Push & Scamper

Sirs:

We still contend that he has no sense of humor. Your instance of his pushing a bell and scampering away while detectives look around to find out who did it (TIME, Jan. 21) indicates rather that he has fallen into his second childhood. I have a boy, eight, who pushes the doorbell and scampers.

ROY BEDICHEK

Austin, Tex.

"He" is President Coolidge.--ED.

"Versailles of Venezuela" Sirs: Fancy how hurt we Maracayans were to see your map of South America in the Dec. 24 issue with never a mention of Maracay. You say "Caracas, city of perpetual spring and home of General Gomez." All wrong! Gomez, le Grand, never sets foot in Caracas, he lives, breathes and transacts all business right here in Maracay-- the Versailles of Venezuela. And what's more. at least 60 of his 84 acknowledged children live in and round the town. He is the original bachelor father, as you may or may not know. AND the Reigning Favorita lives here, just a block from the Royal Residence. All the American population of Maracay (we are seven) swear by TIME, but we cannot bear to have our fair city slighted. It's a grand town, we have a sewer and everything.

GLADYS SLAUGHTER

% American Consul Caracas, Venezuela

In Uruguay

Sirs:

As one of TIME'S best boosters in South America I have often shown your magazine to my Uruguayan friends as the outstanding information publication of my country. Consequently, after boasting proudly of TIME'S accuracy in reporting even minor events of interest, I was quite astonished to read in my copy of Dec. 3, just received, on page 7 under "Chief Yeoman," that Mr. Hoover's complete itinerary included Montevideo (URAGUAY).

The proper spelling, of course, is URUGUAY, and the mistake is quite probably typographical. However, should the good Uruguayans see it, now that their interest is focused more than ever upon the United States because of Mr. Hoover's recent visit, they would certainly not feel complimented. . . .

MORRIS N. HUGHES

Vice Consul of the United

States of America Montevideo, Uruguay

To the good Uruguayans, a typographical apology.--ED.

Rattlers

Sirs:

I have been a careful and enthusiastic reader of your contentious magazine for the past year, and I have been watching with eagle eye for something to find fault about. At last I have you. Last week you printed a snake story. . . .

You have done grave injustice to my friends, the Rattlers, and incidentally, you impugn the courage of us professional snake experts. I quote you.

"Fakirs who dally with venomous snakes take good care to defang them. "Wrong, very wrong. The crude, untutored Hindu may resort to this expedient, but it is not done in professional circles among American snake experts. You will note that I use the more dignified term--"experts." We resent the name "fakirs." We study the nature of our snakes and it is not necessary to "defang" them, not at all. You will note that I place myself among the "experts." Thirty years experience among the rattlers. A good line that? And I never had to "defang" one, except on special order from a museum.

The Rattler is a good-natured snake and when he is in good form carries six pair of fangs, one set in place for action and five extra pair folded back against the roof of the mouth. If he loses one, he moves the next one up into place and is ready for action again. If it is desired to make the snake permanently harmless, the entire poison apparatus must be removed, which is done by peeling the plate of bone, to which the teeth and glands are fastened, from the roof of the mouth. A nice operation, which once performed, makes it certain that the snake will never have teeth again.

I was raised in Pike County, Pa., long famed as the roosting-place of the rattler.* Ed. Mott. who years ago was a humorous writer on the New York Sun, used to say: "Pike County is noted for rattlesnakes, good whiskey and Democrats." All changed now. I say this sadly. First came Prohibition and the good whiskey passed out: then the rattlers died mysteriously; and last fall Mr. Hoover carried the County.

Of course they still make whiskey in Pike County, and how? Terrible! Right after Prohibition was adopted for the rest of the country, a native set up a still somewhere down along the Middle Creek, and began to make a new brand of whiskey from a recipe which he bought from a fellow who ran an acid plant over Scranton way. When the stuff was cooked he filled up on it and went raving mad. They say he ran down the road, foaming at the mouth, and met a rattler. In the argument that followed, the rattler bit him. The snake bite sobered the man but the rattler caught the madness. He fled away into the scrub oak and bit every other rattler he met. These bit their friends and before the epidemic could be checked, all the rattlers in Pike County died of the delirium tremens.

I am sending you a picture of a group, two rattlers and myself. The rattlers are the good looking ones. Please send the picture back as I am only lending it to you from my snake album. R. J. WHEELER

Allentown, Pa. Cherishes "Ice Box"

Sirs: The Frigidaire in our kitchen may not be an ice box, as noted by Mr. Stromwell under 'Letters" in your Jan. 28 issue, but I'll be darned if I am going out to the "ice plant" to get a bite to eat before I go to bed tonight. STOWE WILDER

Pittsburgh, Pa.

Duplate

Sirs:

In the interests of accuracy I wish to call your attention to the fact that there is no non-shatterable glass by the name of "Duplex."

Your article . . . reviewing the annual New York Automobile Show mentions the fact that most high priced and many medium priced cars are using either Duplex or Triplex or non-shatterable glass. You undoubtedly refer to "Duplate" which is used as standard equipment in the Cadillac, LaSalle, Fierce-Arrow, Hudson, Chrysler and Studebaker.

EDW. L. PATTON

Pittsburgh Plate Glass Co., Pittsburgh, Pa.

Not Free Sirs:

In your issue of Jan. 21, you report one Rev. J. F. Norris as having "denounced the Y. M. C. A. practice of giving cigarets to soldiers." It must have been two other Y. M. C. A.'s, for as any A. E. F.-er will tell you, the Y. M. C. A. did not practice giving away anything-- unless "beaucoup francs" were pressed on them by the soldiery. One who paid and paid, J. B. SCOTT

Beacon, N. Y.

Relief in China

Sirs: In your issue of Jan. 14 you refer to the famine in China and excuse the American people from contributing to a fund for its relief using the words: "... any total of contributions, however large, will (not) suffice to permanently relieve the perennial Chinese famine."

Eight years ago I felt much as you do. Hence, when a fund of a million dollars was confided to my direction towards the relief of the famine of that year, determined to use it in a way that would tend to reduce the probability of famine in the territory assigned to me, or at least to mitigate the severity of such famines as did occur.

At the suggestion of the American Minister to China, I planned to rehabilitate a short portion of the Grand Canal, but certain Chinese politicians and the American financiers with whom they were dealing, refused to permit that work to proceed. However, the original plan for the rehabilitation of the Grand Canal called for the construction of a highway from the railway to the point on the Canal where work was to begin. So the organization under my direction built this road. When the money gave out, we had constructed 850 miles of highway, in addition to certain other minor jobs which may be disregarded now. Did these 850 miles of highway prevent another famine from coming? Of course not. But the accomplishment of that year so directed attention to highway construction that practically 1,000 miles of highway have been constructed every year since--under Chinese authority. The growth in the highway program is perhaps best attested by the fact that American exports of gasoline to China were something more than ten times as large in 1926 as they were in 1920.

During the famine of 1920-21 something like $7,000,000 were sent by America to China for relief purposes, practically the entire amount being distributed as "free" relief. However, in 1922, the men who had taken leading parts in the distribution of this large sum, formed the China International Famine Relief Commission, and adopted as one of its cardinal policies that in the future so far as possible such funds as it might command should accomplish relief through the device of employment upon works having a famine preventive or palliative effect.

Hence, you can assure your readers that the "persons who give even two cents to the fund may rejoice in the knowledge that" not only are they "putting a bowlful of rice into an otherwise empty and agonized Chinese stomach" but they are putting several cubic feet of earthwork into dykes or other construction which will prevent a certain amount of famine; and in addition, they are putting forth a demonstration which will be multiplied many fold by the Chinese people of all classes, until famine is as rare in China as it is in the other modernized nations of the world.

JOHN EARL BAKER Mill Valley, Calif.

Promoting Rex

Sirs:

RICKARD The Lone Star State knew him as Dink

At least that's what some say, But over the Grim Reaper's brink

He's gone, to rest, for aye. And as his life was ebbing fast

Who knows but maybe he Sung to himself, the while he passed;

"Nearer My God to Thee."

Up North they always called him Tex,

The kids adored him, too, 'Cause he was the promoting rex

That sprung the ballyhoo. And from around this mundane sphere

There seemed to come a sigh As Dempsey whispered in his ear;

"Goodbye, old pal; good-bye."

JACK HEERIN

The Ex-Street Commissioner Cleveland, Ohio.

Without Restraint

Sirs:

TIME is terse; it might do poorer, But it harbors a certain addiction: Quotations that swear and letters in poetry, Are items it uses without restraint.

ALFRED W. POND

Elizabeth, N. J.

"Dynamite Gus"

Sirs: Twice now--the times being during the last two weekly perusals of your most excellent and newsy newsmagazine--I have been most disappointed in not seeing in the Sport's division something about "Dynamite Gus" Sonnenberg and his winning the heavyweight wrestling championship of the world in Boston on Jan. 4.

It would seem that you could well afford to give plenty of space to writing up the rise in the wrestling game of this most worthy young man with whom I am proud to be acquainted. I am only one of a great many who would consider him to be one of the cleanest-cut athletes and also most affable gentlemen who ever entered the sporting world in any of its branches. "Doc" HEWETT

Albany, N. Y.

Wrestler Sonnenberg, 29, onetime Dartmouth footballer, butted and struggled with Wrestler Ed ("Strangler") Lewis; threw him once; drove him off the mat so often that Lewis cried quits. Many a spectator adjudged the match, fair and official though it was, more a football game than a wrestling bout. Wrestler Sonnenberg took up professional wrestling without premeditation. One night last year in Boston, after watching two grunters struggle, Sonnenberg said: "I could take those two bums in the ring now and lick both of 'em without getting up a sweat." Said Promoter Cy Mitchell: "You're on."--ED.

*Also of the copperhead snake and bears. -- ED.