Zurich Herald, 1923-05-24, Page 3Stories About Well -Known People
A Royal Retort..
When. Huls Gustavus of Sweden was
playing 'tennis with Mile. Lenglen
against Th cater and Mies Ryan recent
iy, he frequenrtly, Gent the belle too
.much to the ri8bt,
I -lie partner hesitated to remark en
this at first, but finally her. lova of ten-
nas overcame her ;hesitation at correct-
ing a king, and she ,suggested, "More.
to the 'left, Your Mtajesty."
I{ing Gustage showed that he had
accepted the hint by seeding a ball
well to the left, but his, ansryver VMS' am
unexpected one. "That to exactly what
• 'Granting (theSwadish. Socialist Prime
Minister) a tells me every day," the
King replied.
Lovely Princess Worked a Miracle.
Not ev'eay. loyal eubject has his
*arts charmed away: by the Queen of
England. Yet it is.in this 'human .role
.
that Queen Alexandea, the •Queen,
Mother, iia. shown in a recollection of
Lord Erneat Hamilton in hie new book,
"Forty Years On," wbichis tine fruit of
niany.years of travel e,nd a mind that
has seen and heard much in English
social and political life.
One of Lord Ernest's, most interest-
ing stories is this about Queen Alex-
andra, who, as Princess o3 Wales,
visited the author's father at Dublin
Castle in 1567:.
"My _ small, and, probably dirty,
hands were at that time badly dis-
figured ; by warts. The application of
caustic ,to these warts • had turned
them brown, whlciih cannot have added
th their attractiveness,
;'H.R.H.'took the most solicitous in-
terest in my complaint, and examined
niy repulsive little hands with the ten,
derest care. After listening to a re-
oital of my woes—for my warts were
a source( of great shame and diratrese
ko me—ehe promised that she would
charm them away ;for mo, A *attain
rite was gone through, to the best of
my recollection With hazel„ivv'ige, but;
be that ae it may, the Pact remains,.
that Prom that day on .my warts began
to disappear and have never shown
any tendency to return.., It is not to
be Wondered at that I worshipped with
a lasting edoretionr the lovely Princese`
who had worked this, Hans' Andersen
miracle on me.”
Fourteen years latex the Queen re-
membered the incident and inquired
about ;the warts, The cure wast • per-
manent.
Why the Keeper Blushed.
The British Minas•ter of Health, Mr.
Neville Chamberlain, tells an amusing
story of a vielt hie father, Mr. Joseph
Chamberlain; once tirade to the Zoo.
The, famous statesman paused before
the hipeopotanme, and .. asked the
brute's name. •
The keeper blushed scarlet and
looked rather embarrassed, but made
no reply. •
"Oona, come," said Mr. Chamber
laid, "whet do you call thie beast? You
have a name for it, haven't you?"
"Y -yes, sir," stammered the man.
"Then, what isit?" asked Mr. Cham-
berlain.
The man teemed to be laboring un-
der great emotion.
"I don't like to • Say it, sir," he re-
plied.
"Why not?"
"You you woruI•dn't like it, sir."
"Oh, never mind tbat," Mr. Cham-
berlain replied; "tell me its name."
"The man sighed helplessly. "You
really won't like it, Mr. Gliamberiain,
sir. We call 'im Joe."
How Some Famous
Authors Work
Gone are the days when authors
worked furiously in garrets on green
tea and black goffee, and finished one
book in a week and slaved at another
for ten years. The author now works
as efficiently and regularly as any pro-
fessional man, says an English. writer.
Arnold. Bennett plans his work for
months ahead. He devotes so much
time to novels, so'much Ito journalism,
and so much to play -writing. He uses.
a pen, and once tried to save labor by
dictating, butt found hesco:uldn'•t man-
age it.
H. G. Wells. uses• pen and,penoil al-
ternately Ide'ie a five -hours -a -day intim,
but when Ire,',; -ret in a 'work the
put inyeigii`t or nine"hones, and get
up in the middle of the night to jot
down happy thoughts. He works "in
bits," which are typed and afterwards
pieced together.
Typewriters In the Woods.
Phillips -Oppenheim writes about
4,000 words a day. Oddly enough, he
does not plan his work, but starts a
book' carelessly at the first chapter,
and relies on his ingenious invention
to carry him through.
Both Ethel M. Dell and Marie Cor ells
write furiously in the heat of the in-
spiration, and both would probably be
4eoandalized if one sugested that they
should compose direct on to a type-
writer. •
Many American writers disdainthe
pen, and carry about a portable type -
Writer, en which they tap out their^
thoughts while .they are ih the woods
Or while sitting on the banks of
streams•.
Stephen M'Kenna, takes long holi-
days
o_li
days`to clear his brain in intervals of
novel -writing. When he has a .book
mapped out, he shuts letmself up, ret
fuses all invitations, and works unre-
mittingly, only going out for an hour's
walk each day.. •
Gilbert Frank= is an amazingly
rapid and efficient 'worker. He die -
dates until he fa tired; has the result
&riled over to him in typescript; goes
through it, re -writes, polishes, throws
it back; and -so the polishing process
goes on until he Is satisfied.
Like Flaubert, George M'oos'e works
slowly and, painfully, and thinks he has'
had a great day's work if he finished.
1,000 words,
Lever, the Irish writer of rollicking
'novels, would have seamed that. He
got up at five and wrote until seven,
ticking off 250 words every fifteen
minutes,. After that, he didn't do an-
other stroke all day.
OpereAIr Devotees.
Just after the success of "If Winter
Comes" I found A. S, M, Hutchinson In
hese Maida Vale flat, wonting in his
shirt-sieeves at' "This, Freedb n." He
was not ee absorbed in that work but
he could break off and talk for an hour,
13y the advice of his friend, Hugh•Wal-
pole, he worlr,s only four hours a day.
Robert Hickens likes to work in the
wenn- He wrote "The Garden of Al -
lair" on a, ieliff • in Sarit, 'Conan Doyle
Risco works much in the open air, ' and
E. F. Benson reserves hie beet effort
for a "holiday" in Switzerland,
Conrad, Hardy, and Barrie are all
pormal Winters, without tricks, or
taeculiaritiess and so is Shaw, who
writes epeediiy,
Clalsworthy Mose to work tb:;ani>'lic
;tad another famous and prelifle hovel-
lit uses. a dictaphone and eainp1eys
three secrotar ies,
...gig...._ Y..
Sensitive to Colored Light.
Ever since Bell and his colleagues
made it possible far use to telephone to
distant points experimenters ' have
been striving to perfect some method
of seeing over a wire, or at least of
transmitting pictures over the latter.
The one strong clue for such invest;
gators has• been the fact that the elec-
trical resiistenee of the metal selenium
varies with the intensity of the light
falling on -lit, so that by using a number
of little selenium parts successively in
a circuit they can reproduce the light
and shade effects at some distant
point.
Crude as thin basis may seem, it has
led to promising results, but even if
developed in ,practice it •could not
'transmit ,colors, as th ; selenium does
not distinguish between them.. • It; was
Prof. Jager of Amsterdam who found
a mineral- which also-, varies in its elec-
trical : •conductivity with the light tail-
ing- on it, but which does this in a
much different degree according to the
color ,of the light. Green bass only -a
slight effect, red rays act 'much more
strongly, while violet light reduces • the
electrical resistance to about one two -
hundredth of what it was in the dark.
Consequently we not only thane a sub-
stitute for the selenium but if we keep
the intensity of thelight the same the
use of stibnite may enable us to tell
colors at a glance.
0. --AND THE WORST IS, YET TO COME
A Chanted Calendar.
P"irst came the. primrose,
On the bank thigh,
Likea maiden looking forth
From the window of a tower
When the battle rolls below,
So look'd she,
And saw the storms go by
Then came the 'wind -flower
In the valley left behind,
As a. wounded maiden, pale
With purple streaks of woe,
When the battle has roll'd by
Wanders to and fro,
So totter'd she,
Dishevell'd in the wind.
Then came the daisies,
On the first of May,
Like a banner'd show's, advance
While the crowd 'runs, by the way,
With ten thousand flowers about them,
They, came trooping through the
fields,.
As, a happy people come,
So came they.
,As: a happy people come
When the war' has roll'd'away,
:With dance and caber, ;pipe and drum,
:And all mance [holiday.
Then carie the cowslip,
Like a dancer in the air,
She, spread her little mat of green;
And en. it danced she.
With a fillet bound about her brow,
A fillet 'round her happy brow,
A golden fillet round her brow,
And rubies in her hair.
—Sydney DobelI.
The greatest known depth of the
ocean is eight and three-quarter miles.
c: -
THREE • KINDS OF
GAS SHED .S
If the war had continued for another
two years it is likely that poison gas
would have become the deadliest weap-
on in use. This is made clear by a
new volume of the official medical his-
tory of the war, issued by the British.
war office.
One of the most striking features
of the volume is the description of the
way in which the Germans employed.
gas, shells of various composition for
bombardment.
Broadly speaking, three kinds of gas
were used—green cross., blue cross, and
yellow cross. Green cross shells con-
tained acute lung irritants. Blue dross
contained sneezing and tear gases•.
Yellow croe contained "mustard gas,
which not only possessed a. -delayed
poisoning power, but was a blistering
agent.
or Harassing.
Fdaast '1•varo f g
Th:e:: first two types: -of shell were
used ;for 'general harassing or neutral-
azieg •purpos'ee, Or in preliminary bom-
bardment; while, the use of the yellow;
or mustard gas, was intended to be re-
stricted to areas which there was no
intention ' of occupying or advancing
over, but where there was a, _likelihood
of causing a number of casualties, and
rendering battery or other important
points untenable. ,
The reason for this was that mus-
Tra
sl ting T
NE of the world's great achieve-
ments, which has been going en
steadily for many yeair% is the
translatioh of the scriptures in-
to various, languages, and dialects.
It is estimated that there are 1,00Q
of these tongues, and .such has; been
the determination and patience of, the
translators of the. Bible that at least
some portion of the Scripture has been
translated into no fewer than 770 of
these mediums. '
' The whole Bible has, been traae,-
lated• into 158 of these 3anguages,. the
New Testament into 142, at least one
complete book of Scripture into 422
and parts (that is, only chapters . or
verses), into 48. •
Tremendous' Difficulties.
Translators of the Bible have over
obme tremendous difficulties, which
are little realized by the general pub-
lic, Also they have brought to light
many odd and interestng facts con-
earning the complexities of language
and the part which nature has. played
in limiting the mental vision of certain
peoples. For instance, in translating
the Biles into Eskimo it was found
impossible to convey the. mea,ning of
the word "lamb" to ;the natives, who
had never scan such an animal. So
the Eskimo Bible: used "baby seal"
where the English Bible uses "lamb,"
that being the naareet equivalent of
the word which the natives could • com-
prehend, an instance being, "Behold
the Baby Seal of God, who taketh.
away the sin of tele world." It ial said.
to have -taken 250 yearn to translate
the Eskimo Bible on aocount of the
difficulty in accurately expressing the
Scriptures to people who live amid
Perpetual snow and ice,
In China to -day it is necessary to
publish two editions of the 'Scriptures-,
because the words used to designate
the Deity coulee not be agreed upon.,
Instead et a union vorsion, two YEW -
$1.0118 of tee Chinese: Bible were le-
aned, one more elegant in style, aid
the other More acotirate in nen-wring.
Neither eould be accepted by all, the
miselons, Perhaps • berceuso trio Chinese.
To rude words the bent attitude is; themselves' have thought hire ;Supreme'
deaf ears. Being too far above'matin to be men -
e Bi
tioned excepting by suggestions, the
�
Chinese •term.to be used where "God"
Is named in the, Bible is still unsettled.
Accurate Renderings.
In India there wore differences
which for a time looked to be irrecon-
cilable. For instance, a literal render-
ing of the text, "Be thou faithful unto
death and I will give thee a crown of
life, was criticized by Indian pundits
because they' said it meant, "Be ye
'faithful up to, and not beyond, the
time when you die." The actual ver-
sion had to take this longer form, "Up
to the point of giving your •life remain
faithful and I. will give you a crown
le
I ,t
BY ARTHUR CHAPMAN.
of life." This satisfied India's, critics,
The hairy sinus,, an aboriginal race
in Japan, are dying out, and their
translation of the Scriptures is dying
with them. Archdeacon Batchelor has
labored for forty years' among the
Ainus, who, When he settled among
them, had no written language. ` He
mastered, their tongue and translated
the Ainu New Testament and Psalter,
and now he is seeing the effeot of his
lifework being slowly lost through, the
gradual dying out of the Attu people;
To -day his version of the Scriptures is
practically extinct, as the people have
forgotten their own speech. • The new
SIGNS Orr' ACTIVITY
e--Philadelttihla Ledger.
Last Link in 6,500 -Mile Highway Completed
With the Qilicia-1 opantng of the
Banff -Windermere Highway in: the
Canadian Itockles scheduled for the
near future, the last link in a 6,690:
mile chain of Seattle roadway will have
beon welded into place, malting an tiro-
broken circuit from California to Cana-
da and return. It panes through Grand
Canon . Park, Yellowstone • National
Park, GIacier Park, :and the Shuswap,
Indian Reserve in western Canada; sand
traverses part of, a most picturesque
country. From Maoleod, in southeast-
ern, Alberta,, a "rectangular" rdute can
be covered, including the beautiful 98 -
mile link from Banff to Windermere,
just completed. One side of the rec-
tangle runs north from Maoleod, cross -
Mg many streams through Parkland
and Midnapore to Calgary. Here the
road makes a great winding turn le. a
geneiaily westerly direction towards
the wonderful country sitrroundini
Banff. After leaving this' latter town;
dile road soon begins to run south, ass
cenddng steadily past Sinclair Pawed'
which divides; the B:rinco and.Stanfer4
ranges. Vermilion Pass, .the highest.
point on the trip, is just ahead with ani
altitude of 5,876' feet. The fourth, or,
seoutlbierly side of the rectangle begins;
after Fort Steele le paced, near Elkc.
Here the Hlglaway swings Sharply: to
the north, eel! it had 1:waits sense of
direction, but, recovering at Michel, its
tures east, making a sharp "corner"'
again at Pincher, and z"eentering Mao-
recd; the starting point, from the
southwest. Every part of this 567 -mile
'circuit passes through regions of great
natural beauty, and the motorist .call-
-not but feel well rewarded atter mak,
ing the round trip
tard gas lies for a long time on the 1'
ground', and troops occupying ground
over which` mustard gas had been dis-
tributed might themselves have been"'
affected for days afterwards•.
Consequently, the Germans only
bombarded the ffanlss of their attacks
with this. herasing gas', and employed
only the more lethal gases, blue and
green gas, over the areas whichthey
were attacking with a view to oocupa-
tion.
Mustard Gas at Ypres.
The potentialities, of mustard gas
were revealed when, for the first time,
the Germans bombarded Ypres with
that type of shell in July, 1917,,and in-'
flicted hundreds of casualties. It was
the turning point of the war as far as
gas warfare .was concerned. Poison
gas was net longer considered a matter
of clouds to be sent over from cylin-
ders
ylindens when the wind was favorable. It
was raised to its proper place as an
adjunct to high explosive, and practi-
cally in every bombardment thereafter
a rain of gas shells descended on val-
leys and ravines in which the vapor
.could drift.
The question raised by the book is
whether more powerful, more deadly,
and more effective kinds of poison: gas
will make future wars inconceivable
in their horror.
Turnable•
•
Fire
Ladder Ex-
tends from Truck.
An effective lire -fighting unit is seen
in a ' new extension leder of English
manufacture which is considered re-
markable for its great "reach." The
ladder is built to reach heights of 60
to 90 feet and upward, and is mounted.
on a turnable carried over the rear
axle of a motor truck. It can be used
either , for life-saving' or as a water
tower:
Foolish Question.
The Passerby (to motorist at road-
side who is red in the face and pop-
eyed from pumping up a tire)-
"What's the matter? Have a punc-
ture?„
Motorist (after counting. ten)—"Noy
I Net thought it would be a good idea
to change the air In this tube."
__
Although it has a huge tongue, the
whale has very little sense of taste.
iStr
"I Am the Unimproved
Highway"
By H. G. Andrews
The feat that pattered in prim-
evai slime gave me birth.
Unchanged while through ages
past I lave endured, time has: but
served to increase my infinite
variety. Earthborn, and without
a soul, yet have I lived. From
the beginning I have been man's
enemy.
I have haves snared caravans that
left bleaching bones in lands
now desert.
Empires• have failon because
of me.
I have turned victories into
routs I - have tramped mighty
leaders and have crushed armies.
To -day I am fair to look, upon,
to -morrow a steaming bog. I add
difficulty to distance.
With isolation do I inspire to
unjoint the endeavor of men. I
tug at the wheels of the grain
cart that bread may be dear. I
hamper those who would feed
the race. I am an enemy of
church and school. I mire the
healer on lids rounds and delay
his coming that little ones may
die.
I am a disrupter of home. 1
speed the firstborn to the cities
when I am fair to see, and when
he would return I face brim with
my forbidding depths.
Whet men plowed with a
crooked stick I was, there. 'When
the ancients' covered • me with
stones I slipped away to other
lands•. I am the ,oldest lie than
lives to -day. Men count me
cheap. I know the price -they;
pay who count me so:
I am the highway -the unite
proved highway. My name is
mud.
True genius requires centuries of
family tradition before it can blesso
into flower. No great literature ha
been achieved without ancestry.—Mr
St. John. Ervine,
nge
u
generation understand& only Japanese, pidity, are due to unsuspected Indians
and Archdeacon Batchelor never traits. Exactness of expression, per -
speaks Alun except when he is talk- fection in the use of the tribal lame-
' ing to persons more than fifty yearn uage or dialect, and a fear of errors ink
old. The Ainu people themselves, are speech and of the same and ridicules
dwindling in number and there are which these bring down upon him, arej
now fewer than 17,000 left. While the the real reasons: Por lain baokwardeesstii
weak among them are rapidly drying It is estimated that in the last de-,
off, the strong are just as: rapidly mix cede at least one complete bear.. of the,
ing with the Japanese, by whom they Bible has appeared• in a new languages
are being assimilated every six weeks, The British ForeIgi
B,ible Society has been the chief pro.
ducer, the American Bible Society besi
ing next.
One of the most remarkable feats
in tran,slation was accomplished by Dr.
Hiram Bingham, translator of the
Marshall Islands and Gilbert Islands
Bibles. Despite the paucity of the na-
tive language, which was merely a
sueceselon of guttural mounds, Dr. Bing-
ham pres,evered until he had brought
the Scriptures to the comprehension
of the islanders. In this case the trams -
dater literally bad to create an alpha-
bet and teach the people to read and
write their own language. There have
been other instances, notably in Afri-
ca, of the creation of a "talk lang-
uage' into written language, The task
is a colossal one.
Among the American Indians re-
markable work has been done in Bible
translation. There are between fifty
ar d sixty linglistic stocks among the
Itl4ians north of the Mexican border.
The tongues dirtier so radically that the
lan•gua.g t of one is unintelligible to the
others. Theselanguages are struc-
turally so varied that they may be des,
cribed as 'differing as widely in char-
acter as English and Russian.
Thirty-five Indian Languages,
The Bible itt whole or .in part hat
been printed in thirty-five languages
of the Indians, la five of these laag• trap nest inelosed in a sheet-iron'boit,'
wages the whole Bible is Inprint, tho 3n6 inches long, 14 inches- writ, and 20
Mohican or Massachusetts, the Dakota i 61108 h gh. `Shit reoerding. attach:
or Sioux, the Cres,: the Eskimo of Ioab• meat is a rubber • s•tainp bearing the
radar and the Ttalt kuth-k itcliin -- hen's name or number, which is fastens
a- trtl e of the lie/teem Yukon Torri- ed to its back by wire hope. When
tory. In nine ether languages the
the hen enters the nest, the stamp
New Testament entire and in twenty= rubs against the Ink pad. As the hen
one additional langrlagts one or moreadvances, a few limbo farther, the
books of the Bible have: appeared. s•fa.ialp makes 'an llttDression nil ii ota•ip,
The reticence of the Indian and his of palter running upon two rolls,,
relectanc•e to spcalc in the white ;men's
Heatless Electric Light
vented by Parisian.
An engineer of Paris, M. Basler, 7.iasi
made a discovery which, it is believed,
will cause a revolution in methods of
illumination. At present most elec-i
tric ramps use, up 70 per cent, of their -
energy in giving out ,heat rather than
light, Risser eras constructed a lainpi
which .given out light without heat, 1!ee
makes use. 01 a vacuum tribe through
which e paaosphorescent material is,
passed. As soon as the electric cur
rent is passed through this a light lei
produced which is brighter than that
of the largest lamps• now in use.
The consumption of energy only,
15 watts an hour In a tube 'six meters,
long and seven millimeters in diameter.
Hens Register Eggs With
New Device.
Hens may now "write their own,;
egg laying records by means of a der
vice recently invented. It omelets Of a
langriagc, even when he is amore or X -Rays for Piaflts,
lose familiar with it, and his stolidity, A London scientist uses '} eetys tit.)
whichis 'so often interpreted as stn-iand diilgues'e plant airbuses.