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Show JMjnhd about Comfort in Traveling. LATELY, on a cross-country prowl, two of us invaded in-vaded one of the remotest corners of the desert. Until our car broke down we crawled along some ol the roughest DacKways in creation, crea-tion, then escaped on what by quaint irony was called an accommodation train over a side-spur side-spur of a prehistoric railway line. When we hit concrete con-crete high roads and air- conditioned fliers, I caught myself my-self saying our fore- if" x fathers put up with lrvin s Cobb plenty of misery in order to move about. And then I realized that what we had endured did not date back to former generations. genera-tions. So soon have we grown accustomed ac-customed to luxury with speed we forget that most of America, fifteen years ago, lacked what we now accept ac-cept as common traveling comfort Why, less than two decades ago, for my sins, I rode on a certain jerkwater jerk-water railroad in the deep South. The last work done on its tracks was in 1864 by General Sherman he tore 'em up. I made the mistake of trying to shave while en route. When I got through, I looked like one of those German student duelists. But, nowadays, even those who use homemade trailers seem almost al-most happy at times. Diplomatic Busybodies. WHO'LL be the next member of our diplomatic corps to open his mouth and put his foot in it clear up to his hip-joint? It has been nearly two months now since our ambassador to Germany Ger-many had a bad dream and before nursie could quiet him was proclaiming pro-claiming that a certain billionaire was willing to put up one of his loose billions to buy a dictatorship for this country. He failed to furnish fur-nish the name and address. Maybe they got left out of the nightmare. Hardly had paregoric wooed this distinguished sufferer back to hush-a-bye-land when our new representative represen-tative in the Philippines began demanding de-manding that when it came to drinking official toasts, his name must come higher up on the wine list or he wouldn't be responsible for the consequences. However, the excitement subsided before he could summon the Pacific fleet to bom-bar bom-bar Manila. There's a rumor that Washington sent him word he needn't worry about being appropriately appro-priately saluted there'd be a nationwide na-tionwide Eronx cheer awaiting him cn his return home. Since then there's been a lull and the American public is getting impatient im-patient We do so love a free show and especially when it's amateur night. Hard-Bitten Females. TOURING about over certain Western states where open gambling gam-bling either is by law permitted, or by custom winked at, I noticed this: Generally speaking, the feminine patrons are the steadiest drinkers, the most persistent gamesters, the most reckless bettors of all. And frequently their manners are the rudest and their faces the grimmest determined seemingly to disavow the theory that their sex is the eentler sex. On the other hand, -the men patrons pa-trons descended, many of them, from old gun fighters, old prospectors, prospec-tors, old path-finders grow increasingly increas-ingly docile and subdued, absorbing less than their share of the hard liquor maybe because they fear there won't be enough left for mama and the girls and risking their dimes vhere the gallant ladies plunge with dollars. Sometimes a fellow, watching the modern processional from the protection pro-tection of the sidelines, gets to longing long-ing for the bygone days when, as Kipling might have put it and, in fact, almost did, a woman was only a woman, but a good cigar was ten cents. These Candid Cameras. ONCE a citizen had a right to object ob-ject to the publication of a flashlight view showing him beating beat-ing his wife or exhibiting his appendicitis appen-dicitis scar or taking out his uppers up-pers or something. That vas before they began printing print-ing magazines for those who've abandoned the old-fashioned habit of reading and writing. And it's doing glamorous movie queens no real good when these betraying close-ups prove that rnaybo the glamor is only paint-deep. Thus the last strongholds of our one-time personal liberty crumble. I used to think a passport picture va;i about the frankest tiling ve had in the lino of Intimate likenesses, excepting, of course, the x-ray. But this candid camera business vhieh catches you unavares arid often without your uridorwears eitheris eith-eris the most fiendish attack of all against our practically vanished privacy. IRVI.N H. COIWJ. 5,-VMU tjervleer |
