average player apparently hinders von Cramm in no way. More credit to the Baron.

R. M. BALCH JR.

Minneapolis-Honeywell Regulator Company

Chicago, Ill.

When he was eight, Baron Gottfried von Cramm had the first joint of his right index finger bitten off by a horse. William Tatem Tilden III lost the first joint of the third finger of his right hand from an infection after running into a wire backstop in 1924.—ED.

Krasnaya, Krasivaya

Sirs:

Under Cinema, TIME, Sept. 13, you state in a footnote that in Russian the adjective meaning “red” also means “pretty,” hence the play on words in speaking of a “red girl” in the Communist sense. Whoever wrote that had better have a talk with Mr. Berlitz and brush up his Russian because krasnaya meaning “red” and krasivaya meaning “pretty” are similar in appearance but entirely different in meaning. I quote the feminine form of the adjective and the transliteration is my own.

RENE C. CHAMPOLLION

New York City

Reader Champollion is wrong. Krasnaya, which also means red, is to krasivaya as bonny is to pretty. Authority: Moscow-published Russian-English Dictionary compiled by Professors V. Müller & S. Boyanus.—ED.

Two Points

Sirs :

Thank you for your letter of Sept. 9 with the enclosed copy of TIME’S Sept. 13 issue describing the new supernova. Everything in the article is straight except two points to which I call your attention for possible future occasion:

1) No Bulgarian but a Swiss am I, though born in Bulgaria. This as a word of caution to you in case you ever run into one of the thousands of Zwickys whose lives and deaths stand recorded in the church registers (Kirchenbücher) of Mollis, Canton of Glarus, Switzerland for over 600 years.

2) Mt. Wilson can claim many fundamental discoveries, but not the new supernova, which was first photographed with the 18-in. Schmidt telescope of the California Institute of Technology on Palomar Mountain, future site of the 200-in. telescope now under construction.

F. ZWICKY

Pasadena, Calif.

Suspected Exaggeration

Sirs:

Referring to “Flight v. Glide” [TIME, Aug. 30] I can add further testimony that flying fish fly, and sometimes fly high.

I was officer of the deck on the U. S. S. Bennington one night in the early ’90s cruising in the vicinity of Barbados when a school of flying fish flew over the bridge. Just abaft the bridge were two large cowled ventilators leading down into the fireroom. A few minutes later the engineer officer on watch called up through the voice tube that several fish had dropped through a ventilator into the fireroom and the firemen were heating their shovels to cook a late fish supper.

I overheard the incident sometime later by a member of the fireroom force who stated that they held hot shovels under the ventilator as the fish came down and flapjacked them until nicely broiled. This, I suspect, was an exaggeration.

J. M. ELLICOTT Captain, U. S. Navy, retired

Mare Island, Calif.

More Butter, Less Sauce

Sirs:

Having read the stirring story by Clem splutter (Hugh J. Crossland) in TIME of Sept. 6, I hasten to offer myself as an inrolee in the Former Apple Butter Stirrers’ Society. . .

My memories take me back to a big basement kitchen in a New Jersey farm house where the preliminaries took place that preceded the next-day’s stirrin’. Down in one corner of the orchard was a group of apple trees known as “Yellow-Sweets.” These were par-excellent for making sweet-cider and indispensable for making apple butter. The day before, a big load of cull apples went to the cider press and a dozen bags of the finest, to the basement for the grand apple peelin’.

One of the hired men operated the peeler and the other hands, along with the women and children, cored and sliced.

It would be near midnight by the time three tubs were full and ready for the morning after. Included in the preliminaries, was a trip to the woods for sassafras root and slippery elm bark for flavoring. Next morning an outdoor fire was made and the freshly scoured copper kettle swung into place. Cider on to boil, apples ready to add, and the bilin’ was under way. Also ready was the long handle stirrer with a row of clean white corn husks tied through the row of holes in the end of the paddle. This was manipulated, all day long, by a relay of stirrers of which I was one. By the time the cows came home there was a grand accumulation of spicy, mahogany-colored apple butter ready to store in stone crocks for all-winter’s use.

I must confess I was never ill from eating apple butter with home made bread, but, in order to qualify, I’ll offer my transgression of slipping away from a morning task for a siesta in the wood shed with a huge basket of butternuts. I was fond of them and the supply so generous I indulged past discretion. I fain recall a most distressing followup, which, I am sure, would equal or exceed any after effects of home-stirred apple butter. With this recital I hope to qualify as a member of the “Butter Stirrers” in full and regular standing.

SARAH A. RIBBLE

Marshfield, Ore.

Sirs:

If I’d a-sot right smack on a tack I woodn’t aben more surprized then I wuz ter larn how many TIME readers wuz former apple butter stirrers. Why, shucks, th’ mailman thot Xmas was here already, jedgin from th’ extra letters he’s had ter deliver.

It wuz mighty fine o’ yer ter let yer readers know about our “Former Apple Butter Stirrers’ Society Fer The Purpose Of Promulgatin, Promotin and Perpetuatin Memories Of Apple Butter Stirrin Days.” And th’ former apple butter stirrers thet’s rote in ‘re mighty grateful, too.

Some o’ ’em ‘re still stirrin apple butter. But most o’ us ain’t done no stirrin since Aunt Tillie cought Uncle Jake sneakin in fer a second look at Little Egypt at th’ Chicago World’s Fair BSR (Before Sally Rand.)

Course nearly all o’ us wood trade our false teeth an hot water bottles fer some o’ th’ good old apple butter agin. An if yer kin find some feller thet’ll guarantee ter make as good apple butter as we use ter stir, all he’s got ter do is tell us about it in TIME (an he woodn’t need a big ad), and his fortune’s made. Fer most all o’ us wood be reglar customers.

I’m havin a fancy new membership card drawed up by one of them smart young artists. An jest as soon as it’s done, I’ll see yer get a honorary membership.

Yers fer better apple butter an less apple sauce.

CLEM SPUTTER (HUGH J. CROSSLAND)

(Editor, Marion County Review) Marion, Ohio