Show who was who I 1 by louise A M Corns comstock tOCA THE BAREFOOT BOY POSING before the camera barefoot and with turned up pantaloons just to make the matter conclusive it a retired lutheran preacher of nebraska recently got his name and tile bla picture in the papers as the original barefoot boy who inspired the amerlean american poet john greenleaf Green leat whittler whittier to write his bis well known praises of carefree boyhood out in the country an exam examination nation of the details of his bis life however and of the circumstances under which whittier wrote his poem lead to the conclusion that the nebraskan and the barefoot boy could not have been one and the same person this preacher states that he came to america from the old country in 1862 whittler whittier Is known to have written the barefoot boy while he was editing the middlesex standard at lowell mass and to have taken his theme from seeing a boy there starting out to his days work in the field rake over shoulder it Is a matter of record that whittier edited the middlesex standard for six months starting in the fall of 1845 nearly twenty years before the preacher ever saw the shores of this country Is it not more logical and more pleasing to suppose that Whit tiers model Is the very spirit of boyhood itself viewing the world through unspoiled eyes FRANKIE AND JOHNNY fers RANKIE and johnny were lov era goes a familiar song and few of its many singers perhaps know that frankle frankie and johnet were real lovers who lived la in the negro section of st louis not so long ago and that frankle frankie Is still alive alie a thickset thick set colored woman now fifty nine years old with graying hair and a razor scar received some forty years ago across one cheek climek frankle frankie herself Is not prone to discuss how she got her man who done clone her wrong but the facts of the case may be dug up out of various pollee police morgue and hospital records and shaped into a readable if sordid tale allen alien britt later albert and still later johnny came to st louis with his parents in isa and there at an orange blossom Bloss qin ball in stoles hall at thirteenth and biddle streets met frankle baker handsome but ten years his senior and formed tor for her his fatal attachment one night nielli frankle frankie found johnny in the ill lighted hallway of the phoenix Iho enix hotel on a pretty named alice pryor the attentions she claimed exclusively as her own took him home and as the climax of it violent quarrel which lasted all night shot him with his own gun gu n just a as 9 he was as advancing on her with a drawn knife fatally wounded johnn staggered to his own home where ills his father called the police and his mother an ambula ambulance ace to take him to the hospital ue he died four days litter inter and his funeral was a gala affair well at tended almost immediately after the wretched affair was being celebrated in song and frankle frankie freed of 0 the tolls toils of the law bore hers herself with ith the pride of a wrong well avenged PRINCE CHARMING 0 LADIES have never actually NO worn glass slippers but the cinderella theme the story of the downtrodden heroine to whom at 1 last a s t has ha 9 come a prince charming arming Cli and bliss forever has become so deeply Im bedded in our literature and in our very hearts that we are scarcely surprised to find it founded on a real happening about 1730 a talented and wealthy french actor named Tb thevenard evenard then a man over sixty wandering about the streets of taris observed upon a cobblers stall awatin awat awaiting ln repair a wom ons ans slipper so dainty was it and of such grace that thevenard The renard was struck with admiration and curiosity about its owner find and a sort of fascination which would not clot leave leaie him even after be had returned home and several days had passed unable to free himself from his uncanny la interest terest oe he at length returned to the cobblers coh biers stall sta 11 but could gain from him film no clew us as to the slippers owner jays days passed and that worn little slipper became so an obes obsession sion with the great man again and agal again a ir irritated r 1 by his own fully folly but un ill to d do otherwise lie he returned to the lie stall and watched at ched the cobbler as he worked upon the tiny shoe always hoping to in v vain ain that the owner would appear she appeared only when the shoe was waa done and proved to be a charming girl enough but of the poorest and humblest class but since this was a real fairy tale that made not the slightest difference and this prince charming and his cinderella were married and lived happily ever after 0 45 1932 western |