PEACHES FOR JAM.

Auckland Star, Volume LXVIII, Issue 162, 10 July 1937, Page 12

PEACHES FOR JAM.

ROCKEFELLER'S TIP. | WEARING HIS KNEES OUT IN] PUBLIC. ' A 'BEASTLIE PIRATE'S' ISLAND (By CHARLES KSTCOURT.) NEW YORK, June •">. In case you read one or these days of | Edna Ferber deserting a penthouse in the city for a farm in the country, the late Ivar Kreugcr is the man to blame. Mr. Kreu„'er, who built a kingdom on a match-stick,-with fo,rlorn results, has been blamed for a lot of things, but the reasoning is pretty plain in the case of Miss Ferber. The fact is our wellknown author leased the match king's penthouse apartment in Park Avenue and found, ranged along the terrace, the following items: A grape arbour, a peach tree, a pear tree, a strawberry bush, a willoy' tree, tulips, plus a kitchen garden (behind the kitchen) that was made to produce lettuce, radishes and scallions. The peach tree grosses annually from 12 to 18 peaches, and Miss Ferber has them made into jam and put into jax-fl labelled "Ferbcr's Farm Products, Peach ' Jam." Funny? Well, everybody thought so but Ferber the idea started to simmer from there and haa now grown so big she's thinking serionsly of taking to Connecticut to gro.w peaches. The Farm Problem. A plan to settle down on a little farm is in the back of nearly every townsman's mind', but country life has its perils for the New Yorker. Irvin Cobb is the man to question about that.

In the days when Paducah's bestknown expert was a reporter, his nearest neighbour was an elevated train. Every four minutes that train came so close to his room it looked as if it was trying to climb into bed with him. So a friend finally invited him out to the country for a week-end to give him at least one good night's sleep. The morning after, Mr. Cobb arrived jfor breakfast pale everywhere except under, his eyes. Under his eyes, he was a deep blue.. To a question, he replied: "No, I didn't sleep at all. I was kept up. all night by some blasted blackbird stomping across the lawn*." Kilts and Caviar. Sir Harry Lauder, the Scottish comic, spent his time in town walking his kilts up and down and telling the boys how the late John D. Rockefeller gave him six brand new dimes and how he still has them. Oh no. he said, he didn't get so many by doubling back on the line. He met Mr. Rockefeller on six different occasions. But the sight of Sir Harry wearing his knees out in public was not as startling to the town as it might have been if it were not for what must be the world's most extraordinary gigolo. He has made people more or less used to the spectacle. This world's most extraordinary gigolo wears kilts in the bra west weather. You can see him even in the winter striding along J?ark; Avenue., his knees ruddy raw with cold, the colours of his clan shining >a shad* ]4Af. brightly than those of his bony days he is in hia finest fettle* a big, bold battlet of *:jnan, decked out like a forest grove in brown, yellow, green, red and cornflower blue.

I him an extraordinary gigolo is', that he's a professional hootmon Scotchman, so full of the lore of -the that "hie spills -over with it at a tap on the shoulder. Ordinarily/it is the Latin"countries that are supposed to grow the species and their air df'dark mystery,- etc. But this northern boy gets along fine. His bluffness and burr-tongued heartiness have keeping., him in kilts , and caviar for the last 15 years. A Captain Kidd Story. Harold T. Wilkins, who has made piracy the study of a lifetime, argues in a voluminously documented book—"Captain Kidd and His Skeleton Island"— that the "beastlie pirate" was forced to take the step from privateering (legal buccaneering) to piracy (illegal bucaneering) by an unruly crew hungry for more of the spoils in which it shared. The fact that the prosecution never got around to presenting its piracy case against Kidd, but hanged him on Execution Dock for killing his gunner in afit of rage, has' produced hundreds of wrinkled brows in hundreds of libraries since the day in 1701 when the captain's heels danced against the air. Mr. Wilkins' book does not settle all doubts, but it does give a presumably authentic chart by which you can go. directly to the treasure Kidd is believed to have cached on "Skeleton Island." The chart, however, doesn't tell you where Skeleton Island is. The fact is nobody can tell you where ; it is or even state with surety that it exists.— , (N4?N.A.) . "' • *'«*.? "■•'-■ ' -