667 BY THE WAY HE word "repeater" has already a dozen or more definitions in the dictionary, but a new one may be added because of the prevalent use of the word in advertising. "A sure repeater," "a big repeater," "a quick repeater," are terms scattered through the advertisements of small novelties in some of the magazines. The reference is to orders that are repeated by the customer. Here are some samples of such advertisements, with a few others of amusing phraseology: The Washing Tablet Supreme. Sell Pudding Powders-delicious desserts. Fast sellers; quick repeat What is a "Brava"? The word brings up suggestions of the Venetian "bravo" of the good old days, when he was the convenient tool for the "happy dispatch" of an enemy of the Doge. But the Brava of our times is a native of an island so called, situated near the west coast of Africa, and he comes to our shores in a "Brava packet." This is a large schooner, which brings these barefooted immigrants of dusky hue, queer speech, and bright-colored costumes to New England ports, some of them to work in the Cape Cod cranberry bogs, some to go to the cotton mills. The Bravas are a docile, peaceful folk, despite their name, BY THE WAY (Continued) and their modes of life both in their own and their adopted land are amusingly described in a chapter in "The Sieve," a new book by Feri F. Weiss, an immigrant inspector. The immigrant inspector above mentioned tells in another chapter of "The Sieve" about his troubles in getting women to tell their ages before landing in America. This is especially difficult, it seems, in the case of saloon passengers. When a lady refuses to tell her age, the inspector usually remarks casually that he can guess it. "Then," he says, "with a woman's inborn curiosity, she makes the mistake of asking me to guess it. Too late she realizes that she has walked into a trap. I generally guess about ten years older than she looks, saying, 'Madam, you are about fifty-five years old.' Quick as a flash comes the retort, 'Oh, you horrid man! I am only forty.' "Thank you, madam; that is all Uncle Sam wants to know. Here is your landing ticket. Next!"" The illiterate vernacular of America, as typified in the phrase "I ain't got nothin'," is aptly illustrated in Mencken's "The American Language," a new edition of which has just been issued. This takes the form of the opening sentence of the Declaration of Independence, which is thus paraphrased: When things get so balled up that the people of a country have to cut loose from some other country and go it on their own hook, without asking no permission from nobody, excepting maybe God Almighty, then they ought to let everybody know why they done it, so that everybody can see they are on the level, and not trying to put nothing over on nobody.. The waiters in the cafés in the old city of Prague, Czechoslovakia, are wonderful linguists, so a correspondent of the London "Sphere" says. It is the fashion in these cafés for the waiter to bring a newspaper with the customer's coffee, and the waiter invariably detects the patron's nationality from his accent and brings his home paper. For instance, says the correspondent, "proud of my German, I say, 'Heer Ober, ein caffee, bitte.' 'Yessir,' he responds, and fetches me a week-old copy of the "Times' with my coffee. Once I tried French. 'Une tasse de café, s'il vous plait.' 'Oui, monsieur,' the waiter replied. But he did not bring me the 'Matin,' or 'L'Illustration.' He brought me the "Times' and the 'Sphere.' One realizes that in the matter of languages it is useless to air one's knowledge here. True. I speak four tongues, but these waiter men speak six or eight." for use with Victor records Not Victor records alone, nor yet the Victrola alone, but both together bring about the perfect musical result. This is fully evident when you play Victor records on Victrola instruments. In no In no other way can you get such lifelike reproductions, nor reproductions which meet the approval of the artists themselves. Victrolas $25 to $1500. New Victor Records demonstrated at all dealers in Victor products on the 1st of each month. Victrola No. 330, $350 Victrola REG. U. S. PAT. OFF. Important: Look for these trade-marks. Under the lid. On the label. Victor Talking Machine Company Camden, New Jersey THE OUTLOOK. April 26, 1922. Volume 130, Number 17. Published weekly by the Outlook Company at 381 Fourth Avenue, New York, N. Y. Subscription price $5.00 a year. Entered as second-class matter, July 21, 1893, at the Post Office at New York, under the Act of March 3, 1879 670 FA THE MAIL BAG JUSTICE AND HUNGER AMINE is ever present in China. Last it was Honan, Shantung, year Shensi, and Chihli provinces-north China. This year it is Kweichow, Hunan, north Kiangsu, Anhui, and parts of Honan and Shantung. No appeal is being made for foreign help, as considerable sums of money left over from the North China Famine Relief last year are available for use in central and south China this year, besides funds from the customs and communications surtaxes. In Hunan the famine now is due to prolonged drought last summer, while in Anhui, northern Kiangsu, and Honan it is due to flood. Foreigners do not fully realize the different conditions prevailing in this vast land. No foreign aid is being given to Kweichow Province, southwest China, in spite of terrible conditions there, as we all feel that if the fields which were given over to opium. last year had been planted to rice and wheat and corn there tain amount being paid over to each WHAT OUR SOLDIERS READ [The writer of this letter is one of the field secretaries of the Y. M. C. A. who has lately returned from Coblenz.] o soldiers in a foreign land were would have been no famine this year. Never so fortunate in the matter of In Hunan we are giving assistance to no district where opium is found growing. The anarchic conditions prevailing throughout China are in large measure responsible for the prevalent want and suffering. For instance, here in Hunan military officers and district officials secretly encourage opium-growing. Also, in spite of the rice shortage in Hunan, military officers are profiteering in rice and exporting it to other provinces. Again, as the district magistrates have to buy their posts and hold them for only a few months, they have no interest in the welfare of their districts, so granaries are not replenished and no effort is made to help the poor farmers. Armed robbery is rife, especially in the southwest of Hunan. In one district (county) 150 villages and tons of grain were burned by these marauding tu-fei. In the same district 200 Chinese have been kidnapped this past winter and held for ransom. Americans who contributed to famine relief in China last year may know that their money is honestly used with a minimum of waste and overhead to save the lives of the poor Chinese farmers. But there must be an end to this famine relief somewhere, because the Chinese officials are coming to think that they can squeeze their people unmercifully, profiteer in foodstuffs, and divert harvest fields to opium-growing, and that it won't matter, because the rich Americans will come to the aid of the starving farmers! If the great mass of the Chinese could only rise up and throw off the yoke of militarism and corrupt "democracy"! But they have neither arms nor money. The one hope is for partial disarmament under some sort of foreign control, in return for a foreign loan through the banking consortium, and a foreigner to see that the guns and equipment are actually turned in for destruction, a cer reading as has been our little army in and Aristotle. A lone, small volume of The library has been the court of last resort for every imaginable problemwhen bowling alleys were to be built, for instance, or American plumbing to be installed, or army mules to be poisoned. In these last months there has been a run on shelves never before popular, the 395's, which, as any librarian will tell you, are books on etiquette. The men have been going home. Many are leaving the Army. Beyond his bailiwick the soldier is shy, and will tell you quite humbly that in the Army he has forgotten how the outside world behaves. EVELINE W. BRAINARD. New York City. LETTERS TO MR. TAYLOR READ with interest your article on tion for the A. E. F. (some 35,000 vol- I The Great Under-Weight Delusion" umes), and current books were added Books have been made to play a large a The readers range from "firsts" to highbrows indeed, however, like the youth in khaki who shook the dust of the library from his feet when it failed to supply Swinburne complete, and the other young man who called for Plato in The Outlook of March 15, and am wishing that there could be reprints of this article for use in the schools in the State. It has seemed to some of us that there was too great stress being laid on the under-weight test, not because it was not important, but because so often it is the only factor that is taken into consideration, and your article will do much to counteract this. HELEN G. MILLER, Office of Executive Secretary, Missouri Tuberculosis Association. St. Louis, Missouri. I cannot tell how much I appreciate that article of yours in The Outlook for March 15. I think you have performed a conspicuous service. F. M. GREGG, Department of Psychology, Nebraska Wesleyan University. University Place, Nebraska. PRACTICING LUKE X. 33, 34 HAVE lately read of a Protestant I church in Cambridge, Massachusetts, which employs a physician to treat the poor and needy of the city. There seem to be great possibilities for such service in all our large cities. I thought perhaps you might care to consider giving the idea publicity. It seems to me that if the Church first cares for the physical needs of especially the poor and discouraged, the way will be opened to teach these people the things of the spirit which they so much need. HARRY G. DENNISON. Worcester, Massachusetts. WR Is it possible that we are offering a value too great to be credible? E recently mailed several thousand circulars to booklovers. We described and pictured these thirty volumes of the Little Leather Library honestly, sincerely, accurately. But we received relatively few orders. Then we mailed several more thousand circulars to booklovers, this time enclosing a sample cover of one of the volumes illustrated above. Orders came in by the hundred! The reason, we believe, is that most people cannot believe we can really offer so great a value unless they see a sample! In this advertisement, naturally, it is impossible for us to show you a sample volume. The best we can do is to describe and picture the books in the limited space on this page. We depend on your faith in the statements made by the advertisements appearing in The Outlook Magazine; and we are hoping you will believe what we say, instead of thinking this offer is "too good to be true." What this offer is Here then is our offer. The illustration above shows thirty of the world's greatest masterpieces of literature. These include the finest works of such immortal authors as Shakespeare, Kipling, Stevenson, Emerson, Poe, Coleridge, Burns, Omar Khayyam, Macaulay, Lincoln, Washington, Oscar Wilde, Gilbert, Longfellow, Drummond, Conan Doyle, Edward Everett Hale, Thoreau, Tennyson, Browning, and others. These are books which no one cares to confess he has not read and re-read; books which bear reading a score of times. Each of these volumes is complete -this is not that abomination, a collection of extracts; the paper is a high-grade white wove antique, equal to that used in books selling at $1.50 to $2.00; the type is clear and easy to read; the binding is a beautiful limp material, tinted in antique copper and green, and so handsomely embossed as to give it the appearance of hand tooled leather. And, though each of these volumes is complete (the entire set contains over 3,000 pages), a volume can be carried conveniently wherever you go, in your pocket or purse; several can be placed in your handbag or grip; or the entire thirty can be placed on your library table "without cluttering it up" as one purchaser expressed it. What about the price? Producing such fine books is, in itself, no great achievement. But the aim of this enterprise has been to produce them at a price that anyone in the whole land could afford; the only way we could do this was to manufacture them in quantities of nearly a million at a time-to bring the price down through "quantity production." And we relied for our sales on our faith that Americans would rather read classics than trash. What happened? OVER TEN MILLION of these volumes Many people who have been asked to guess the value of these books have estimated, before we told them the price, that they are worth from $50 to $100 for the complete set. These records are on file for inspection of any one interested. have already been purchased by people in every walk of life. Yet we know, from our daily mail, that many thousands of people still cannot believe we can sell 30 such volumes for $2.98 (plus postage). We do not know how to combat this skepticism. All we can say is: send for these 30 volumes; if you are not satisfied, return them at any time within a month and you will not be out one penny. Of the thousands of readers who purchased this set not one in a hundred expressed dissatisfaction for any reason whatever. Send No Money No description, no illustration, can do these 30 volumes justice. You must see them. We should like to send every reader a sample, but frankly our profit is so small we cannot afford it. We offer, instead, to send the entire set on trial. Simply mail the coupon or a letter; when the set arrives, pay the postman $2.98 plus postage; then examine the books. As stated above, your money will be returned at any time within 30 days for any reason, or for NO reason, if you request it. Mail the coupon or a letter NOW while this page is before you, or you may forget. Little Leather Library Corporation Dept. 464, 354 Fourth Avenue, New York Little Leather Library Corp'n, Dept. 464 Please send me the set of 30 volumes of the De Luxe edition of the Little Leather Library. It is understood that the price of these 30 volumes is ONLY $2.98 plus postage, which I will pay the postman when the set arrives. But if I am not satisfied, after examining them, I will mail the books back at your expense within 30 days, and you are to refund my money at once. It is understood there is no further payment or obligation of any kind. |