GILBERT WAS NOT A FAILURE 8 B Dy FANNIE HURST telet3e net AS BAS ® vr. ° Ne i PAZ yA PAS PAF SAY TA Jol Jollet o> $0590 S00 240 590 590 | Geletistietietietietielietie HE by MeClure Newspaper Syndicate.) ({WNU Service We ILBERT was at least twenty- six before he first began to realize that some of the moun- tain tops toward which he had directed his footsteps were not going to be so accessible as he had dreamed, Gilbert had come from an achieving family. His father, up to the week of his death, had been one of the most important barristers In town, His mother had practiced law In a highly successful way up to the last year of her life. His brother, at thirty, was already a surgeon of more than local importance, His sister, a college grad uate herself, had married one of the outstanding bio-chemists of the world. So it was by background, environ- ment, example and possibly Inher- itance that Gilbert, even before he was finished with college, should turn his footsteps resolutely toward acom- plishment, It is true that the subject of law had never particularly interested him, He had not a systematic mind. The conception of ideas interested him more than their execution, and if he had any preference at all, it was for lying for a large part of the day be fore a good fire, or a sun-kissed meadow, and reading. But a man cannot foster such In clinations if he hopes to get ahead in this world, Gilbert knew that. Unless you had a marked talent of one sort or another, the safest road to achieve ment lay along lines of one of the substantial, remunerative professions, Medicine, Law, With his slender talent for writing, the best he could probably hope for would be 8 Journalistic or editorial career, And so it was that Gilbert turned to law. It was not that he did not bring a fairly average equipment to this work. He had a good mind, even an unusual endowment of Intelligence, ind every law office of the city was open to the son of his father, The secret of his fail ie long ire to progress, about the, time he was twenty franiclne tal iunan i gixX, was na tal one, 1..8 heart was not in his work intellectually, he successful lawyer Emot! for the blpe heen tak ry boy first trip yearned the that Kind of life, with perh ind : that he writes, from impulse subtle yet a net wanted to be a yearned where he had on his for pt wae sweet pencil at his beck ane could write as a dil rather than am. wt ny i ition or necessity, The instinct to struggle was not In Gilbert, and yet, surrounded as he was by the examples of successful people, he had not the courage to let And so for four years after these first realizations began to dawn dis quietingly upon him, he struggled ahead at a profession that was flavor lesa to him. It was plead a case with fervor about which you felt so dispassionately The claims of set of human reings against another could not, did not, interest him. The cunning, devi- ous, shrewd phraseology of the con- tract, so fascinating to some types of mind, elicited no real interest from Gilbert. The ramifications of the law, its Interpretations and its practice, aroused in him nothing more than a weariness for the rather nurposeless struggles of mankind against man- kind. At on an impulse he vas never thoroughly able to comprehend --nor the amount that went with it—Gilbert resigned his po- sition as junior partner in a well known law firm, left superficial ex- planatory notes to a few of the mem hers of his family and his friends. drew out a saving account of some several hundred dollars and took a ship going Mediterranean way. That was the beginning fof fifteen vears wandering over the hoary face of the hoary earth. Lingering. when necessary, in one city, in one port, in one village or anther, long enough to lay up, by simple manual labor, sufficient money to sustain him for a brief period of the future. Those of his friends who happened to en. counter him in thelr travels, described him sadly as a pale, draggled follow wandering aimlessly across the face of the earth, In a way, that was how Gilbert re- garded himself, While the new life was far, far preferable to the old, and mot a regret lurked In his heart, at the same time there was also a futility, an aimlessness, a seeking after he knew not what. Gray began to come out in his hair and a stoop was upon his back. Even the variety of mew scenes, new faces, began to pall. The second era of his discon- tent was upon him, It was not that the fifteen years following his decision had been unhap- py ones. On the contrary, they had been rich, fruitful, yielding and ud- venturous. The university of the uni. verse had been Gilbert's. Figuratively and literally speaking, he had kept lean, whetted with an appetite for life, for wisdom, for experience, for love. And yet sometimes it seemed to Gilbert, as he entered a new port,.as he steamed out of another, as spiced and foreign wines slid against his xo impossible to one thirty, of courage of palate, as the sweet, mocking eyes o° exqtic women beckoned him, as h« livell and learned and suffered, that after all he was getting nowhere, And that, for one who has made the kind of momentous decision that Gil bert had fifteen years before, is a dis heartening realization, He had sac rificed everything, Well and good, but only if the sacrifice had been justi fled, Whither? was the question that be gan to engrave {itself acidly into the heart and mind and the consciousness of the wanderer. Freedom and wha to do with it? Lalsure and where to spend It? The world his playground and where to play? He was always coming, he was a) ways going. Maidens smiled at him out of their casements, They had homes, They belonged there. were rooted to some soil, Everybody, it seemed to Gilbert, was rooted to some soil and even though the the responsibilities—lis- along with cities and family men men, surrounded with aura of belonging. he belonged nowhere and yet was not what was bothering him. He would not, had he been able to manip- backwards the magic time-car- pet, have returned to the life he had s0 discarded back youth days. If certaln dissatisfactions, nostalging were upon him, they were not those of regret, He was sick with quest. Neither must debonairly vou these years Gilbert had been without the the amours, the gratifl- cations that have to do with women He had crossed the paths of many and they had left their upon him, Yet, at forty-five, Gilbert, ure, was still pastimes, memories seeking, it was in Naples, of all places, when Gilbert was forty-eight, that he ran across, in the open market place, a girl named Chita. She was selling lemons out of a big beautiful and she had driven In that morning with them piled on a donkey eart, rom the incomparable hilis of Amalfi, She was beautiful in a brown, Italian way, ho stripling of a girl, but with a blown maturity to her. Rich, rather dusky skin and white teeth flashed against It. who ! ie hills of key eart, with thelr ven a goat and sles try of these wing to the calls his study, in hine he swwehard and, before hi writes » sall-specked Afternoons, ir goat finished and he trees around number twenty. grandmother house until crone 0 the The «ald blesses him each day some as summer. She Is with child, Gilbert knows well In what light his life will be regarded by the world he has deserted. fn (1 PA. 1 — ——————————- ber that Chevrolet gives you a Be CENTRE HALL [ [ failure, Mirror Superstition A woman is apt to be made miserable breaks a looking glass She believes she will have deaths In the family, and other bad luck, for sev- en years. This belief is one of many popular superstitions which sre not supported by scientific or other trust. worthy investigation. but are truth to those who believe them. hecause she tion of the effect health and outlook of the believer has been the subject of much investiga tion. but the general answer seems to be that some persons give no second thought to their fortune when they break a mirror, and seem to suffer no ill consequences, “Science” and “Art” According Jevong, a sclence teaches us to know and an art to do. Astronomy, for Instance, is the foun- dation of the art of navigation: chem- istry ig the basis of many useful arts. The arts are distinguished as fine arts and useful arts, the former Including painting, sculpturing, musfe, poetry and architecture, the latter (useful arts) including the trades. Tue sel- ences have heer variously ‘classified. The principal ones are physics, chem. istry, astronomy, meteorology, mathe matics, geography, geology, ethnology, anthropology, archeology, blology and medicine, to Maine First to Can Corn Maine generally has been acknowl edged ns the early home of corn pack. ing In this country, and its claim has Portland (Maine) paper. About 1830 Isane Winslow began his experiments igsued and then It was to John Wins. low Jones, Isaac's nephew, The first recorded sale of canned corn was from Nathan Winslow to Bamuel 8. Plerce of Boston, The in- voice was dated February 19, 1843, and was for one dozen canisters of pre- served corn at $4, Mishap Helped Famous Hymn Win Popularity In the St. Nikolas church at Obern- mas eve in 1818, “Stille Nacht, Helige Nacht” was sung for the first time, The curate, Joseph Mohr, had com- organist, Franz Xaver Gruber, the melody. To the fact that the little organ in Oberndorf had broken down Is due the widespread popularity of the hymn. The organ builder, Karl ! been sent for to make the necessary repairs. He heard the alr and hummed it in his native country, where it be- came very popular in a short time. There were four brothers, by name Strafer, who went to the big German markets every year selling products of the Tyrolese home industry, and at the concerts of Tyrolese songs they sang the air which had become so popular “back home.” Thus the melody was introduced to the North, from whence it started around the world. — Detroit News, Stockings Might Have Fitted Lincoln's Hands Even Abraham Lingoln had to bow a | Httle to prevailing styles, a fact which | recalls a highly amusing Incident that | happened on the eve of a big White House reception. It was one of those affairs at which the President would be compelled to shake hands with . thousands of people and Mrs. Lincoln | sent out for a box of white silk gloves, | both to protect Mr. Lincoln's hands and to make sure that by frequent _ changes he would look neat and fresh throughout the reception. The gloves came but were far too small to fit the mighty hands of Lin- . eoln. An emergency call was sent | out. All Washington sent gloves but mone were large enough. Mra. Lincoln | was greatly vexed and on the verge of | tears when the President turned to i her and sald with a chuckle: | “Better get me some of your stock. Whole World Enriched by Poet's “Golden Pen" Omar Khayyam, Persian poet, wos born about the middle of the Eleventh century at Nishapur, Khorassan, where he died about 1123. As an astronomer he was known for a revision of the Persian calendar, and occupied a posi. tion of Importance at the court of Mahmud of Chuzni. It Is as the author of a collection of quatraing, called the Rubaiyat, that Omar Khayyam is more popularly known. These poems ~isolated, impulsive, unrestrained and characterized by rapid transitions from love minstrelsy to grave argument, and from a deadly fatalism to ribald tavern songs—are an interesting de- velopment of Persian mysticism, There is little doubt that Omar was not the author of all the poems which in- gpired his translator Fitzgerald's pen. Fitzgerald's translation was first published anonymously In 1850, “Rubal”; (or rubary) Is the Persian word for quatrain or epigram, a stanza of four lines, the firet, second and fourth lines rhyming, “Rubaiyat™ means a collection of quatrains, Ancient Rhodesian Foundry An ancient iron foundry, buried six feet in a cavern, has been dug up by the Italian expedition which is search. ing for traces of prehistoric man near the Livingstone rocks In Rhodesia. Here 3,000 or 4.000 years ngo a su perfor, intellectual race smelted fron by primitive methods, such as are now known to the Bantu people. The dis covery Indicates the great age of the Zimbabwe and other Rhodesian stone ruins, and throws new light on the his tory of metallurgy. ‘ Pretty Tribute *I have three grandmothers” sald little Evelyn White to her mother. “How do you make that out?’ asked Mrs. White. “Grandmother Leach, Grandmother White, and umother,” Tribune. replied Evelyn. Formed in Revolution | The Society of the Cincinnati is an hereditary patriotic society organized | in 1783 by the American and foreign | son river near Fishkill, N. Y¥. The planck house, then the headquarters The objects of the society were: “To perpetuate as well the remembrance of the Revolution as the mutual friendships which have been formed under the pressure of common danger. . . Since most of the officers were returning to their farms, which they had left to fight for the republic, they named their or ganization the Society of the Cincin- nati, after their Roman prototype, Lu- cius Quintus Cincinnatus, George Washington was the first president general. He was elected in 1787 and reelected until his death, Presidents general succeeding him have been Alexander Hamilton, C Cetesworth Pinckney, Thomas Pinckney, Aaron Ogden, Morgan Dewis, Willlam Pop ham, H. A. 8. Dearborn, Hamilton Fish, William Wayne and Winslow Warren. The state societies meet an- nually and the general society meets once in every three years, The living hereditary members number 980. The emblem symbolizes the union of France and America, —— Babylonian Lawgiver Hammurabi was the most (llas trious of all the Babylonian kings. He was the sixth of the Amoritie or West SBemitic dynasty and reigned 48 years between 2007 anw 2020 B. C Hammurabi promuigated for use throughout his empire one of the greatest legal codes ever devised. A fairly complete copy of the code was found about the Twelfth century at Susa Inscribed on a diorite stela eight feet high. Apparently the stone had been taken to Elam as plunder by in- vaders during the later period of Babylon's deciine.~Pathlinder Maga- sine. Houses of the Poor in Korea Houses belonging to the common thatched, and have the walls being made of small, low and few rooms, High buildings were for- bidden by the oid laws of the coun- try, but now that no such restrictions exist there are many two-story houses, some of them brick, especially In ur ban districts. A unique part of the Korean house is Its heating arrange ment. The floor is made of flagstones plastered over with clay and covered with thick oiled paper. Underneath, forming what would be the joists, run a series of horizontal flues. Fire is made outside the room and the het smoke-laden air cirenlates through the flues and escapes at the opposite end. Thus the floor is thoroughly heated. The Po'house Dropping down to old Richmond from Washington, the tourists decides that literary shrines should have first attention, so they asked a negro taxi driver to take them to the Poe house. After the dial showed two or three miles of travel, they became doubtful of their driver, but he reassured them and soon stopped before a vast hrick dwelling. “Here's the pohouse™ de- clared the driver, and over the door was chiseled, “County Poor Farm.” There was a $3 fare before they finally reached the Poe memorial, —Li- brary Journal. “Robbing Peter to Pay Paul” “Fable has it,” according to Brews er's Dictionary of Phrase and Fable “that this phrase alluGes to the faet that on December 17, 1550, the Abbey church of St. Peter, Westminster, was advanced to the dignity of a cathedral by letters patent; but ten years later it was joined to the diocese of Lon. don again, and many of its estates appropriated to the repairs of St Paul's cathedral.” The expression may have been a familiar one much earlier than that Sy.
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