Evening Star Newspaper, November 30, 1930, Page 103

Blessed Barrier A Story of Release. By Fannie Hurst. OMEWHERE in the heart, the mind and the spirit of young Sterling was a barrier as high, practically, as his life was long. Had you even suggested anything of this to any member of the Buhlow family, they would have met the implication w'th loyal and heated denial. How could Sterling sec...ly feel himself an outcider in the Buhlow family, when not one of the Buhlow children, although they had quite simply been told when they each became 8, had an atom of consciousness that Sterling was not blood brother. As a matter of fact, bend'ng too far back- ward perhaps to achieve this end, Ann and Proscow Buhlow took pains to see to it that Sterling received even more than their own children of parental solicitude. The fact that Sterling had been adopted by Ann during a previous marriage was as remote in the minds of her present husband and children as if it had never happened. TERLING belonged. As the senior member of a remarkably alert group of children, he was the acknowledged leader of the clan. “Sterling is too outrageously clever,” Ann was wont to remark of her alleged eldest, treating him in the colloquial young fash’on of the modern mother. “He sets a dreadful example to the rest of the children. They have to live up to him.” “Sterling is not clever,” Ann’'s really eldest, Shirley, would sing out on such occasions. “He’s a soulless misanthrope, an acid-flinging cynic, a misbehaviorist, and he passes off among the unworldlings of my mother’s gen- eration as clever.” “Oh, Shirley, be yourself,” Terry, two years below Shirley, would retort on the fling of a sofa pillow. “You know you'd give your sleepy head to be as clever as Sterling.” “What Shirley can't be. she is not going to bid for,” remarked her father, dodging in turn the same sofa pillow, flung by Shirley toward him, that had been flung by Terry to his sister. “Father. it is a good thing you make it a point to speak your true words in jest. Other- wise your family would never grant you a- hearing.” Typical, all this, of the way Sterling stood n the admiration of his so-called parents and brothers and sisters. Not only the two older of the Buhlow children vested him thus in their full and enthusiastic approval, but the stepladder of younger ones followed suit with hero-worshipping eyes. “Sterling this.” “Sterling that.” “If I had Sterling’s brains.” “Sterling is the genius of this family.” “If only Sterling would take the trouble he could be anything he set out to be!” Scmethbing undoubtedly there was in Sterling. The something that would not take the trouble. Time after time, her sweet, anxious eyes scru- tinizing this youth, Ann tried to analyze that trouble. Proscow, too. And as Ann said banteringly of her husband, as a famous alienist whose job it was to analyze the work- ings of the human brain, Proscow ought to be able te ferret out the way to attack the streak of cynical inertia in Sterling. “Darling, with all your brains, isn’'t there anvthing you want to be?” “I want my father to subsidize me with ten thousand a year as guarantee aga'nst the hor- rible thought of ever wanting to be anything.” “Sterling, won't you be serious just once? You're 20 now., The time has come when you simply have to decide what you want to do with your life. You're too talented! Music. Painting. Writ‘ng. I've a suspicion you can be a great person in any one of them.” “Perhaps.” “Proscow, you talk to h'm.” CURIOUS. with any one of their own chil- dren, this problem would have been treated in quite another manner. In fact, the prob- lem of Terry had already been handled with decision and the school for h's medical train- ing selected. With Sterling, just because of his equivocal position in the household, the dilemma of stimulating him to action was a subtle and troublesome one. “You know after all, Sterling, your father, in sp'te of his wealth, could never be wealthy enough to encourage a dilettante in the family.” A flush ran beneath the palior of the best- looking member of the Buhlows. Ann had struck in. Proscow, and rightlv, would not per- mit one of his sons to live off of his largess . . . much less Sterling, the outsider. How to convey to these dear, warm, dis- creet people that gnawing, sickening sense of his outsideness. The very coloring of the eyes and hair of his five foster brothers and sisters was something Sterling could never look upon without the cold sense of being alien sweeping through the lonely inner moors of his desola- tion. The Buhlows were blonde, every one of them, blue-cyed, straw-haired. Dark, aloof, alone, he stood in their dear, kind world —alien whose isolation no one dared mention. The alien, SHE SUNDAY STAR, WASHINGTON, D. C, NOVEMBER 30, 1930. The confession of his years of secret anguish and jealousies came from him one night in a torrent of revealing who by very virtue of the anomaly of his po- sition, was treated with cons‘derations that hurt more than helped. All of his childhood, Sterling had yearned for the heartier repri- mands handed out so unselfconsciously to the Buhlow children. No childish dispute had ever been settled against him. The alien deferred to! The same way now with his retarded de- cision. With not one other of his children would Proscow have been so indulgent. Terry was & concrete example. Even Shirley, the only girl in the group, had never met the quality of indulgence that had been meted out to Sterling. It made the bitterness and the hurting and the secret gnawing pain of being special, and a little outside the dear, inner group of people who were dearer than dear tq him, almost too vast to be borne. It was not alone the sense of being the out- sider, it was the knowledge that their un- spoken sense of it kept them all so cruelly con- siderate, so deferential to his special position. Ndr even his foster father was to sense this out as the secret of the curious problem confronting him in this foster son of his. ‘Too bad. Most gifted member of the family. All- America Continued from Fifth Page he first began to practice this harmless sport, which has since become so dangerous. Yes, it was quite harmless back in the gay nineties. But the critic has to watch out now, for he may have aroused the ire of some rabid foot ball fans tc the extent that a quart milk bottle just grazes his dome because he left off a fa- vorite son of a certain State. Walter could at- tend all the big games himself during the sea- comm:ttals. Brains. Talent. Will get his bearings in time, of course. But a curious licked kind of psy- chology to the lad. Doesn’t care a great deal about anything. Fine intelligence. High strung, but not unduly nervous. Sensitive, of course. But somewhere in the machinery of the boy's fine mind, a'monkey wrench. For a while Shirley had seemed to have easiest access to the confidence of Sterling. They were so close; so filled with admiration, each for the other. Their entire childhood had been like that. Merciless in their repartee, gibe and banter, they were nonetheless closer than any other two of the children. But then at this stage, when more than ever Sterling had become the non-committal dilet- tante, even Shirley had fallen back defeated. Something was eating Sterling. However, in the end it was Shirley who was to find her way into the tormented labyrinth of Sterling’s dilemma. ‘The recital of his years of secret anguish and hurt and jealousies came from him one night in a torrent, on the heels of a discussion they had been having together on the subject of his refusal to compete for an art prize. Sentence by sentence, reveal'ng commitment by commitment, the strange secret tortures of the years lay revealed. . “I'm too jealous, Shirley. Too eaten with the devilish pain of being an outsider to the people I love best in the world, to care about anything. I'm licked before I start. You, can’t want anything badly enough to go oY and get it when you're eaten with a devil ke that. It will always be that way with me, Homesickness, heart sickness, to be one of a group that will always too consciously and con- scientiously try to make me think I am what I am not.” “You fool,” said Shirley, after hours of lete ting this too long dammed-up confession flow from him. “You darling, blessed, adorable idiot, The only thing, Sterling, that has made all these late years of mine the grand luminous years that they have been is the fact that you are not one of us in the sense you mean. Fool. Darling idiot. Please don't sit there pretending you don’t know what I mean, Sterling—how terrible it would be if really you were of us.” Suddenly, seeing her there in a rad‘ance thad was as beautiful as it was unmistakable to h'm, Sterling did see . . . and secing, came to bless the fact that he was not one of theml! (Copyright, 1930.) Teams the Bunk, Says Gil Dobie. son and he had a trained eye for star foot ball men that made you® accept his choice at the end of the season without a word of disap- proval. One picker and one team were enough to satisfy the fans. Then came the day when the beloved Mr. Camp passed on, and immediately a hundred . aspiring sports writers clamored to occupy his throne. Finally a new All America czar was selected, But in the meantime the great foot ball tidal wave had arrived that sent as many as 120,000 Newest Fashions in Smuggling. Continued from Fourteenth Page busiest piers, the pier of the North German Lloyd Line at Pier 4, Army Base, Brooklyn. The customs employe who passed on the informa- tion which made this seizure possible and who is therefore responsible for it is Station In- spector J. Rothschild. Although he is an in- spector of many years s'anding and has been responsible for other large-scale seizures, he has been a station inspector only since the early part of this year, The facts in this particular case make a very interesting story. Since Inspector Roths- child’s assignment to this pier, the peculiar ac- tions on many occasions of one of the assistant baggage masters working for the steamship company aroused his suspicions and led him to believe that there was a possibility of nar- cotic smuggling on this pier. Rothschild men- tioned his suspicions to the steamship authori- ties, who ordered all their ship’s officers to co- operate with the Government inspector in his endeavor to prevent such smuggling. The steamship authorities rendered every assistance possible and in no sense could they be blamed for what happened. In fact, it was only through their hearty co-operation that the seizure came to a successful consummation. When the S. S. Europa was still on its way to the port of New York on its trip which ended on September 15, and about six hours before it docked, the customary airplane service from the vessel brought information to In- spector Rothgthild that one of the sailors had in his possession a suspicious looking package ’ which might contain narcotics. Acting on this information. Inspector Rothschild immediately passed this advice on to customs officials. The officials acted quickly and efficiently and had their men trail the suspect with a suitcase in which he had placed the package. The sailor was met by the assistant baggage master, the man suspected by Inspector Rothschild. The baggage master, in his official capacity, relieved the sailor of the suitcase and placed it with the unclaimed baggage. Later he returned with a customs baggage stamp which he placed on the package. Still later he r:turned for the suit- case and carried it through the customs line with the guard’s O. K. on the label. At this point he was met and placed under arrest by customs inspectors. IN THIS manner are our docks and our bor- ders guarded from invasion from abroad of the very worst and most dangerous form of contraband, and it is only through the eternal vigilanice of such alert officers' as Inspector Rothschild that America is able to combat this great evil. While a seizure such as this one, the value of which has been placed at $20,000, may be considered to be only a small part of the total which does get by the officials, it is only by being everlastingly on guard that such smuggling can be discouraged. Developments in this particular case may lead to the break- ing up of a regular narcotic ring, but even if such is not the case, the men responsible for seizures should receive the commendation not only of their fellow eémployes and superior offi- cers, but also from the citizenry at large, frenzied fans fighting for a seat at Soldier FMeld in Chicago for a big game. And it had become the habit of every zestful cub sports writer, along with every veteran critic, to sit down at his typewriter and pound out his version 4@ an All-America team. Then the dozen or s0 teams selected by these men were shuffied to- gether and an All-America team selected through the process of naming the man who had received the most votes for a position on the first team, the second highest on the second team, and so on. These second and third teams help soothe the wounded pride of aspirants for first-team honors, in some cases. But it is jusg as ‘likely to be the cause of an assault upom his good judgment by rival sports writers, who can’t understand why Jones of Oshkosh Col- lege, that sterling triple-threat man, was placed on team three instead of team one. YES, choosing an All-America team was com« paratively simple in the pioneer days of foot ball. The critic could jog around to big games on successive Saturdays and see every great player of mention in action. He could choose his team from what he saw. But now a critic would have to have a drawing account like the assets of the world’s largest bank, & pair of seven-league boots and a game schede uled for leading elevens on every day in the season to enable him to witness all the great teams and players in action. For during this last season more than 250 games among well known colleges were scheduled on a single Saturday. The average foot ball critic can see no more than 10 major games a season. So the hard-working and conscientious sports critic solved this perplexing problem by read- ing the newspapers from the sections he findsgs impossible to cover, which are usually many; talks with coaches about teams and players that have been on their schedules, and weighs this second-hand information he gets with what he gleans from attending the games. One metropolitan newspaper came to the conclusion last year that All-America teams are so much “hooey,” and four well known coaches, representing the East, Middle West, South and West picked all-star teams for their respective localities. After all, foot ball coaches are probe ably better judges of the qualifications of the teams than the sports writers, for they aré®~ supposed to know = good foot ball man when they see one in action.