HomeMy WebLinkAboutZurich Herald, 1924-09-11, Page 2MRI.Mn...+r,.n1.!.w+Y-f'n.^'11^..+.!r'-.•m....-.^r•.--w.. ....-...wrr�...l .....
Village Plays and Pageants
Sometimes it seems to me that the Ian, Duteh or German immigrants
Impulse ter play acting, like sun livor-' would be suggested by wagons loaded
ship or devil dancing - or singing, is; with household goods and the building
deeply seated among the primitive in of a log cabin.
stinets. Certainly you evils find the . Dances in native ccstur e would fol
desire to paint up and perform in some low, and folk songs, accompanied in
Fanner "before e, wondering public the old-fashioned way with a fiddle or
among all races and in every remotest an 'accordion; and an early wedding
Hack wind corner of the world. land merrymaking, perhaps interrupt -
Among. our own people the impulse ed by a call to arms at the beginning,
appears to be stranger in the villagesof the war of 1812.
and along any healthy countryside A pageant, whether there are to be
than in the cities. Perhaps thisis be- spoken words or not, must be fully
cause the, country children are thrown planned and written. But you don't
ioi fullyo n their own resources for need literary folk for that, Every via
u e u ei
amusement. The city dweller, I am lags houses. certain thoughtful persons,
sure, weakens in the faculty of honest young or old, who love the place and
self-expression as commercialized di- its history. There is usually a teach-
versions. multiply around hills. er or a librarian somewhere near who
And' then, of course, he seldom can can help. The planning is vastly more
Itnow the joys of doing fairy plays in important than the writing. and that
a big old barn; is wholly a matter of study, thought
The villages I have known—and, and sense.
West and East, they are many—have Yes., by all means create your own
always simply erupted amateur plays. pageant. Stick to your own history,
I can't recall a little -farming centre" of your own ideas, your own faith. Make
a thousand . or so population that It a local effort, draft in everybody to
hadn't some sort of hall over the gen- help, and you will find your neighbor-
eral store or the emprium with some hood flowering cn your hands.
sort of stage at one end of it and us- In selecting the ground for the pag-
wally some sort of footlights, scenery eant keep in mind two important re -
and otherequipment for theatricals.
For play acting is fun, and of a very
busy healthy sort.
You can'tcast and rehearse a play,
advertise it and present it in business-
like fashion for a night or two, with-
out drawing heavily on whatever in-
telligence and imagination may be evi-
dent or latent in the community.
There must be organization and co-
operation and a kind of daring. No
village undertaking that I know of so
sharply lifts people out of routine into
a degree of excitement, and none is so
sure a solvent of cliques.
Capable Leadership.
I.can hardly imagine a village from
which a few young men and women
haven't gone up to a university only
to discover that playwrighting, stage
decoration and acting are now ebjects
of sober study a.nd practice. Many of
these scatter homeward every year',
fired witb. a new enthusiasm.
The home magazines have recog-
nized the movement by publishing
many new plays with instructions for
inexpensive staging.
There is hardly a normal s,clueol or
high school to -day in which you will
not find some bright young teacher
who has designed a stage setting or
two or picked up some knoweedge of
sketching costuraes and of the effec-
tive use of colors.
The agricultural colleges are at it.
With thi,s. widespread. racy ardent le
le no longer neceasary.
. It is hard to think of a play that
ecan't be pres.ented better in simple
draperies than in erudely painted old -
I fashioned sets,.
; Lighting is no longer a serious, prob-
lain; any bright boy with a hunch at
wiring a motor or setting up a radio
outfit can quickly grasp the simpler
Interesting playe can be presented
with. dignity and charm on a platform
in a schoolroom.
Of one truth I am convinced: There
is consid.erable talent in any sraall
community, particularly among the
young people. There is plenty of it
on farms, anywhere.
Hunt out that talent, develop it, let
, native enthuslastn find a healthy out-
let, and you will soon be in the way of
building an organization of which your
community will have reason to be
I know of no more stimulating com-
munity activity. It is a clean, busy,
Stirring sort of recrea,tion, and there
13efore going into the many interest-
ing problems that arise in pregenting
plays indoors--problera.s of selection
or tbe pla.y, casting, rehearsing, pre-
paring the stage, and so on. ---it will
perhaps be timely to touch on outdoor
plays and pageants.
A pageant, as the term is now un-
derstood., is a series of. historical or
symbolical episodes designed to recall
the growth of a eomrautity, or of an
art of induatry, or of an idea,.
They usually are enacted in eauto-
mime, without spoken words, though
there la music and. there may be danc-
ing and singing.
But to me the most iateresting are
those that are prepared wholly within
a, village or a neighborhood to cele -i
brate some important local anniver-
sary or event.
I saw a few years ago such a home -1,
Made pageant a small village that ;
depicted in fasehiating episodes and
touchee of allegory the history of the I
quaint eld settlement from earliest
times, when the primeval forest knew!
only the hunts and danees of the In -
thanes through the, landing of the wbite
discovereta from England, original
treety tor the land, the life and dee-
gers of those filet settlers, the Indian
wars, and tea clown to to -day. I
It was a prettettleus undertaking
that called ot. the servieee of hundreds
of persons' within a, 'radius of many
dealing with tate early tlags of sonie
foam Ontaria
tvery Region ilas Ka Color.
quirements—a fairly wide place for
the action, preferably beside a river
or pond, as you niay wish to show the
Indians in their canoes,'and somewhat
masked by trees; and room for the
audience to sit. -
If you can find a natural stage area
beneath a sloping hillside you are for-
tunate, for then your audience will be
hY?»lYYpv
`'y SY/+`.`'Yai
Y''.,..,a' asesee ..
see eeesees•
erica"""
't?!*;,7.
Oft
The world to -day awaits a benefac-
tor such as it,•lias never before ltnown;
one who will deliver' it from the great-
est scourge ,of ii11 time—Cancer. It is
by far cur most terrible and dreaded
disease --compared with it, consump-
tion is infinitely lees deadly ---.and 80
fast is it spreading that its victims
number millions. In this ccuntry
alone, 5,000,000 of the present popula-
tion are :doomed to die a lingering
death by it.
For 'all these sufferers science can
do little or uotiilnb. The disease is
the despair of all the great medical
hinds, and both cause and cure are
I absolutely unknown. "It is doubtful,".
Sir Arbuthnot Lane, the consulting
surgeon to Guy's Hospital, London, re-
marks, in an introduction to "Cancer,"
by Mr, J. Ellis Barker, "whether a cure
for cancer will ever be found,"
A Disease of Civilization.
"I, have come to the conclusion," Mr.
Barker .writes, "that cancer is pre-
ventable and avoidable in the great
majority of cases, that it is a disease
of . civilization, and that it may be
made to decline gradually and to dis-
appear altogether as - that fearful
scourge,' leprosy, which devastated the
world in olden times, In the Middle
Ages there were, ,19,000 leper: houses
in Europe: Now leprosy has become
a rarity. Cancer is the leprosy- of
modern civilization. It may never be
curable, but it is avoidable." _
greatly within the next few years me-
lees some counter measures are adopt-
ed, I1 noappropriate steps are taken:
for preventing 'cancer, the eencer
death -rate in England may rise so
greatly that •of the people now living
not 5,000,000, but 6,000,000, 7,000;00.0,
8,000,000, may die in torments of that
ghastly disease."
Cancer, he adds, is almost exolusive-
ly a disease of advanced age, because
it takes so many years for the poison.
to assert itself; also, instead of a blow
often being the cause of cancer, it is
more likely it merely accelerated a
disease which Would have made itself
manifest in any case. Some doctors
are' almost distracted by the haunting
fear of cancer. A good many medical
men 'have connnittd suicide when at.
tacked by cancer and some have ap-
parently ended their lives merely ow-
ing to the unfounded fear of having
the disease.
One of themost extraordinary, fea-
tures of cancer is that it stribes down
rather the strong and :the well-to-do
than the weak and the poor, who are
more likely to contract consumption.
It is not infectious, . nor is it heredi-
Elson McKay, Canadian cyclist.chainpion in the quarter and half mile
distances, taking a sprint around the Scarbpro Beach bowl with Katty McRae,
one of the dominion's most promising lady riders,
The Forest Ranger.
Should you meet a man with a face
of tan
With a stetson that's sunburned and
worn,
On a jet black mare with her head, in
And a gun on the saddle horn.
A man with a quirt and a buckskin
shirt, -
Whose breeches are tidy and trim,
able to look on in comfort from the in A man beguiled by the lure of the wild,
cline. And the sight of the world from the
Building a large enough stand for an rim,
audience is expensive business and is
seldom necessary,
Outdoor Plays..
Outdoor plays have in summer and
early fall a charm all their own,
They are simpler _ than pageants,
calling for a smaller stage and much
less in the way of organisation. Often
there are pleasant old -private grounds
With a look in his we sort of never -
say -die .
And a poise that is bred of the air;
With. a back just as straight as a five
• barred gate
And shoulders both thickset and
Making Love -Letters Private.
There have always -been parents and
;"guardians to hinder and thwart the
hapless' lover, and many girls have
I bee "obliged to resort to methods of
deception.
The simplest means ever employed
,was to write the love messages with
fresh milk instead of ink. On the r:e-
ceit of a blank sheet -of paper, all the
recipient needed to do was to sprinkle
it with soot or charcoal. The grit
stuck to the lines traced by the pen.
When .the trick: was of no avail,
'chemists would perforin the task of
writing` with, acetic acid. Another
chemis applied eulphuretted hydrogen
gas + to the letter and the secret was un-
. folded.
Another "sympathetic" ink isthat
produced from cobalt, the writing 'of
• which disappears in the cold, but ap-
i pears again •as often as one cheeses
f after being exposed to a moderate de -
in a village that will gladly be loaned His deep furrowed brow bearing wit- gree of heat.
!br the purpose. If not, there is al- Hess to how 1 Characters written in diluted sul-:
most always a grove or a field within He's fought against storm and the phuric acid and lemon -juice become
reach. cold, j black or brown; those written in solu-
It is well in selecting outdoor bills And his manner is mild—'tis the spell tions of nitrate and chloride of cobalt
to avoid realistic modern plays ca;Iling . of the wild and of chloride of copper are rendered
for indoor scenery and furniture. If On the student who dwells in its fold.I green, the color disappearing when the
you need to suggest a' rear wall simply a paper is allowed to cool in a moist
run a cord or wire between two trees Should you. ,meet ,on .the trail he will place.
and hang cambric or Canton flannel j give you a hail,
with openings for doors and windows.
- Composition board, roughly painted,
may be used to suggesthouse.
square;
And ask in.a casual way, Faithful Mother Seal.
The questions, oftcial•�your name and
A sea -captain not long ago'captur"ed
In the author's• opinion, cancer is
caused by chemical poisoning; tar
workers are poisoned by the poison in
,the tar; it is the same with oil work-
ers, aniline workers, etc, We are
poisoned • with fumes from tar ,and
petrol,smeiling roads—for petrol—also
may be a contributory factor. In can-
cer—but the most powerful source of
poisoning is the preservatives In food.
Also, we do not eat sufficient coarse
foods.
"The cancer death -rate in England
and in other advanced countries," Mr.
Barker writes, "is likely to rise very
tary.
A shortage of vitamines in the body
affords .another opening for cancer,
and the only way to ..overcome this is
by consuming less sugar and eating
mord wholemeal bread, green vege-
tables,.'and fresh fruits. Sugar is a
thoroughly dangerous food;"
Therefore, to .escape cancer we
should carefully avoid chronic poisoning and vitamine starvation. To avoid`
poisoning we should avoid that state
to remedy which so many people em-
ploy strong purgatives. To` avoid vita -
mine starvation we should, avoid all
substitutes for wholesome natural
food, however tempting they may look
and however strongly they may be re-
commended to us.' Patent foods and
patent medicines are equally danger-
ous. Mr. Ellis Barker's book is a valu-
able and timely contribution to medi-
cal science.
Snapshots of Sounds.
A new invention of Professor Four-
nier d'Albe has made it possible to
photograph sounds.
Professor d'Albe is the inventor of
the apparatus by which a blind man
can read a book, the printed letters
reflecting light on to a selenium call,
which produces sounds by electricity,
so that the person really reads by
•sound. -
The new instrument is called a tong-.
a initial ede e. It consists of a trumpet, of
Costumes are very effective -out- Obje-ctive; duration and stay. a young seal, hoping, to tame and rear P
n , ma • , l't .,. 'hoard' hi He' lay it in a which the end Is horizontal;' the
dears„ and ca be de most .imp y I 1 l i � •, th ...;end is stretched a shoot of thin tub motionless, 'without
.rico the te' s brew-
out f h The I And Rhi h i d of 'digester;
is Much more important than the ma- ing soon d 'swiftly as the ship
s er1 en the mother was as swift and Th light lam is Hector the road
followed in search of het- young When : edecteci from the mercury on to a ter.
The Murder Car.
Alone, save for a dot of white
The wide road lay in the morning light
A low, soft . purring on the air, ;
A. long, black monster now gliding
there
Along the road, turns frons its way,
Springs• for the dot as a cat for its
. prey,
And' Mary's pet Leghorn
move again
"What does it matter?
hen."
will ne'et
lt's� only a
ls p• p_.
o cheap materials. eco oriug, then
ck se,ure it, but ,w e s hint of coming,
'thout
;ocean wasp an ' ', bei, •on w c . s a rep, mercury. ' sas er "
The invite is warm and sincere, P e from an electric P ec or watches for his mss
terials or the cut:
He—"My doctor advised me to take
lots of air."
She -"Dad's no doctor, but he told
me to give you the air, too."
And he- thaws in' a flash with
wr the t �hotographic plate, and any sound Now of relatives. and friends bereft
bacon and mash, it was first caught, ht the mother howled P
He's a host that is full of good cheer, piteously, and the "baby" carcked spoken or sunlit'° n the trumpet/flakes The collie dog is all he has• left,
b kit ief; but the man was re -the mercury vibrate, a "pattern of the A sudden roar, a pitiful moan,
acs
gr
Then you sit round the fire and youlentless, and woolly watched the agon- broken reflections being produced on And Poor old Hector lay dying, eloper
the plate.
never will tire
To listen with silence and awe,
To tales that are strange of forest and
range '
Of aimals wild and their lore;
ized mother follow` him 'till, the ship
reached the wharf at Santa Barbara.
Here lie tbought his prize was safe,
;for` surely no seal would venture there,
and 'tile ' ship was docked. , Suddenly
the mother gave a cry close to the
To talk that is quiet of havoc and riot, ship, and the little one, as if obeying
By Sorest fire; landslip, and flood, instructions, struggled,. still in the
Of strong silent men who left human sack, to the edge of the deck, and roll.
ken, -
led Mel! overboard. The mother was
With. the call of the wild in their seen to seize the sack, ;rip it open with
blood; her sharp teeth, and joyfully claim he
baby. She• had swum after it for
eighty miles.
A Poem You Ought to Know.
• A Song of Sunrise.
Probably the most magnificent des-
cription of the coming of day is the.
prologue to Robert Browning's "Pippa
Passes." Browning is often accused
of obscurity, but here is directness and
force, and the splendor of the language
matches the splendor of the dawn.
Day l
Faster and more_fast,
O'er night's brim, day boils at last;
Boils, pure gold, o'er the clouts -cup's
brim
Where spurting and suppressed it lay,
For not a froth -flake touched the rim
Of yonder gap in the solid grey
Of the eastern cloud, an hoar away;
But forth one wavelet, • then, another,
curled,
Till the whole sunrise, not to be sup-
prest,
Rose, reddened, and its seething breast
Flickered in bounds, grew gold, then
overflowed the world.
An Improved Telescope..
A. telescope has been invented which,
although only five inches long, will
magnify four -and -a -half times. Such
largo magnification, combined with a
Short focal length, has been achieved
by improved lens grinding and perfect
mounting.
The border' of prismatic color in
most expensive field glasses has been
avoided by a new combination of•glass-
es and the arrangement of apertures.
The glass contains a concave -convex
flint ,objective lens with a double con-
vex crown and a double concave flint
eye -piece.
An Apple a Day.
Men the doctor arrived he found
the patient in tears.
"Cheer up, my geed man," he said,
„you'll pull through all right"
" 'Tisn% that, lade," groaned the pa-
tient, "but just think of the money
I've spent buying apples to keep you
away,"
'Tile oborlginal Ionians 'would figure
of course, Then we would see the
hardy i'roneh missionaries or fur.
traders, .Incidents in tlle•lives -of the
white settlers would be shown, We
would see the rod -shirts(, bat pygo-
lttaky lunmernlen in their camps.
The incoming of Swedish, 'or Veg-
With a parting grip and a friendly tip,
He swings to his waiting mount,
And canters away, for his work won't
stay,
Tho days of a ranger :must count;
The trail calls you on so you journey
along,
Through a country to which you're a
stranger,
With, a hope in your breast that some-
where in the West
You'll meet once again with the
Ranger.
=Frank Miell, Nordegg, Alta.
Animals Killed Wholesale.'
During the recent hcof-and-mouth
plague in California the nurnber of ani-
mals slaughtered in some places was
so great that natural canyons and
abandoned railway cuts were used as
burial places for the mass of carcases,
the: earth sides being: blown in with
dynamite.
Britain's War widows have been de-
creased by 90,000 who have married
again.
1
- True Majesty.
I love the sense -of power that a horse
Bred to rude service—some great Nor-
mandy
Or Percheron teeming with strength
and force -
Gives to me as he pulls' so easily
r His mighty load along the city . street.
His bashing eyes, wide nostrils., toss-
ing mane, •
The shaggy fetlocks dangling round
his feet, :
His surety of movement, show his
I grain -
And mettle, as'unflinchingly each day
He serves mankind; and when I thus
{ behold
This nobleTitan marching on his way
With such true majesty, my head I
•• hold
I-Iigher a bit, step livelier through the
crowd
And with new sense of power am en
dewed.
These patterns are quite distinctive.
The mote B flat gives a different pat-
tern from the note F; intact, the drop
of mercury follows every variation of
musicsung or played into the trumpet,
so that a moving band of photographic
-film would .record voice or music as a
,series of -different patterns. .. •
We thus have a new instrument for
the'study of speech and sound, which
may pave the way to fresh knowledge
and perhaps find many good uses,
With savage joy runs the wild road
hog,
"What does it matter? It's only a
dog.,,.
To Observe Sun Spots.
A very small telescope or even an
ordinary field, glass or opera :glass,:
will afford the reader a view of sun
spots at a time of solar activity. The
safest way to observe them is to point
the instrument at the sun and focus
the eyepiece until a sharp image of its
disk, several inches in diameter ,is
projecte'd on a surface of smooth white
cardboard held at a distance of from
two to four feet. The spots can easily:;
be distinguished from specks on the 1
eyepiece by .noticing that they move
with the sun's image. At present we
are just emerging from a period of
solar calm during.which no spots have.
been seen for Weeks at a time. But
a new cycle of activity has already be-
gp g g' to
appear. The reader hardly needs to
be warned that if he wishes. to look
directly with his telescope, field glass
or opera glass he must protect his
eyes with the blackest of smoked Blass
Will Raise Price.
Mother—"Silence is golden. Wil-
lie, not silver, as you say."
Willie—"I'm glad to hear that -sis-
ter has never given `lire-more'n a quar-
ter, you know."
Speckled. Trout In Maritime Provinces,
The fish cultural operations carried
on by the Department of Marine and
Fisheries have been almost entirely in
the interests of the most valuable com-
mercial food fishes. The demand for
speckled trout has, -however, increased
in recent years in the Maritime Pro.
vinces, and with a view to meeting •
this demand, 700,000 speckled trout
eggs were obtained early in the yeas'
from the state of New Hampshire and
1,200,000 have been secured from coin
merelal''ish farms in the United States.
These eggs have been distributed
• amongst. the yarlous hatcheries in the
Maritime Provinces,
un and a few s ots are be ronin
—Louella C Poole
I as the intensely bright image would
• otherwise seriously injure them.
Y' engineer of Ontario, to enable Kitchener to convey supplies to
I:,)eo,,Cd with the aid of J. I,, T:lrawer, 1)fi1Ci;y6 c,ii., i y
is clese to the resent disturbance In
Khartum in attempting to rescue Gordon, this'bi�idge over the Atbara river p
the Slidell.
An Object Lesson.
A certain sea captain and his chief
engineer, tired of endlessly debating
which the ship could more easily dis-
pense with, decided to swap places
for a Clay. The chief ascended to the
bridge and the ,skipper dived into the
engine -room. After a couple of hours,
the captain suddenly 'appeared on
deck covered With oil and soot, and
generally the worse for wear,
"Chiefs" he called, wildly :beclroning.
with a monkey wretch. "You'll have
to tome down here' at once. 1 can't
seem to make her go."
"OC course, you can't," said the
chief, calmly removing his pipe from
his mouth. "She's a,shere," -
Mcchenical Berk Clerks.
Machines which sort money into the
various d.enoinivatis, and count it,
are likely . to revolutionize banking
methods.
Tho 7iootei)ays, British Columbia,
aro the principel source of 811:0 in Cnn-
oda, There ere wvorkebbe d pooits at
Notre 1)aino des singes, tilts in the
Ciat'm penineu7e, Quehieed;