For Crying Out Loud

Press, Volume CI, Issue 29803, 21 April 1962, Page 3

For Crying Out Loud

IA Fourth Leader in "The Times"]

The old London streetcries. with their invitations to buy anything from lavender to muffins, would now be of no avail in a main street in competition with the zooming of the traffic. That may be one reason why the catch-word cries of a jeering kind have also dwindled away. There is on certain promenades the mating-call or whistle of the juvenile “wolf”, but this is a wordless beckoning. Another cause for the disappearance of the old, facetious verbal challenge is the departure of the habits or features which evoked it. It was once a custom of the impudent lad to ask noisily of a young lady passing by. “Does your mother know you're .out?” Today the question is pointless. The maternal awareness is irrelevant. The mother would not dare to forbid the out-goings of a daughter and, if she did protest, the result would doubtless be disanpointing. Another example of the street-cry losing all point is the prevailing addiction to beard-growing. Forty years ago there was the habit, fatuous but briefly popular, of shouting “Beaver” when- ' ever a beard was seen in I the street while the spotters of face-fungus competed in number of captures. But now the “beardies” abound Tn such regions as Hampstead and Chelsea, once described by an American writer in (London as “art and culture ; purlieus.” the Beaverites , would be gravelled for ex- ' cess of matter. Before the derision of beards it had ibeen urchin’s delight to exIclaim, with or without good Icause, “There’s ’air.” So

many young women of today choose a soaring coiffure that the cheeky comment would be merely a platitude. There, indeed, is hair, rising in splendour to the proportions of the old cottage-loaf, which has regrettably vanished from so many o.' our bakeries. Not that masculine top-knots lack conspicuous qualities. No longer is there a simple request for a haircut from the boys about town. They order their special styles of length and pattern and very odd some of them are. To meet their demands the barber has dropped that old and simple name in favour of hair-stylist or even coiffeur. In view of these changes the catch-word custom is defeated. It would be optimistic to attribute this to improved public manners. But. with beards abounding and with both sexes sporting a "hair-do” in which birds might nest, such comment is as superfluous as the locks and tresses now on view.

Harry Nelson Pillsbury, one of America's chess giants, was put to a unique test. He memorised thirty words that were read to him once by Dr. Threlkeld-Edwards of Bethlehem and Professor Merriman of Lehigh University. He repeated them in the order given and then in reverse order. And the following day, he repeated them again. The words: antiphlogistine, periosteum, takadiastase, plasmon, ambrosia, Threlkeld. streptococcus. staphyloccus. micrococcus, p'asmodium. Mississippi, Freiheit. Philadelphia. Cincinnati, athletics, no war, Etchenberg, American. Russian, philosophy. Piet Pogelter’s Rost, Salamagundi. Oomisillecootsi. Bangmamvate. Schlechter's Nek. Manzinyama theosophy. catechism, Madjesoomalops.