-
By ELMO SCOTT WATSON
T ALL started when Lewis Gannett,
literary critic of the New York
Herald Tribune, in reviewing a re-
cent book, “The Private Life of
Sherlock Holmes, sald: “When
Lendon gets around to honoring
Sherlock, Hannibal, Mo., the home
town of Huck Finn and his statue,
will lose its proud claim to being
the home of the only statue ever erected to a
character of fiction in the world.”
Whereupon Carolyn Marx, literary eritic of the
New York World-Telegram, reprinted Mr. Gan-
nett’s statement and added: “How about Framp-
ton’s Peter Pan statue in Kensington Gardens?
And the statue of Lewis Carroll's White Rabbit
unveiled only last month in Wales?”
But that was only a starter, for, as Mr. Gan-
nett confessed in his column & day or two later:
“Let Hannibal, Mo. boast: a flood of corre-
spondents deny its claim to the only statue of a
fictional character. Most of them recall only
Peter Pan In London's Kensington Gardens:
B. 1 K. of the department of romance languages
at Columbia says there is a statue of D'Artagnan
In Auch, France: Carolyn Marx In the World.
Telegram mentions the Wonderland White Rab-
bit recently unveiled in Wales; and Christopher
Morley thinks he recalls a Little Nell in Phila-
delphia and Sir Walter Scott's Rob Roy son
where else. But, Chris, they don't count If they
are in private homes: they must be public monu-
ments to match Hannibal's Huck Finn and Tom
Sawyer, Are there more?”
There were more, indeed!
”
16h
Several days later
the Herald Tribune reviewer printed this:
*
Late additions to the lists of literary statues:
Hans Christian Anderson's Little Mermaid,
near the Royal Yacht club In Copenhagen.
Paul and Virginia In the Jardin des Plantes,
Paris.
Longfellow's Evangeline In Grand Pre, Nova
Scotia,
Mistral's
Provence,
Puss in Boots In the Tuileries, Paris
The Roaring Camp group on the Bret Harte
statue In San Francisco,
Velleda, voluptuous Breton druidess from Cha-
teaubriand’s “Les Martyrs” near Boules ard
Saint-Michel Gate of the Luxembourg Gardens,
Paris.
Which, with:
Peter Pan and Rima in London
The White Rabbit in Wales
Little Nell and Tam o' Shanter In Philadelphia
Leatherstocking in Cooperstown
The Circuit Rider In Salem, Ore.
The Barefoot Boy In Ashburnham
make more than a dozen rivals to Hannibal,
Mo's Huck and Tom. “the only monument in
the world to a fictional character.”
Mireille In Les Saintes Marlies in
And even that list might be extended. Over in
Madrid, Spain, four years ago there was unveiled
in the Plaza de Espana near the royal palace a
huge memorial consisting of two monuments,
One of these monuments, standing 60 feet high,
was a life-size bronze group of Don Quixote on
a horse and his man, Sancho Panza. on a donkey,
Crowning the main column was the figure of Cer.
vantes, the man who gave to literature the
famous fighter of windmills, and at the base of
he monuinent was an allegorical representation,
the “Fount of the Castillian Tongue.” Although
the memorial was primarily to honor the genius
of Cervantes, at the same time It preserves
imperisfiably those two famous fictitious charac.
ters, Don Quixote and Sancho Panza.
But to return to America—a little Investigation
will reveal the fact that the list of statues and
memorials to fictitious characters is not limited
to the compilation of the New York columnist.
Be it remembered that the genius of Daniel
Chester French, the dean of American sculptors,
not only produced, among others of his great
pieces of work, a bust of Washington Irving, but
he also made a full figure statue of the famous
character which [Irving created—Rip Van
Winkle.
And Phillippe Hebert's statue of Evangeline
at Grand Pre Is not the only one which recalls
Longfellow's immortal heroine. Hebert's statue
was erected more than a decade ago, but it was
only about three years ago that there was un.
veiled at St. Martinville, La., another statue of
the Maid of Grand Pre. This was done in the
presence of several thousand Louisiana Acadians
and of two hundred Acadians from Moncton,
Montreal and Crand Pre, who made a pligrimage
to the Bayou state for the ceremonies connected
with the dedication of the statue which stands
over the grave of Emmeline Labiche, who was
the original of Evangeline,
Go out to Denver, Colo, and visit Washington
park, There In the center of a pool is a fountain
where you ean see immortalized in stone Eugene
Field's “Wynken, Biynken and Ned,” Or go to
Lincoln park In Chicago and look upon them as
they are portrayed on the Fleld memorial there,
As for the monument to Huckleberry Finn and
Tom Sawyer which gives Hannibal, Mo. the
right to make its “proud claim,” it was made by
rederick C. Hibbard, a Chleago sculptor, and
1. The Lewis Carroll memorial at Liandudno,
Wales, which features the White Rabbit of
“Alice in Wonderland.” Beside it stands David
Lloyd George, former British premier, who un
veiled the statue,
2. Statue of Evangeline, which stands in St.
Martinville, La., over the grave of Emmeline
Labiche, the original of Longfellow's heroine.
3. The Captain's Well in Amesbury, Mass,
made famous by the ballad by John Greenleaf
Whittier,
4. Memorial to Eve, erected in Fountain Inn,
8. C.,, by Robert Quillen, noted newspaper para-
grapher and editor (who stands beside it).
5. Statue of Muckieberry Finn and Tom Saw.
yer which stands in Hannibal, Mo., Mark Twain's
boyhood home town,
¢ 3
presented to the city of Hannibal by Mr. and
Mrs, George A. Mahan, It stands at the foot of
Cardiff hill where foregathered Tom and Huck
and Tom's immortal gang.
Closely akin to the practice of Immortalizing
in stone characters In fiction has been man's
practice of doing the same for mythical and
legendary figures, Some of the greatest sculp-
tors of ancient Greece and Rome found their
inspiration In the gods and goddesses whom the
Greeks and Homans honored. Similarly, in mod.
ern days, names In the Bible have been trans.
lated into stone, Two of the finest pleces of
work by the great French sculptor, Rodin, are
his figures of Adam and Eve, and in America
we have such statues as William Henry Rine
hart's Rebecca, with her pitcher at the well
Down In Fountain Inn, 8. C. is an unusual
memorial--not a statue, bat a slinple white shaft
erected to the memory of Eve beeause Robert
Quillen, editor of the Fountain Inn Tribune, and
a famous paragrapher, thought that “insufficient
honor has been paid to the mother of the human
race.”
Wo you remember that ballad by John Green-
leaf Whittier which tells of the shipwreeked
New England sallor who was cast away on the
East Arabian coast and as he tolled across the
hot desert sands, hungry and thirsty, cursed the
day of his birth and then, suddenly overcome
by a finer emotion, “prayed as he never before
had prayed”?
Pity me, God! For I die of thirst:
Take me out of this land accurst:
And if ever I reach my home again
Where earth has springs and the sky has rain,
I will dig a well for the passers-by
And none shall suffer from thirst as IL
Then, do you remember, how the shipwrecked
mariner came back safely at last to his home
land and,
When morning came he called for his spade.
“I must pay my debt to the Lord,” he sald
Bo he tolled day after day out in the yard
behind his house until at last “the blessed water,
the wine of God.” gushed forth,
Perhaps you thought that story was Just a
creation of the New Engiand poet's. But it was
something more than that. Although Whittier's
PORTER, CENTRE HALL, PA,
jer + jegend of
na
ar to
a very
Go to Ame
“The Captain's
ail Americans, it
st hats
mry, Mass,
Well” there as
H. Walker of Amesbury and presented
Town Improvement society, You ean drink
its pure and as you
reminded not or Is of the hero of Whi
lad but of all th dventurous New En
waters, do so you
men who once carried the
corners For the
tain’s Well” is a memorial to them.
The hero of the ballad was Valentine Bagley,
a native of wury, who, at
eon, in
Eighteenth and the ste
tures can be found In an old book,
Salem in 1704
Sufferings
Board the
gon, Commander,
of the restored
globe
Ame
went down to the sea
century
of Daniel Saunders, a Mariner on
Which was Cast Away
1702."
Bagley was a carpenter's mate on the Com.
merce when that ship sailed from the Isle of
France on January 27. 1792, bound for Madras,
There she exchanged her Boston master, John
Leach, for a Rhode Islander. Samuel Johnson,
and on April 28 set sail for Bombay, However,
the new captain, “being unacquainted with the
coast,” steered too far to the west and the ship
foundered off Cape Morebet July 10.
The crew, “thirty-four souls in number, twenty
whites, thirteen Lascar sailors and one African
black,” took to the boats and for three days made
their way along the shore. Then they were driven
ashore by a storm which drowned three of them.
Starting up the coast, the 17 white men, tor
tured with thirst, hunted everywhere for water,
Becoming separated, they wandered about in
small parties and one by one they laid thelr
weakened companions under bushes and left them
there to die. -~
On and on they plodded across the burning
sands and Bagley, thinking no doubt of the damp,
fog-swept town of his nativity, forced his parched
throat to utter the promise to his God that if
ever he got back to that town he would dig a
well where all who passed might drink,
At last the castaways fell in with a party of
Arab traders, traveling on eamels toward Muscat,
who took them along. On August 12, six of
the seventeen arrived at Muscat where most
of them took ship for home, But Valentine Bag.
ley evidently was In no such hurry. Still seeking
adventure, he shipped on an Arablan vessel and
followed the sea for three more years before
going back to Massachusetts,
Two years later Bagley kept his vow by dig-
ging the well and for years from its cool depths
bubbled the precious water which he had craved
#0 much on the hot sands of Arabian. But after
his death the well fell Into disrepair and its
waters were drained away by excavations for a
deep pipe line in 1012. But the restoration four
years ago of the well and the erection of the
memorial designed by Leonard Cracke, an Eng
lish sculptor living In Boston, has guaranteed
perpetuation of the story of Valentine Bagley,
& real character in a ballad of a famous Amer
lean poet,
© by Western Newspaper Union,
i
f
POINTS OF VIEW
CALL FOR CODE
OF GOLDEN RULE
“It occurs to me,” sald George B.
Cautious, at the weekly meeting of
the Rowanis club, “that we need
some sort of a national code or agree.
ment fixing more definite regulations
for individual points of view. There
is an old expression that eircum-
stances alter cases. It might have
been broadened to include the obser.
vation that circumstances alter points
of view, and that what a man thinks
and feels one moment may be wholly
foreign to hig mental reactions the
next.
“Take, for example, the man who
drives his ear downtown, All the
way down, and while he Is
motor minded,
pedestrians to get out of the
than he expected, But
and he
He is
changes,
his
becomes
point of view
pedestrian ed,
severely critical of
what he did a few
Now
there ough
exactly minute
before
that
ground
and that means nll
more toler
they
somewher
are driving,
broader minded when
ing.
“1 know
rious when h finds that a I:
sprinkler Is throwing
has But
his own home he is
to start the sprind
pe
fo nas
a citizen who becomes fu
to pass, when he
ler going, and the
Epray into
the
know permit
bery to cover most of the sidewal
and
of
be torn out by
we
they do not war
proper for them, it seems, to take up
CHURN
street
men who thelr shrub
who declare that the
* roots,
SCC men an women do things
enough room In a street car for two
persons. If they see somebody else
i FS "
do it they declare that something
should be done about it. Maybe the
Golden Hule enough
for all of us, but we seem to be off
the golden standard, and | have men-
tioned the matter here today In the
hope that some of you gentlemen
might suggest a way out of our diffi
culties,”"--Indianapolis News,
—————————————
Dr. Pierce’s Pellets ave bert for liver,
bowels and stomach, One little Pellet for
8 lazative-—~three for a cathartic Ady.
would be code
Room at the Top
Child (pointing to bald-headed
man)-—Mummy, is he a nudist?
Mother—Yes, dear; but only a be-
ginner,
Why Hospitals Use
a Liquid Laxative
Hospitals and doctors have slways
used lig laxatives. And the public
is fast returning to laxatives in liquid
form. Do you know the reasons?
{ aliquid laxative can be
be cone
you need
abi i a day or
ater. Nor will a mild liquid
laxative irritate the kidneys.
‘double do
The right
perfect movement, and there is
no discomfort at the time, or after.
The w
you const
ig cathartic may keep
ated as long as'you keep
And the habitual use of
, or of powerful drugs
y concentrated form of
i
A weak h a properly prepared
tive like Dr. Caldwell’s
Syrup Pepsin will | you a lot. A
few week nd your bowels
can be “ y
Dr. Cald
approved |
druggists kes p re:
an ideal family ls
all ages, and may
es effective for
be given the
ASDar ins
*
your throat.
X
thoroughly w=
Modern medical science now throws
an enlirely new light on sore throat.
A way that eases the pain, rawness
and irritation in as litte as {wo or
three minules!
It requires medicine—like
BAYER ASPIRIN- to do these
things! That is why throat special-
ists throughout America are pre-
scribing this BAYER gargle in
place of old-time ways.
Be careful, however. that you get
real BAYER Aspirin for this pur-
pose. For they dissolve completely
enough to gargle without leaving
urilaling particles,
At All Draggists
“1 know of nothing bet.
ter for expectant mothers
than Dr, Pierce's Favorite
Desigtion,” sid Mm J.
G. Dawson George
St, Hagerstown, Md “1
have eight deatttd chil.
dren, When 1 would need
and sick to my stomach
used Dr. Pierer's i Prsacitption and
found at relief.” Sold ra
New i tablets S0c; liquid tH 0, Large
size, tabs or liquid, $1.55. “We De Our Pars.
| JEANETTE! HOLLYWOOD'S OWN SONG
{ HIT. Inspired by the Queen of the Screen
5c mailed, orehestrations 6be (no stam -
Wm, ie, 538 Clay St, San Francisco,
CNTY
ede LiRy 5