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Show I j. "The Name Is Familiar BY FELIX B. STHEYCKMANS and ELMO SCOTT WATSON Sideburns SIDEBURNS used to be called Burnsides because it was Gen. A. E. Bumside who popularized them during the Civil war. The "wags" of that day changed the name from Burnsides to sideburns just to be funny. General Burnside's sideburns were not the rather weak things so often worn by the younger mascu- line element to- . day. As the pic- j ture of him i shows, they were husky and pur-poseful pur-poseful adornments adorn-ments that really went places clear across the frontal features to join each other right under the nose or is that thing a mus- tache? lien. Burnside Why General Burnsides wore them is open to discussion. It might have been to make up for the fact that his first name was Ambrose and his second name Everett. But his achievements never needed need-ed apology. He was graduated from West Point in 1847. He served in the army for a while and then resigned re-signed to go into the manufacture of firearms. He invented one of the first breechloaders, called the Burn-side Burn-side breechloading rifle. It loaded load-ed from the top, thank goodness, because be-cause if it loaded from the side it probably would have been called the Sideburn breechloader. Back In the army again, he was a colonel during the Civil war, was prominent at the Battle of Bull Run and later became a major-general. He was intensely patriotic, amiable, amia-ble, modest and very popular. No American patriot deserved more to have his name commemorated. It's too bad it had to be immortalized in reverse! Graham Cracker EATING crackers in bed is a time-honored time-honored American custom that is attended with well-nigh disastrous aftermaths, and eating graham crackers is much worse than munching munch-ing soda crackers because the former for-mer crumble more easily. For this greater evil we can very definitely blame Sylvester Graham, health food faddist of the early 1800s. He devised granam flour, not so the bits of cracker would crawl down under un-der our pajama collars and in between be-tween the sheets but because he wanted to pre-i pre-i serve the whole-someness whole-someness of the entire wheat ker- S. Graham nel. Sylvester Graham Gra-ham was born in Suffield, Conn., in 1794, the son of a highly educated English clergyman. He became a minister, also, and went through life as a Presbyterian to save his soul and became a vegetarian to save his body. His theory was that temperance tem-perance could be furthered by a strictly vegetarian diet which would prevent all desire for stimulants. One new food theory of his led to another and he had a wide following. follow-ing. Some followed him because they wanted to save themselves from liquor, some because they wanted to preserve their health and others followed fol-lowed him because they wanted to break his neck. Among the latter were butchers and bakers who rioted riot-ed when he spoke against meat and refined flour in Boston in 1847. He died a natural death in 1876. The Guillotine THE guillotine, machine used for legal beheading in France, was named for Dr. J. L Guillotin, who prevailed upon the national assembly assem-bly at Versailles in 1789 to adopt this contraption for all executions. Two things about this need clearing clear-ing up. First, Dr. Guillotin was not cruel he was a kindly, mild-mannered physician from Paris. He spoke in behalf of the machine because be-cause it was a quick, painless method of inflicting inflict-ing death. Second: Guillotine Guillo-tine is spelled with a final e that is not found in Dr. Guillotin's name. When they called the machine ma-chine "la euillo- v"t3 ik tm: tine" instead of lr. Guillotin "le guillotin" they not only bestowed be-stowed paternity upon the doctor but they declared the child to be of the female sex. All French nouns must have masculine or feminine gender. Why the guillotine had to be feminine femi-nine is not known from the standpoint stand-point of French grammar but it is decidedly appropriate for something devised to make a man lose his head . . . quickly and painlessly! ir.c:c.-scd by Vv es'.ern Newspaper Union.) J |
