Evening Star Newspaper, January 23, 1921, Page 61

BY STERLING HEILIG. PARIS, January 12, 1921. ITH the new year opening & new era, and with the world no longer surprised at the great prices of art wales, the question arises everywhere, “Who ‘are the Corots of tomorrow? Among the crowd of known and un- kzown painters, the works of which of them will rise 20,000 per cent in ‘value, twenty years hence?" ‘There are a number of Americans in €he salons, though not so many as before the war. Many went home. One and the other. how do they sell? Does it pay to work abroad? Does it Pay American boys and girls to go in for art? Yes, American art pays. It pays its practitioners today, will pay them more tomorrow, and has already paid the collectors who trusted them ten years ago. Recently an international collector, ‘who has taken to buying up “young Americans” right and left said: “The Corots of tomorrow are Ameri- cans. Some may be unknown young fellows, just getting into the salons and home exhibitions. But which? Perhaps many, some of them already well known. Their work is more virile and they have a fresher eve. ‘Their color is as good and their tech- nique is perhaps better than the E ropeans’; nor have they the ‘cookery’ of European painters. but are gen- uine, original and individual.” As to the selling values. he said: “American plctures are the best in- Yestment' young buyers can make. You see, it is too early for the great dealers to ‘run’ them. But America is the coming land of art and when they begin buying more on their own taste over there you will see the prices shoot up.” \, ITH this I began an inquiry which led me far. In time it took me to the studio of Albert Gihon, the American landscape painter, formerly of Washington, D. C., and San Fran- cisco. Albert Gihon is a personage in his Paris studio and his country place at Montigny, on the Loing. He clings to the old school, the classical style of painting, of sentiment, dis- tinguished composition, color, tech- nique and drawing, and has no lean- ing toward jazz, confetti or get- there-quick methods, and he says that all successful American painters have achieved their permanent suc- cess on similar principles. Among his American admirers have been former Senator William A. Clark (portrait of his niece, Miss Anita Abascal), Senator Simon Guggenheim (Wanamaker prize picture). Perry Belmont, Oliver Hazard P. Belmont, J. W. Hawley, Charles H. Hyde. Henry Doscher and the late Col. H. B. Wil- son of New York; Henry Hayes of the Detroit Museum, Samuel Newhouse of Ttah, Charles Deering, Otis Skinner, the actor; Harry Beekman, Samuel and Isaac Untermyer and their col- league, Peter Zucker; Charles Stix and J. E. Thornton of St Louis, Sir ‘William Van Horn, president of the Canadian Pacific railway: the late R. F. Foster of Washington, Larz Anderson and. in Paris, B. J. Shonin- ger and Sidney B. Veit. secretary of the Societe des Amies des Artistes. Gihon is typical of the American youth who goes on his own, without state aid or patronage. At the age of twenty he was drawing for the San Francisco Chronicle, Examtner and Journal of Commerce, with some previous study at the Pennsylvania * * ¥ % Academy of Fine Arts, Philadelphia. He did the Pacific coast from Van- couver and Victoria to Panama, earn- ing $100 per week and enses. life he went to New York and started to work with Louis C. Tiffany, decorator, at $400. per month. Two years later he took contracts on his own account, but he¢ burned to study painting in Parfs: He had saved enough money and he came. After two years at the Julian Acad- sell landscapes and portraits. the salon. was exhibiting at @il the annual ex- hibitions of the psincipal American and European citiés. same. * % X % 4T)OES American art pay’ ted. EOPLE die—ever notice? P An ancient soldier man who (3 had spent a half oentury of peace in this town went back to his boyhood beginnings a year ago, and now he has traveled to a new home that can't be located be- cause the other world has no map. He had his pension, of course, but did odd jobs to “keep his hands go- ing”—and one of his friends who met him by way of a & re- members the time like this: He was s0 old that he might have been twin to Cheops, and so young (that his face was as bloomy as a hardy-growing rose. He was so busy that it took & kit of tools to fix the knob, and so idle that he made long pauses between tinkerings, under the impression that the woman—do- ing things at a desk—ought to know the history of his life. “Yes, mum; my leg hurts consid- erable when it rains—Johnny gave me a bullet—Antietam. Sometimes that old fight seems 8o close behind me that I can smell powder and hear drums. But when I get to figgering out that I have passed my Bible mark ¢ and that all my folks are gone, well, mum, I tell you it's a mighty lone- some job, being the last button on old Gabe's coat, as the sayin’ is.” The woman who was having the knob fixed almitted that it was a mighty lonesome job. She had ex- periences to go by. “Yes, mum, it's nature for a man te want camponionship, and if he can't do botter he takes to dumb critters—and he might go farther and fare worse, as the sayin' is—I got so lonesome about six years ago that I pald one dollar and a half for a § duck, and that duck, mum, is almost as much. company as an entire family. Yes, mum, 2 duck is real sociable when you can’t do any better. Some of these high flyers claims that dumb ters have got no sense, but I tell you, mum, it seems to me that my duck has got the knowledge of a if 80 ba it mout talk. It has ght, knowing eyes—and it's a right purty little chap, too, with ‘dlueish, greenish feathers with a gloss on ‘em, and a sort of a speck- ledy down on his breast.” fight for ome's country and to suffer for it for more than a half- years, and to have nothing better than a duck for a comrade, rather touched the woman, for she shoved aside her rk and asked with real heart intere: “What kind of a duck *A stuffed duck, mu! Ard now that the anclent soldier Nmo t:.;‘ho m;:tlng place o: oneq, maybe of Johnny o Antietam, where loneliness will be ‘his, never, w0 more, do you Suppose— his will served his soli- » e £ XD After two years of that delightful | 82 the | & 8ood thini THE' SUNDAY STAR, JANUARY 23, 1921-PART 4. TRAVELERS AID SOCIETY HAS BIG WORK IN HELPING UNFORTUNATES AT STATION Albert Giho n, Interviewed by Sterling i Heilig, Says American Art Really Pays. | DParis Connaisseurs Cite Prices—A Collector Who Buys “Young Amer- icans —Praise of Our Schools. ALBERT GIHON, AN AMERICAN PAINTER LIVING IN PARIS, WHO PREDICTS A PROSPEROUS FUTURE FOR AMERI ICAN ARTISTS. —_— ner, the negro painter; Henry Gold- enearth. Winslow Homer and many others found that American art pays, first abroad and afterwards at home, when practiced legitimately and not in a charlatan way. As for myself, 1 did not have a red cent twenty years ago, and now am pretty well off. 1 am not cooped up in a skyscraper, but enjoy a fine life in Paris, and in the open air of the country. I sell my pictures as I paint them. So do Eugene Vail, Frederic Bridgeman, Dannat, Connell, Dougherty, Ridge- way Knight, his son, Anson Knight, F. C. Frieseke and Cameron Burn- side, who so ably organized the re- cent exhibition at the Folies Marigny, | where twenty American pictures were sold and two bought by the French vernment, one of them being one Others who have made of it are Ernest Rosen of New York, the thoroughly Amer- fcan Poles, Abel Warshawsky and his brother, Alexander, and my own ‘brother, Clarence Gihon. “Yes, tell American boys and girls to go ahead, if they love art. Don’t of his own. emy of Paris he began to paint and ! be afraid. They will get better prices At the | every year. end of two more years he was in|who took $7 for his first picture and In two years more he|already in 1912 he was getting 31,200 1 know of one painter apiece."” “Will their prices ever jump as did those of the French leaders of the “Like whose?" he interrupted. “Do you know the prices Corot got while living? The selling values of Amer- Any one else, he says, can do the | Barbizon school” * We re-|ican painters cannot be judged, be- pea “John Sargent, Whist-| cause they have not lived long enough Ire, Ranger, Alexander Harrison, Tan-| yet. The pictures are not old enough. s AROUND THE CITY. A WELFARE club held a rummage sale at a nice little home on a nice little side street, with the parior filled with second-hand finery, refreshments in the kitchen and a grab bag in the hall. You paid a dime, dived a hand in the mystery depths, and after feeling around among the bundles, fished out——. Two nelghbors who had invested, staged their explorations on the stair- way with other neighbors for audience. The pudgy woman who looked as if she didn't have a nerve in her body lacked the courage to untie her string, because “she knew she was golng to be disap- pointed,” but the other, like that brave lady in the song, “bade farewell to every fear” and boldly waded in. “Handkerchiefs, Gooddy! The very things for Aunt Mollie's birthday.” “1 hate to get handkerchiefs for a present.” The interruption came from a lookeron. “So do I, but they are grand to give amay, when you can't think of anything else. *And look at this little blouse, will you It'll just come in for Maggie's Emma !” Maggie's Emma was to come in for a blue galatea, faded in the wash and adorned with china buttons, as big as| poker chips. (Note: Poker chips are what you play poker with.) “Why I think I got a lot for 10 cents— open yours, Mat—go on—open it!"” Mat was unanimously urged by the lookers-on, most of whom were ochuckling over their own luck, but the nearest she could come to an exhibition was a peephole she made in the bundlle’s end: “I dasn’t because I know T'm go- ing to be fooled—serves me right for buying a pig in & poke.” What about it? Nothing, neigh- bors, dear, except that Mat had spent dollars baking cakes and making | lemonade for the refreshment booth, had bought the postal cards mailed around the neighborhood, and the twine and manila paper for fixing up the bundles, besides making the bag itself from some cretonne left over from a couch cover. So it wasn't meanness. The trouble was that Mat simply didn't know how to take a chance. And it may be some such cranky little_ kinks in our mental make-ups that keeps such legions of us pegging away at desks and counters instead of risking life out in the open. ‘We are afraid to take a chance. Why * ok ok ok P S. Reason forty-eleven-B. men do not give up car seats to the ladies: “If a couple of women get on ar that has plenty of room but two vacant seats together, they mal no bones of inviting a fellow to move out of his place by the window to some other place, 80 that the women may sit together. A man may be 0 To be continued. NANNIE LANCASTER. | 1 ignore the Hudson river school, it was very primitive; but the work of the American painters of the past twenty-five years, look you!—twenty- five vears hence, that work will rise in art sales prices higher than the clarrespondlng work of foreign ar- tists.” “Pardon,” I said, “but did not the well known collection of American paintings made by William Chase sell rather moderately in New York just before the war “That s ahat I say.” retorted Gihon. “Twenty-five years hence, those samé pictures will fetch big prices.” And, really, does not the actual course bear him out, so far as it goes? You cannot persuade a painter to talk prices and names together. Gihon would say nothing. But it is common knowledge in Paris that just before the war Alex Harrison, Louis Ashton Knight, Gari Melchers and the late George Hitchcock were estimated be- tween $1,300 and $2,000, and Edwin Connell, the cattle painter, and the landscapes of the late Peter A. Gross between, say, $500 and $700. And it is equally common knowledge that “all of them today are selling for three to five times as much.” ‘Twenty-five years ago, Harrison and Melchers probably took $200 for a pic- ture more than once. Van Boskerck. painting in France, accepted almost anything for his early works, and those who snapped them up for, say, $50 apiece, made a fine speculation. Just before the war Van Boskerck was get- ting from $800 to $1,300, and today— well, try to buy one! Others who have gone up notably are Samuel M. Roose- velt, Herbert W. Faulkner, the Venetian painter; Clarence Gihon, brother of Al- bert, and Seymour Thomas of Alabama, who has been in Paris, moving back his furniture and belongings, to set up permanently in America. . Americans used to cross over to have their portraits painted by Seymour Thomas in Paris. His setting up at home is significant. Faulkner, who for a long time deemed that he could best abroad, has proved, for ten years past that he can do equally well at home. The same discovery has been made by Victor D. Hecht and by Van BIDISI‘"CK in long tours of American cities. * x x % I ASKED Gihon about selling abroad and at home. “Many Americans like to buy abroad,” he said. ‘They want an ar- tistic souvenir of their trips, or they like to buy in Paris from the salon or in the painter’s studio, or they like European subjects. I have exhibited landscapes at the Pennsylvania Acad- emy of Fine Arts, the New York So- ciety of American Artists and the Chicago Institute. Some sold, some came back to me in Parls. Well, those same landscapes have been bought at my studio by Americans who saw but did _not buy them in Philadelphia, New York or Chicago.” porary and personal. America s the great field of the future for American painters. Even today students have no need to come to Paris—unless for prestige—to begin selling. Carolus-Duran, a year before his death, sald to Gihon: “Young Americans do not need to come to Paris nowadays to study, with the beautiful landscapes you have at home and art schools good as any.” Carolus-Duran referred particularly to the art schools of Philadelphia, New_York, Washington and Chicago, and Boudet de Montvel, a Jittle before his death, declared the school at Cin- cinnati one of the finest in the world. “Aman-Jean told me,” says Gihon, “that ‘the ArtStudents’ League in New York was a revelation to him, and he had not sufficient words to praise the Art School of Chicago. As to the yearly exhibition of the Carnegie In- stitute of Pittsburgh, Aman-Jean, veteran French leader of the Societe Nationale des Beaux Arts, has pro- nounced it to be ahead of either of the Paris salons, for the two consid- erations, that it has an international jury, not open to wire pulling and that' the greatest painters of the world exhibit in it (This was in 1913, and Aman-Jean naturally be- lieved all good painters to be in the Societe Nationale des Beaux-Arts!) I find this annual Pittsburgh salon looked on generally in Paris as a fine example of the growing American art interest all over the country. “The greatest painters of the world really do compete at Pittsburgh,” said Gikon, “and when you get a prise there it carries a heavy sum of mon- ey with {t. 1 assure you the foreign celebrities are struck when asked to sit on its juries. It is therefore of interest to men- tion a Carnegie Institute detall which has caused hurried meetings of Amer- ican painters and sculptors in Paris. Gihon looks on it as rather tem- |parsley; “AMERICA IS THE COMING LAND OF ART,” SAYS AMERICAN ARTIST LIVING IN FRANCE To make it clearer, it should be stated that Gihon made a trip to the United States in 1917 and held exhi- bitions at the Braum Galleries, in New York, and the Corcoran Gallery. in Washington—the latter by invita- tion of the president and trustees. He went on to Pittsburgh and was well received there, The Carnegie Institute,” he said. “which has the biggest endowment and the finest gallery in all America, and makes Pittsburgh the best Ameri- can art center, away ahead of New York, or any other city in Aunerica, should be an example of impartiality and the first to encourage its own American painters and sculptors.” Now, a last important word: “There aré milllonajres, over there,” he said, “who will take you around in their automobiles and spend $200 a day showing you a good time, and then they will leave some college pro- fessor to buy your picture. It is not always the extremely rich who buy best. There is a constantly increas- ing class of cuiltured, well fixed Ame icans, but not enormously wealthy, who buy two or three good pic- tures a year, take a lot of pleasure in it, and think it over in advance. Many are college professors—I have frequently sold to such. “They are theé beginning of the great and true American appreciation.” he continued, impressively. “Slightly low- er in fortune, there is also a large and increasing class of cultured Americans who can pay $150 or $200 for a picture. Often they save up or deprive themselves. Well, they are getting good investments when they buy our ‘young’ Americans. Their children will sell those canvases for $1,500 or $2,000—perhaps for $10,000, perhaps for $100,000. “When?” I asked. “When the “big dealers begin to push them—say, when the painters of them are snugly deceased. tAHere he made his notable sugges- ion: “Dealers are all right in their way,” sald Gihon. “Just now they are pushing old masters. But American painters ought to atrange to be inde- pendent. American painters and sculptors in Europe and America ought to combine to hold a great exhibition every year in all the American cities. Thus they can be- come promptly independent.” It would be the American salon, not limited to ome city. but having several centers. American artists have now a great chance. if they will stick together, yet paint individually. Every one appreciates them. en America is beginning to do so. Watch Saved Life. IT is not infrequent that one reads as an incident of war that a sol- dier’s life was saved by an enemy's bullet striking his watch, though more often the accounts say that his life was saved by the bullet burying it- self in the family Bible which the man's mother gave him when he marched away and which he carried in the pocket of his blouse and over his heart. Perhaps there are many authentic instances of such things happening. No doubt such things have happened often. There is, in the Na- tional Museum, a watch case which bears the bullet mark of authenticity. There is no doubt that the watch was struck by a bullet or some small mis- sile which struck with great force. It is duly attested that the watch was in the watch pocket of a soldier at the time it was hit by the builet, and it is a fair and reasonable deduction that the bullet would have killed the soldier if it had not been stopped by the watch. It was a lucky stop-watch for that soldier. It is a silver watch with a dial about four inches in diameter and the case is about one inch thick. There i no doubt that it is a very old-fash- joned watch, for now they make clocks for the wall and the mante| piece much smaller than this watch. 1t is a dear old watch and it marked the passing hours many years before the majority of the eyes that follow these lines saw the light of the world. It was the watch of Lieut. Joseph C. Hussey of the 10th Wisconsin Volun- teers in the civil war, and while in Lieut. Hussey’s pocket was struck by a “minie ball during the progress of the battle of Perryville, Ky., Oc- tober 8, 1862. It was struck on the rim near the stem. The case was mashed in so that the sink is nearly an inch deep, and a section of the dial is shattered. The relic was presented to the museum by Mrs. Hussey, wife of the officer who carried the big sil- ver watch. Vegetable Centerpieces. Most housekeepers will be surprised to learn how the commonest vegeta- bles may be combined to form at- tractive table decorations. For ex- ample, a tall candle placed in the cen- ter of a mound of cranberries could ocoupy the center of the table. Out- lining this may be a double row of potatoes, onions with their brown skins removed and crisp parsiey, which radiate carrots to an outer ring of parsley. Lighted tapers may be placed between the carrots. Apples, grapes and bananas may be used in effective combination. The fruit should be arranged in a low wicker basket twined with eénery and surrounded by & ring of perfect grapes, alternating with sprays of green. The result is very pretty. Squash, cranberries, tomatoes, car- rots, celery and asparagus fern com- bine well. An inverted pan should be covered with greenery to support the squash, and around it tomatoes and celery alternate. The cranberries are laid in a circle, with carrots between the oelery stalka on the outside. Fruit and greenery in star-shaped form make an attractive decoration. Place in the center & tall candl banked with s fern. Radi- ating from this place five broad fern Jeaves, each tipped with a taper, while apples, grapes, bananas and oranges are grouped between. A popoorn centerpiece is dainty. In the center place & high candle, encir- cled by a small mound of parsley. Outline this with a wide filliag of popcorn in square shape, edged with place an onion at each cor- ner and one in the center of each side. A small white candle should be placed in the center of each onidn. Pale green onions piaced on vircu- lar beds of scarlet cranberries and|app topped with radishes could form a star-shaped centerpiece. A head of lettuce banked by oy forms the center, from whi radiate white parsnips placed between the beds of cranberries and onions. Permanent Places. \IR" Douglas Robinson, <vhose & speeches were a feature of the recent campaign, said at & reception in New York: “Making & speech is nothing like so difficult as keeping & servant. I know a young woman who hss ac- tually changed her cook seventeen times in the last three months. “This young woman said to me the other day with & sigh: ~“‘When cooks get to heavan it must annoy them awfully to fird eut that they can’t leave.’” Uncertain. NOVELIST JOSEPH HERGEIHEL- mer was talking in Philad>Iphis about the mercenary upbringihg of the modern girl. ‘A chorus girl,” he said, “came home one night from the sho® with a gSnificent bunch of mauv¥e or- ch “‘Who gave you those orihids? her mother demanded. H . ‘A certain young man’ tk» girl answered with a blush. 3 “Certain? sneered her miother. ‘Pooh! What a fool you®ard! Ne man is certain, child, till he's landed.’ I BY EDNA M. COLMAN. O the commuter, the profes- sional traveler and the tour- ist, journeying about from city to city is all in the day’'s work, merely incidental to business or pleas- ure, but to those who rarely leave home and then only on the urge of necessity or some great emergency, traveling alone is an ordeal whose magnitude is never sensed by the ex- perienced. These latter tolerantly wave aside the gemtle query of the Travelers Aid workers’ “Can I assist you in any way?" if put to them, with scarcely a thought as to what that same question means to the weary, lonely, oftentimes bewildered and frightened strangers, who alight by the hundreds daily from the trains that constantly rush through Washing- ton's Union station. The greeting of comfort and cheer which the kindly women wearing the badge with the typical sheltering palm hold out to all strangers that enter the gates of the terminal and the ready hand of service revives dy- ing hope and faith and restores confi- dence to all who avail themselves of its benefits. Even the willful runa- ways recognize in it real friendship and submit to the protection and au- thority that is behind it to save them from themselves. The Union station is the literal gate- way of Washington and is thus the Alpha and Omega, as weli as the great midway of the countless comedies and tragedies that order in varying de- grees the journeyings of the throngs that pass through it. Every class of society and every element of human happiness or sorrow mingles in the rush past of the hurrying crowds. * Kk K To the Travelers Aid, the guardian angels of the station, they are all “just people,” regardless of class, color, creed, a or condition, and they may need some service, great or small. No pen or brush, unless magic- tipped by genius, can portray the gamut of emotions that find expression in the needs, the mistakes and tne cir- cumstances that come to light under the ministrations of these workers. A day in the Union station would furnish the most ambitious photoplay artist with a wealth of material that would rival some of Balzac's comedies or fill the hearts of the sympathetic onlooker with thrills akin to those of Dumas, could he but follow the devious trails into human passion which find a setting and e stage in the prosaic stretch from the ticket window to the waiting train. To measure or classify this service rendered by the workers of this pro- tective _organization rendered all hours of the day and night, all days in the year, would be impossible, as it is given to fit the emergency, whether it be in securing a bottle of warm milk for a wailing Infant or the services of an undertaker. In order to obtain some idea of the diversity of troubles which beset so many of the traveling public, the writer sought out the presiding ge- nious of the organization in Wash- ington. Mrs. Walling Van Riper of New York, who since last June has been organizing and executive secre- tary, and in that brief time has es- tablished it on most efficient lines. Through her efforts the great con- structive and protective principles of the organization have come to be a recogiized and valuable factor in ‘Washington life. Mrs. Van Riper brought to this work a vast background of experience zal in many lines of philanthropic service, much of which was done in or near Washington, and this has made her well known to itspeople. Her first introduction to local inter- ests was as director of the National Special Aid Soclety, which rendered important service during the war. Then came = year of home servics for the American Red Cross. Besides this, she was financial secretary of the Flort Greene district of the Brook- lyn bureau of charities; also head of a liberty bond department in a New York bank, and put in long service on the New York committee of acci- dent prevention. Her most appre- ciated “enlistment,” however, was as a soclal worker at the base hospital at Camp Meade, where the boys dubbed her “sergeant” for her un- tiring wervice in their behalf. ' * x % % ‘When asked to tell of one of her days In the Union station with her two assistants Mrs. Van Riper re- plied: “First of all, let me tell you just what Travelers’ Aid is. It is just ex- actly what its name implies—an aid to travelers of all sorts, especially those hampered by age, youth, inex- perience, lack of ability to speak Eng- lish or any other handicap that makes it necessary for them to have as- sistance in getting to their trains and safely on their journeys. The aid sends telegrams notifying friends of the arrival of a traveler, finds suitable accommodations for those unfamiliar with the city and not met by friends, obtains wheel chairs and careful at- tention for invalids, gives special care to young girls traveling alone. It is watchful in protecting girls from the attentions of undesirable men and likewise looks after children and young boys who are making trips by themselves. “Yes,” Mrs. Van Riper answered the question, “one must love humanity to do this work. The late Phillips Brooks sald. “The longer I live, the more hu- manity appeals to me.’ You will no- tice, he did not say any particular type or phase of humanity, but hu- manity. That {s the keynote of the Travelers’ Aid Society and the ac- tusting motive of all who enter its work. “I shall not attempt to tie these in- cidents to the hours in which they happened, for sometimes two or three s elapse before we feel that a case is closed, and often correspondence is maintained for a long period. *“One of the most interesting girl cases was discovered apparently waliting for a train here in the station. She was about seventeen years old and alone. The Travelers Aid worker roached her and after chatting a ‘while learned that she had a ticket for & southern city, and there seemed nothing to be done for her. But you know, in this work we rather de- velop a sixth sense where girls are concerned, and hence the worker chattted on with her in friendly ‘way, seeking for the opening to be of some real service. “The girl claimed to be from New York and on her way to visit rela- tives, but she was altogether provin- clal—the small-town t d ob- viously sFe knew nothing of big cities. The worker soon discovered that the girl had_come from a coun- try town in New England. The father had deserted the family, home.condl- tions were dull and sordid, the girl worked hard all day, walking a mile and & half to and from work dally and at night sharing a bed with two restless children. She was only searching witht the dreams of seven- teen for something mors beautiful somewhere in life—and to run away from it all was her solution. She thought to find in mnother city mors congenixl surroundings and better opportunities. We cared for her, put hér in charge of a member of a Girls’ Protective League. Her mother was notified by wire, but she refused to allow her to come home, feeling that in the eyes of the small community her daughter had disgraced herself and her family by leaving home. Through the efforts of the Travelers Ald she was placed in care of a New England Girls' Protective League, and a few months later she wrote to gur -ocdaty‘ th-t’-ha r:"-:‘o living Im|¢er o protection of a us_organisa- tion. She had a good position, was at- tending night school and was devoting ° NAUGURAT [ | Station. Claim Much Attention From Volun- | teers Who Wear Badge of the Sheltering ; Palm—Mrs. Walling Van Riper, Or- ganizing and Executive Secretary, Tells of a Day With Workers at the Union ION Visitors Will MRS. WALLING VAN RIPER, OR- GANIZING AND EXECUTIVE SEC- RETARY OF THE TRAVELERS AID SOCIETY. her life to religious service. In S she said, ‘I know now I was foolish to run away from home, but 1 am glad my steps were guided to Washington.” “While tbis girl was being looked after our attention was drawn to the actions of a man who approached two girls waiting for trains. He was or- dered out of the station after the first instance, but came back later by an- other door and sat down beside another girl, attempting to engage her in con- versation. This time the case was re- ported to the police and the man taken to a detention room. Two of the girls were summoned. Both denied any knowledge of the man, though he in- sisted he had met one in New York and the other in Atlantic City. Both girls proved that they had never been in the cities mentioned and the man was locked up. Pollce investigation proved that he was ‘wanted’ on two charges. “But_girls are only a part of our problem. Here is record of just an average day that comes to my mind and is, no doubt, just what you are seeking as far as the diversity of difficuities go. * ¥ ¥ % “From 7 to 9 am. we looked after twenty-one foreigners, placed them on trains going south or west. They had arrived in this country the pre- vious day, And, by the way, foreign travelers are a dally occurrence, as each morning during those hours we have from ten to forty of all na- tionalities, all of them just landed and on their way to places of em- ployment on farms or in cities of the south and west. “Washington, you know, is one of the most important polats of transfer in the United States. We are fortu- nate in having employes in the sta- tion who speak almost every language. This helps us, as foreignors are de- lighted when they hear their own lan- guage and it inspires them with con- fidence in the ones who are assisting em. “Next, that morning, we had a six- year-old boy to look after. His moth- er had sent him to Washington to visit his grandmother and forgot to give him her address, so we cared for the little chap until the information arrived, when he was taken to his destination. “About the same time our attention was needed for a disabled soldier from ‘Walter Reed Hospital going home for a visit, the first in three years. We secured a porter with a wheel chair to take him to the train, and wired the Travelers Aid in Richmond, Va., to meet and assist him when he changed cars. “The next train brought a girl of sixteen who became very ill at the station. A physician was secured, and as it was acute appendicitis, she was sent to a hospital and her people notified. “Then along came a boy of nineteen who asked our advice. He had left New York on the death of his mother and had worked as mechanic in the middle west until, homesick for the old surroundings, he bought a ticket to Washington and arrived here pen- niless. We prowvided a lunch and sent him to the Gospel Mission, where they secured employment for him and gave him shelter. “That same day we met and cared for a six-year-old girl en route to San Francisco from New York. We put her on the train and wired our ‘worker in Chicago to meet and as- sist her across the city.” * X * ¥ *“Wedding parties in trouble?” Mrs. Van Riper laughed at the question. “Yes, we had one that particular day. A young couple from the rural dis- tricts came to Washington to be mar- ried. Their train was seven hours late and they arrived in the city after the license bureau had closed. On the train they had made the ac- quaintance of an individual who was bent upon piloting them to a place of his own selection. Our worker, however, recognizing his type, per- suaded the young people to trust themselves to her care and the young man was sent to an inexpensive hotel and the girl taken to the home of a woman interested in fravelers Aid work. The following day they were escorted to the license bureau and then to a minister. “Toward the close of this ordinary day in our work we had a runaway girl whom we located and later sent to her home in Wisconsin, and also a nervous and excited old lady came to us. She had expected her relatives to meet her, did not have their ad- dress and could not even remember the number or street on which her nlece was living, nor could she re- member her nephew’s first name. Aft- er we had gotten her caimed down a little so that we could question her, she finally remembered that in her trunk she had letters from this niece. Through the assistance of the bag- gage master we located the trunk and on one of the letters the much- needed address was found. We com- municated with the family and in a short time the old lady was turmed er to them. “This day Wi not unusual—just typical of every day. Sometimes there is more of pathos and other days more of the amusing, and often in cleaging away the dilemma we are able to“help In the working out of really big problems that mean life- long happiness, as in the case of a little child returning to her father in San Francisco after spending six months in Washington with her mother, as the divorce court had de- creed she should. After the child arrived the er sent & note of thanks for our kindness. We thén \ § N wrote him what love and care the mother had showered upon the child and how badly she had feit at part- ing_with her.” We later learned that he had been writing 1o his wife. He has also written to us, and now the comes back in the spring the father and mother will be_reunited. “Another day a soldier came to our booth much dejected because of ar- riving oo late to call at the home servide of the Red Cross. Two days previous his wife had given birth to a baby and was dangerously il The ldoctors telegraphed for him to come at once. He bought a ticket to Washington, at the same time wiring hlv“ wife’s family to wire money to Washington for him to continue his journey. Arriving here, he found no money at the telegraph office for him and no message. Having very little money, he could not go on. We com- icated with the officials of the iRed Cross, who assured us that it we could handle the case the reim- bursement would be forthcoming the next day. The ticket was purchased, the wife’s family wired of his time of arrival and he was sent on his way. We never had a more app ciative or grateful traveler than this young lad. * ¥ x % “Another day we had a little widow and two babies who had jour- neyed all of the way from Johan- nesburg, South Afrida, to return to her people in the extreme south, and IISIGKIA' OF THE TRAVELERS AID SOCIETY. a demented woman, who claimed that she had received a wire from the President asking her to come to see him on businss. “Elopement Oh, yes, only a few days ago a girl of very prominent fam- Unnatural Natural History VEN in a sclentific age like ours, superstitions in regard to the most familiar things as well as the most unfamiliar still linger. I can remember as a boy firmly be- lleving that if I should touch a toad I should have warts grow on my fin- gers; that if I should drop a hair from a horse’s tall into water, it would be- come a water snake; that a cobweb would stop the bleeding of a wound; that a stiff breast bone in a goose be- tokened a cold winter. Every coun- tryman believes some of these and scores besides. It would be worth somebody’s time to collect similar su- perstitions and traditions the coun- try over. It would make an enter- taining _contribution to unnatural natural history and throw light upon popular psychology, These superstitions are merely sur- vivals of countless beliefs Which seem mostly ridiculous, but which ‘were gravely accepted g everybody, even the most learned. How far back they go nobody knows, but Pliny, in his “Natural History,” written in the first century A. D., is full of ‘hem. And all down the centuries, espe clally through the fifteenth and six- teenth centuries, there were scores of books which gathered and advan such wisdom; and they found a public down into the eighteenth century. They find their way—these beliefs— into literature, and Shakespeare's plays are scattered through with ex- amples of them. Th he speaks in “As You Like It” of “the toad ugly and venemous,” recious jewell in his head” ntlemen of Verona,” of “chameleon love which can feed on air”; in “Ham- let” of the crab which walks back- ward, etc. These traditions were a part of his mental outfit, as they were a part of the mental outfit of every- body else, and nobody ever Qques- tioned them seriously, 8o that they continued to be handed down even to our time—some of them. Here are a few examples drawn from sixteenth and seventeenth cen- tury books, some in regard to the most familiar things, and a few in regard to fabulous creatures: The goat breathes at the ears and not at the nose, and it is usually fe- verish. Ashes of goats’ horns and goats’ wool will drive away snakes. If you cut off the beards of goats they will stay faithfully at home. The bite of goats is deadly for trees. Goats die if they lick honey. He- goats have more teeth than she- goats. Their hoofs burned, pounded and mixed with liquid pitch will cure baldness. Goats’ milk will prevent wine from souring. The blood of a goat will scour rusty iron better than a file, It has another marvelous power—a magnet rubbed in garlic loses its magnetic force, but If it is bathed in goats’ milk it will recover its magnetism. ‘When the kine calve often and have many calves it is a sign that there will be much raln during the coming winter. When cows have sore feet anoint the animals between the horns with oil and gl.tch. I the ox nds _{its head to the right to lick fts halter it presages a storm. If it bends to the left it presages a calm day. If it lows and smells the ground, or eats more than usual, it betokens a change of weather. In the head of the ox is a little stone, which the ox will spit out of its mouth if it is thoroughly frightened. This same stone will ease the teething of children. That horse is accounted best in war and battle that thrusts its head deepest into water when it drinks. ‘The blood of a horse is poison, like that of f. If a sword or & spear be anointed with the sweat of a horse it will make a wound which will not stop bleeding so long as life Tasts. The horse has a bone like a dog’s tooth in its heart. The man who wears one of these about his neck will never feel grief or sorrow. The tooth of a yearling colt hung on the neck of a baby will assure pain- lel-; t%:.:'imn"hl-lrl ing about the 0, Y loses E."'“” & courage. and so growi eat be cut away it To keep a cat indoors the nelghbors® chick- probabilities are. that when the child S ily was {nduced to return to her home and try to be married in the regular way. “Travelers whose purses and tickets are lost or stolen, lost, strayed or for- gotten babies, malds, packages and all find their way to us or we em. “The War Department notifies rela- tives and freends of deceased soldier: who are coming to Washington fer reburiul of their dead 1o xpply to the Travelers Aid booth for all necessary information. Many of these have never before been many miles from home. We secure rooms, notify the Red Cross where to call for them asd the num- ber in the party. and also advise them of the way to get to Arlington ceme: t ‘One_elderly man who lived in Ta- coma, Wash.. left his home town for the first time in fifty years when he came to Washington to witness the burial of his only son's body in Arlington cemetery. * ¥ ¥ X “The boy. a member of Company C. 348th Artillery, was killed in action. The father, a bewildered old man, ar. rived several days aheal of the sched- ule. Those days were plunned out for him in sightseeing. “Many children are sent to our eare. [One day we had twenty-three under fourteen years of age. Frequently we look after women en route to their homes from Johns Hopkins Hospital after operations. We have a porter take them in a wheel chair to the Red Cross room, where they rest for sev- eral hours before being again rolled out and placed upon their trains. Wires are always sent to the Travelers’ Aid Society at the destination, so they may meet and sist them. Through our society it is possible for children and aged men and women to travel from coast to coast in safety.” vice ed “How is all of this splendid ser financed?” Mrs. Van Riper was 5 “All service is free,” she explained. “Travelers pay for the telephones and telegrams when they can. - The work is supported wholly by voluntary con- tributions, quite a bit coming back from grateful people whom we have assisted and some from those who have observed our activities. The work is done by local volunteers with- out remuneration for their services. Being non-sectarian, the soclety claims the interest and support of every de- nomination and creed.” The last published monthly report issued by Mrs. Van Riper gives the total number of persons aided in one imonth as 2.465, and for the six months the Travelers Aid has been in opera- tion here as 28,703. The local soclety, which is one of the 170 branches of the great national so- clety in New York, has the indorse- tary Club. The Present officers are: J chai; workers, with a large committee, are endeavoring to so firmly establish this work in Washington that the Union station may have at least six workers in place of two, and that every train may be met. The value of this dur- ing such a period as inauguration week is obvious to even the most disinter- ested. At the same time the National Travelers Aid is striving to increase its 170 cities now supplied with work- ers to inciude every city and sizable town in the land, so that never again may one be confronted with the appal- ling assalgnment of civic neglect that ‘was expressed in the statistics giving 68,000 girls as having disap from the streets of the big cities in ;lll. of which 6,000 were lost in New ens and birds cit off its ears; cate cannot endure to feel drops of rain fall into their earholes, and they pre- fer to remain under cover rather than risk getting caught in a shower. The breath of a cat destroys the lungs. “A toad is in a manner a venemous frog.” 1In the right side of each frog is a “bone” that cools boiling water if it be thrown into it, and the ves- sel cannot be reheated unless the bone is first removed. Toads infect sage leaves with their poison. It is never safe to eat unwashed leaves in consequence. If you put & toad into a new earthen pot and bury it in a corn field “there will be no hurtful tempests or storms there.” There is a precious stone in the head of the toad, useful against the bite of snakes and against all poisons generally, but it must be taken out while the toad is ficult e stol may worn in a ring, and it will bear watcking, for it will always change color in the presence of potson. Snakes come not within the shade of an tree morning nor evening. If a suake be set between a fire and a lot of ash leaves he will rather run into the fire into the leaves Thrae or four leaves taken in wine each morning make those lean who were fat. If you rub a filbert upon the head of a bo{ who has eyes of different colors the eyes will grow alike in color. It also is good for the bite of scorplons. Amber warns of poison, for if one dipe it into polson it makes a great chirking and changes into divers col- ors like the rainbow, and that im- mediately. Amber boiled in the grease of a sow that is suckling young pigs ‘becomes rich and clear. ‘The chameleon lives on air. “If the chameleon at any time see a serpent taking the air and sunning himself under some green tree he climbeth up into that tree and settleth himself di- rectly over ihe serpent, then out of his mouth he casteth & thread like & spider, at the end whereof hangeth a drop of poison as bright as any pearl, which lighting upon serpent killeth it immediately. With the tail one can put es asleep and stay the flowing of floods and waters; the tail mixed with cedar and myrrh, bound to two rods of palm and struck upon the water, causes all things that are contained in the water to rise to the surface.” Revolutionary Science. ¢QCIENCE revolutionizes our ideas.” ‘The speaker was W. L. George, the English novelist He resumed: “A millionaire contractor was com- plaining to a scientific friend of mine that a beautiful actress had accepted his proposal of marriage, only he had just discovered that she did so for purely mercenary motives. 1 “But my scientific friend pooh- poohed the millionaire contractor's lament, “‘What & queer fellow you are,’” he said, ‘You want to be loved for your looks alone, that is for the posi tion in space of the atoms, ions, mol cules and what-not which chance, working through some DI-I"M inian se-