Ghandi's Watch Pocket
Gandhi's Watch Pocket
Sirs:
Subscriber Smith & Reader Jones would like to have TIME'S explanation for the following ambiguous statement which appeared in TIME, Oct. 5:
"Abruptly St. Gandhi jerked out his dollar watch, announced that it was 7 p.m.--time to pray."
From where was the dollar watch jerked?
GEORGE N. JONES
State College of Washington Pullman, Wash.
The Gandhi watch is jerked from a fold of the Mahatma's first shawl (the one next his skin) to which he secures his large ("dollar") watch by a large ("baby's") safety pin. In England St. Gandhi wears a second and often a third shawl. The three cover him tentwise when he sits crosslegged, showing only his big toes, small hands and birdlike poll topped with stiff black & white hairs clipped to a length of 3/8-in.--ED.
Pumper's Fly-Pelts
Sirs:
Following the 47th, 48th and 49th annual meeting of The Guild of Former Pipe Organ Pumpers in New York City last May, a Mr. Bill Furth of your magazine wrote a lengthy article on the organization (TIME, May 25), and the meeting was broadcast in TIME'S March of Events Weekly Program. As a result of this activity on your part something like 50 new members have joined and received their degrees of Fellow Pumper. Included in this number was Lunsford P. Yundell, president of the Mohawk Mining Co., who pumped a pipe organ in Danville, Ky. As a reward for his services he received 10-c- a Sunday. This fee was augmented when the secretary of the church paid him 1c for every 100 fly pelts he turned in after each service. Not only has Mr. Yundell been made the Guild's Official Fly-Swatter, but he has been congratulated on breaking into the "Y" sector of the roster, previously occupied only by Fielding H. Yost of Ann Arbor, Mich.
However, that's not the point. Since the TIME article and the broadcast our Clasped Hands Memorial Board has found it extremely difficult to cooperate with our Engineering Staff in a Decrease-In-Membership Drive inaugurated in June. This drive is aimed to discourage applications from new members and to encourage a reduction in the number of old members. It is only in this way that the Guild will be able to maintain its deficits.
I would, therefore, appreciate your refraining from any similar activities in the future, activities that have worked a very great hardship on those who are exerting every effort to keep the situation in hand. Only with this co-operation from you will we be able to make our present stock of letterheads and certificates last until the rush of business you have created passes over.
CHET SHAFER Grand Diapason
The Guild of Former Pipe Organ Pumpers New York City
Promises
Sirs:
What TIME has gained in painful accuracy it has lost in memory.
On two distinct occasions TIME had definitely promised future information, which as yet has not appeared. One, the fate of a liquor store selling openly on a downtown thoroughfare of New York City; the other, the vicissitudes that had attended the winner of the first prize of last year's English sweepstakes. Let TIME brush up on these breaches of promises and bring to light other forgotten instances.
HY SEIGEL Los Angeles, Calif.
Let Hy Seigel read TIME, Oct. 12. p. 13 and TIME, June 15, footnote p. 34, before charging breach of promise.--ED.
The March of Time
Sirs:
Like hundreds of others who probably won't take time or have time to write you--I'm darn glad that you are back on the air--with "The March of Time." You can count on us being by our radio Friday nights!
W. HUNTER SNEAD
Pittsburgh, Pa.
Sirs:
. . . Everybody I have heard comment on "The March of Time" out here went plain "nerts" about the first presentation. It is truly splendid. Never knew so much drama could be crammed into such a thing. That's what everybody says.
WILLIAM J. ROBINSON San Francisco, Calif.
. . . As you doubtless know, Friday evening is the eve of the Sabbath for those of the Jewish Faith and at the time of your broadcast we are in our Houses of Worship. This deprives many of your subscribers and readers, as well as many listeners, of a most stimulating enactment of affairs of the past week. Wednesday evening, of course, would deprive other faiths and Sunday evening practically all Christian denominations hold religious services. . . .
LESTER ALEXANDER Toledo, Ohio
Sirs:
It would seem that after all there is something new under the sun. Your broadcast came to us today thru KHJ, Los Angeles.
We expected that it could not be as good as we imagined it would have to be to be commensurate with TIME. It was!
Congratulations!
BERKETT D. NEWTON South Pasadena, Calif.
Onetime Minister Barrett
Sirs:
In your today's issue (Oct. 19) you quote an advertisement in the New York Times which announced that the services of a "former American Ambassador" (the last two words being purposely in your heavy black type) without mentioning his name could be secured by interested clubs to discuss international affairs. You then, evidently with the intention of clever ridicule (which I admit makes good reading!) emphasize that said "Ambassador" had been identified as myself, a former "U. S. Minister to Siam, Argentina, Panama, Colombia, longtime (1907-20) Director General of the Pan American Union," etc.
I would not refer to this item, were it not that my entirely unselfish desire to help a most worthy international good-will cause was indirectly responsible for the insertion of the original advertisement, the exact wording of which I did not see until after it was printed. The philanthropic Honorary Secretary of that worthy cause had suggested to me that much help for its needed funds could be obtained if I would deliver some public addresses in its favor. I replied that, while I could not appropriately do that, I would gladly contribute the proceeds of honorariums which might be received for speaking engagements which he would secure to discuss international topics. He then asked if he could endeavor to secure such engagements through special notices in the newspapers. I agreed with the provision that my name must not be used and left to him the proper wording. When I saw the advertisement, I remonstrated as he can confirm and I insisted that in all correspondence he point out that the announcement was made on his own initiative. He meant well and in his enthusiasm made the quite pardonable technical error of describing a former "Envoy Extraordinary and Minister Plenipotentiary" as an "Ambassador," and such earnestness caught the attention of the meticulous stylemaster of TIME!
Incidentally, in his defense may I state that he was aware that the President of the U. S. had offered me a real Ambassadorship when I voluntarily retired from 26 years' international service as U. S. Envoy and Minister and Director General of the Pan American Union, and that I had declined because I did not have the financial resources to accept.
JOHN BARRETT New York City
$1.01 Quarts
Sirs:
Apropos of remarks of Dr. Logan Clendening in regard to the need for a five-cent drink of whiskey (TIME, Oct. 19), Dr. Clendening, of course, like other ethical medical men, abhors the thought of publicity. It is, however, possible that since he began writing articles for the lay press intended to disseminate the rudiments of medical knowledge among the common people, he has become somewhat inured to it, and probably was speaking more or less confidentially to one or more newspaper men without at all realizing, as indeed who but a publicity man would, that the remarks might be quotable and have some news value.
That such a blissful state, as he mentions, of affairs is not entirely impossible even though, as your historical comment indicates, it may be quite unlikely, is borne out by the fact that a few years ago a Louisville drug store used to offer, on the occasion of what were called 1-c- sales, two quarts of excellent, 100 proof, five-year-old Bourbon for $1.01 which on the old time bartender's calculation of 20 drinks to a quart would figure somewhere in the neighborhood of 2 1/2-c- a drink.
There may have been depressions in those days but at least no one who had $1.01 had to worry about them.
C. D. ENFIELD, M.D. Louisville, Ky.
German Peewits
Sirs:
Just read in TIME (Sept. 28) that "kibitzer'' is a "Yiddish colloquial term." Kibitz or Kiebitz is the German name for peewit or lapwing. This bird has the reputation of warning other birds at the approach of hunters. Hence its application to spectators who make nuisances of themselves at card games. . . . English-speaking Davenport skat players have used the terms to "kibitz," "kibitzing," and "kibitzer" to my knowledge for over 30 years just as they use other German technical terms necessary in playing skat.
Speaking of words, "cumshaw" (generally pronounced commishaw) is not restricted to shipping men. Chinese servants in the East are all accustomed to getting cumshaw. The Chino cook buys the groceries for the household and if he does not get his cumshaw from the dealer at the end of the month, he buys elsewhere. This practice is generally considered quite ethical. "Cumshaw'' is Pidgin English and evidently is derived from "commission."
GEORGE BRAUNLICH Davenport, Iowa
Frances Willard at College
Sirs:
To settle the cigaret controversy which has aroused many doubting Thomases to rise in defense of the "saintly" Frances Elizabeth Willard in an effort to wipe clean her nicotine-stained fingers, may I offer this tobacco episode as presented by Miss Willard herself in her autobiography, Glimpses of Fifty Years? The chapter head is "College Days," and the reference appears on pp. 116-117: ". . . I wish I had not had those months as a 'law unto myself,' though nothing worse occurred in them than I have told, except that one night Maggie and I dressed up as two pirates. I had been reading that greatest of pirate stories Jack Sheppard, the only one of its kind that I had ever seen, and we were planning for the adventures that were before us as highwaymen of the sea, and were using, I am sorry to say, as much of the language that such men would have used as we knew, which was not much, and, horrible to relate, were armed and equipped, not only with wooden pistols and bowie knives, but with a cigar apiece, and I am afraid that on the table before us stood a bottle of ginger-pop, which was as far as we dared to go in the direction of inebriation. We were not accustomed to estimate the permeating power of cigar smoke, whereby we were very soon given away; for there came a gentle rap at the door, and without waiting for any response, a tall, elegant woman came in, Miss Mary Dickinson, my division teacher. She it was who, entering my room each day, would run her finger along the window-frame to see if there had been careful dusting. It must, indeed, have been a spectacle to her to see a girl who never failed in her recitation room sitting, in the character I had assumed, beside another who was known as 'the wildest girl in school.' But Miss Dickinson had remarkable clearness of mental vision. She made no ado whatever, but said, 'Well, if this is not fortunate! The mosquitoes have almost driven me out of my room this hot summer night, and if you girls will just come in and smoke them out, it will be a great favor to me.' So we had to follow after her, in our high-top boots, and there we sat, as imperturbable as we knew how to be, but with very heightened color, I am sure, and she insisted on our smoking, while she threw up the windows and drove before her the fluttering mosquitoes. She never alluded to the subject afterward, neither reported nor reproved us, for she wisely reasoned that the charm in all we were doing was the daredevil character of the performance, and that if it was treated as a very commonplace affair, this charm would soon be gone. . . ."
And, while we are on the subject of prohibition, the following excerpt from the same source, appears on p. 306: ". . . Three things I did, once in awhile, during my two years and four months of foreign travel, that I never did and never do at home. I went to see sights on Sunday, went to the theatre, and took wine at dinner. . . ."
CHARLES FINSTON
Evanston, Ill.
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