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The Seaforth News, 1958-08-14, Page 2Strange Things Folks Do For Love It was a sultry summer night with stars scintillating in the sky as a young couplesauntered across a common on the out- skirts of a French city. But neither the .full -lipped, languorous girl nor her fiance felt happy. The girl, who had a fiery temper, was -in one of her quarrelsome moods. "Be kind to me, sweetheart," he begged, putting his arm around her waist. "I .love you so much — I shan't be really happy until we're married next year." The girl's eyes flashed in the darkness. "Love me!" she mock- ed. "I don't believe it, What have you ever done to prove you love me? I shan't marry you until you do something really brave" Her challenge bewildered the young man. "How can I prove that I love you?" he asked wild- ly. Pointing to a disused chimney rising -120 feet into the sky, she declared: "Climb that tomorrow. if you don't climb it I won't marry you." Next day the young man made the giddy ascent, climbing the chimney by means of a rusty iron ladder attached to it. Just as he reached the top the ladder began to fall slowly outwards, But as it did so he had the presence of mind to grasp the lightning conductor and clung there for several agonizing seconds. Then, slowly swinging one hand and one foot outwards, he grasped the swaying ladder. Dragging it towards him, des- perately, he secured the top to the chimney again and was able to descend to safety — into the arms of his half -sobbing fiancee, who had watched the whole inci- dent. There are countless instances of amazing' ways in which men and women have.. proved and tested their love. A report from Bucharest said that one girl hired a "vamp"— a curvaceous young woman—to prove whether or not her fiance was faithful to her. In another case, a prospective young bridegroom was "vamped" a week before his wedding by e pretty girl who winked at him in the street and later came and sat at the same table when he was lunching. But the bridegroom - to - be would have none of her wiles. Only after his wedding did his bride tell him of her ruse to test his love for her. The "vamp" was really hex own cousin, A Belgian named Garlier Once fell in love with a girl who had vowed that she would only mar- ry a very courageous man who could first prove his love and bravery. "If I walk into a den of lions and stay there for five minutes smoking and reading a news- paper will that satisfy you?" "You wouldn't dare!" she re- torted. He would — and did — despite the chorus of snarls and growls from the circus lions. To prove his love another brave but very foolhardy youth lay down on a railway line, rolled up his sleeve and let a train cut off his arm. It was later revealed that he had told his girl's mother that he would rather lose a limb than be part • - ed from her. And be showed he meant what he said. It is said of the great artist, Vincent Van Gogh, that he once burned his hand over a lamp to show a girl that he loved her. Another artist, an Austrian named Justinus Szodan, spent twenty heart - breaking years learning to paint on - cobwebs. BALI? BALLERINAS—Storting a course of rigorous training which may make some of them ballet stars in the future, these youngsters put plenty of energy into the job of acting out a nursery rhyme at a dancing school in London, 'England. Children of 10 to 14 years are trained at the school. TAKE TALKS6a When you buy melons for pickling, be sure to select those that are too hard for immediate use. They must be a little green, or your pickle will be flabby Honeydew melons make especi- ally good pickles. For light colored cantaloupe pickle, use white vinegar. Tie your choice of whole spices (you may like a different mixture from the one in this recipe) in a thin piece of cloth. Let the spice bag soak in the syrup until the flavor suits your taste, then dis- card the spice. For a darker, mare strongly flavored product, use cider vinegar and brown sugar and put a few whole spices in each jar. Why? Because the fail -haired, pretty Viennese girl with whom he had fallen desperately in love had looked at him coquettishly when he proposed to her and had said: "The man I love must do the impossible." With grim ardour the young painter set about achieving his superhuman task, working for years in an obscure little studio. Finally he achieved "the im- possible" one bitter December night — he painted a lovely little picture on a spider's web, after discovering the special colour mixture which would show On the web and not tear it. What had happened to the girl who had inspired him? He went to seek her — only to find that she was dead. Artistic Vienna applauded the man who portray- ed miniatures on cobwebs, but the fame he won never compen- sated him for her death. A strange story of how some native girls in Papua insisted on would - be suitors committing murder was told in an official report from the wild hinterland of British New Guinea. Courting there was a strenu- ous business, for no attractive girl would look at a suitor until he had killed a man To prove he had done it he had to present her with a finger belonging to the victim. WALKING ON WATER — Wayne Wilson, strides along inside a 300 -pound plastic bubble he dreamed up. The strange -looking craft, which Wilson claims is unsinkable, enables its passengers to walk on water without getting wet. Described in Popular Mechanics magazine, the bubble has a series of "paddles" which push it along while Wilson walks inside, twirling the globe around him like a squirrel cage. Cantaloulic Pickle 2-3 pounds melon (honeydew, casaba, or cantaloupe) 1 pint white vinegar 1 cup light corn syrup 1 cup water 3 cups sugar 1 lemon 1 tablespoon each, whole cloves and allspice 2 medium pieces ginger root Vs teaspoon whole black pepper 3 sticks cinnamon Salt Cut melon lengthwise into 6 or 6 strips. Trim off rind and the spongy seed pockets Then, cut melon crosswise into from 3- to -inch pieces. Put melon in glass or enamelware container and cover with salted water (8 tablespoons salt to each quart water), Let stand 3-4 hours. Rinse and drain melon. Taste; if too salty, rinse again. Cook mel- on in clear water until almost fork tender, then drain. While melon is cooking, tie spices in cloth. Mix all other ingredients except lemon and 1 the sugar; boil 3 minutes. Add melon and cook 15 minutes. Taste syrup; if as spicy as wanted, remove bag. Cover pickle and let stand in coal place from 12 to 24 hours. Add re- maining sugar and the thinly sliced lemon and cook until the melon is clear and syrup as thick as you like it. If syrup becomes too thick before melon is clear, add more water. Pack pickle to within about ih inch on the top of tapered jars; bring syrup to boiling and pour, boiling hot, over melon. Put dome lids on jar; screw band tight. * * * Watermelon -rind pickle has been a favorite in most families since grandmother's or even great-grandsnother's day. The fact that only the -rind of the melon is used makes housewives feel thrifty when preparing this sweet and spicy condiment. If you like gingered rind, add 1 tablespoon ground ginger to the clear water in which you cook the rind. Watermelon Rind Pickle 2 quarts prepared rind 2 quarts lime or salt water 4 - 6 cups sugar 1 quart water 1 quart vinegar 1 tablespoon whole allspice 1 tablespoon whole cloves 1 stick cinnamon 1 tablespoon crushed ginger root Trim the pink flesh from large pieces of thick, firm watermelon rind. Soak rind in lime water (1 tablespoon slaked lime to 1 quart water) 4 hours, or soak over- night in salt water (4 table- spoons salt to 1 quart water). Lime water gives 'a crisper pickle. Drain, rinse, cover with clear water and boil 11/2 hours Cool, then cut . in small pieces. Trim off green skins and meas- ure rind. (This may be done at the time pink meat is removed but is easier to do after the rind has been partly cooked.) Boil 2 cups sugar, 1 quart fresh water, 1 cup vinegar and the spices for 5 minutes. Add rind, Sim- mer 30 minutes. Let stand overnight. Add re- maining sugar and vinegar and boil gently until syrup is al- most as thick as honey and rind is clear. Add boiling water if syrup becomes too thick before rind is tender and transparent. Pack into ;hot jars and seal at once. „ You may belong to the large. group of hostesses who feel that no luncheon is complete with- out a pickled peach on each plate. If you do, you will find it fun to make your own for the fall and winter season of entertain- ing. Clingstone peaches are best• for pickling, but freestones may be used. The peaches should be hard -ripe, Peach Pickle 2 dozen hard -ripe peaches 5 - 6 cups sugar 1 piece ginger root 2 sticks cinnamon 1 tablespoon whole allspice 1 teaspoon whole cloves 2 cups water 3 cups vinegar Pare peaches and leave whole. Boil 2 cups sugar, the spices, water and vinegar until sugar dissolves. Add peaches, a few at a time. Cook gently until heated through, then take out of syrup. When all peaches are heated, cover with the syrup and' let stand in cool place until cold. Drain off syrup, add to it 2 cups sugar, cook until sugar dissolves, cool slightly. Add peaches and let stand overnight. Pack the peaches into hot jars, add rest of sugar to syrup, cook to de- sired thickness and pour boiling hot over peaches. Process 10 minutes in hot water bath. 'Note: It Is less trouble to add all the sugar at one time, cook pack and process the peaches immediately, but there is less danger Of shriveling when the sugar is added On the installment plan, • • Pickled Cherries Pickled cherries add sweet- sour taste t0 your meats, Wash, seed, and drain eher- ries. Cover with vinegar and let stand 12 hours. Measure both cherries and juice and add an equal amount of sugar. Let stand 10 days, stirring each day. Pack cherries into hot jars. Heat the syrup to boiling, pour over cherries' and seal at once. (Claims Tail Fins Have Their Uses No adornment of the Ameri- can road has been sO caricatured as the soaring tailfins on late - model automobiles. So drastic has been the attack on these streamlined pieces of light -fes- tooned sculpture that few re- member the very practical pur- pose they were originally intend- ed to serve , Last month, a 65 -year-old Ger- man scientist tried to set the matter right during a visit to the Stevens Institute of Technology in Hoboken, N.J., where one of his four sons works. Dr. Wuni- bald Kamm, "Father of Tailfins," recalled: "I started in about 1935 when I was in charge of the Automotive Research Institute in Stuttgart. I had 400 assistants -200 engineers and 200 mechan- ics—working on the problem of stability and what tailfins could do to help. T have continued ever since. Recently we have even interested the German Gav- ernment in the very real possi- bility of finned cars which auto- matically keep their direction so. you don't have to keep bal- ancing them all the time." Directional stability—the abil- ity of an automobile to keep its course without, driver correction, even when disturbed—has al- ways been Kaman's goal. He feels that tailfins even larger than the ones on current Detroit models are needed to achieve this. Their purpose: To concentrate all the wind forces which act on a car at a focus between the centre of gravity and the midpoint of the vehicle. Mathematical analysis as well as wind -tunnel and tow- ing -tank tests have shown that this point is critical to automo- bile stability. To test his theories further, Kamm hopes to persuade U.S. and German manufacturers to build radically tail -finned exper- imental autos on the pattern of one he designed for millionaire sportsman Briggs Cunningham. Unfortunately, Cunningham did not like the fins and took them offs a decision Kamm feels handi- capped the car in a French race last year "The driver drove the fastest lap," said Kamm, "but then was thrown off the track and could not get to victory again. If the fins had been on the car, he would not have had the accident," DON'T DESPAIR In some of the United States —Rhode Island and North. Da- kota among others --where life. imprisonment is the only pen- alty for homicide, a person can still be legally put to' death for committing murder. The law in those states says that if a per- son, while already serving a life sentence for one killing, kills somebody else, he is to be hang- ed. Any More For Sparrow Pie? Sparrows hopped into the news', recently when it was re- ported from Peking, China, that' these perky little birds .had mul-. tiplied so greatly and become such a pest that three million' residents there were waging war on them. Guns, sticks, catapults; and poison were used in an official anti -sparrow campaign; Within three weeks more than 105,000. sparrows were wiped out. Not long ago, in South Africa, too, a wild life conservation ex- pert drew attention to the men- ace of sparrows. He described them as "dangerous foreigners" which must be destroyed or they would wipe out all the beautiful birds. Ever since a common sparrow is alleged to have killed a cer- tain famous cock robin, the spar- row's reputation has been re- garded by farmers as pretty - shady. In 1940, the British Min- istry of Agriculture ranked the sparrow as Public Enemy No, g a close second to the wood pigeon: "Sparrows ravage green food growing in the garden and green - stuffs and corn in the fields," said the indictment. "They tear flowers to pieces, take grain from the fields, the stacks and poul- try yards, and damage ricks and thatch." The common sparrow has a broad hard beak and a black "bib." On the other hand, .the hedge -sparrow, a small brown bird with a fine beak and a white collar round his throat, is one of the.most useful insect eaters. Anti -sparrow campaigns , are nothing new in Britain. A re- ceipt for sparrows' heads was once found in an old trunk in a Worcestershire village church. During the eighteenth century the village suffered a plague of sparrows and the churchwarden. paid for all heads brought to him. Sparrows used to be killed and eaten in English cottage homes, where sparrow pie was quite a delicacy. TOO MUCH TILT — City fathers in Pisa, Italy, have appealed to engineers all over the worldfor help to keep the famed Lean- ing Tower of Pisa from toppling. The tower, pictured above in a rare night photo made in 1954, tilted another 1.5 milli- meters during the last 12 months. This is one and a half times the annual rate of lean. Since it was erected, the 784 -year-old white marble bell tower has developed a lean of 4 meters, 55 centimeters and 6 millimeters (less than five yards) away from the perpendicular. The problem is a big blob of soft clay on which one side of the base rests. Massive injections of concrete earlier this century apparently did not help. s �� .� .L '..n. n`.\!s .C•.Z:iJwC3XN.•r::: .&,:. �'9: NOT IN THE SCRIPT — Firemen pour water on the Samuel Goldwyn sound stage in Hollywood cis the roof and walls collapse. Damage to the sound stage and equipment is estimated at $2,000,000, The fire will disrupt the shooting of the film "Porgy and Bess."