By Degrees

Sirs:

James Henry Breasted of your front cover (Dec. 14) is an odd-looking man. I wonder how many others will tell you: "He got that way by degrees."

ALBAN F. BUTLER

The Commodore Vanderbilt New York Central R. R.

New China

Sirs:

Please tell your headline writers that they have created a new Chinese city. A fellow-passenger, idly thumbing TIME of Dec. 21, saw under Foreign News p. 16, this subheadline: '"Bun-Yanking'' and his remark that Miss Addams must be getting mixed up in Chinese affairs in Bun-Yanking, China caused some smiles.

ALEXANDER L. H. DARRAGH

En Route Manhattan Limited Pennsylvania R. R.

Tallulah Bankhead's Aunt

Sirs: Your criticism of film producers on p. 25 of your issue of Dec. 21, for using the talented Tallulah Bankhead in their efforts to put over "three of the dustiest vehicles of the year," prompts me to write you a paragraph or two. Both Miss Bankhead and I are natives of Alabama. Long before Miss Bankhead went to London to achieve fame on the stage, I worked alongside her interesting and brilliant aunt, Mrs. Marie Bankhead Owen, on the staff of the venerable Montgomery Advertiser. That was back in the days when the American stage had much of which it could be and was proud--such as John Drew, Henrietta Grossman, DeWolf Hopper, Frederick Warde, Rose Stahl, Otis Skinner, Mrs. Fiske and many others, most of whom have passed out, as the stage goes, and many of whom have passed on, as humanity yields its units to the touch of time. Mrs. Owen and I alternated for several years at writing for our paper reviews of productions as presented at Montgomery's famous old show house, the Grand Theatre. After Mrs. Owen and I had returned to the Advertiser's offices one night from witnessing a rather shabby musical comedy, which had as its only hope for success a chorus of the type--40 beautiful girls--count 'em, Mrs. Owen wrote her review. She handed her "copy" over to me to read before turning it to the city editor's desk. I have ever since remembered one paragraph, which really comprised the substance of the review. It was this: "--was presented to the Montgomery public by way of the Grand Theatre last night, and it further emphasized the fact that such shows cannot longer interest a leg-weary world." Twenty years ago and the public was leg weary. I am just wondering if the public hasn't finally become hip, rib, back and altogether sex weary by this time. I confess I am against the ropes. JASPER C. HUTTO Charlotte, N. C.

Rusticated Hearst

Sirs: TIME is wrong in saying (Dec. 7, p. 22) that William Randolph Hearst was expelled from Harvard College. Mr. Hearst was rusticated" in 1886 to Washington, D. C. He did not return to Cambridge to be graduated. EUGENE LENT

San Francisco, Calif.

I WAS IN THE CLASS OF '86 AT HARVARD. I WAS NOT EXPELLED IN '87 NOR ANY OTHER YEAR. I NEVER DID ANYTHING VERY BAD AT HARVARD NOR ANYTHING VERY GOOD EITHER. I WAS RUSTICATED IN '86 FOR AN EXCESS OF POLITICAL ENTHUSIASM AND A CERTAIN DEFICIENCY IN INTELLECTUAL ATTAINMENTS. I DID NOT RETURN TO BE GRADUATED. THERE DID NOT SEEM TO BE EITHER REASON OR HOPE. I THINK THE LESS SAID ABOUT MY COLLEGE CAREER THE BETTER. PERHAPS THAT IS SO WITH THE REST OF MY CAREER. HOWEVER. EXERCISE YOUR OWN JUDGMENT. ONLY PLEASE PRINT THE FACTS, OR PERHAPS I SHOULD SAY, PLEASE DON'T.

WILLIAM RANDOLPH HEARST

Los Angeles, Calif.

Rustication: An old-fashioned academic penalty whereby delinquent or intractable undergraduates are sent away, generally to their homes to continue their studies under a supervisor designated by the college.--ED. Mackintosh's Message

Sirs:

Your issue of Dec. 7 says that Elbert Hubbard wrote A Message to Garcia one evening after dinner.

Let me give you the account as I remember it from a letter published in the Saturday Review of Literature some four or five years ago and have never since heard refuted.

The letter was written by a man whose name I have forgotten. He was the immediate predecessor of Elbert Hubbard as the editor of a Buffalo (?) newspaper (?). The story was submitted to this preceding editor, who . . . found no use for it.

The story was in his desk when he turned his position over to Elbert Hubbard. Some time later the story came out as Elbert Hubbard's. . . .

HAZEN ATHERTON

Monroe, Mich.

Author of the Saturday Review of Literature's letter (Oct. 16. 1926) was Harry Persons Taber of Wilmington, Del., once a partner of Elbert Hubbard. Wrote Correspondent Taber: Hubbard "borrowed" ideas right & left. Not Hubbard but the late William Mackintosh, then managing editor of the Buffalo Evening News, wrote A Message to Garcia. Taber, then editor of The Philistine, had accepted it for publication (with different names, a different setting) in 1895. Before it appeared he and Hubbard quarreled. Hubbard printed A Message to Garcia as his own in March. 1899. Not Hubbard but Taber was founder of the Roycroft Shop, originator of The Philistine, of Little Journeys.--ED. Humane Contractor

Sirs:

For the past four and one-half years, I have been employed as inspector on levees in the Vicksburg District. My job is to see that the levees are properly built. As I often have to live in the camps, they concern me too.

... I know many of the contractors and laborers intimately, am fairly observant, and yet I know of no instance which would justify any of the charges made by the A. F. of L. . . . A contractor was charged with beating no less than ten men in a single night, to such an extent they had to be carried to the hospital. I was on this contract eight hours every day. Is it not strange that I heard no report, nor even a rumor of such an outrage?

Such tales are ridiculously unreasonable. The average contractor is as humane as anyone else.

Not long ago I was talking to a contractor on the work. Occasionally a Negro would come up and ask for a job. He had all he could use and was forced to turn them away. About dark an old grey-haired Negro, perhaps 65 years old, shuffled up. "Boss, I wants a job." "Sorry. Lige, I have more men now than I need." "Boss, I jes' got to have a job. Dese is de hardest times on an old. nigger I ever saw. I can't get a job nowhere. I walked all de way out here, nine miles in de rain and I's hungry. I knows I can't work like a young nigger but I can still chop a little and don't care what you pay me.'' The job was in the red, he needed no more men: but what could any human do? "Go to the quarters and tell them to feed you. I will see what I can do for you."

The next morning I saw the old Negro in the clearing gang. Out of curiosity I asked to see the time book. He was getting $2.50 the same as the rest.

C. K. LITTLE

Greenville, Miss.

Mayor General Lytle Brown, Chief of Army Engineers, investigated contract labor camps in the Vicksburg area, last fortnight reported to Secretary of War Hurley that no "slavery in its most hideous form" existed there, as alleged by the A. F. of L. Here and there he did find "bad spots," long hours, low wages but no thrashings.--ED. Wilkes's Booth

Sirs: You give in your issue of Dec. 28, p. 10, "Mummy," over a column on the authenticity of a mummy of the man who assassinated Lincoln. My understanding of this incident in history somewhat differs from the popular version. Quote: "John Wilkes, Lord Mayor of London, had just jumped his bail and had hurriedly left that city for the States, arriving some days ahead of his inevitable bad news. Going immediately to Washington, the first thing he noticed was that his old friend Laura Keane was playing in Our American Cousin and on seeking to obtain a seat for that night's performance, he was informed that the only thing available was a box. or as it was called then, a booth. Feeling flush and, as usual, drunk, he bought it; but when, after a few more drinks in Miss Keane's dressing room before the show, he went to take his seat out front, he found that the dolt in the box office--who later became James McNeill Whistler --had given his box, or booth, to President Abraham Lincoln and his party, who were already in it and couldn't, of course, be moved. As there wasn't a seat left in the house, Whistler took Wilkes around the corner to a place on F Street, and they were heard of no more. When, during the second act, one of Wilkes's enemies sneaked into the box and shot Lincoln by mistake, the news was erroneously flashed that the President had been shot by John Wilkes Booth instead of in John Wilkes's booth. This was rather hard on the actor of that name who was living miles away in an old barn, hard at work cutting all the other parts down for his next performance of Richard III, for a few days later he was surrounded and an attempt was made to set him on fire; but it was raining and he escaped down a drain, turning up--clean shaven --20 years later as a well-known Mormon." TIME to my experience has been unusually accurate and I would now like to know which of these versions is correct: the popular one or the above quoted one. . . . N. L. WISSER Shinnston, W. Va. John Wilkes (1727-97), Lord Mayor of London stormed through Britain's politics, libeled his King, fled to France, returned to sit in Parliament. James Abbott McNeill Whistler sailed for England in 1854, never to return to the U. S.--ED. Omaha Museum

Sirs:

It seems a shame that such an important event as the opening of the Joslyn Art Museum in Omaha last Sunday should not be important enough news to go into your "weekly news-magazine"' as you call it. I dare say you would have devoted considerable space to the event, had it occurred in New York or any town east of the Mississippi River.

You seem to be blind to the fact that news of great interest takes place in the West as well as in the East. Don't you think that it would be fairer to your readers if you became less provincial?

JOHN THOMAS

Grinnell College Grinnell, Iowa

The $3.000,000 pink marble Joslyn Art Museum is a gift to the city of Omaha from eccentric Mrs. Sarah Selleck Joslyn sometimes known as "The Cornbelt's Hetty Green." Her late husband acquired a fortune of $10,000,000 from a cure for venereal disease (''Big G") and an enterprise for furnishing boiler-plate insides for small-town papers. The museum opened November 29 with an impressive exhibition of British. American & Flemish masters borrowed from the Paul & Long Galleries of New York. The permanent collection includes an exhibition of Phoenician glass and a large canvass by Adolphe William Bouguereau. famed fashionable painter of nudes of the 1850's. -- ED. Flippant Relative

Sirs:

Don't let the letter from my flippant relative, published in TIME of Dec. 14, alarm you or your circulation department.

Mr. Robert Johnson has promised to give this "rolling sister-in-law" a subscription to your perfect magazine.

M. ELIZABETH TOBIN

Portland. Ore.

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