As a political and social philosopher Samuel Strauss will be remembered. For years he was publisher of the New York Globe.Later he wrote and printed a little journal of personal philosophy, The Villager, extraordinary in the freshness of its observation. To-day he is an absentee Iowa farmer living near New York, and, as his writings indicate, emphatically discontented with the tyranny which Things have come to exert over the modern spirit. ¶A New York lawyer, M’Cready Sykes seeks an answer to that question which, more than any other, is agitating conscientious parents. Grace Zaring Stone is the wife of a United States naval officer now serving with the Yangtze Patrol. ¶In recent years Mark M. Jones has centred his attention upon problems of organization and management in large industries, and in certain international religious movements. Constructively, we think, he applies business methods to the activities of a vast and manifold enterprise.

One of the younger literary generation, Joseph Wood Krutch, formerly of the Department of Philosophy at Columbia University, has faced disillusion ‘in a time haunted by ghosts of a dead world and not yet at home in its own.’ His essay is a companion piece to his acute analysis of ‘The Modern Temper,’ which appeared in the Atlantic for February. ¶After so reasoned a struggle with ‘thoughts to try men’s souls’ it is refreshing to turn to Agnes Repplier’s account of collective unreason, equally indulged in, we note, by both sexes. R. S. is a Harvard sonneteer who makes his first appearance in our pages. Edwin Muir is a young English writer whose critical studies, Transition and Latitudes, have helped to unlock the door of many modern mysteries. Captain B. H. Liddell Hart, military critic of the London Telegraph, has not confined his attention to contemporary leaders. He has to his credit a biography of Scipio Africanus, a study of Great Captains Unveiled, and a critique, The Remaking of Modern Armies. His present series of ‘Reputations: Ten Years After’ will be continued in successive issues. Tacy Stokes Paxton, a newcomer to the Atlantic, is a Kansas writer—and a friend of William Allen White’s. Roger Lewis tells us he has a wobbling mind. We know what it feels like

Ralph Linton is captain of the Marshall Field Expedition to Madagascar. In reading his narrative, which we publish by courtesy of the Field Museum, it is well to remember that he stands six feet two inches and is broad in proportion. Roderick Morison is the most seafaring poet we know. As the editor in charge of the wireless edition of the Daily Mail, he has crossed the Atlantic well over sixty times. And he’s never, never sick at sea. ¶Like many an Englishman whose home is where he hangs his hat, Henry W. Nevinson, a press correspondent of the first rank, finds solace in an occasional visit to the Mother of Men. ¶There are times when we all pine for a nice, polite illness and several weeks in a cool bed. Flora McIntyre has a philosophy for just such an occasion. ¶Professor Emeritus of Philosophy and for generations a famous teacher at Harvard, George Herbert Palmer took occasion last spring to point out certain discrepancies in the foundation of the Junior College. From the correspondence that came to him in reply he has selected certain questions to answer in his postscript.

Charles A. Beard is a professor of politics, an authority on American history, and a writer whose words, particularly when they also bear his wife’s initials, may be taken at par value. ¶The Reverend C. Stanley Smith sends us his manuscript from the Missionary Home, Shanghai. ¶A dirt farmer with a good many Wisconsin acres under his plough, Glenn W. Birkett tells us that his paper ’is the result of pains caused by the revival of Farm Aid.’

Justice

In the January issue of this year, we printed a paper by Clifford A. Tinker entitled ‘Jinx or Jeopardy,’ in which the author, accepting the verdict of an official Naval Board of Inquiry, charged Captain John H. Diehl, skipper of the City of Rome, with negligence in connection with the sinking of the submarine S-51.

In justice to Captain Diehl, we wish to report that a Federal jury has recently cleared him of all blame and the presiding judge has stated that ‘the evidence proved pretty conclusively that the cause of the accident was defective lights on the submarine.’ Experts at the trial, including naval officers, testified that the lights on all the vessels of the S-51 class were illegal.

The blame for the disaster is thus laid at the door of the Navy Department. There was a good deal of a clutter there already.

‘Jalna,’ twenty years later.

DEAR ATLANTIC, —
I am sending you the ending to Miss de la Roche’s very interesting prize story. I think we shall all like to know what became of the Whiteoak family after the celebration of ‘Granny’s’ one-hundredth birthday. I believe the author will be pleased to know these facts herself.
Twenty years later, on a beautiful June morning, we are again at the Jalna home in Canada. Granny died the night of her one-hundredth birthday, of exhaustion. Nicholas and Ernest outlived their mother but a short time, and Granny’s money eventually came to Renny. On this pleasant June day we find Jalna much changed and improved. Renny and Alayne live here with their boys and girls — two boys and two girls. Renny continues to be the ‘ head of the clan,’ though the clan are separated now, some dead and some far away. The notice of Eden’s death in California came to Renny two years after his grandmother passed away, and later Renny and Alayne were married and Alayne came back to Canada to be the mistress of Jalna.
Meg and Maurice still live at Vaughanlands. They have one son, Maurice, now nineteen years old. Piers and Pheasant live on the Jalna estate in a new house built for them by Renny. They have twin boys, Renny and Piers, and one girl, Alayne. Finch has become a famous musician and composer. He and his wife, also well known in musical circles, live in New York. Wakefield grew stronger and healthier as he became older. He won an Oxford scholarship, and is now an Anglican clergyman, vicar of All Saints Abbey, with a strong chance of soon becoming the bishop of his diocese. He is a High-Churchman, has never married, and will make an ideal Anglican bishop. We remember Wakefield as a mischievous little fellow, but notwithstanding this he always had a religious complex. Aunt Augusta is dead too. She returned to England, where she died five years ago.
Now we leave the Whiteoak family all settled and happy, each in his or her right place.
VIRGINIA VAN PELT

Anne Miller Downes’s paper on ‘The Cost of Illness’ has been received with sympathy and amazement — the sympathy of long-suffering patients, the amazement of members of the medical profession. The following letters are representative of the two opinions, and it is interesting to note that they come from the same state, where, incidentally,costs are noticeably lower than in certain other portions of our country.

OHIO
DEAR ATLANTIC, —
Mrs. Downes’s article, ‘The Cost of Illness,’ in the October Atlantic, holds for me a painful interest. I would rather forget this ’secret anxiety, ’ but Mrs. Downes reminds us that our problems should be viewed in the light of community interest.
We have been married thirty-five years. We not only belong to the large percentage of less than $5000 income, but we have never had more than half that amount. Yet we live under the assumption of being ‘rich’! Because my husband’s father was (for the then small town) successful; because, some thirty-seven years ago, my fiance bought a good lot on Main Street on which we later built a pretty home (for less than $5000), we are ‘Main Street’ people and therefore ‘rich.’
The allowance on which I run my home and pay all personal expenses is what any good hired housekeeper would get for herself alone. It is not hard to do now, but when we were bringing up and educating three children it took management as well as economy.
The first time that I underwent an operation (in our nearest large city) I had not the courage beforehand to mention the cost. The surgeon, finding that we live on Main Street, sent a bill for $350. That operation is considered a minor one, and was performed for relatives of mine in New York City for $100 in one case and $75 in the other. Their income was as large as ours. My surgeon went on a false assumption, and my husband, from pride and inexperience and desire to save me worry, said nothing. I did not know of the bill until months afterward when the receipt came.
This false assumption of wealth comes from the fact that merchants are supposed to be making money. In Mrs. Downes’s list of prices charged, those to business men are from two to five times those of the clerks. In our case, as in many another, no such difference exists. It is the overhead expense in these days that makes running stores so difficult. The outside investments that members of my family have made have been mostly disastrous. Hence, to-day our economies, which have seemed so queer to well-meaning, remonstrating friends, are as necessary as ever.
Figure, then, what it has meant when other operations and serious illnesses have occurred. When for five months we had to have a night nurse in the home, she received from two to three times the amount that I receive weekly for all expenses. ‘Practical’ nurses drew the smaller pay, and trained nurses the larger. Fortunately the latter do not get as much here as in New York City. The nurse’s bill was only one item of the increased expense, but added to all the other sources of anxiety and sorrow, the cost of the illness was nerve-racking.
As muses belong to a union which fixes the price, I see no help for this worry but to forestall it by sickness insurance.
Specialists and surgeons have seemed like hard-hearted materialists, but perhaps our acquaintance with them has been unfortunate. On the other hand, I have known some skillful doctors who seem to be filled with the spirit of the Great Physician. Their reward is greater than that of the almighty dollar. (You see I spell this god without capitals, for while absence of it is a hardship, its worship is disastrous.)
Most of the world seems so money-mad that I doubt anything will be done to stop this increasing cost of illness. If by discussion of it you induce some young people to invest in sickness insurance, or place a reserve fund inviolable by the temptation of bubble investments, you will have done a good thing.
M. F. J.

OHIO
DEAR ATLANTIC, —
Undoubtedly Anne Miller Downes’s article will draw fire, as it should.
On the first page we note that muses are paid seven or eight dollars a day. In my country (Ohio) nurses are paid six dollars for maternity and medical cases. This is for either twelve or twenty-four hours’ work. That is, therefore, twenty-five to fifty cents an hour. Remember, this is the rate paid to high-school graduates with at least three years’ additional training. For contagious cases, when the nurse risks life and health, she is more than compensated by receiving thirty-three cents an hour.
Now we come to the harrowing experience of the poverty-stricken professor. This gentleman received only $425 a month for his labors in the vineyard. He could not, according to the worthy historian, pay $150 for his treatment. In my city I will find five men, men with at least three years’ special training, who will do this operation for no more than $40. I myself will wager my last year’s income that I can remove these offending members in fifteen minutes.
In regard to fees charged, I will quote from the fee manual of the Ohio State Compensation Board. These fees, understand, are those paid to physicians by the state for patients injured in any accident taking place in any establishment employing more than three persons.
Abscess (listed as minor dressing) $3.00
Amputation, easy (listed as foot, band, fingers) 25.00 to 50.00
Anaesthesia (hospital) 5.00
“ (physician) 10,00
Tracheotomy (see minor operations) 5.00 to 10.00
Trepanning (as skull fracture) 25.00 to 100.00
These rates are construed as a fair average of those charged throughout the state. Of course some men, by reason of their training and experience or cupidity, are able to charge more, but then many, many more charge less. This last statement does not require proof. Any average, of a necessity, represents many more less than the mean than are represented above.
Now turn to the doctor’s side of the story. ‘You have invested a capital of $10,000 at the least.’ This is only too true. My pre-medical work, taken, of course, after the usual highschool period, was of three and one half years’ duration. This represented $3500 in cold cash. I defy anyone to go to a respectable college or colleges for less. My medical course was, as the law requires, four years in length. These years averaged me about $1400 each. The total to date then being, at the time of my graduation, $8900. Then came twenty-two months’ interneship. This did not cost anything in cash, but netted me the magnificent sum of $225 — in addition, of course, to my board and room. On the credit side, then, we have $225. On the debit side, $8900. The balance is $8075 in red. This is spread over nine and one half years. The simple interest on this investment for this time would be $2884.43. This brings the total to $11,559.43.
So much for cash. A man of the calibre to develop and hold a practice should, at the age of seventeen, be worth $1800 a year. If he applied himself to any going business for ten years his salary would be commensurate. Let us, for the sake of argument, place it at $600 a month. Of course he would not make that from the start, so $300 would be a fair average. Multiply $300 by 120 months and we have $36,000.
Add the cash expended, with interest, and the amount lost by absence from gainful occupation, and we have $47,559.43. At 5½ per cent this sum would net about $2750 yearly. But more of this later.
My income in cash is about $8400 a year. I have been in private practice two years. My office costs me about $3400 a year to operate. Subtract $3400 from $8400 and the net is $5000 even. Then subtract the $2750 in the above paragraph and we have $2250. Since I work every day in the year, we must divide the residue by 365. This means, then, that I receive $6.01 daily for my work. Since I am subject to call at any hour — that is, twenty-four hours daily — we must further divide the honorarium of $6.01 by 24. This shows us that I receive twenty-five cents an hour for my services. What day laborer will work for that? What trade-union would not declare a pogrom of capitalists if its members received only that much?
We lose 36 per cent in collections. This statement is compiled from the experiences of many physicians in many places. This figure may vary widely for specific locations, but on the whole I feel it to be correct. In the small town or village, collections must be almost 100 per cent. In a city the size of Cleveland I have heard that they run as low as 50 per cent.
A one-inch bandage costs us from seven to ten cents. A pad of gauze, not counting the cost of sterilizing, must be at least fifteen cents. Mercurochrome, the antiseptic, for 5 percent solution, costs us twenty-five cents an ounce. Adhesive tape costs us from $1.10 to $1.75 a roll. Certainly dressings for forty-two days are cheap at twelve dollars. That is thirty cents a day. Try to dress a sore finger for thirty cents.
We do not need endowed hospitals as mentioned. No self-respecting person will accept charity unnecessarily, no matter how disguised. Better to direct our attention to the retention of some of our worldly goods, not using our entire incomes in the payment of chattel mortgages incurred as high as two years before. A certain amount of illness will overtake any family. A budget for this will release a family from all fear of that evil day. I think I may safely say that no honest physician, and most are honest, will unnecessarily burden a family with debt. We ask only that people play fair with us. If charity is needed, then it will be given. If only a certain fee can be charged, we will gratefully accept that and lay up the charity balance where moths do not corrupt, nor rust decay. Ask your family physician.
I am asking the Atlantic to use only my initials, since our code is very definite against any form of self-advertisement. If anyone is interested, the Atlantic may divulge my name, after being shown good reason for so being required.
Sincerely yours,
E. K. G., M.D.

More ‘home thoughts from abroad.’

Los ANGELES, CAL.
DEAR ATLANTIC, —
I have just read Mr. James Truslow Adams’s article in the October number. It is very interesting and very sympathetic. Like Lowell and the American of fifty years ago who made every Englishman love the United States, Mr. Adams has entered into the spirit of the countries. He has correctly analyzed the meaning of it all. Mr. Adams’s article may be read with profit by so many Americans. (I wished to say by so many of us, but was prevented for reasons that will presently be apparent.)
I am a Londoner born within a stone’s throw of the Houses of Parliament and Buckingham Palace, of as noble a lineage as anyone can claim. Through my father I am an hereditary Freeman of the City of London. Out of that arises a grievance, which is that London is not a city like New York or Paris. The City of London consists of one square mile with a population of about thirty thousand; the County of London has 226 square miles. Our Lord Mayor’s jurisdiction is strictly limited to the one square mile. We have our own police, the rest of London does not control its police; with various consequences: among others, that these alien police have licensed a flood of motor vehicles to ply over the same routes as the street cars, practically putting the latter out of business. Each of the twenty-eight municipalities comprised in the County has a separate government, with fewer powers than even small American cities.
The little City of London has a charter more ample than any city in the world. What the people of London desire is the extension of that charter to the County. The existing anomaly is due to graft (of a magnitude that would turn an American grafter green with envy) and partly to political considerations.
Mr. Adams remarks on tulips and irises dotting lawns of inestimable value as ’real estate.’ It may interest him to know that as coowner, with less than one thousand others, I have the life privilege of playing tennis on any of five exquisitely maintained grass courts within the City itself, where the ground is worth over ten million dollars per acre; and we cannot sell because noblesse oblige, and none of us dare suggest a sale, although the law does not forbid. Those lawns have been there for ten centuries and will probably remain for another ten.
Curiously enough, while the Houses of Parliament., the Government Offices, and Scotland Yard are in the great city of Westminster, the Bank of England, the Stock Exchange, and the Law Courts are within the City of London. The alien police of the County capture criminals and send them inside the city for trial, where the City police force takes charge. No citizens control the County police. Not only the criminal law, but all the higher civil law, is administered within the City and not in the County. There are no superior judges or appeal judges sitting outside the City, but the public records are kept outside the City!
In Mr. Adams’s excellent paper nothing strikes me more forcibly than his allusion to the ’ characteristic remark’: ‘Why don’t you go and live there?’ Happily that is an innovation. It was not always so. In old times strangers were welcomed here with both hands and assured that with their help this country could be made still better. That was the welcome which made people love America. It is a pity it has changed since the war.
I have lived here a good many years and have often had to answer that question and answer it much the same as Mr. Adams. He puts his finger on the weak spot when he says Europeans dread Americanization of Europe. It will be a bad thing for the world in every respect when it is standardized and that is what Americanization means. Variety is essential and it would be equally bad to have the world Anglicized, Germanized, or standardized to any other pattern. That is what militarism implies, the militarism which we went out to destroy a few years ago. This country has its own great destiny to fulfill. Let it be America, the America of joyous idiosyncrasies, and let everyothercountry retain its peculiarities, so that we may still find experience and joy in travel, and in every country find some suggestion for the spiritual gain of others.
THOMAS SUTTON

Medicine for criminals.

BAR HARBOR, MAINE
DEAR ATLANTIC, —
After reading Mr. Edward Weeks’s interesting article, ’A Criminal in Every Family,’ published in the October Atlantic, I feel prompted to write you the following incident. I am writing it exactly as I heard it related by a Missouri tourist who spent the month of August motoring through New England.
’When I arrived in your town, I drove at once to the busiest section of the main street and drew up at the curb. Just as I was about to step out, I realized that a big, blue-coated traffic officer had left his post and was coming toward me. “ Great Scott, what next!” I said to myself. “On this trip from Missouri to Maine I have been commanded to move on, to draw in closer, to get off the yellow line (totally indistinct), to blow the horn more often, to refrain from blowing the horn, to move faster, to cut out that speed. Now here is an officer bigger and broader than any of the others. What is he going to do to me?”
’He came up to the car, placed a powerful left hand on the door, raised an even more powerful right in a sort of salute, then he opened on me the sunniest smile I have ever seen, and said, “How do, sir. I see you are a stranger here. Anything I can do for you?”
‘I hope that cop can read the language of facial expression. It was the only language I could use at that moment. I had intended to spend two days in your town, I have been here already six days. That which gives me the greatest pleasure — after the pleasure of contemplating the beauty of your seashore, mountains, and lakes — is driving into the village to exchange cheery greetings with your genial officers of police.’
LOUISE DEASY

EDGEWOOD, R. I.
DEAR ATLANTIC, —
I have a sure recipe to remove ’A Criminal in Every Family.’ I took the medicine for three days, so can testify as to its ability to make one righteous. Drive without a horn.

A WOMAN DRIVER
P. S. My nerves were restored when I had the horn fixed.

The positive defense of Paris is still being waged by military critics.

JACKSONVILLE, FLORIDA
DEAR ATLANTIC, —
Marshal Foch has recently been quoted as saying that people are trying to prove that everyone except Joffre won the first Battle of the Marne.
In the article entitled ‘Gallieni — A Reputation Ten Years After,’ in the September issue, Captain B. H. Liddell Hart speaks of the attack of Maunoury’s Sixth Army on the Ourcq, a part of the action known as the Battle of the Marne.
Captain Hart states, on page 360, ‘And Gallieni pushed forward every possible reserve he could scrape up in order to strengthen Maunoury, Here occurred the immortal episode of the Paris taxicabs. The Seventh Division had just detrained in Paris . . .’
Captain Hart does not tell us where this Seventh Division came from.
The Seventh Division, with the Eighth, plus the Corps auxiliary troops, comprised the French Fourth Corps under command of General Boelle. It had been in action in the region of the Argonne, many miles to the east of Paris. Badly as this Fourth Corps was needed at various points of the French line, General Joffre had it ordered out of action to proceed to the region of Paris.
It takes a number of trains and a number of days to accomplish rail movement of a corps, and the movement of this Fourth Corps was commenced some time before Maunoury’s attack, in which its Seventh Division participated. General Joffre would scarcely have effected the movement of this corps had he not intended to have it used in something more positive than a passive defense of Paris.
W. R. WHEELER

Those who read the Reverend C. Stanley Smith’s account of the Nanking Raid in this issue will have an uncommon sympathy with this distant correspondent.

UNZEN, JAPAN
DEAR ATLANTIC, —
Living as I have for over twenty-five years in the interior of China, I have ever found the Atlantic a source of information on world events. It has seemed to me to present an unprejudiced picture of what was going on in the uttermost parts of the earth, and so it has gained my confidence. Now in my confusion of mind, trying to puzzle out what has happened to the press in America, what has caused the public of America to be so unsympathetic to the sufferings and insults under which their own nationals in China are staggering, and to be so extremely sympathetic to the Nationalist Party that is openly causing these sufferings, I turn to the Atlantic, hoping for some answer to my questioning.
It is true that I have never before gone through a revolution, never been in the midst of a country torn by civil war and in the chaos of no government but that of military generals. But I have for many years during the quiet evenings, far from the movies, studied and read all of the books that I could get hold of on the American Revolution, and the French Revolution, and the revolution now going on in Russia, so that I feel I can intelligently compare what I see going on in China with what has taken place in other countries. I think I am not prejudiced, for personally I have not suffered at the hands of the Nationalists, and I have many friends in that party.
To go back a bit to the time when the Sun Yatsen government in Canton was getting its start, the youth of China, so often humiliated by the weakness of their country, saw a vision, and not only the youth of China, but all those who lived within her borders and loved her people. You will find the Y. M, C, A. Chinese secretaries strong Nationalists; the N. C. C., composed of supposedly the strongest Christian Chinese leaders in China, strongly Nationalist; the teachers in the mission schools, the pupils in the mission schools, the faculty of the leading colleges in China, the mission leaders, all pro-Nationalist, coming out openly, both in articles in the press and in bold advice given to the home mission boards and to the United States Government. Long before the demand for registration was made by the Nationalists, many schools had already been put under Chinese principals, and some stations had been turned over to purely Chinese leaders with full control of funds. This was going on rapidly as the educated men and women came from the colleges and from postgraduate work in America. Never was a movement started with such support from the educated youth and from the influential foreigners in the schools in China. So much for a background to what has happened.
Looting and occasional acts of violence even to people from a friendly country may be expected, but the propaganda in America has persisted in saying that this movement was ‘not antiforeign or antichristian, it was only anti-imperialistic; that soldiers will get out of hand and we must not lay that up against China,’ even when our consulate in Nanking was looted and our flag torn down. I would agree to that if there were only the one incident, or if these incidents were always the work of ignorant soldiers. As soon as the Southern army began to move toward Shanghai, the stories began to come in from sources that were unimpeachable. The C. I. M., which has many women alone in small cities in the far interior, has suffered severely from the Nationalists wherever they have occupied territory. Most of their property has been taken and the women treated with insults. The Y. M. C, A., whose proud boast is that they have from the beginning given responsibility to the Chinese leaders, have had their property confiscated in Hangchow, in Changsha, and possibly in other places. Long after the soldiers have passed on, and when the civil authorities have taken control, American school buildings, American mission dwellings, American business property, have been looted, destroyed, and taken over for Nationalist headquarters.
Now for my first question: Why does the Nationalist Party, which was welcomed by the educated Christian leaders and by the faculty of mission schools, and which is so heartily supported by the leading American magazines, by American mission boards, despoil and confiscate American property, and close American schools? Medical colleges, the hope of China, have been closed, even the Yale in China, which had a Chinese board of control; no school that was a going concern, no hospital that was doing a fine work of succor for the community, even though in the hands of the local Chinese, but has been destroyed or confiscated by the Southerners. The protests of the local Chinese have counted for nothing; the local Nationalists have been insulted and put out of power. What does this mean for the immediate future of China? Can one expect law, justice, order, from a party that destroys its own friends? These are hard, cold facts — destruction, insult, confiscation, all along the line. And more than that, posters with scurrilous lies of what foreigners do to defenseless Chinese have scattered the seeds of hatred from one end of the country to the other. I have seen the posters, and they are terrible. I have seen the effects of these lies on the minds of poor ignorant laborers, and the anger of mobs roused to fury by lies.
So my second question is, Why does the American public, through its newspapers, leading magazines, churches, and mission boards, cry down the business man as though he were a criminal if he protests against the destruction of his property and asks for his rights according to treaties between his country and China? Why do churches in Philadelphia send a protest against the so-called ’bombarding of Nanking’ and never a word of protest against the burning of foreign homes, the killing of friendly teachers, and the insults to American women and children? Why does one mission board even go so far as to call home one of its leading men on the field, and other boards reprimand their members, for sending true information to America in regard to what actually took place in Nanking? I am puzzled, but more than that, I am distressed by the position my own country is taking and the effect it must have upon the country I love, China. As Colonel House said in his Intimate Papers, the influence of public opinion has great weight, and can accomplish much. I do not want gunboats to force China, but I do want the weight of an intelligent, just, and honest American opinion to show China and the young misguided students that America won her place in the civilized world by working, not by talking.
ONE Wno Is PUZZLED

Cape Codisms abroad.

DEAR ATLANTIC, —
The use of ‘tempest’ for ‘thunderstorm,’ reported by Mrs. Phillips from Cape Cod, is common in England among the country people of the Norfolk coast. I believe that the East Anglian origin of many American peculiarities of speech has been pointed out before now. Here is an example new to me which I have recently seen in a pamphlet called Reminiscences of a Norfolk Parson (W. H. Marcon): ’The old word “ clever” I’ve heard used about a kind urbane person; apparently it has no connection with brains.’
Probably most of us have heard the same usage from old New Englanders.
I may say that in a delightful out-of-print volume entitled Life and Sport on the Norfolk Broads, by Oliver Ready, the Cape Codism appears in the short glossary — in this case as ‘tampist,’ which represents accurately the word which I have heard.
H. E. ALLEN

HUBBARDSTON, MICHIGAN
DEAR ATLANTIC, —
Our family is several generations removed from Cape Cod, but all of Mrs. Phillips’s idioms except the use of ‘tempest’ are very familiar to me. I do not quite agree with her explanation of the source of the expression ‘ would like to have. ’ As she suggests, it is always used in connection with something unpleasant, and I think is just another way of saying ’likely,’ meaning ‘having reason to expect,’ ’in danger of.’ So the housewife who ’would like to have burned her pies’ just meant she was likely to have burned them. I wonder if you are familiar with this use of ‘strange.’ My baby and I went to call on my Irish neighbor. She greeted me and then turned to the baby with the question, ‘Does she make strange? ’ This was a new expression to me and I puzzled some moments before I realized that she was only asking if the baby were shy.
MABEL G. LANGDON

What every woman knows

DEAR ATLANTIC, —
As to ‘The Right to Be Happy,’ in your October issue. Dostoevsky, in his good but overlong Brothers Karamazov, says, ‘Happiness is meant for men. He who is happy is doing God’s will.’
OLD SUBSCRIBER