BY THE WAY you "When I first saw Richmond, in 1895," says a writer in "Collier's," "it belonged to the Old South. In the hotel a smiling colored boy stopped my bathtub with a paper wad and put a tumbler over it to keep me from kicking it loose. The water served to me at supper was so full of red clay I mistook is for iced tea. Go there to-day and will find-The tobacco interests of four nations with buying headquarters there. The focus of railroads that are the most prosperous of the country. A dozen hospitals, six colleges, a great American cathedral, and hotels that are oases in the life of the traveler. The city has the commercial spirit of the North as keenly as Atlanta, but, glory be, it has not lost the social spirit of the South!" The remains of Mary Campbell, Burns's "Highland Mary," were recently removed from the Greenock Old West Kirk buryingground and reburied in Greenock Cemetery, in the presence of representatives of Burns Clubs from many parts of Scotland, and after impressive services. The reinterment was made necessary by the extension of the vast shipyards of Harlan & Wolff, the Clyde ship-builders. Mary Campbell inspired one of Burns's most pathetic songs, "To Mary in Heaven." "Topsy-turvy" pronunciations: "A lady here recently had this peetomaine poisoning.' Another had 'potaine poisoning."" "Don't argue with old ; he always goes off on a tandem." "A lady of my acquaintance, in discussing a friend's divorce case, said she had 'just received her elocutionary (interlocutory) decree.'' "Our washerwoman reports that the vocal teacher says her daughter has an exceptional voice and will be a madonna (prima donna)." "My daughter and her bunch is goin' to have a picnic to-day," said our village Mrs. Malaprop, "and I've got to go 'long to shampoo (chaperon) the crowd." From a local paper: "The entertainment (interment) will take place in Maplewood Cemetery." From another local paper: "The Lord Mayor who was terribly emancipated as a result of his long abstance from food had been delirious for many hours and was unconscious when death came." "At the conclusion of the school term prizes were distributed. When one of the pupils returned home his mother chanced to be entertaining callers. Well, Charlie,' asked one of these, did you get a prize?' 'Not exactly,' said Charlie, but I got a horrible mention." " A ghost story of the comical sort is told in a recent book. At an English country house a lady was put into the haunted chamber. In the middle of the night she was wakened by feeling, to her horror, that the bedclothes were being dragged off her. She held on to them desperately, but they were ruthlessly snatched away. She got up, dressed herself, and waited in speechless fear for morning. In the breakfast room she was about to tell her fearful tale when another guest, a man, said to the hostess: "I woke so cold in the night that I went into the ghost room and took the clothes off the bed, to make myself warm. I knew you wouldn't put any one in there." In a talk to advertising men, Arthur Brisbane said recently that there are five points that every advertisement should possess. "It must be seen, it must be read, it must be understood, it must be believed, and it must make the public want the thing it talks about." "A Negro preacher of this town," a Southern reader reports," said in his ordination sermon: 'I was bought at the Lamb's sale. I was predestined, foreordained, prefixed, suffixed, and affixed, and cannot be unfixed; and I am not hell scared."" The "Empire State Express," of the New York Central Railroad, between New York City and Buffalo, may fairly claim to be an "institution." It has now been running for twenty-nine years; October 26 was the anniversary of the first trip. For many years it made the westward run in eight hours; the schedule time is now nine hours, the reason given by the railway being that increased patronage and the consequent lengthening of the train to the capacity of the locomotives made a lowered rate of speed necessary. Photographs come from Paris showing a war on rats, which have been very destructive. But the despised rat once did the French a good turn, according to Colonel Repington's just-published history of the war. He says; 66 On the parapets of the front trenches are what look like window flower boxes. They contain chemical materials for making a smoke screen to lift the German gas when it comes. All the rats in the trenches congregate round these smoke boxes when the gas comes, as they realize that they save them from suffocation. This process of lifting the German poison gas was discovered quite by chance. During a gas attack some straw was set on fire by accident and forced the German smoke up. The rats came in swarms to squat round the burning straw and gave the French the hint." Another rat story is told by Frances Pitt in Wild Creatures of Garden and Hedgerow." Miss Pitt came upon a nest of baby rats, and the idea occurred to her to give one of them surreptitiously to the family cat to rear, its kittens having just been sacrificed, except one. She cautiously placed the young rat by the sole surviving kitten, and the plan worked! The old cat nursed the baby rat, washed it, and treated it in every way as a kitten. The rat learned to know Miss Pitt as a friend, and became, she says, "one of the tamest creatures I have ever known." It proved a most amusing family pet for nearly two years. Apropos of present-day speed in traveling by airplane, automobile, and motorcycle, a subscriber writes that an Ohio newspaper says that an old scrap-book contains a clipping stating that the Lancaster, Ohio, school board in 1828 refused to permit the use of the schoolhouse for a debate as to whether or not "railroads are practical." The board members are said to have reported: You are welcome to use the schoolhouse to debate all proper questions in, but such things as railroads and telegraphs are impossible and rank infidelity. There is nothing in the Word of God about them. If God has designed that his intelligent creatures should travel at the frigh: ful speed of fifteen miles an hour he would have forecast it. All that was humanly possible FTER the fire in which those school children AFT perished, after the heroism of teachers and firemen, after the official investigation and the report-how was the responsibility fixed? What reforms were recommended? Did the report exonerate officials and attempt to clear the city of the disgrace? Did it say, "everything that was humanly possible was done to safeguard the school against fire; every thing that was humanly possible was done to safeguard life from fire?' Did it point out that hundreds escaped and scores were rescued, thanks to the provisions of exits, stairways and a fire drill that half worked? The fathers and mothers of the victims, the little sisters and brothers of the lost ones-a tiny minority perhaps would like to cry out in protest and reproach. "Everything was NOT done that was humanly possible." The simplest, sanest, surest thing of all was not done. Grinnell Auto matic Sprinklers would have put out that fire in the first three or four minutes. They would have put it out had it started in a closet instead of the basement; would have put it out no matter where, or how or when it started. The heat of the fire would have opened a head on the ceiling and brought down a torrent of water and saved our children. For with sprinklers, "when the fire starts, the water starts." Don't compromise with ruthless, lurking, child-killing Fire Dangers in your public schools. Now, before you have such a tragedy, insist on automatic sprinklers. In many cities the law compels the owners of dangerous buildings to protect their employees against fire with automatic sprinklers. Why not give real protection to our helpless children. in school? Read "Fire Tragedies and Their Remedy" Write today for "Fire Tragedies and Their Remedy" and learn from the records the folly of Compromise Protection. Pass this book along to your friends, and have it read aloud in your lodge, your club, your Chamber of Commerce. Address: Grinnell Company, Inc., 289 West Exchange Street, Providence, R. I. Complete Engineering and Construction Service on Automatic Sprinklers. GRINNELL AUTOMATIC SPRINKLER SYSTEM-When the fire starts, the water starts. THE OUTLOOK. December 8, 1920. Volume 126, Number 15. Published weekly by The Outlook Company at 381 Fourth Avenue, New York, N. Y. Subscription price $5.00 a yea Entered as second-class matter, July 21, 1893, at the Post Office at New York, under the Act of March 3, 1879. IT is not written down to the child, it is rather written up to his thought, ideal, and point of view. It requires no censorship and may be relied upon to fill his mind with interesting fact and fancy, with ideas of honor, fearlessness, courtesy, and kindliness. YOU SUBSCRIBE FOR A YEAR JOHN MARTIN'S BOOK is printed in two colors on tough ITS REGULAR PRICE PER YEAR IS $4.00 (Canadian and Foreign, $4.50) JOHN MARTIN CHILDREN MAKE WHOLESOME AND HAPPY MEN AND WOMEN THE OUTLOOK IS PUBLISHED WEEKLY BY THE OUTLOOK COMPANY, 381 FOURTH AVENUE, NEW YORK. LAWRENCE F. ABBOTE, PRESIDENT. N. T. PULSIFER, VICE-PRESIDENT. FRANK C. HOYT, TREASURER. ERNEST H. ABBOTT, SECRETARY. TRAVERS D. CARMAN, ADVERTISING MANAGER. Contributors' Gallery... 627 War-Impelled Migration 629 An Air Race..... 629 Riddance to Rintelen.... 630 The Injury to Plymouth Church. 630 The Blue Law Agitation.... Cartoons of the Week..... 630 631 Why Not Try the Experiment ?.. The Football Season... 632 632 What's It All About, Anyhow?..... Our National Parks Threatened... Shall We Scrap the Treaty ?.... 633 633 634 |