Evening Star Newspaper, December 28, 1930, Page 81

THE SUNDAY STAR, WASHINGTON, D. C, DECEMBER 28, STUFFED DATES Now You Must Decide What to Do With All the Maxim-a-Day Calendars You Got on Thursday—Put Them on the Wall If You Must--but Many Feel That Hanging Is Too Good for Them! By Weare HIS Winter's crop of calendars is smaller than. usual. The insurance company seems to have overlooked us, and the butcher has failed to come across with his customary Young Lady Inhaling a Lily. (Why butchers invariably select simpering blondes as calendar illustra- tions is something that only a psychologist could explain) 8o far we have received no Indian-in-a-Canoe from the lumber company and not a single Wounded Stag from the hard- ware store. We used to be able to count on a very lux- wurious lithograph from the bank every year— usually a historical scene of. battle and blood- shed, which was designed to make us appreciate the blessings of peace and 4 per cent. But there is nothing from the bank this year. Per- haps, following the trend of the times, it is merging 1931 with 1932 and will send us a con- solidated caldendar next year. But that doesn’t help us much right now. Unless some kind- hearted tradesman comes to our rescue we will be obliged to use one of the calendars we re- ceived for Christmas—or else go Cro-Magnon and cut a notch on a stick every time the sun rises. There is a great difference between the ad- vertising calendar and the gift calendar. The former is fashioned for utility;' it hangs on a brass loop and you can read it half a block away on a clear day. The leaves have to be torn off only once a month. Holbrook. Later on, one doesn’t even do that. It’s a rare gift calendar that is disturbed after February. MOST of the gift calendars in circulation at the present time are literary, offering a quotation a day from the classics in such small doses that they never become habit-form- ing. Sometimes all the quotations are selected from one writer and the calendar is called “Ruskin Day by Day,” “Through the Year With Chaucer,” or “Shakespeare’s Daily Thought.” It may be depressing to picture the Swan of Avon with clipped wings, limited to one thought a day, as if he were working on a schedule for a newspaper syndicate. But there are many of us old Shakespeare lovers who must have our daily quotation from the myriad-minded bard, though it consist of nothing more than this: Monday, January 15—“O, hell!”—Midsummer Night's Dream,” act 1, scene 1. One Christmas some one gave us “Around the Calendar With Bobbie Burns,” but we didn't get very far with Bobbie. Personally, we can enjoy Harry Lauder’s phonograph record as well as the next fellow provided the next fellow- doesn’t nudge us in the ribs to empha- size the laughs). Dialect, however, should be heard and not seen. Set down in black and white all Scotch poems look like the same poem—i. e., “Comin’ Through the Apostrophes.” If you read one of Burns’' poems from begin- ning to end the meaning is fairly clear, for you can translate the unintelligible parts with 1930. “113 years old and still going strong.” daily items of bad news he grows painfully con- scious of the evanescence of human existence. Man, he realizes, is little better than a May fly. And by the middle of July (Bastille taken in 1789, Nicholas II killed, 1918; Robespierre beheaded, 1794; Capt. Fryatt shot, 1916; King Humbert assassinated, 1900; Lord Fisher died, 1920; Andrew Lang died, 1912; Ellen, Terry died, 1928), he feels that it is only by some miracle that he is still alive. UT the “inspirational” calendar is even more depressing, for it offers you a daily reminder of your own shortcomings. Living with it is like having breakfast every morning with Ben- jamin PFranklin. Theoretically, it is supposed to fill you with ambition, but the effect is usually quite the opposite. Instead of glowing with the fine fervor of a correspondence school advertisement, you become morose at first and then downright mean. Your mood of self- reproach is followed by a suspicion that there is some cosmic conspiracy against you. This may lead to a complete mental breakdown. The case of Mr. Q. is a horrible example of what inspirational calendars can do to a man. Last year Mr. Q. was given a calendar called “The Morning Pepogram.” There was a leaf for each day, with a neatly printed axiomm de- signed to exalt the reader and encourage “The Golden Text for January 3 was ‘If at first you don’t succeed, try, try, again’” But the gift calendar is tied up with pretty ribbons; it is so decorative as to be almost 1l- legible, and it must be tended as often as a window box. Some have a page for each week, but most of them have to be pruned daily to keep them up to date—and when you attempt 1o seize Time by the forelock, all you can get hold of is a silk tassel. Calendars are unsatisfactory Christmas gifts because they are non-negotiable. If you are given a copy of “The Royal Road to Romance,” by Richard Halliburton, you can simply remove the card or erase the inscription and send it on to your niece at Ward-Belmont next Christ- mas. Pullman slippers, cigarette lighters and even plum puddings are as good one time as another—which is saying very little. But a calendar is ephemeral; you can't pass it on un- less you happen to know somebody who has a birthday between December 26 and January 1. ‘There is nothing more useless than a 1930 Daily Reminder in 1931, unless it is that ball of tinfoil you started to save during the war. But the insidious thing about gift calendars is that, even when outmoded, they seem a little too handsome to throw away; consequently the attics of the Nation are full of them. In fact, one hes'‘ates to tear off the current pages, part- ‘ly because of the charming sentiments inscribed upcn them, but chiefly because they are printed on heavy bristol board, and in order to tear them out it would be necessary to remove the whole calendar from the wall and wrestle with it. So at first one merely lifts the and peeks under them to find out what day it is. the help of their context. But when single lines are lifted out and transplanted all by themselves, the effect is confusing. There are no clews. On January 5 Burns remarks: “The best- laid schemes o’ mice and men gang aft a-gley.” That's plain enough, even if you aren’t quite sure what “a-gley” means. But on January 6 he says: “If there’s a hole in a’ your coats, I rede ye tent it"—and where are you? On January 7 he has another lucid interval re- ferring to midnight as “that hour o’ night's black arch the keystane”—only to relapse into a Scottish mist on the following day with “An honest man’s aboon his might, guid faith, he maunna fa that,” which might mean almost anything. Accustomed as we were to having our Scotch cut, the Burns calendar was too much for us. After three weeks of worry over missing vowels we just let it hang. Historical calendars aren’t so distracting; they simply announce facts—usually facts per- taining to death and disaster. In January, for instance, we have the deaths of Baring-Gould, Sir Ernest Shackleton, Napoleon III, Lenin, Queen Victoria, William Pitt and Field Marshal Haig, not to mention the fall of Port Arthur, the Starchfield murder, the surrender of Paris and the birth of ex-Kaiser Wilhelm. ‘These melancholy anniversaries are recorded in every thoroughgoing historical calendar, and while they may be of the utmost interest to an insurance actuary or a student of necrology, they move the average person to nothing more than mild self-congratulation. As he reads the in self-improvement. Mr. Q. resolved to start the year right., He put the calendar up on the walls of his office right next to the clock, so that he would read it whenever he looked to see what time it was. But when he removed the top sheet (“Janu- ary 1—Happy New Year!”) he read: “January 2—The bee doesn’t watch a clock. Why should you?—Kaufman.” Mr. Q. took the hint and moved the calendar to the other end of the room beside the telephone. The golden text for January 3 was, “If at first you don’t suc- ceed, try, try again.—Anonymous.” Mr. Q. glared at it several times during the day while waiting for central to give him the right num- ber. Finally he went over and tore off the offending page. In doing so he pulled the whole calendar down. He had to get a hammer to nail it up again. It wasn’'t until he had smashed two fingers and knocked a hole in the plaster that he noticed the words for January 4, “Genius is simply an infinite capacity for taking pains.—Marden.” Mr. Q. decided not to look at it again until day after tomorrow. On January 5 the calendar announced that “A friend in need is a friend indeed.—Plautus.” And Mr. Q. had a call from old Jerry Topham, who used to room with him in college. Jerry was always a friend in need. This time he needed $200 and Mr. Q. let him have it for the sake of auld lang syne (Burns). As soon as Jerry had gone he removed the current page of the calendar, hoping to find something a little less ironical underneath. For January 6 he read, “A loan oft loses both 1teelfl and friend.—Shakespeare.” “Hmmm,” mused Mr. Q. count on that.” Two days later Mrs. Q.’s mother arrived forw an indefinite stay, and the calendar, unden’ date of January 8, inquired, “What is home without a mother?—Hubbard.” Lcoking at ity Mr. Q. realized that it would be a long time before he had a chance to find out. Grimly he turned the calendar’s face to the wall. Hée was beginning to feel a little superstitious. But on the following day he could not r:sist a peek at it. He had just dropped $20,000 in. the stock market and his broker was phoning frantically for more margin. Mr. Q. looked at the page for January 9. He read, “Ccne tinual dropping wears away the hardest stone.—s Lucretius.” It was uncanny. His hand trembled as he turned the page to see what tomorrow’s bad news would be. “January 10—A babe .in the home is a well-spring of pleasure.—Tupper.” Mr. Q. knew what that meant. Cousin Lucy and the twins were coming for a visit! He moaned softly and read on, “January 11— Life is but a means unto an end.—Bailey.” <iIr, Q. gasped. It was handwriting, or rather the lithographing, on the wall. January 11—only} three days away. There was no escaping it, Holding his breath, he turned one more page, “January 12,” he read, “Never leave that til} tomorrow which you can do today.—Franklin.” A light of sudden determination gleamed in Mr. Q’s eyes. Striding across the office, he opened the ,windoew, stepped lightly to the sill— and jumped. The calendar had done its work, “I wish I could THE case of Mr. Q. is an exception. Few men are done to death by the Maxim silencer, but thousands have been driven to lesser de- grees of desperation by the daily didactics of the inspirational calendar. How much more human and genuinely ine spiring was the old patent medicine calendar which used to hang on the kitchen wall with the compliments of the corner drug store! It was considered too garishly commercial for the parlor and too clinical for the dining room, but it carried a daily message of hope to young and old. On each page was a harrowing story, full of stark realism—but every story had a hapny ending. There we learned .all that we ever knew about the gall stones of Mrs. J. J. (“I sufe . fered agonies”) Frinch, Steubenville, Ohio, and the sciatic of Col. H. C. (“Doctors gave me up') Peppergreen, Higgins Landing, Ky., and _the migrane of Miss Myrtle (“I was drove ’é‘m crazy”) Threep, R. F. D. 3, Decatur, Nebr. The descriptive passages had a wealth of detail that Zola might have envied. The lan= guage was simple and forceful and every saga of suffering ended with a paean of praise for Dr. Sweeny’s Bessarabian Balm (“Try one bottle and be convinced”), The calendar was & constant reminder that the age of miracles was still with us. Who could read that grateful letter from Isaac (“Gets around like a boy™) Brock, 113 years old and still going strong, without feeling that Ponce de Leon’s fountain was just around the corner? We know better now, of course. Patent medi- cines have gone the way of the asafetida bag, the electric belt and the rheumatism ring, Blurred by automatic exercises and dazzled by, ultra-violet rays, we cannot see Dr. Sweeny’s Bessarabian Balm. But we wish that Dr. Sweeny would send us one of his calendars this year for old times’ sake. The calendars of the butcher, the baker and the candlestickmaker are all right in their way, but they lack human interest. And as for our Christmas-gift calendars—hanging is too good for them! D. C. High Schools. Continued from Ninth Page o last stood in the middle of the yard and was grown from a slip prgsented to Mr. Seaton by John C. Calhoun, fts twin being in the yard of Mr. Colgate in the neighboring square on the east, also grown from a slip presented by Mr. Calhoun to Dr. James C. Hall, who gave it to Mr. Colgate, a relative by marriage. “In addition to this property Mr. Seaton either owned or leased a square of ground in the city bounded, as I remember, by Fifth Sixth and L and M streets northwest, wite " he used as a garden and from which he drew the vegetable supplj/s‘ for h*l always' libetral and indeed celebratet! table.” g