Evening Star Newspaper, June 18, 1933, Page 75

Y, D. &, JUNE 18 1S3 post bed, then back at her own reflection. *¥m pood!” she sald in a low, ecstatic tome. “Ye ods, but I'm good!” *Of course, :ou are!” mumbled Granny. ou're a real good girl!” The old lady in the mirror floated away. The bed room door opened and closed softly. A moment later the gate-latch clicked. EVERY seat in the open-air theater was filled, every foot of ground that afforded a view of the stage was close-packed by an excited, hattering throng. They swayed and craned eir necks to locate the candidates, who were eated in a flower-canopied box. ‘The applause was ‘tremendous as the mayor came forward and beamed upon them all. In lhis hand he carried an envelope with an im- [portant-looking red seal. This evelope con- ained, he stated, the name of the winner of e popularity contest, the name certified by e counters of the votes, a committee of promi- ment business men. This name he would now read. The silence was profound as the mayoral Ipen knife was searched for, found and applied to the envelope. From it the mayor took a sheet of paper and a pink bank check. He leared his throat. “It is my great privilege,” he said sonor- ously, “to inform you that the prize of $500 Ipresented by the Lorendo Merchants’ Associa- tion to our most popular girl, has been won by — He squinted at the check, adjusted his glasses, guinted again, slowly read the name: “Bessalena Butterfield Bush.” A gasping sound greeted the announcement, followed by a loud buzz as everybody began to talk and to question. Down near the stage a group of young men started to chant. It had a marching rhythm, and each phrase ended with explosive burst of sound that soon provoked the amusement of the fun-loving element. They oined in the chant with a vim. “Bessalena Butterfield Bush!” they roared. “Bessalena Butterfield Bush! Bess-a-lena! Bess-a-lena! Bessalena Butterfield Bush!” “We want to see Bessalenal!” And then she was before them, hobbling across the stage on the arm of the mayor, look- ing down at them through her glistening spec- acles—a quaint little figure in a rusty black silk dress that swept voluminously from waist o floor. There was & moment of tense silence. Then the house seethed with excitement. Voices were questioning, voices demanding to know what right they had to enter an old women in & contest for the most popular girl. There were a few shrill cat-calls and derisive hoots. The mayor, so flustered that he made no sttempt to bring them to order, had silently handed the pink check to the old woman. From behind the scenes some one was fran- tically beckoning her to come off, but she did not heed the summons. She stood quietly looking at the audience, then raised her hand and in the gesture was a simple dignity before which the questionings ceased and the chant broke off abruptly. She began to speak. “I am going to tell you two little stories,™ she said, “and then I am going to ask you a question, and I want you to tell me what you really think. “I've sort o’ slipped out of things of late, Nvin’ out on the Old Ferry road that’s so rutty nobody ever drives that way any more. I'm so old that all the folks that were my friends are dead and gone, and the younger ones have just about forgotten me, I guess. But there’s some that remember my husband, Nathan Bush, when he was a young merchant with a name for square dealin’, and our daughter Evelyn, and our grandson Alan, who went away to the war with the other boys—and never came back. “One story is about Alan, when he was a little bit of a fellow, just startin’ in to school; so full of spirits he couldn’t sit still, and always playin’ some pranks like boys do. One day he played a joke on a man that lived in a big house near the school, a queer man with a black scow! for children. And little Alan was all ready to streak it, fast as he could go, when he pointed to the smoke comin’ out of the chim- ney that day and yelled: ‘Mister! Your house is on fire!” “But the man didn’t chase Alan. He turned and ran across the meadow to his house and up to the room where his young invalid wife lay in her bed, and brought her out safely in his arms. Because the house was on fire! And the child’s joke saved that wWoman’s life.” The old woman paused, and the audience waited, motionless, quiet. other story is about another joke,”™ she went on after a moment. *“This joke was played by bigger children who were thinkin’ only of their game, and never dreamin’ that they were bringin’ about a miracle that an old, old woman had been prayin’ for, day and night. She was pretty near to the end o’ the poad—no money, no friends, not goin’ to be able to work much longer. And then these big chil- dren, havin’ their joke, opengd to her the éoor of a home where there’s peace and rest for tired old women. Maybe she should have said “No' when they asked her to play their game with them; maybe it wasn’t right to let them go on with their joke. Arnd Y want yva 8 tel) me what you really think. Was # fair? Was it honest? Should she let em open that door?” It sounded like one big voice, that hearty *Yes!™ that followed her question. She was holding out her hands to them. “Oh, I thank ycu with all my heart!” they heard her say as they quieted. “You've crowned my last years with your friendship, and I thank you—I bless you!"” The trembling hands fell at her sides and she turned slowly away. But the mayor de- tained her and again checked the applause. Some one had remembered, he said, that Mrs. Bush used to have a very fine voice, and they wanted him to ask her if she woulin't sing one of the old songs. As she hesitated, they loudly encouraged her. And at last she came back to them. She did want to do something for them, she said, and though she didn’t have much of a voice any more, she’d do the best she could, and maybe they’d be good enough to help her on the chorus. They were delighted to help her. Lustily they swung into the chorus, and were so pleased with the effect that they would not let her stop when she made her first bobbing curtesy. They wanted another song, and another. It was not until the mayor interposed, reminding them that they must not overtax her strength, that they allowed her to go. And as she hob- bled away, waving the hand that held the check, hearty cheers surged across the foot- light for Bessaleno Butterfield Bush. T was long past midnight, but Granny was sitting bolt upright in her bed, a pink bank check in her hand, her eyes going alter- nately from it to Pepper, who was standing be- fore the glass smearing her face with cream. It had given Granny a real turn to see some one that looked like herself walking into her room. Most incredible of all was the story Pepper had told, of impersonating Granny before that big audience, telling them some of the stories Granny had told Pepper, reminding them of bygone days, awakening old memories, so that some of them were coming up to shake hands with her. 9 “But I lit out before they got to me!™ Pepper said gleefully, between wipes. “They were coming up—to shake hands— with me?” Granny breathlessly asked. “In droves!” Pepper said. Granny didn't answer. She was crying, her knotted hands over her face, her body racked with sobs. Seemed as if she couldn’t stop, once she had started, until her heart’s burden of loneliness and fear had been wept away. And Pepper understood. She just put her strong arms around Granny and held her tight, let her have her cry out, then began to tell about some good luck she had had, herself. “Just think, Granny,” she crowed, “this mas- querade stuff put me next to the very idea I've heen searchin’ for all Summer. I've been tryin’ to dope out a better vaudeville act for next season, and I'll say I was gettin’ the heebees over it because there wasn’'t one glimmer in th’ old dome. But I've got it now! And 1t’s sure goin’ to be a winner. ’'Course, I'll have an entirely different patter, but I can use a bunch of the same old songs, and——" “Songs!” Granny echoed faintly. “Did you— did I—sing?” “I'll say you did! I had it all fixed up with one of the boys to suggest it to the mayor, and it certainly made a hit!” Granny swallowed bhard. “What—kind of songs—did you—did I sing?” Pepper gathered up her jars and bottles, stuffed a white wig into the big box, crowdea her close-fitling hat down over her flaming thatch of hair and came across the room with her airy swagger. But as she stood by the bedside, Granny saw, for an instant, a tender wistfulness in the big brown eyes. “You needn’t worry any about the songs,” Pepper assured her. “They were real nice, ladylike songs—the dear old chestnuts that everybody loves.” Granny gave a sigh of relief. “You see,” Pepper said softly, “I had a dear Granny—once. They were her songs—that I sang.” She stooped and brushed Granny’s cheek with her lips, then dashed to the door. “So long!” she called. The door closed with a bang. Granny sat for a long time, treasuring the sweetness of the girl’'s caress. When she looked again at the check, it was through happy tears. Above the strip of paper, with its promise of freedom from fear, of rest for weary hands, “the most popular girl in the fown of Lorendo™ bowed her grateful head. (Copyright, 1933.) Out W here the Temblors Are a Real Nuisance BY FRANK CONDON UT in sunny California, which re- gards itself as the finest and most salubrious State in the entire Union, there is a venerable law which forbids persons of sporting proclivities to shoot goats or other ferocious beasts while riding on the local street pars—that is, while the persons are riding on the street cars and not the goats. This statute is of ancient vintage and was enacted in the days when the population apparently rode into town armed with shotguns and annoyed the motor- an by popping at animal life in the under- brush. There is likewise a stern, but unwritten law, 'which indicates that any one who willfully and m ously discusses earthquakes, especially with reference to Sunny California, is an un- grateful scoundrel, and on a par with the juju bird, which fouls its own nest and eats its oung. It is the custom to call them “tembiors,” refined and fluffily effeminate word that is expected to create in the mind of the reader a Ip of something being smoothly and gently imoved, a slight readjustment of the earth’s surface, which, taking everything into con- sideration, is rather pleasant and stimulating. erefore, that is what the native sons have out there in their glorious, golden movie State, temblors or earth tremors, a slight, harmonious and friendly oscillation of the crust, and there s quite a bit of crust. NTIL this recent gquake, which blew me out of my seat where I was bidding four lhearts in a bridge game, the newspapers un- failingly referred to the temblors as if they vere high breezes. There was always one ex- eption. San Francisco newspapers, which have sisterly feeling for everything Los Angeles, never refer to a Los Angeles earth movement s a temblor. Their own earthquakes, of course, e temblors, but anything moving down Los geles way is published in the Prisco papers las a large, husky, devastating earthquake, and if possible, pictures are printed of cornices falling pn pedestrians. Quite naturally, the Los An- Feles papers return the courtesy by giving San ncisco the entire front page, every time a handelier wobbles on Market street. This is Hust family stuff, and should not concern the putside world. It can thus be seen that we Californians do have earthquakes customarily, although the we had recently seemed in many ways to an earthquake. San FPrancisco folks are ven more touchy than us Southerners and h even yet refer to their calamity of 1906 the “earthquake and fire,” with very heavy pmphasis on “fire,” which is much like saying he old man died of typhoid pneumonia and Down in our southern and favored end of the State we have, according to the white- faced scientists, 150 temblors every day in the ear, and for four or five days during the ecent unpleasantness, the number ran up to 1,000 & day. You cannot notice these little tembilo as they are three or four miles un- round and shake around quietly, disturbing hing but the finely attuned seismographs in the umiversities. Occasionally one of these aby temblors suddenly grows up to be a man, “I fought my way valiantly out of the clothes closet.” and that is when the school buildings fall over. Timid strangers, arriving in sedans from the Midwest, sometimes stop at the border to ask about our earthquakes, and receive nothing but scornful looks from the residents. And at that a good, stiff quake isn’t half as terrifying as a New England Summer thunderstorm, with the lightning jumping around the room between the bridge lamps and the radiators. In one of our shakes you can at least move outdoors on the lawn, but in a lightning debauch you cannot move anywhere or do anything, except stay where you are and brush sparks off your vest. N my many years of being a synthetic na- tive son, I have been personally concerned with only two or three adult quakes, with real hair on their chests. During the first ones X spent the curation trying to find my hat, and they were all over before I found the hat and Joined my folks in the orchard. When this most recent uneasiness came along, I was play- ing bridge in a stucco apartment building—and stucco is of no real use in a quake. There was present a motion picture man, an old hand at earthquakes, a fellow who regarded them as ine teresting and rather amusing. He was sprawled in his chair, trying to make up his mind to bid on a jack-high hand. He suddenly said¢ “Earthquake,” speaking without excitement or emotion of any kind—and almost languidly. After that he did not move, but stared with in= terest at the chandelier, which began swaying. I immediately fell into a state that might be described as complete, blind and unreasoning panic, which seems to be the normal condi- tion for strangers, or ones unfamiliar. Your first fear is that everything over your head is about to fall on you, so you wish to be out of doors, and how you wish it! We were on the second floor and I was not familiar with the geography of the building, so I seized my hat and began running. I galloped first to the door of the aparte ment, intending to skip into the hall, dewn the stairs and out into God’s friendly sunshine, I actually rushed into a small closet, filled with coat hangers, arriving there in the misbelief that the door led into the hall. The quake lasted 10 or 15 seconds, and while 10 seconds is nothing if you are waiting in the drug store for a girl, it is easily two and one-half years if you are fighting your way throligh clothes hangers in a strange closet, and certain that you will be dead in another instant. - I fought my way valiantly out of the clothes closet, and as usual the thing was over. I then located the actual door to the hall, a trifle late, but still enthusiastic about doors and halls, and bounded downstairs without fure ther ado, to discover the entire population of the building standing on the front lawn, very green of countgnance, sea sick, shaky and speechless. Had the house caved in during the cataclysm, my body would have been found under a pile of clothes hangers, which merely proves that an earthquake confers on a pere son a state of mental disorder that does him no particular good. This is the last quake we are going to have In California, an ftem that has been guarane teed by chambers of commerce everywhere, They may have future ones up in San Fran- cisco, where they tell me the residents eat suclf dishes as fried abalone. Any body of free peo- ple that will eat abalone deserves everything that comes along. (Copyright, 1933.) Seecks More Business POSTMASTER GENERAL FARLEY, address- ing the mail advertisers in Chicago, urged upon those present that the Post Office Depart- ment be given the business of sending out bills, Invoices and other matter which has been lost to the department since the 3-cent rate wen# into effect. He pointed out that the more business the department has the more efficiently it can be operated and with the increased efficiency he held out a definite hope that a return to the 2-cent stamp would be possihle.