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Show Released by Western Newspaper Union. nOW SOME nOBBIES WERE DISCONTINUED TO FOUR OF MY ACQUAINTANCES ACQUAINT-ANCES the war has made an unusual un-usual difference in that it has temporarily tem-porarily put an end to the following follow-ing of their hobbies. All four are business or professional men whose incomes are devced to the pursuit of hobbies. The business of Col. Charles E. Jacques is that of manufacturing baking powder. In normal times he can be found at his business office of-fice possibly as much as one month out of each year. The other months he works at his hobby of traveling to the out-of-the-way places of the world, seeing and talking with the little-known people of such places. His dream Is that of inspiring such people with the ideals and ideology of America, and of bringing back to the people of his own land such good as he may And. It is surprising what he has accomplished over the years in his travels from the Arctic to the Antarctic and all in between, be-tween, but his hobby is out for the duration. I I do not recall the full name of the second of these acquaintances. To me he was just "Bill," "Bill" Morden. His income comes from the manufacture of frogs and switches for railroads. For many years that income was spent in providing American natural history museums with specimens of rare wild animals of the world, especially the New York Museum of Natural History, under whose auspices he traveled. The travel bills were paid with the profits on frogs and switches. One of his most prized accomplishments was the pair of Siberian long-haired tigers that are a prize possession of the New York museum. That hobby, too, is out for the duration. A third is Dr. Frank Thompson, Thomp-son, an eye specialist of Chicago. For many years he has devoted six months out of each two years to the hobby of photographing wild animals in their native haunts in Burma, the Malay states, India, Indo-China and other far east countries, coun-tries, but especially Africa. His desire de-sire is to bring to America photographs photo-graphs that will be of scientific value to the students of schools and colleges. col-leges. He has been remarkably successful, suc-cessful, especially in the pictures he has secured of African elephants. His hunting is not for the pleasure of killing, but the joy of photographing photograph-ing for a laudable purpose. His activities have been suspended by the war. I have always thought of the fourth acquaintance as a travel scout, a man who seeks new places for others to go after he has blazed the trail. The advertising agency Mason Warner operates pays for his travel scouting expeditions. He finds a practical way to reach the grave of Dr. Livingstone in central Africa, or a passable new route across the South American Andes. He returns to tell others how they, too, can go where he has gone, and see the things he has seen. Like the other three, the Mason Warner hobby is out for the duration. |