The Contributors' Column

WHEN a general magazine devotes more than twenty pages to a single story, the editors stake their reputation that it is a good one. In April of 1934 the Atlantic published ‘Good-bye, Mr. Chips!’ and now it offers ‘The Voice of Bugle Ann.’ MacKinlay Kanlor, born in Iowa in 1904, is the author of Long Remember and Turkey in the Straw. ‘The hound-dog story, he writes, had been brewing for a long time, inspired perhaps through association some years ago with my friends Doc Martindale and George Proctor, two men out in the Middle West who know running dogs from nose to tail tip. The idea for Bugle Ann” awakened me in the middle of the night. I Called up my friend Tom Duncan, in Des Moines, over the long-distance phone; had him drive to Proctor’s farm and get the answers to several perplexing questions. He sent me the material by air mail, and then I started writing the story.’

‘America’s First Ambassador is a chapter from an important forthcoming book, The Lees of Virginia, by Burton J. Hendrick, author ol various authoritative histories, and twice recipient of Pulitzer prize awards. ∆’ Art and Democracy’ is a plea lor government encouragement of art, by Edward Bruce, a painter of distinction who, under the New Deal, has been in official charge of relieving distressed artists. ∆ ‘Asylum’ concludes the remarkable story of a man’s salvation from acute alcoholism after his voluntary commitment to a mental hospital. Its author, William Seabrook, has had a varied and productive career as writer and explorer. His ‘Asylum’ will be published as a book this fall by Harcourt, Brace. Ivor Brown (‘The Pendulum of Taste’) has been London dramatic critic and leader writer for the Manchester Guardian since 1919, and in addition has published numerous books and essays.

To readers distrustful of the present estate of poetry we commend this little group of verses. Individual tastes may vary, but there is a lyric excellence which may not be mistaken. Does one not find it here, and may there not be something gained by contrasting and comparing the varied qualities of this unpretentious collection? ‘Legend of the Unicorn’ and ‘Smith’s Place’ are first, poems by Josephine Young Case, whose first story, ‘Frieda,’ we published in June of 1933. Lawrence Lee (‘A Last Word’) and Helene Magaret (‘Aureole’) appear in the Atlantic for the first time. Virginia Hamilton (‘for Children Only’) won the Atlantic’s College Essay Contest in 1933. John Holmes (The Good, the Great, the Wise’) is instructor in English at Tufts College and a valued contributor of prose and verse.

‘In the Wings’ continues the memoirs of the actor-playwright in whom the capitals of the world rejoice — Sacha Guitry. Howard E. Barker (‘The Ancestry of Family Names’) is an economist who has made the study of surnames an unusually active avocation. During the war he had charge of various military records running into millions of entries, and, impressed with the variety of American names, he was instrumental in enabling the American Council of Learned Societies to complete a report of family names and national origins of colonial Americans. John Hyde Preston — author, at twenty-nine, of a biography, a history, and a novel, besides numerous articles — relates in ‘A Conversation’ a meeting which actually took place between himself and the woman who will be remembered for her profound influence on young talent in the early twentieth century. Herbert Brueker (‘The Glut of Occurrences’) is Assistant to the Dean in the School of Journalism of Columbia University, and his revolutionary suggestions are the result of detached, but informed, consideration of the problems of newspapers. ∆ ‘Rose Marie is another acute observation of nature by Bradford K. Daniels, who still lives among his cherry trees and White Leghorns near Tacoma, Washington. Edgar J. Goodspeed (‘The Twilight of the Professors’) is Distinguished Service Professor of Biblical and Patristic Greek at the Universily of Chicago. ∆ No one can speak with greater authority on the complex and immediate problem of ‘Private Fortunes and the Public Future’ than Abraham Flexner, formerly secretary of the Carnegie Foundation for Advancement of Learning, now director of the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton. ∆ For a decade and a half Arthur Pound (‘The Atlantic Portfolio of Industry’) has contributed to the Atlantic important papers on economic subjects.

Something to crow over.

Dear Atlantic, —
I was very much amused and interested by the letter of Mr. William H. Trapnell in the Contributors’ Column in the Atlantic for June, relating to the crow at Virginia Beach who made a practice of stealine golf balls. I was at Virginia Beach four or five years ago and saw this very crow make off with a ball which had been driven down the fairway by a member of the foursome in which I was playing. On my return home I reported my experience, and a friend of mine wrote what seems to me the delightful little poem which follows: -

KROFLITE

Perhaps the poet jumped to conclusions about the sex of the bird. I think, nevertheless, that the poem is good enough to justify a little nature faking, as well as to compensate for the loss of a few dozen golf balls.
F. LYMAN WINDOLPH
Lancaster,Pennsylvania

‘Kid reviver.’

Dear Atlantic, —
Language arid Logic’ in your March number reminded me of the English stewardess oil an Atlantic liner who tried to buy some shoe polish in New York City. Approaching the counter of a large department store, she asked for some ‘kid reviver.’ The puzzled clerk, not wishing to show ignorance or disappoint a customer, recommended Mellen’s food.
E. E. C.
Shukugawa, Japan

Missouri hominy.

Dear Atlantic, —
‘The Simple Epicure’ by Mrs. Lutes took me back to my child hood on a Missouri farm, but she omitted one or two things that were favorites and very tilling in a home where the table was set three times a day for father, mother, and at least ten or a dozen of their fourteen children. One was hominy.
Father would bring into the kitchen a bushel basket or a gunny sack full of choicest ears of white corn, and a circle of youngsters soon had It all shelled into the washtub, where it was left to soak till morning. Then it was put on to boil in the ‘soap kettle,’ in strong lye water, until the skin was tender and the little black germ at the point ready to come out. Taking it off the stove, we washed it through many waters and rubbed and stirred till all the black spots came out, and the taste of lye was gone. Fried in butter, with a little sprinkling of flour mixed through it, it was good.
After a generous ‘mess’ had been sent to the neighbors, it was packed away in crocks and fruit jars for future use,
The Atantic is a welcome visitor at our home on the Manchurian prairies.
ROSE A. HUSTON
Tsitsihar, Manchuria

Gastronomic Michigan.

Dear Atlantic,
Sincere thanks both to you and to Mrs. Lutes for that article in the March number on ‘The Simple Epicure.’ As I read, forty years were reversed and I was a contented lad again on my grandparents farm in southern Michigan. My grandparents were pioneers from ‘York State.’ What fun it was to gather with them and their neighbors each year at Diamond Lake, at their Pioneer Picnic, where they renewed with unwearying gusto the memory of those earlier days when ‘men were men, and women knew their place’!
It was hard for me to convince myself that Mrs. Lutes was not describing my own grandparents: my grandmother’s uncanny skill in preparing the dishes mentioned — headcheese, friedcakes (my grandfather, too, snorted a big Scotch-Irish snort at the name ‘doughnuts’), apple pie, and all the rest, with just the proper pinch of this, and the eternally right feel of that; my grandfather’s prejudiced pertinacity in insisting upon the exact methods his mother used. Once more I seemed to be leaning — panting and sweat-covered — on the three-tined fork in the hot hay field, as I drank eagerly from the cool jug that a thoughtfull grandmother had sent out. Oh, those gulping drafts of switchel! — although I knew not that scientific name, but merely thought of the drink as cold water, flavored wondrously well with ginger. It was supposed to keep the weary hay-man from the dreaded sunstroke that mere cold water might have induced. How it stimulated tired muscles to renewed zest in tossing the seemingly unending rows of thick-standing ‘cocks’ upon the spacious hay wagon!
Mrs. Lutes, however, omitted one of my fondest memories in that epicurean fare of forty years ago — the Sunday evening meal of bread and milk. No pint or quart bottles, sales-taxed and stingily measured out, but generous crocks of ample rotundity, shaped wondrously like the potbelly of old Silenus. And more on the cool floor of the old cellar, if the first bountiful supply proved insufficient. And those glorious ‘hunks’ of ‘salt-risin” bread, to crumble with liberal hand into the ample bowl of unskimmed milk! And, best of all, no one to count the calories, and to chart scientifically the vitamin values! The hard but life-satisfying work on the farm, and the accumulated wisdom of innumerable generations of forgotten pioneer mothers, took care of that.
So here’s a grateful toast to the simple epicures of those pioneer days in southern Michigan. And let us who are privileged to remember drink it in a mouthfilling swig of switchel from the harvest jug, or in a brimming dipperful of russet cider from the wooden, hand-made spigot of the old cider barrel. But let the cider be sweet!
E. W. DELCAMP
Transylvania College
Lexington, Kentucky

Sergeant Damascus.

Dear Atlantic, —
The new headwaiter at our family hotel was tall and fine-looking, with an evident dash of Indian blood. His bearing and control of his subordinates bore out his claim to many years in a colored regiment; and his adaptation of words and manner to the person addressed held the amused attention of the guests of the house whenever he broke his usual sombre silence.
When asked his name, he said: ‘I have not heard my name spoken for many years. In the army they called me “Sergeant,” You see. my name does not readily lend itself to abbreviation.’ ‘And what is your name?’
‘My first name is Damascus, When I was a boy I was quite provoked when they called me by my first syllable; I was angry when they called me by my second syllable or my third. But I went fighting mad when they called me by my first and second syllables — real lighting mad. And I led just the same right now! So I would much prefer to be called “Sergeant” if you don’t mind!’
But ‘Sergeant’ seemed too formidable for daily use, so we compromised on ‘Mass,’ though this did not please him.
At breakfast one cool summer morning our star boarder, a distinguished singer, glanced over her shoulder and shivered.
‘Mass,’ she called in her dramatic contralto, ‘will you close the window behind me?’
He drew himself up to his full six feet two and bowed respectfully, then said, in a gentle voice: ‘Pardon me, Madam Eugenia Cortona Delgado, but it is not my vocation to manipulate the ventilation!’ Then in a voice like a bugle: ‘Sam! You shet that winduh!’
HAROLD P. BROWN
Montclair, New Jersey

Pigs still is pigs.

Dear Atlantic, —
Not long ago an unusual sign was heard in our village here. I Say ‘heard’ advisedly. We have a town crier, who does the work of other communities’ signboards and advertisements surely a more pleasant way of advertising, if not so effective. The crier slops at each street corner, rolls his drum, and in a loud voice says what he has to say. The title of the weekly cinema show, a wallet that has been lost, and so forth. For each of his cries he receives five francs, and it takes him two hours to go right through the town.
The other day our local pork butcheress gave him this announcement to cry (the good lady is not popular and it caused a good deal of amusement): —
‘Madame Béarnais fait dire à ses clients qu’elle fait le cochon toute l’année.’
Whilst writing to you I take the opportunity of saying how much I look forward to the day that brings the Atlantic. it sheds a little intellectual light into a corner of France where our conversation is chiefly, as probably in villages the world over, of the waywardness of our neighbors, and how bad the crops are, and what perfectly dreadful prices we get for them.
E. L. REÉ
Eymet, France

‘Turning and twisting.’

Dear Atlantic, —
After reading your ‘More and more signs of the times,’ in the May 1935 issue, I wish to tell you the following: —
Senator Platt of Connecticut once opened a political speech in his home town by saying: ‘The partisanship of this campaign reminds me of a sign I used to see over the door of an old turning mill, as we passed up and down from Hawley ville to Litchfield on the Shepaug Railroad. It read, “All kinds of turning and twisting done here by A. H. Wyant.”’
Do we still have ‘all kinds of turning and twisting done here’ by our political candidates?
RUTH B. SMITH
Washington, Connecticut

Signs of Palestine.

Dear Atlantic, —
We have had many a laugh over some of the ‘signs of the times’ that have been contributed to recent Atlantics. Some months ago the Palestine Post printed a delightful article on some of the signs one sees in Palestine. To quote: —
‘The arresting title “Hair Works,” painted up outside a shop in the Jaffa Road, merely draws attention to the presence of a wigmaker. Then there is the obstetrician whose qualification (diplômée) has led her to claim the proud title of “Diplomatic Midwife.” A Jerusalem hotel which calls the attention of patrons to the fact that the main door is in a side street might have expressed this meaning more happily than in the notice “Entrance Sideways.” The dressmaker whose shop advertises “Dresses for Street-Walking” should make sure that, she attracts the right type of customer, for the phraseology is certainly ambiguous. And finally a medical practitioner announces that he specializes in “Women, and Other Diseases.”’
MARGARET B. LEAVITT
American University
Beirut, Syria

The horned serpent.

Dear Atlantic, —
In the May issue Herbert Ravenel Sass gives considerable credence to the experience of an unnamed clergyman who had encountered a horned rattlesnake. The clergyman’s experience somewhat parallels one of my own.
It was some twenty years ago and happened about ten miles south of Mojave, California, near a place called Bissell. I was returning from the examination of an engineering job, in company with a contractor, and walking along the railroad track when I observed the loop of a snake’s body inside the rails with its head and tail not visible, both being under one of the rails.
On discovering the reptile I was guilty of gross carelessness. I reached down and with two fingers of my bare hand jerked the snake from its concealment. As I did this some sixth sense told me to let go. I did, the ‘letting go’ being simultaneous with jerking the reptile into full view.
It appeared to be a thirty-inch rattler, much irritated, and even for a rattlesnake extremely hostile.
Both my companion and I were struck by the creature’s silence, and we wondered at first as to what species it was, yet the evidence presented by the triangular head, its coiling, peculiar markings, and deadly attitude, was unmistakable.
After it was killed an examination disclosed in place of the usual rattle a rather sharp horn approximately two inches in length which formed a harmonious extension of the reptile’s body.
WILFRED F. FOURRIER
Phœnix, Arizona

A sensible pragmatism.

Dear Atlantic, —
I wonder whether your June Contributors’ Column correspondent. W. M. J. McClure of Harrisburg, has chanced to see what Julian Huxley wrote not long ago in the London Spectator in the course of an article on ‘The Future Life’: —
‘In the circumstances, the only rational attitude is to concentrate on the enrichment, and ameliorization of this life, in confidence that if our personalities do survive death, a sane and hopeful activity in this world is the best preparation for the next.’
WILLIAM GORHAM RICE
Albany, New York

Spirituals in Japan.

Dear Atlantic, —
Your recent (recent to us out here) articles on music for the layman have been of special interest to us because for the past, few years a group of twenty have been enriching themselves with the singing of Negro spirituals, fully realizing that only Negroes can really sing them. Just this week a concert at the Imperial Hotel demonstrated how effectively an amateur group can add to its own pleasure, and even to that of others, by just singing. None of us is professional, least of all I myself, who pretend to lead. Some of us sing with a Scotch brogue, many with a Yankee accent, but everyone looks forward to our meetings as the most satisfying event of a busy social calendar.
W. BRADFORD SMITH
Tokyo, Japan

Robins and real estate.

Dear Atlantic, —
I was very much interested in Mr. Lebaire’s article. ‘Heritage.’ in the June issue, for I too have just come into possession of an old family house, not, alas, as Mr. Lebaire did. by ‘hairing it (as they would say in Hilltown), but by paying for it in the coin of the realm. But, as with Mr. Lebaire, always there slumbered in the back of my mind the knowledge that some day the place which I have just bought would be mine.
When I was a little girl it was owned by a greataunt and uncle. They were childless, and so lavished their love upon all the children of the family. My Aunt Amanda was short and slender, with great brown eyes and a high lilting voice which I still remember vividly. And she spoke and moved very quickly. so that altogether there was something birdlike about her. To go to her house was the most delightful thing which could possibly happen. In spring the broad lawns were covered with blue forget-me-nots. In summer the garden was lovely, and always when I was ready to go home my Aunt Amanda would run to pick a hunch of sweel peas and mignonette and pansies. She would wrap the stems in wet brown paper and I would hold them carefully all the way to the city on the train. In the autumn my Uncle John would sit by the stove and pick hickory nuts from their shells, or peel cold red apples and cut them neatly into quarters for me. while there was no sound in the warm room but that of the ashes falling through the grate and the coals sinking lower. And always there were two pies in the cool pantry and a chicken cooking upon the shining black range.
But it is not for these memories alone that I have bought my house, nor is it because in its Gothic way it is quite lovely. The reason I have bought it is because, of one fragrant summer evening long ago when I sat upon the narrow porch with my Aunt Amanda. As I listened dreamily to the tender night sounds she said, ‘The robins are calling for rain.’ And for some reason in that flashing moment I touched the very heart of — what shall I call it? — reality, the world, nature. It is a silly reason for buying a house, is n’t it? One should, of course, attend to the plumbing and the roof and the chimneys.
I am a bit worried about Mr. Lebaire. Will he return to live, in his house or will he continue to wander through the world? His last paragraph is only a little reassuring. But he did make a list of the things that needed repair (to which, I must warn him, he will add at every subsequent visit), and so perhaps in the end he will settle there after all.
EDITH HORTON
Ithaca, New York

The sons of John Brown.

Dear Atlantic, —
Since coming to Pasadena. I have learned that to this city some years ago came members of the family of Old John Brown, of Harpers Ferry and Osawatomie fame. Afterwards, while doing some research work. I came across a reference to Owen Brown’s thrilling narrative of his escape from Harpers Ferry the day after the futile attack of his father and party on the arsenal. This narration is contained in the March 1874 number of the Atlantic. and for those who enjoy an extreme thrill it is well worth reading and rereading.

Few people traveling over the mountain railway just to the north of Pasadena realize the historical significance attached to this territory. John Brown’s first wife died in the East in 1832, three of her children came to Pasadena. Her daughter, Mrs. Ruth Thompson, came in November 1884, the older son, Jason, about the same time, while Owen came a little later, possibly in 1885. Preceding them, the second Mrs. John Brown, with three daughters and one son, came to northern California.
Both Jason and Owen Brown were well known to the builders of the mountain railway. Jason helped to lay the foundation of the Echo Mountain House, and was curator of the hotel’s wild-animal museum originated by Mr. Lowe, the builder of the road. Jason was a nature lover, retiring in disposition, rather serious-minded, gentle and kindly, always ready to assist those in need. He was short and stocky, with while hair and well-trimmed beard. He had an aversion to impure language, and did not use tobacco in any form or drink intoxicating liquors. He frequented the mountain trails alone in search of museum specimens, and occasionally acted as guide to parties, or went as messenger to unfrequented places. He was fifty-nine years old when he came to California.
Owen, the other son, was tall and slender, with long, snow-white heard and twinkling eyes Like his brother Jason, he was known for his purity of thought, gentleness, and kindliness. Nothing of his was too precious to share with his neighbor. He neither used tobacco in any form nor drank intoxicating liquors. He lived with his brother Jason on the mountainside in Millard Canyon, and many times he could he seen walking with engineer Macpherson of the railroad. Although he had been in the thick of the border warfare in Kansas and Missouri, was inured to hardship, danger, and grief, and had successfully led that, daring and thrilling retreat from Kennedy’s Farm near Harpers Ferry, he was as mild-mannered as a timid child. He was fifty-seven years old when he came to California.
On Sunday, December 30, 1889, Jason and Owen came to Pasadena to attend the gospel temperance meeting conducted by Colonel Woodfor in the Tabernacle. They returned to their mountain home in the evening and Monday worked hard in the open. Tiring during the day, Owen lay down on the banks of the Arroyo and went to sleep. When he awoke, he was stiff and sore, with a slight congestion in his lungs. Greatly interested in the Tabernacle meetings, he attended again that evening. Thrilled with emotion when the collection plate was passed, he gave all his money, leaving nothing for carfare. He walked to his sister’s home that night on the edge of the mountains, two miles away, and went to bed. In the morning he found he had pneumonia. That day the W. C. T. U. voted him and Jason honorary members of their organization, an act that pleased them greatly.
On the eighth of January Owen died. He was buried with the temperance white ribbon pinned to his breast. The funeral was held in the Methodist Tabernacle with over two thousand attending. The trustees of the city of Pasadena attended in a body, as did the students of the Pasadena Academy, The G. A. R. were out in large numbers, and the citizens and civic bodies generally vied with each other in honoring him. Thus passed a strong man of deep convictions and sincerity of purpose. His body lies buried in the mountains he loved above Las Casitas. A simple inscription on a stone slab marks the spot.
It was a delightful day in August 1934, in the hills bordering on Millard Canyon, that by mere chance I met two granddaughters of Old John Brown and their nephew. One is married and lives in Hollywood. She came here with her parents and sister in November 1884, and is seventy-eight years of age. The other, much younger, resides in Pasadena, where she has been a teacher in the public schools for a number of years.
Owen and Jason Brown were strong characters. Owen proved himself especially so. His account of his escape from the Kennedy Farm, where he was at the time of the attack on Harpers Ferry, is one of the most thrilling of adventures. Mark Twain, who was intimately acquainted with the man who wrote the interview, has this to say of the story: ‘I made three attempts to read it, but was frightened off each time before I could finish. The tale was so vivid and so real that I seemed to he living those adventures myself and sharing their intolerable perils, and the torture of it was so sharp that I never was able to follow the story to the end.’
J. A. VYE
Pasadena, California

The lessons of deafness.

Dear Atlantic, —
Are you willing to publish another short letter on the subject of deafness? I feel so strongly that there are innumerable forces all about us which we are not enlightened enough to make use of that I want to ask my fellow deaf what are the main lessons they have learned from deafness.
Years ago, in an Old World garden surrounded by birds that were new to me, I insisted they were not singing, only to learn from others that it was merely my lack of hearing that was at fault. Since that day tolerance in judgment of people and things about me has been of great help in enduring the handicap. It would be interesting to know what experiences of Others have taught similar lessons.
HELEN G. SMITH
27Linden Avenue
Rutledge,Pennsylvania

His word is his bond.

Dear Atlantic, —
In your June issue, in the discussion of the word ‘gentleman.’ you omitted the definition written by Elbert Hubbard, which was: ‘A gentleman is one who keeps his promises to those who cannot enforce them.’
Do you not think this is worthy to be included? HENRY G. BRENGLE
Hot Springs, Virginia