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Like | Was Telling You : By. 'BARTLEY HOWLEY Paul turned a quizzical eye on eyes that darted happily about the dining car, missing nothing. 4 "Like I was telling you," she said in a birdlike voice, "people don't usually show their true selves. You never can tell just what a person will, do providin', of course, he's given an opportunity." Delicately she nibbled a sll. "People are funny, they really are. Don't you think so?" : Paul nodded silently. So far he _ hadn't been given an' opportunity oF to speak but he didn't mind. This lady reminded him of his. maiden aunt, an extraordinary woman who had been mother and father to hin. She had been gone now for years. \ Miss Harrington, Miss Abigail Harrington, began again, "Take my husband, for instance," Paul lifted an eyebrow. "You're wonderin' how I could be Miss Harrington, aren't you, young man? It's stmple. The judge gave me permission to take my maiden name back. That's what I want to tell you about. It's almost unbe- lievable the things that people do. "Arch, my husband, had a fine edu- cation. and a 'marvelous personal- ity." © She dipped her head and pecked coyly up. "Supposeit's Irard to believe, but IT was not so bad myself. "Arch was downtown' one day doing some shopping for "me. * He was waiting" "for his package and what do you suppose?" . Paul shook his head. "Well, sir, the woman next to him moved on and left her purse right in front of him. A nice, juicy purse. Now Arch had gobd pay and "everything nice but there it was--in front of him--the big purse--the opportunity." Bie temp- tation was too much. Arch felll" She laid her fork down and wrung her-hands. "Naturally I begged him to take it back, pleaded until 1 was blue in the face. I'll bet you can't imagine what-he did?" Paul shook his head. "He wouldn't fight with me, of he picked up .her purse and heameA. : course, and he. wouldn't take the purse back. He bought. me the loveliest dressing gown you've ever seen," Her eyes glowed. "I looked beautiful in it, too. But it was ill- gotten. I was newer happy in it." Paul was silent. i "his companion: She had bright blue two "Things got fromgbad to worse. Arch was ¢lever but the police got on and we were hunted all over. I stayed with him naturally because he 'was my husband and he was good to me. But they caught him." A shadow crossed her face. "They tricked him. That wasi't fair, was it?" Paul shrugged. Abigail Harrington looked up, ner sprightly self 'again. "That's my story. I'm sorry if I've bored you but I've always thought it was a good example of what people will do if given opportunity." - Paul nodded silently and paid the bill. . She, picked up her purse and beamed at him. They rose togeth- _ec.and-made their way back. to their. seats, For the next two hours she prattled on about her family and friends, his family and friends. She asked many questions and answered them herself. The journey was over too soon to suit Paul who was en- joying himself immensey, The train pulling in was giving spasmodic "jerks so he placed a protective arm to steady her. He jumped down and turned to help. that one of her heels had caught on tire step and thrown her off bal- ance.- He caught her neatly. "That was close," she gasped. "Thank you, young man." She adjusted -her hat and Paul stooped to retrieve her purse and its It was a gentleman's wallet, his wallet. His eyes raised to hers "Like I was- telling von," she quavered, "people are fuany., You never can tet what peonle will do, given the - wianity," Too -late, he saw 'scattered contents. With a bow, he returned the articles, all except one, ,. Thefe are quite a number of assorted, interesting--I hope--items which I've been saving but haven't got around to using, as yet. So fit looks as though this week's column might develop into a sort of hash. (Which reminds me of vaudeville act in which the waiter ;was taking the customers' orders, then shouting them out--in langu- age of his own--to the cook. One man ordered hash. "Clean up the kitchen for one!" yelled the waiter promptly. * LJ - Over in Great Britain they're trying out a new method of storing apples and other fruits, as well as potatoes, using ordinary woodland moss to pack the stuff in. Until next June, whem the 500 tons of apples packed this way as an experiment are uncovered, it won't be known whether the system is suited to British climatic conditions -- but they're hoping it will spread their home-grown fruit supplies over a _nine-maonths period, instead of six, as at present. -* 4 * This system of nioss storage was discovered accidentally some years "ago by a Swiss engineer, who want- ed to get some rare orchids he had found in the Himalayas home alive. He lined a wooden box with damp moss, gathered at random, then placed the Qrehids inside, and hoped for the best. When he operied the box in Switzerland, the orchids were in perfect condition ' * * * So next he experimented ®with fruits, and found that the moss--- | according to its degree of dampness --had the power of releasing moist- ure, or of absorbing it from the atmosphere, thereby maintaining -a constant: humidity. -Furthermore, because of the evaporation which "took place, it had a endency to lower the temperature and hold It steady. In addition, it purifies and regenerates the atmosphere, be- cause tlie moss "breathes"--or ab- sorbs air. i * * * ~ Now, on the "Continent, railway trucks are equipped with the moss system of stogage--and it has even been used successfully as a method of keeping clieese fresh. The Swiss . engineer has developed it on a com- mercial basis and is. meeting with great success Sounds like some- thing worth giving a trial. Rl * * Th "public opinion poll" boys are still at it--or maybe this one took place before fhe Truman<Dewey thing knocked them for a loop. Any- way, several hundred farmers were "askd this qustion--How do you de- the old - cide whether a man is a "success- _ ful farmer?" A good share of them replied, "He's the man who does a really good job of soil conserva- tion." Men who got big yields, or "who made a lot of money, didn't - rank nearly as high in the opinion of their fellow-farmers. * * * Which brings up the tale of the nian who was driving through some very steep hilly country and, notic- ing cattle grazing, asked farmers in the neighborhood just how the stock did on such "pasture." "They don't get any feed," one man jokingly replied, "but they sure do gét a lot of exercise." * * J But lettting stock graze on such " and fs~just about the worst thing that could be done. The cattle crop the grass short; then the water slides off the slopes as if the hill- sides" were greased. That water comes rushing down to'gouge out new gullies on the good farmland below. : . * * The same_ man drove a little further along and came to some hills that really had a lot of grass on them. He asked a Soil Conservation ~ "Those farmers fenced the stock off and let the native grasses do a come-back," was the answer. "Now they pasture. those, hills only about two months expert "How come?" every other year." Ve * » * This might be a*good time for a relinder that water pipes less than three feet deep in the ground should be covered with straw or spoiled hay to prevent danger of freezing. Also that sparrows in poultry houses are parasite and disease carriers... The higher openings in the poultry houses should have screens. * * * There have been many warnings in the past about the danger of feeding. treated seed oats to .live- stock. But there are always a few farmers who think they can get away with using just-a few bughels as feed. Ed . - . Well; recently at an American University a test was made. Eight pigs were divided into four: lots. Two were fed untreated oats and water. The others were fed oats treated with one half ounce of Ceresan M per bushel for periods of 10, 20 and 30 days. * * * . What happened? The pigs that ate the treated oats for 10 days lived through the test. Pigs in the - 30-day trial lived through the test. period, but died later, The 30-day test couldn't be completed as the pigs died before the time was up. * * * : A Le . Which should be just about enough hash, . I imagine, for one serving. : ' Car Tires Made With Soap, Sugar Motorists can look forward to bet- ter tires of synthetic rubber, made according to new recipes employ- ing soap and sugar, according to a prominent Illinois scientist, The quality of GR-S, the synthe- - tic rubber blended with natural' rubber in all tire treads, has been greatly improved by the recent de- velopment of an amazingly rapid 'redox" process, according to Pro- fessor Marvel, who directed an im- portant phase of the World War II research on synthetic rubber. This new method makes it 'pos: sible to manufacture rubber at freezing or subfreezing tempera- tures instead of at 212 degrees Fahrenheit, the conventional tem- perature, he said, asserting that the quality of GR-S and similar -rub- bers seems to go up as the temper- - ature goes down. i GR-S js essentially a combination' of two liquid petroleum com- pounds, butadiene and styrens, which are made to unite (pelymer- ize) by a -chemical stimulant (a catalyst). In the redox process, the .=compouids-are first emulsified with - a soap, and the reaction is started by a type of sugar, which is called the activator. "Everytime I come to one I just close my eyes and step on the gas! T SAYS GOOD-NIGHT TO WIFE: AND SETTLES FOR SLEEP, WHEN WI VERY TIRED FROM CHRISTMAS SHOPPING LAST YEA HG fe fas HE NS os, TRYING 10 dacioe \v #END THE WIMPLES 15 JUST DRC HE'D BETTE E MORE ORNAM THB TREE, MOS #3 GOT BROKEN By GLUYAS TT MUTTERS TO REMIND 'HIM IN Jue MORNING 8ES EYES - AND C1 FIRMLY ___ Hg jt pee FER ite OUSIN With All She Has k aa a x fen That's Orson and Tyrone, All Dressed Up--\Vhile making a movie in Rome---based on the life of Cesare Borgia, Orson Welles, left, and Tyrone Power, right," wear the co orful cos- tumes of the Fifteenth Century. Actor between is hidentified "Our Gracie" Works Everyone kyows Gracie Fields, "Our Gracie," the large-hearted, humorous character, who-interspers- es comedy songs with serious ones, sings Schubert's "Ave Maria" after "Turn Herbert's Face to the Wall, Mother!," and gets away with it; the Lancashire mill girl who, with no, - pretence at being a lady or "talking posh" has endeared herself to mil- lions of peopleteverywlere by her inimitable personality and inex- haustible vitality, That. is the Gracie heard on the air and seen on the stage. But what is she like at rehearsal?" : She is amazing when she is re- hearsing in a radio studio; she works hard, never questions the pro- ducer's decision, sings each song as many times as he wants without complaint, and accepts cuts, or sings extra choruses , without a word of protest. When the orches- tra is reharsing alone she sits quiet- ly resting, sometimes pushing her hand through her blonde curls, or perhaps playing with the black beret - -she'often wears. . But when she gets to the micro- phone the fun begins. She will prob- ably go up the few stairs to the stage bent almost double, lifting her legs with her hands as she makes awful clicking noises to symbolize the creaking of her ageing joints; she will sing a serious song and, noting somebody passing at the back of her, will stick out her foot and trip him; she will fling out her arms in a graceful gesture when she gets the feel of a popular number and a moment afterwards sway . from side to side like a woman hav- ing +a fierce argument with her butcher. She cannot resist guying a straight number and for a really comic one will crush on the beret, wearing it at -some peculiar and most unorthodox angle and, letting herself go at full tilt, steps back from the microphone and screams raucously "What 'as SHE got, that . I 'aven't got?" Immediately after- 'wards as she is singing a really sen- sational number, she will push the beret over her nose and pull a hide- ous face yet, so powerful is her con- trol over an audience--which in this case is the orchestra, a few engine- ers and one or two others, that no one laughs, although she is looking extremely funny, - Guyihg her songs is part-of her personality and not just put on for the occasion; for when. Gracie has an audience, no matter how small a one, she reacts to it like a flower to the sun. bother to put on any glamorous stuff; "there she is, the -strapping, big-boned Lancashire lass, singing away like a lark--or a jay. Audi- ences in the theatre, or on the alr, can either take her or leave her; |. the vast majority take hee. __too At rehearsal she doesn't - How "Swat-the-Fly" Campaign Began Ta the Kansas of-1903 there were too" many cases of typhoid: fever, too many deaths from it, and far many flies, Residents of the State took flies for-granted. They called them a nuisance, and let It gO apothat. How could any doctor convihce thé that the insects carried typhoid germs, and could even cause epidemics? To persuade. all Kansans to join in a war on flies was the job. of Samuel J. Crumbine, intrepid To- peka public-health expert, who had learned through the Spanish-Am- erican War that flies meant to medicine. Crumbine published and distributed a "Fly Bulletin," ex:-- plaining the menace of te inhsect. He advocated house screens, and mailed out recipes for making fly _paper. A Slogan Born Then came what Crumbine calls "the most productive day of my life." He was watching the West- ern "League: baseball club's opening of the season. With one man out and a runner on third base, the next batter came to the plate. "Excited fans yelled "Sacrifice fly!" When the batter swung and missed the first ball, a tentorian voice boomed: "Swat that ball!" An idea began to . emerge ia Crumbine's brain. "I have it," he "yelled. "Swat thie flyl" Taking an old envelope from his pocket, he jotted down the slogan that was to sweep the country and become part of the American vocabulary. Crumbine was born in 1862 in a log cabin. He worked his way through two years of medical school and then hung out his shingle in the cow-country capital, Dodge City, Kansas. 'Always A Crusader In those days the West was the haven of tubercular Easterners. They travelled -across Kansas ia trains or wagons, bearing jugs of "rock 'n' rye," the only medicine prescribed for the disease. Crum- bine, as secretary of the Board of Health, began to investigate the cause and transmission of . the White Plague. * ' One hot day in 1907, while riding a Missouri Pacific train, Crumbine went to the water cooler for a drink. Ahead of him was a tall, thin man with 'a racking cough, and a tow- headed 5-year-old girl. The maa filled the train's only drinking cup with water and drank. Then the . little girl eagerly swallowed from the same cup. a Crumbine was on, hls way to in' vestigate a smallpox "¢pidemic, but the scene on the train made that trifling, There should be a law for- bidding the tin cup, attached to the chain, in every coach. The doctor went to work, The railroads ob- jected. It took two years, but in March 1909 Kansas passed a law prohibiting the common drinking cup. Soon after that, the roller: towel also.met its end. TIE Fp FLAN EAL spectators Right after hearing Fred Allen's first radio program--the one im which he did that screamingly fuan burlesque of "Stop the Music"-- wrote something to the effect that while that sort of thing was O.K. , for a "single shot", keeping It wp would be a mistake. Talking too much about your competitors' goods ls a bad thing in mecchandising-- tending to "back-fire" qn your ows wares--and the same thing goes la show business.' : ' *. ., LJ Now it's reported that "Baggy Eyes" may abandon hls Insurance plan which guarantees listeners against loss on" "Stop the Mysle" payoffs while they're tuned in to the Allen show--and I hope its true because, from the way I look at it, such an offer should never have been made. No claims for such In- surance have been made as yet--at least not legitimate ones. More than that, Fred's stunt hasn't affested ths giveaway show's popularity, whieh is still ahead of Allen's. * + * And now they say that "Stop the Music" is considering a plan to offer--just as a gag, of ecourse-- copies of all the best jokes Allen puts on the alc-waves to Its owa llateners on request. Sounds to me as If both sides would be better to tey and "act their ages." LJ . * They've made movies about .the- doings of practically every famous personage, from Cesare Borgla to Al Jolson, now comes one about a - famous horse--the great pacer, Dan Patch. Charlotte Greenwood will have a big comedy role in the flick- er; and If the horse that plays the part of "Dan Patch" ls as good an actor as the original, Charlotte will have her work cut out to "top" him. . «1. IFor although 1 don't. remember . him personally, those that know tell me that the real Dan Patch--ba- sldes being a wonderful pacer--had | a huge streak of "ham" in him. After leading his opposition to the wire he'd parade past the crowded stands, actually "bowing" In response .to the applause. . * * * 'Once, when he "broke" coming through the stretch--whatever that means--Dan Patch was so ashamed of himself that he refused to face the" but, instead, ducked through an exit and headed for the stables. And It {s said that there was a standing bet that no camera man a Just For Fun The teacher, explaining to her young pupils that the garth was | = round, asked questions to bring out her point. "Herman," she asked, "could you walk around the earth?" | "No, ma'am," promptly re- plied little Herman. ' "© "Why not?" asked the teacher. "Because my mother. won't al- low me to leave the back yard." "No," the youngster replied, "but I have two' brothers and they have a sister." And then she joyfully added, "And I'm the sister!" e With the Movie and Radio Folks - By Grace Sharp' "Dan oould take a picture of the horse that showed him otherwise tham facing stealght [ato the camera. {le seemed to-sense the presence of a samera--and try as they might to catch him sideways, béfore the shut- tec clicked, Dan' would be staring proudly straight to the lens. . - . J . So, as I said before, if the new Patch {a anything: like the actor the original was, long-legged Charlotte Greeawood will have am awful time "stealing" any scenes from the pacer. . A . . Back to the screen, after au ab- sance of six years, comes Anna May Wong, one of my real favorites of yore. She'll be appeazing in an opus titled "Impact" along with Briam Donlevy and Ella Raines. Just why she's gettlng a chance to do this comeback through one of those queer switches that could take place only out la California. . * *. The part was originally that of a Swedish mald. Then the prodacec decided to use San Fransico's Chinatown as a backgroupd--so im stead of a "Yetta Yensen" type they decided to use the Clilnese-Amer- ean darkeyed beauty. At all events I'm glad that wa're to have another pesk at Anna May, and imagine there are plenty more like me Which will have to ba all foc Just ROW. Great Lake of Pitch Source of Unlimited : Supply of Asphalt One of Nature's strangest pliea-" omena ls Trlnadad's famous Lake of Pitch. Durlng the past one hua- fe ' dred years oc so, millions of tons of asphalt have been dug out from ts surface and exported to pave the streets and highways of most - of the world's principal towns and sities. Yat, for all this, the quantity of the asphalt in the lake shows no _ visible signs of diminishing. Up to the present, no satisfactory mechanical devica has beea found for extracting fhe asplialt. Every pound taken from its Il4.acre sur ace has to be laboriously dug out = by hand-wlelded pick and shovel. As the asphalt is removed ton by © ton, pits and breakages ace left la Its even surface. 'Yet within a few days they ars filled with new pitch, puslied up from balow from soma hidden and apparently inexhaust- Ible source. EE The surfac f this like is al- ways on -theMuove- although its movenients are so slow that they escape the eye. [ts mass turns and folds over upon itself continuously. Sometimes it claims foc its own any object that may lave been care- lessly left- on its surface, and .at other times some ancient fossil or long-lost treasure that had disap- peared many years before ls ex- purgated. : It is. because of this dangerous movement of the lake's surface that the light railway which runs out across it to carry away the asphalt as it is dug has to be relaid dally, so that it, too, shall not sink out of sight. } : Scientists have uot decided oa the origin of the lake, but they agree that the pitch is sufficlents to supply the world's many generations. néeds.. for' LF "You Just Cut Them Out and Blow Them Up--Ilt is custoina for Canada to import new ideas in children's toys from south of the border--but this time it's different. These new Walt Distiey character toys not only show children how to use the scissors carefully but also furnish them with a lot of fun. Made of strong Vinylite plastic, each toy is equipped with a novel self-sealing valve. Of Canadian design an manufacture, the toys will soon be marketed in the United States as well as throughotit the Dominion LITTLE REGGIE LOOK - AT MR§ WY IN HIGHTOWER'S LAWN THERES NOT A - : "% ihe vou ve eI EVERY LEAF GONE 14%) a MU i) v ay "wl hy { A aly i LLL STUY) AER 9) EN . So a en hr vie, Ty a 3 a - Ea i fv ) . a pl _. Ears ho fo Ange gor, pa Chr ges VTL a i em a pal et ---