THE SKETCHER

Otago Witness, Issue 3757, 16 March 1926, Page 77

THE SKETCHER

THE LITTLE ROAD Did you ever notice a little road That you didn’t wonder where it led? Whether—after the cool, green wood— It chanced on the dell where your dreamhouse stood? Maybe—beginning dusty and rough, It keeps up the pretence just long enough To tire those who haven’t the clue, And leave the adventure—and end—to you 7 Maybe it leaves the highway to follow Up, swooping up like the flight of a swallow— Till valley and town lie dim below, And Time hies far on the winds that blow, There you may find a nook for your dreaming, Seeming, Just planned for you from the Edenglow. So the little road cries to me: “Follow, follow, Maybe you’ll find that your dreams are hollow, Maybe you’ll see—but follow, follow, Come with the faith of the homing swallow, Or, to your death, you will never know.” —Ellen Morrill Mills, in the Lyric West. A COLD IN THE HEAD. (By Professor J. Arthur Thompson.) Is there anything more contemptible than a cold—a cold in the head? There is a certain dignity in bronchitis, and a wonderment in influenza, for who knows what may come of it, but there is nothing but contumely for a cold. “Very few people,” writes Professor Russell Cecil, “are entirely free from colds. Many are highly susceptible to them and are miserable "for the greater part' of the winter and spring.” What a confession for Homo sapiens, that he is reduced to misery by a cold! * * * We have been culling wisdom from an admirable little Appleton book on “Colds,” by Professor Russell Cecil, of Cornell University, and we wish to hand on that wisdom, which is at any rate more praiseworthy than handing on a cold. We did not realise before that a cold was such a momentous thing, or might be. “The common cold is an ailment which we are apt to look upon rather lightly, but it is so often the preface to graver diseases that its prevention and treatment cannot be regarded too seriously.” And then comes the kind of sentence in which we delight, it sends such cold shivers down our back. “Not only pneumonia and pleurisy, but meningitis, mastoiditis, infection of the sinuses, bronchitis, and asthma arc Visually traceable to preceding colds. Some of the chronic infectious diseases, such as pulmonary tuberculosis and chronic arthritis often date their onset to the same cause.” According to some authorities, housemaid’s knee and writer’s cramp are also traceable to the same surging fons et origo of our sea of troubles Of course, there* arc colds and colds, but the one that interests us just now is the common cold? which we have always been accustomed to call a “cold in the head.” Its real name, we now learn, is acute coryza or artite rhinitis, but this is an undeserved dignity. Like most other diseases, it is due to microbes which become insurgent at the back of the mouth and spread forwards into the nasal chamber, or may go the other way, down into the larynx and so forth, giving us a sore throat. But let us keep to the nose, where the common cold is most at home. It produces inflammation of the lining membrane of the nasal cavity and often poisons our whole being.

Medical experts have a great tendency nowadays to take refuge in the invisible universe. Their theories bristle with entities that no one can see, unless it be Mr Barnard, and even he does not exactly sec them until they are photographed. But wo must not go into this difficult question. We were saying that the germ that gives us a cold in the head is usually regarded as a “filterable virus,” a living organism that is too small to be seen and small enough to pass through the finest filter. The germs of measles, of foot-and-mouth disease, and of cancer are in the same ghostly company of invisible microbes. But the modern theory of colds seems to be that the invisible virus only starts the gamo, being followed by others like Streptococcus, Pneumococcus, Staphylococcus, and Influenzococcus that are always lurking about any mouth and throat which contains the ordinary floral population. The invisible virus is terribly like the unclean spirit of the parable, that brought in with him seven other spirits more wicked than himself.

Man always likes to blame other people for what is his own fault. So he puts down his cold to those wretched sniffing, coughing people in the bus or tramcar or railway carriage. This is often a just accusation, but by no means always. For many colds are due to self-infection. That ia to say, we irritate the nasal mucous membrane in some way or other, and this renders it liable to be attacked by a germ that is a normally harmless inhabitant of our mouth or throat or nose. In the ordinary balance of vigorous health, the microbe does no more harm than an occasional moose in a mansion. But if there are too many crumbs about,

or if the food-boxes “have lost their lids, or if the cat is old and tired, the mice may become so bold and multitudinous that they drive the housewife distracted. In the same way the microbes, normally kept in check, may get quite out of hand in our noses. The removal of the check may take many forms, such as overfatigue, too many cigarettes, unequal cooling of the body, over-heated air, and a bad circulation. But one must not blame cold. As a distinguished pathologist used to say: “People never catch cold through cold” ; and Professor Cecil writes: “Exposure to cold per se will not cause colds so long as tho body is kept dry and warm.” Polar explorers do not take colds till they come home again. * * * There is nothing but self-contempt for a non-contagious cold; but when one has the other kind, one can blame one's neighbour, which is always a comfort, shadowed though it may be by the suspicion that we shall not fail to hand on the germ in our turn. In the contagious type of cold the germ comes directly or indirectly from someone else with a cold. Our Mentor writes: “Kissing is an infallible method of transmitting colds, and one of the commonest sources of infection.” 0 stern American! * * * Professor Russell Cecil’s admirable book should be consulted by all who are seriously desirous of not catching cold. For even if they do not succeed in avoiding infection, they will gain much in the attempt. Thus the third of his twelve commandments is: Avoid overeating, especially sweets. The sixth commandment is avoid undue fatigue. The first half of the seventh is not very polite: Do not put fingers in nose or mouth. The conclusion of the whole matter is: “A sound, healthy, vigorous body and a clean, smooth-working respiratory apparatus are the main essentials.” The only difficulty is that for some of us it means being made over again. NEW ORLEANS. Where lies thy charm, oh quaint and lovely place! Dreaming and languid, lost in our great land America, the fiercely modern, quick To plan, to think, to act decisively t Not to our time and ways could you belong. The thin veneer that overlies your heart Of new and unaccustomed ways and things. Will ne 7 er be but veneer; always beneath Beats the incurable romance of you. Your charm that lies upon us like perfume Of your own jasmine and magnolia flowers, Passionate and cloying, yet so dinging sweet, That we may ne’er forget it far away. All the delights and strangeness of old days, Iron balconies in the Vieux Carre. Where creole belles once leaned on summer eves, Pages of history turned long ago, Heartaches and happiness in ancient tales Bound up within your walls—all your great past Presses upon us, and we feel ourselves Not in our own familiar well-known world, Enfolded in your magic circle, traced By fairy wand, wielded by unseen hands. We are bewitched ! How far away they seem 1 The turmoil and the rush, the restless throngs In the great cities, where men toil for gold! Lull us into forgetfulness, that W 3 May never have to leave you, and so lose The memory of aught but what you give! —Grace E. Bush, in Cipriana and Other Poems. REFLECTION. Geraniums . . Who ever heard that Sappho put Geraniums in her hair? Or thought that Cleopatra brushed Her long against their petals? Did Beatrice carry them ? Or any bird sigh out his wild-fire heart In passion for them? Yet sparrows, far outnumbering nightingales, Have gossiped under their tomato cans, And lonely spinsters loved them more than cats And living girls have felt quite festive going Down vulgar streets With such unsubtle gaiety at their belts —Elizabeth J. Coatsworth, in The Dial. GENIUS IN BED. AUTHORS WHO WORKED IN BLANKET BAY. Our modern authors give testimonials to the fountain pens, easy chairs, and tonics that assist them in the production of masterpieces, but the good old fashioned bed has been the favourite study of a large number of successful writing men. That R. L. Stevenson, whose lifelonc ailment compelled him to spend so much time in bed, should have written there

was entirely natural. He appears, moreover, to have made a sort of virtue out of necessity, according to a close observer, Lord Osborne. After stating that the nature of Stevenson’s illness has been generally misunderstood, his stepson and collaborator continues:

The actual spells of illness were not extremely painful, nor were they as a rule loiirr continued. The intervals between the htcmorrhageg lasted many months, and during these periods, except for the irksomeness of' a confined life, and the enforced separation from friends (whose rare visit* tended to excite him and diminish his nervous force) he was on the whole exceedingly happy, undisturbed by physical ills. His preoccupation for writing was so intense that in many ways he enjoyed this aloofness from the world. His time was not intrudec on by a multiplicity of cares and petty engagements ; he could read and write and think —in peace; he could let himself live in his stories without any jarring interruption.

Mark Twain, unlike Stevenson, was a robust fellow, but he deliberately preferred writing in bed for the simple reasons that he was warm and quiet there. Comfortably propped up by pillows, with a writing pad against his knees and clouds of smoke from a corncob or calabash pipe wreathing round his shaggy leonine head, he wrote thousands of words.

A famous French author who preferred bed to any other place for writing was Villiers de ITsle Adam, chiefly because he detested daylight, and never ventured into the streets until the lamps had l>een lit. * * *

His cousin, Robert du l’ontavice, thus describes his method of life : -

“I got into the habit of going to see him between three and four o’clock in the afternoon. 1 generally found him sitting up in bed, supported by several pillows, hard at work, and only stopping to roll a cigarette, which, as often as not, he did net light.” When the writer saw his cousin he would leap from bed and open the window, sending tobacco, cigarettes, and sheets of paper flying. Then he would ret hack into bed. Du Pontavice would collect the precious sheets, seat himself, and a long talk would begin. “At last, towards six o’clock, and by dint of persecution I contrived to drag him from between the sheets, and out we went into the streets.” EXITS AND ENTRANCES. In England one enters life quietly thus: — The wife of Mr J. B. Robinson of a son. 11l Germany people are far more excited about one; and one begins somewhat in this way:— Mr Bookbinder Hermann Schultz and Mrs Herwig Schultz (by birth Muller) have the honour to announce with » profound joy and gratitude that on December 24th the Christ-child brought them a sturdy and adorable little German boy (Johann Friedrich). Purely as a matter of taste this sort of thing tends to grate a little on the British ear (writes Guy Sutherland in the Sunday Chronicle). But then our national reticence on such occasions seems, no doubt, very odd to the German, who is easily tempted to believe that because we say little we feel even less. So much then for the first and most serious accident of life. Now let us lobk for a moment at the last. This is how one disappears from the world in England: — DEATH.— On September the 10th, at Curzon street, W., T. R. Tobinton, aged 73. Nobody seems very much upset about it. In Germany, however, it is quite another matter. There the desolation is terrible. This is the sort of thing that happens in any German newspaper:— Mrs Dr Selma Schultz (by birth Lindner), Mrs Hedwig Schultz (by birth Muller), Mr Dr Commercial Councillor Ludwig Schultz, Mrs Emma Sandner (by birth Schultz), Mr Teacher Heinrich Schmidt, Mis 9 Hildegard Bauer, and the families Lindner, Muller, Schmidt, Bauer, and Stahl, Stricken with inextinguishable grief, Announce that on the 16th of September MR DR HANK-MANAGER Juj.*.ANN FRIEDRICH SCHULTZ, their cherished husband, beloved son, devoted father, revered grandfather, treasured uncle, dearest god-father, and esteemed connection, After a long and painful illness, Endured with superhuman fortitude, Passed gently away into a better life In the 74th year of his age. The funeral procession Btarts from the Kurfuistendamm 61-63 on September the 19th at 12.30 in the afternoon. And this notice is only one of several. For in the same issue your colleagues at the bank and the local branch of the Oddfellows record their shattering sense of loss in equally passionate terms. SHOPPING IN PEKINC. To the right and left stretches a maze of narrow lanes with flowery names denoting the specialty of the shops therein —Jade street, Silver street, Embroidery street, and Lantern street, with its shop signs of huge red lanterns. Porcelains and silks can be had in the Great Ch’ien Men. Furs, too, are in great demand, as Peking is very cold in winter. Sable, minx, chinchilla, otter, ermine, Arctic fox. Mongolian dog, seals, astrachan and larger skins like wolf and bear can be purchased very cheaply, but must be disinfected before using. Many a case of smallpox is traced to this omission. Embroidery street! Who can imagine that behind those little doors in winaowle» walls are shops containing such gorgeous garments? Penetrating through

many little courtyards, we found them. Long-coated, black-satin-capped Chinese men unrolled Mandarin coats stiff with gold embroidery. On the quality of the embroidery and the history of the coat depends tne price demanded. If the coat is faced with “Imperial yellow” much more is asked; and “Peking stitch,” which is like tiny French knots, is valued. Old embroidered garments come on the market through deaths or great poverty in families. But in some cases tlie embroidery has been cut off from worn-out clothes, and glued or stitched on to new material. Modern embroideries are produced in many districts all over tho country, each district having its own special designs and colouring. “Fakes” are made by cutting out and stitching on designs from European ribbons. In Jade street we found shops with glass windows! Rare in the Far East. Here behind strong iron grilles, were displayed many valuables: pearls, carved ivories, ambers, carved amethysts and exquisite jewel jade, in many forms and colours.—Grace L. Morrow, in Chambers's Journal. THE COMIC MUSE. (By Gerald Gould, in Daily Chronicle^ Verse does net lend itself to humour as easily as prose. When Shakespeare wanted to be really funny, he generally changed in more commonplace and now dreary without the saving tunes, do most comic songs appear! How dreary, for that matter, appears almost any collection of verse intended to be comic! There are, of course, exceptions; nobody could call “The Bad Ballads” dreary, or Mr Belloc’s “Bad Child’s Book of Beasts.” But there are other books ot humorous verse, equally famous in their day, which do not wear quite as well as one would wish. What about “The Anti-Jacobin”—and “Rejected Addresses” —and “The lugoldsby Legends”—and Tom Hood’s punning ballads? There are masterpieces among them; but, taken as wholes, aren-’t they all guilty of just a touch of dreariness? And collections, selections, anthologies of comic verse are, as a rule, worse. There is something conducive to low seriousness in the very idea of bringing together poems intended to be amusing; the recalcitrant human animal resents the deliberate attempt to make him laugh. But there are no difficulties so great that the right man cannot overcome them; and Mr J. C. Squire, in “The Comic Muse, An Anthology of Humorous Verse” (ColJins, 6s), has succeeded to admiration in an almost impassible task. Or so it seems to me; the book is, for me, packed with chuckles; and though the sense of humour is capricious and individual, I think there are few people who won’t find something here to their taste. For Mr Squire has on the one hand enormous knowledge, and on the Other hand a genuine love for the simple, ‘Straightforward jokes of the cabrank and the music hall. There is nothing so depressing as the high-brow pretending to be hearty, and sharing the pleasures of ordinary folk with an affected gusto more odious than open contempt; but there is no touch of the high-brow about ivir Squire; and indeed his sole fault as an anthologist is an apparently insuperable scruple against putting into anv anthology, grave or any poem of his own. * * * He begins with such classics of the Elizabethan age as I canont eat but little meat, My stomach is not good; But sure I think that I can drink With him that wears a hood; and l;e comes right on to I often lie abed and think What an awful thing is work; I know a lot who’ve started it And finished with a jerk. He has for the most part excluded satire; satire, after all, at it§ best, is rather painful than laughable; but lie has put in the whole of Byron’s “Vision of Judgment,” a magnificent exception. For the rest, I suppose the two main divisions of comic verse are epigram and parodj’; but there are sub-divisions of the latter —there is plain parody, and parody with a purpose. Wliat ingenuity does Sir Arthur Quiller-Couch show in combining Euclid’s demonstration of how to make an equilateral triangle, with the metre and language of the grand old Scots ballad:— The King sits in Dunfermline town Drinking the blude red wine: “Oh, who will rear me an equilateral triangle Upon a given straight line?” In a special class, again, is Mr E. V. Knox’s translation of Keats’s “Ode to a Nightingale” into the American of the films: Oh boy! Some head! I have a right 6mart pain Aa 'hough of neutral spirits I had drunk. . . Mr Squire does not give this last-men-tioned poem; that is, however, the only omission I can charge him with; and the riches he has provided make quotation embarrassingly difficult. The passages of Thackeray, of Edward Lear, of James Russell Lowell, of Lewis Carroll, of W. S. Gilbert, are familiar, and none the worse for it; most people, I suppose, know also Mr Chesterton’s “Logical Vegetarian”: No more the milk of cows

Slqji pollute my private house Than the milk of tho wild mares of the barbarian;

I will stick to port and sherry, For they are so very, very, So very, very, very Vegetarian;

but to many Jiis poem on “Hygiene” will be new:

When Science taught mankind to breaths A little while ago, Only a wise and thoughtful Urn Were really in the know: Nor oould the Youth hia features wreathe, Puffing from all the lunge beneath: When Duty whispered softly “Breathe I” The Youth would answer “Blowl’ 1

It would puzzle any critic to analyse the appeal of Mr Belloc’s superb si inplleitys Life is a vale, its paths are dark and rough, Only because we do not know enough: When Science has discovered something more Wo eliall be happier than we were beloie. Or, even more nobly: But when tlx Bookie—oh! my word, I only wish y_u could have heard The way he roared he did not think, A.nd hoped that they might stiike him pinkl Simple, too, is Mr Harry Graham: I had written to Aunt Maud, Who was on a trip abroad. When I heard she’d died of cramp, Just too late to save the stamp. Far preferable, morally, is the Reverend Cornelius Wliur, who wrote one of the few unintentionally funny poems admitted to the collection: A \ While lasting joys the man attend Who has a polished female friend! But it is an interesting observation, how large a proportion of jokes depend on a pretended callousness, and take death and suffering for their theme. Why do men laugh at calamity? Why i do they laugh (as several epigrams in this collection oddly remind us that they do) at doctors? Why, indeed, do they laugh at anything or anybody? But that is another story—or, at any rate, it will be another article. HOME FOLKS. Although they spread from Tung Ting to the Wall— Hibiscus red and white, song-scented, blue Lan blossom, Lotus jade-white, pearled with dew, Paulownia whose purple petals fall When heart of friend to absent friend would call, Poppy, Pomegranate, all the rest that grew, Of unimagined scent and alien hue—They would be only strangers after all. So said my heart until the spring-time came, And, nodding in the Chihli sun I saw The lilacs bowing as they bowed before The barn at home; and, spendthrift as of yore, The yellow roses scattering the same Gold petals tha*„ bestrewed the springhouse floor. —Genevieve Wimsatt, in Woman in China. FAME BY ACCIDENT. ROMANCE AND THE POPULARITY OF HEALTH RESORTS. Accident has played almost as great a part as advertisement in building up tho renown of our holiday resorts. Worthing was but a cluster of cottages, of whose very existence even London scarcely knew until George Ill’s favourite daughter, Amelia, breaking her heart for love of one of her father’s equerries, was sent there to bring the bloom hack to her pale cheeks. When hei sisters went to cheer her exile, and sent back reports of its natural beauties, its name and fame began to be talked of in the circles of fashion, and the little Sussex village &Qpn became a Mecca of health and pleasure seekers. And while his daughters were thus laying the foundations of Worthing’s fortunes, their Royal father had stumbled on. Weymouth, and was co delighted with the magic-working of its ai. that he built a. pleasure house for himself there and decided to spend a few weeks in it every summer. Where a king leads, his subjects follow. * * * Little more than a century ago Southend seldom saw a stranger within its modest borders, until Caroline. Princess of Wales, wishing to escape for a time from the misery of her wedded life, took her daughter there —“where,” as she says, “I should be quite out of the world.” But her retreat was discovered; the curious were drawn to the little Essex village its name became known throughout England; and from those days it has drawn its holiday pilgrims in increasing crowds. Horace Walpole declared that the Brighton of his time was “inhabited bysavages” ; and Dr Johnson described the country around the modem “Queen of the South” as “so desolate that, if one had a mind to hang oneself from desperation at being ob’iged to live there, it# would be difficult to find a tree on which to fix a rope.” Indeed, ’ ad not Dr Richard Russell, a famous physician, chanced to discover “Brighthelmstone” and sun 7 the praises of its wonderful, health-giving air; and had not George, Prince of Wales, been persuaded to trv the virtue of its chalybeate spring, Brighton might well have remained a squalid seaside village. * * * The Isle of Wight owes its popularity largely to the visits paid to it ninety years or so ago by the Duchess of Kent and her young daughter Princess (hater Queen) Victoria, of which her late Majesty often spoke as “the most deliehtful holidavs of my life.” And Ventnor is indebted for much o? its popularity to the doctor who first discovered that its air had a magic to strengthen weak and to heal diseased lungs.