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Show wttdt o 2hJimkd about Vanishing Wild Life. VARNER PLANTATION, Tex. Thanks to wise legislation, leg-islation, the wild fowl are coming back to this gulf country. coun-try. True, the flocks may never again be what they were; yet, with continued conservation, there'll again be gunning for one and all. But when I think back on the ducks I saw down here 10: years ago In countless hosts I'm reminded of what Charley Russell, the cowboy artist said to the lady tourist who asked him whether the old-tim-e r s exaggerated when they described the size of the vanished van-ished buffalo herds. "Wellum," said Charley, "I didn't get up to this Mon-f tana country until Irvin S. Cobb after the buffaloes started thinning out. But I remember once I was night-herding when the fall drift got between me and camp and I sat by and watched 'em pass. Not having anything else to do, I started counting count-ing 'em. Including calves, I counted count-ed up to 3,009,065,294, and right then was when I got discouraged and quit. Because I happened to look over the ridge and here came the main drove." Becoming a Head Man. LET an unshorn dandruff fancier claim he's divine and, if nobody else agrees with his diagnosis, the police will jug him as a common nuisance and the jail warden will forcibly trim his whiskers for him or anyhow have them searched. But if enough folks, who've tried all the old religions and are looking for a new one, decide he is the genuine article, then pretty soon we have a multitude testifying to the omnipotence omnipo-tence of their idoL Let another man think he is a reincarnation of Julius Caesar or Alexander the Great, and if few or none feel the same way about it he's headed for the insane asylum. But If a majority, which is a large body of persons entirely surrounded by delusions, agrees with him that he is what he says he is he becomes a dictator and rules over the land until un-til common sense is restored, if at all. Let the writer of a daily column begin to think his judgments are perfect and his utterances are infallible in-fallible but, hold on, what's the use of getting personal? Grandma's Togs. WE LAUGH at our grandmothers grandmoth-ers who believed that, for a lady to be properly dressed, she should have a little something on anyway. Maybe those mid-Victorian ladies sort of overdid the thing bustles that made them look like half-sisters to the dromedary, skirts so tight they hobbled like refugees from a chain gang, corsets laced in until breathing was almost a lost art, boned collars so high they seemed to be peeping over an alley fence. Still, wearing five or six starched petticoats, the little woman wom-an was safe from Jack the Pincher unless he borrowed some steamfit-ter's steamfit-ter's pliers. And later when, for a season, blessed simplicity ruled the styles, her figure expressed the queenly grace that comes from long, chaste ' lines. Probably the dears never figured fig-ured it out Just the natural cunning cun-ning of their sex told them 'twas the flowing robes which gave majesty majes-ty and dignity to kings on the throne and Judges on the bench and prelates prel-ates at the altar and shapely women-folk. How old-fashioned those times seem today when every dancing floor is a strip-tease exhibit and every ev-ery bathing beach a nudist show; and a debutante, posing for snapshots, snap-shots, feels she's cheating her public pub-lic unless she proves both knees still are there. Reading Dickens. I'VE been reading Dickens again. This means again and again. I take "Pickwick Papers" once a year just as some folks take hay fever. Only I enjoy my attack. Dickens may have done caricatures, carica-tures, but he had human models to go by. He drew grotesques, but his grotesques hnd less highly-colored duplicates in roul life. And renders recognized them and rcas-urcd rcas-urcd them ns symbols of authentic types. The list is almost endless Sum Weller, Saity Gamp. Daniel Quilp, Uriah Heap, Mrs. Niokleby, Mr. Micawber, Mr. PceksnilT oh, a dozen more. What writer since Dickens has j been able to perpetuate one-teirt.h so many characters? There Is Tark- ington with his lYnrod and his Alice : Adams; there was Mark Twain with his lluck Finn and Colonel Mulberry ; Sellers. There lately lias been Sinclair Sin-clair Lewis with two picturesnuo creations to wit: Babbitt and Sinclair Sin-clair Lewis. ntviN s. conn CopyrluM. WNU SiM vU. |