The Charlotte News
Wednesday, August 31, 1955
FOUR EDITORIALS
Site Ed. Note: The front page reports from Jerusalem that Israel had resisted this date joining Egypt in a cease-fire along the strife-ridden Gaza Strip, demanding that Egypt first take the blame for starting border violence which had continued into the seventh consecutive day. An Israeli Government spokesman said that Israel resented being placed on the same level as Egypt, the attacker, in a U.N.-proposed cease-fire order. But it was regarded as being highly unlikely that Egypt would acknowledge that it was the aggressor in the violence. Egypt had agreed the previous day to a cease-fire beginning this date. In the violence, more than 20 Israelis and Egyptians had been killed and many others had been wounded. In Cairo, an Egyptian communiqué said that Egyptian commandos had entered Israeli territory and blown up a broadcasting station six miles from Tel Aviv, and that the commandos had also blasted two Israeli armored cars near Magdal. According to Egyptian observers, those commandos were believed to be irregulars operating across the frontier in retaliation for continued Israeli attacks. Prior to the issuance of that communiqué, Egyptian newspapers had stated that commandos had penetrated Israel to the extent of about 25 miles the previous day to carry out "punitive action" against the population, in the process killing between 15 and 20 Israelis. But Israel had only made an announcement through a military spokesman that infiltrators had fired after midnight on a military car near Fallujah in southern Israel, wounding one of the occupants. The chief of staff of the U.N. Palestine Truce Observers Commission, Canadian Maj. General E. L. M. Burns, was trying hard to restore peace to the border area, where at least 21 Israelis and eight Egyptians had been killed just since the previous Thursday. A U.N. Commission spokesman said that Israeli Premier Moshe Sharett's Government had replied the previous night to the proposed cease-fire with a request that General Burns obtain Egypt's acknowledgment of responsibility for the previous week's violence. A later U.N. announcement stated that Israeli authorities, in view of further border incidents the previous night, were doubtful as to whether to accept the cease-fire proposal and that their final decision would not be made until this date. But an Israeli Government spokesman had taken exception to that announcement, saying Israel's answer had been contained in the letter to General Burns.
Russia was beginning to pose a serious challenge to American and British influence in the oil-rich Middle East, with reports emerging to the State Department and other Federal agencies that the Soviet Government had offered arms to Egypt and possibly to other Arab states. There were also signs of Communist buildup of trade and diplomatic ties with the Arabs, as well as Communist denunciation of Western efforts to build a Middle East defense system. American officials believed that the most immediate purpose of the Soviets was to develop a type of neutrality bloc in the region as between the Soviet Union and the Western powers, with the long-range goal being to establish Soviet influence in that part of the world. Secretary of State Dulles had made it clear to a press conference the previous day that he regarded as reasonably reliable the reports of offers of Russian arms in the Middle East, though admitting that he lacked confirmation of same. Egypt's Prime Minister Abdel Nasser had been invited to visit the Soviet Union and had accepted, anticipated to be in the following spring. Trade contacts between the Arab states and Russia had multiplied, with Egypt having announced early during the month that it would sell 60,000 tons of rice to Russia in exchange for 500,000 tons of crude oil. Communist Hungary had agreed to deliver 93 diesel engines for Egyptian cotton and rice, while Communist Czechoslovakia and East Germany had offered to trade machinery for Egyptian products.
In Buenos Aires, Argentine El Presidente Juan Peron offered to resign this date, followed by mass demonstrations by his followers, insisting that he remain in office. Both the Central Confederation of Labor and the leadership of his Peronista Party, to whom he forwarded his resignation letter, had been ready to receive it and reject it. His letter had stated that the time had come to work and consolidate the revolutionary gains, and so he offered to retire "to ensure pacification", that he did not want to be an obstacle. He said that he did not believe there would be a civil war in Argentina, that there would be peace or dictatorship and that he had no taste for dictatorship, that if that were the solution, someone else would have to do it. He could have fooled everyone else. Obviously, the Peronistas were quite as brainwashed as are the Trumpies these days.
In Paris, the French Government announced this date the resignation of Gilbert Grandval as its top administrative officer in Morocco, with General Pierre Boyer de Latour appointed to succeed him as the resident general of the protectorate. The latter had been the resident general of Tunisia and previously had served in Morocco. He said that he would seek to do everything in his power to find a reasonable and peaceful solution for the situation in Morocco. M. Grandval had been sent to Morocco on July 7 with orders to relax French rule, and had built up popularity with many Moroccan Nationalists, but had drawn the ire of European residents who opposed giving the natives a stronger hand in the government. The new resident general would satisfy both the Nationalists and the French colonials. During his tenure in Tunisia, the French government had granted the protectorate a large measure of home rule, and while he had formerly been in Morocco, he had used a firm hand against unruly Moroccans.
In Atlanta, it was reported this date by Roy Harris, a political leader in Augusta and former Speaker of the State House, that a statewide organization to combat desegregation was being formed in Georgia, with the cooperation of all political factions. He said that the organization would be similar to the citizens' councils set up in Mississippi and would be called the States' Rights Council of Georgia, designed to "make the fight clearly within the law and do everything that's necessary to preserve segregation in the South." He said that unless such organizations were formed right away, there would be a resurgence of the Klan and other wildcat organizations, as the people of the South were determined to do something about the situation. Them cit'zen coumsells, they desined to 'void the vi'lence down heya from the Klain, see. They faw ever'body.
The bitter irony involved in that announcement would become painfully evident the following day when the news would emerge from Mississippi that the brutally beaten body of 14-year old Emmett Till, with a bullet hole through his head, had been discovered in the Tallahatchie River this date, after he had been missing since Sunday morning at around 2:30 a.m. when two half-brothers, and possibly a third man, had abducted him at gunpoint from his uncle's home and taken him away on the excuse that he had been "doing the talking" the previous Wednesday at the general store operated by the brothers in Money.
In Washington, a 26-year old Navy veteran this date told Senators of a Civil Service subcommittee, investigating the Federal employees security program, that he had been fired from a Navy civilian job as a security risk, on grounds that his mother and father had been in a subversive organization, the name of which he had never been provided. He said that he had been told that if he did not live with his parents, it might have been a little different. His mother also testified, saying that she had never belonged to any organization which she had known to be considered Communist or subversive, that she had belonged to the Progressive Party, which had as its presidential nominee in 1948 former Vice-President Henry Wallace, had also been a member of the International Women's League for Peace and Freedom, and the World Affairs Council, none of which were on the Attorney General's list of subversive organizations. The veteran had been on active duty with the Navy between 1951 and 1953 and had received a probationary job as a metal-smith's helper at the Naval Air Station in Quonset Point, R.I., the previous January, where he said he helped to overhaul and repair fighter planes. He had been dismissed on July 29, being told that it had nothing to do with him, that his record was clean, that it had only to do with his parents and their supposed membership in a subversive organization. He said that he had been in the Boy Scouts, responding to a question of whether he had been a joiner. The Navy could fire him without filing formal charges or giving him a hearing, as he did not have permanent civil service status. Senator Olin Johnston of South Carolina, chairman of the subcommittee, said that he believed the case would show the public how the Administration could run the numbers of supposed subversives into the hundreds of thousands, "and still crucify the characters of many people." Democrats were contending that the Administration had artificially inflated the number of security risks which it listed as dismissed from the Government by padding it with such cases.
In Charleston, S.C., the man who had been arrested by the FBI, wanted for first-degree murder in New York and for an escape from a Boston jail during which he had used a machine gun against a guard, waived arraignment and extradition to New York this date after a Federal judge denied a motion for change of venue to South Carolina, his defense counsel contending that the defendant could not get a fair trial in New York where he was described as public enemy number one, the judge indicating that unless the local district attorney consented to the change, he could not order it as the indictments were not filed in South Carolina.
In Meriden, Conn., many of that city's 44,000 people did not have water while others had only a trickle, after a pipe had not been marked on a map of the city water systems some 80 or 90 years earlier. A construction crew digging a hole to sink a gasoline station tank had punctured the water main, which City workers were unable to reach because of the gushing water, prompting City officials to turn off the line which they thought was running into the main, but the water flow had not ceased. They then had shut off another line, which also did not stop the flow. Thus far, they had not been able to find the feeder line, despite going over the map of the system several times. Meanwhile, the City was making arrangements to install a split sleeve on the broken pipe so that it could be repaired despite the continuing water pressure. They would probably use a big Stillson wrench for the installation.
In Chimney Rock, N.C., two men had slugged a woman who operated a grocery store and service station this date and had escaped with an undisclosed sum of money, according to that which the woman told police. She said that the two men, one black, one white, had been driving a "short, green car" with South Carolina license plates, headed east toward Rutherfordton. She said that she had been clubbed unconscious in the hold-up. Physicians at a hospital at Bat Cave said that she was irrational in her description of the events. At least they did not say that she sounded as crazy as a bat. If you see a short, green car, or a short, green person in a black and white car, be sure and ram it hard and then call police, as you do not wish to take any chances. They could be them Martians.
In New York, columnist and broadcaster Walter Winchell was suing ABC in state court for seven million dollars for termination of his contract with the network the prior June 26.
Also in New York, actor Paul Muni, star of the Broadway hit, "Inherit the Wind", had departed the play because of an eye ailment, with the New York Post having reported that it might be necessary for him to have one eye removed. The play was continuing with understudy Si Oakland playing the role of defense attorney Clarence Darrow, under the character's name of Henry Drummond, representing Bertram Cates, the name of the character representing John Thomas Scopes, the school teacher who had been charged in 1925 in Dayton, Tenn., with the crime of teaching evolution in his class, the fictionalized town of the play being dubbed Hillsboro.
Were there, parenthetically, any doubt of the proof of evolution of man from the apes, despite the missing link, the half-brothers in Money on Sunday had fully provided probative value to there being exception to the rule that man—with his conscious mind, able to think through abstract, puzzling scenarios and reach rational conclusions from the premises thus posited, based at least to some degree on engendered empathy for one's fellows, prior to acting on impulse with instinctive breast-beating, territorial rage against any other vaguely perceived as an interloper
In Charlotte, the busiest intersection in the Carolinas, that at Morehead Street and Independence Boulevard, would be reopened the following afternoon after an underpass had been constructed to carry the traffic on Independence beneath Morehead.
Dick Young of The News reports that assignment of students in the Charlotte City Schools for the coming school year would be the same as that which had been in effect the previous spring, unanimously approved by the City School Board in its session this date. The policy was based on the recommendations of a report submitted this date by the Board's special three-person committee appointed to review the Supreme Court's May 31 implementing decision in Brown v. Board of Education. The report indicated that already enrolled pupils had been assigned for the coming year the previous spring, and that most of the first grade students had also been assigned, and recommended that the few remaining pupils not assigned should be directed to the schools to which they ordinarily would have been assigned the previous spring. Previously, Board members had stated that it would be impossible to carry out an orderly transition under the Supreme Court's decree prior to September, 1956, and had appointed the special committee to review the situation. The report stated that many problems had to be met and overcome to accomplish an orderly transition and that further study would be undertaken by the committee. Who do you think you're kidding?
On the editorial page, "Possible Solution for Crowded Courts" indicates that the Board of County Commissioners might have come up with a workable plan in lieu of establishment of a separate small claims court to speed justice in the county, a plan which would eliminate time-consuming jury trials in Superior Court cases involving claims under $1,000, permitted under new state law, provided the parties to the lawsuit did not demand a jury trial in their initial pleadings.
It finds that the plan had two advantages over the proposal of having a separate small claims court, one being that appeals from such a court would wind up in Superior Court anyway, where the proposed plan would have the indicated cases filed in the first instance, with the other advantage being that approximately $40,000 per year of taxpayer money would be saved by not establishing a separate new court. By elimination of jury trials, the substitute plan would enable the Superior Court to handle as many cases as would a small claims court, and so the fact that the Board of Commissioners had ordered a study of the matter demonstrated their sense of duty to providing relief for the overloaded court dockets and their being careful with taxpayer money.
It urges that one of the two types of proceedings ought be established to relieve the clog of cases in the Superior Court.
"The Double Standard of N.L.R.B." indicates that if a person worked in a factory, the person had the right to join a union, to advance its interests and to choose the bargaining representative, but if a person worked for a union, despite what the law required, the NLRB had recently said that the employee did not enjoy the same rights, refusing to apply the law to a Teamsters Union subdivision found culpable by an NLRB examiner for unfair labor practices against Teamster employees, indicating that the union had fired several workers to prevent them from joining the Office Employees Union, and had also sought to get another member to take a trip to avoid testifying in the NLRB investigation.
It quotes from the National Labor Relations Act, that it was an unfair labor practice for a labor organization or its agents to restrain or coerce employees in the exercise of their rights guaranteed by the Act, which included having the right to self-organization, to form, join or assist labor organizations, to bargain collectively through representatives of their own choosing, and to engage in other concerted activities for the purpose of collective bargaining or other mutual aid or protection.
The Board had determined that it should not consider cases involving nonprofit organizations, such as the Teamsters, while its minority report disagreed, indicating that Congress intended the Board to apply the law to unions in their capacity as employers.
It concludes that while the Act was open to interpretation on that point, there was no doubt that the rights of the Teamster employees had been violated, and it was also clear that the Board's majority had chosen to interpret the Act for the union, at the expense of the union's employees, which it finds did not make sense.
"Boot It, Boy!" indicates a desire, after the summer verbs associated with baseball had grown tiresome, to read about how the football clubs were going to be winners or at least "representative", utilizing such descriptive terminology as "knifing, jarring, jackrabbiting, waltzing and bone crushing".
"By Any Name a Booby Prize" indicates that children who scored the lowest in a game of skill received a special mark of shame called a "booby" prize, while at present, adults used the more polite term, "consolation" prize, but with the same associated shame. It notes that Charlotte had just received such a booby prize for killing only nine pedestrians during 1954, a prize presented to Mayor Philip Van Every by the American Automobile Association and the Carolina Motor Club in an impressive ceremony, suggestive of the notion that it ought be a source of pride.
It indicates that it was not so, as Charlotte's death rate the previous year was a shameful 6.7 per 100,000 population, compared to 4.1 for the national average. It suggests that if the city kept up the good work, perhaps even more people would be killed during the current year than the previous year and that therefore the city might merit an even bigger and better booby prize.
A piece from the Christian Science Monitor, titled "Idylls of a Suburbanite", indicates that the advent of such household robots as the automatic lawn sprinkler and piped sprinkler systems had permitted people to leave certain chores to the devices while attending to other chores, which, gradually, had also been overtaken by machines, such as dish washing.
But in the process, it finds, thinking, musing, and ruminating appeared as less delectable pastimes when there was nothing to interfere with them, more difficult to do well when a person was liberated from other activities.
It suggests that if it were not for the ball game on the radio, the man of the house would have nothing to make himself feel like "part of a living, moving, exciting world". "And that is why the man's wife, bringing him a cold drink as the game goes into the sixth inning, decides to take the drink back to the refrigerator, then pulls down the blinds, shuts off the radio and tiptoes out of the room, smiling."
Drew Pearson's column, still being written by staff while Mr. Pearson was on vacation, indicates that Government agents were investigating a ghost which was reputed to be haunting the Pentagon after dark, by all accounts, a playful ghost, which flashed telephone switchboards at night from empty rooms, tampered with wires behind locked panels and scared cleaning women out of their wits. Agents were concerned as to whether the ghost had a security clearance, for it had apparently been wandering darkened corridors in a restricted area. The cleaning women told of hearing eerie noises at night and having the lights turned off by unseen hands, while maintenance men swore that the ghost had been gumming up the wires behind locked panels. Once, the latter had spread grease around a locked air-conditioning unit in the hope of finding the fingerprints of the culprit, but the following morning, there was no print present in the grease. The investigation had been turned over to the General Services Administration, especially regarding the problems occurring in the secured area. (It was probably that ectoplasmic "man in the green shirt", who was snooping around the Commerce Department 11 years afore, up to his shenanigans again.)
When members of Congress had increased their own salaries by 50 percent, it was supposed to end payroll padding, but despite the new $22,500 per year salaries, more members than ever were maintaining relatives on the Government payroll. The column had found a record 58 relatives on the House payroll, not including in-laws, whose different last names made it tough to trace them, with some of the relatives earning their pay, while others did no work at all. New York Congressman John Taber, the most miserly man ever to head the House Appropriations Committee, had been, ironically, the worst offender in that regard, with his son on staff at $632 per month, along with a brother, at $379 per month. The highest paid Congressional relative was the son of West Virginia Congresswoman Elizabeth Kee, receiving $722 per month, but worked hard for his salary. The column provides a state-by-state list of other members of Congress who maintained relatives on their staffs. Among the 24 states with such members, no one is listed from North Carolina.
Vic Reinemer, formerly associate editor of The News until the prior March when he joined the staff of Senator James Murray of his native Montana, writing in The Reporter, discusses the ongoing fight against fluoridation of the water supplies in various communities, indicating that more than 20 million Americans in more than a thousand communities consumed artificially fluoridated water, from the addition of approximately one part of sodium fluoride per million parts, while another 3.5 million Americans drank naturally fluoridated water. Fluoridation had been approved by every scientific society of recognized standing in the field of health, including the American Dental Association, dental societies of every state and territory, the AMA, and the U.S. Public Health Service, all favoring the treatment because exhaustive tests conducted over a period of time had concluded that fluoridation reduced tooth decay among children by an average of 50 percent or more. He cites examples from the prolonged studies over a decade.
Nevertheless, there were people who fought against fluoridation, such as Dr. E. H. Bronner, Dr. Royal Lee, and the Citizens Medical Reference Bureau. Dr. Bronner, a Los Angeles chemist who manufactured his "Organic Mineral Salt", claiming that it was superior to fluoridated water, had referred to fluoridation as "treason", "insanity", and "Communist". His side had won by a 2 to 1 margin a referendum against fluoridation in the city of Seattle. In January, 1952, when he had been making speeches against fluoridation in Iowa, he attracted the suspicion of the Clinton Herald, which discovered that he had been committed to the Illinois state hospital for the mentally ill in March, 1946 and had escaped from it in 1947. Dr. Bronner then quickly accepted the alternative to recommitment offered by the Clinton police, and departed town, but, nevertheless, the city council had voted against fluoridation by a margin of eight to one. Dr. Bronner pushed vitamin products and also opposed pasteurization of milk and cooking in aluminum pans, advocating use of his products in preference to fluoridated water. He had been convicted in Federal court in 1940 in Milwaukee of misbranding one of his products, which he claimed would cure 41 diseases and conditions, including goiter, Bright's disease, whooping cough, dropsy, cystitis, "weakness in hot weather", St. Vitus's dance, and loss of hair. In 1942, he had been ordered to stop shipping misbranded products in interstate commerce, and in 1951, a Federal court in Los Angeles ordered him to cease giving away some of his literature. Despite that history, after a speech to a women's club in Lakeland, Fla., in 1952, the city council there had been persuaded to return fluoridation equipment which they had not yet installed.
Dr. Lee, a trained dentist who had never practiced, and another dentist who practiced but had never been trained as such, having received his license in 1902 when dental college training was not required, were other opponents of fluoridation, with the latter also opposing vaccination. The Citizens Medical Reference Bureau was using some of the same arguments against fluoridation which it had used against vaccination during the 1920's and an AMA investigator had reported that the Bureau's secretary sold "Koch's drug for cancer", which consisted almost entirely of distilled water. The Milwaukee Journal had reported that the Bureau was financed by anti-vivisectionists and opponents of chlorination, vaccination and fluoridation.
Mr. Reinemer concludes that it was the extremists, rather than the occasional unconvinced physician or dentist, who persuaded voters and members of city councils to reject the advice of the health experts, with those extremists aided by the general indifference of newspapers and organizations. The opponents had put the Communists on the other side of the issue and had enlisted J. Edgar Hoover, who had warned the public in 1951 to report any attempted "poisoning of the public water supplies", having nothing to do with fluoridation, but nevertheless was employed in a campaign in Yonkers, N.Y., the previous fall to rescind a 1951 ordinance appropriating $10,000 to begin fluoridation in that community. Despite Mr. Hoover having issued a letter to a member of the city council stating that he had never issued any statement concerning fluoridation and that his earlier remark ought not be construed as an opinion on that subject, the council had voted 10 to 3 to rescind the ordinance. Mountain Home, Ark., had been one of the few communities to approve of fluoridation in the 1952 election, with the usual scare pamphlets having been outweighed by the weekly Baxter Bulletin, which had informed voters of the benefits of fluoridation, after a state health department dentist had proposed the treatment, and had shown up the opponents more effectively than many dailies in other communities.
Doris Fleeson, in Jerusalem, indicates that the principal architect of Israel's foreign relations was the "brilliant, intense" Prime Minister Moshe Sharett, under whose direction the nation looked steadily toward the West, which he did not always believe reciprocated with suitable warmth, one of many problems he faced. Since the Israeli-Arab armistice agreements of 1949, the Arab states had been waging a cold war against Israel, with the conflict occasionally becoming a hot war along the borders but chiefly consisting of economic sanctions.
Egypt prevented ships bound for Israeli ports to pass through the Suez Canal, and Iraq had shut off the oil pipeline which terminated at Haifa, the combination of which actions forced Israel to import its petroleum supplies primarily from Venezuela and to ship them the long way around, adding significantly to the cost. Syria had persuaded the U.N. Security Council to seal off a vital stretch of the Upper Jordan River, near the Sea of Galilee, so that an important water project had to be stopped. And Lebanon did not trade with Israel through its major port of Beirut.
Prime Minister Sharett still believed that the end result, after some undefined period, would be peace, and that in the meantime, a long waiting period would necessitate patience, while Israel became stronger and strengthened its ties with other nations. He reminded Americans that Israel had many times sought a mutual defense treaty with the U.S., which he candidly stated would be for the purpose of bringing the U.S. to Israel's aid if it were to be attacked and to stabilize its position in the Middle East. When asked whether Israel would like to join NATO, he responded that the question should be addressed to the U.S. State Department.
Meanwhile, he was at least in accord with Egypt on the issue of Iraq coming into the Western collective security system via an alliance with Greece and Turkey, with both nations objecting strenuously to such a move because it would weaken the Arab League and Israel by strengthening Egypt, with which Israel remained technically at war. Prime Minister Sharett said that the move would retard peace in the area, as well as establishing a general trend in that direction, with Iraq being the first step, as the latter had sent an army against Israel in 1948, though not sharing a common border, and that it was Israel's understanding that at present, heavy shipments of arms were going to Iraq. He emphasized, however, that Israel was present to stay, had plenty of work to do but desired only friendly relations with its neighbors. He described its paramount problem as "consolidation, integration of her people, continued progress toward complete economic independence." He stated that improvements in the world situation helped Israel, as well as everyone else, and he hoped it would help the Arab states, as it was not in the interests of Israel to remain as "the only island of progress in a sea of discontent."
When reminded that Israeli dynamism made many people feel that Israel would one day burst out of its borders, he replied: "Let them make peace and define our borders. That is the way to dispose of that fear."
He described U.S. Ambassador Eric Johnston's efforts to get the Jordan River multi-purpose water project moving with Israel, Syria, Jordan and Lebanon as being of great importance, but warned that it had to be concluded very soon, that there was not much time to lose, as Israel had quadrupled its irrigation area and would need to double that again, irrigation being the sine qua non for the country's progress, that if the project failed, Israel would then resume its freedom of action and do what it could to advance its projects.
David Nowinson, writing in the Los Angeles Times on the prior May 6, indicates that the average American believed that Horace Greeley had said, "Go west, young man," that Mark Twain had stated, "Everybody complains about the weather, but nobody does anything about it," and that P. T. Barnum had said, "There's a sucker born every minute." But, in fact, the quotes were not uttered by those to whom they were attributed.
In the case of the first such misascribed quote, John Soule, editor of the Terre Haute (Ind.) Express, had been chatting in 1851 about opportunities in the West with a friend, Richard Thompson, later Secretary of the Navy, when the latter had urged the former to travel westward as he could find more material for writing, that if he tried he could find enough for an article which would be attributed to the great Horace Greeley, prompting the doubt of the editor. But Mr. Thompson had persisted and they finally decided to bet on the matter, with the loser to buy a barrel of flour for a worthy poor person. Mr. Soule had then written an editorial for his newspaper, pointing out the opportunities offered young men by the West, observing that Horace Greeley could never have given a young man better advice than: "Go west, young man." Mr. Greeley then received many letters congratulating him on that advice, and the phrase grew so popular that it was attributed to him, causing him guilt and finally prompting him to explain it.
The New York Tribune, which Mr. Greeley edited, then reprinted the editorial of Mr. Soule, along with Mr. Greeley's statement: "The expression of this sentiment has been attributed to the editor of the Tribune erroneously, but so fully does he concur in the advice it gives that he endorses most heartily the epigrammatic advice of the Terre Haute Express and joins it in saying, 'Go west, young man.'"
Mr. Nowinson concludes that in spite of the admission by Mr. Greeley, for a century, people had continued to attribute to him the phrase he did not actually originate.
The next time some wise-acre proposes to quote P. T. Barnum, by the way, tell them that they are one of those born each minute.
The attribution to Mr. Soule, incidentally, has been debunked by an attorney in Indiana in 2004, finding that there was no evidence of the 1851 editorial by Mr. Soule or a disclaiming statement in the Tribune by Mr. Greeley, that the story of misattribution had apparently first circulated in a gossip column in 1890 in the Chicago Mail. And for that matter, the researcher found no direct verbatim use of the phrase even by Mr. Greeley, though similar such advice he had given. It was likely Calvin Coolidge who first uttered the phrase, as with so many other of his original epigrams, in splendid silence.
Whatever the case may be, Mr. Soule's poetry, the Louisville Journal's opinion to the contrary notwithstanding, did not match up, say, with Thomas Gray's "Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard", first published a century earlier, and, no doubt, provided the inspiration for the young editor-poet who appears also to have sat down that day in 1851 far from the madding crowd to compose his elegy. Nevertheless, no matter how you wind it through the wendings, north, south, east or west, of time's variant pronunciations, "sky" and "brilliancy" do not rhyme except among either the semiliterate or, perhaps, those steeped in too much wine on the slopes in Colorado. Of course, "God" and "abode", from the paradigm on which he patterned his latter-day offering, also can scarcely be reconciled in runic metering by any acceptable modern pronunciation, even from across the pond, especially as God is considered incorporeal in being, though perhaps sometimes a spelling rod along the rood, albeit the further remoteness in time might more likely lend to it some degree of bond-enshackled freeing. Mayhaps, however, we can make allowance for poetic license in Mr. Soule's use of "during" for "enduring", the "en-" otherwise throwing akilter his four syllabic feet of each alternate line, though a ninth might have been specially added as a meteoric sign, or "lone", else "lode", substituted, as it was the middle of the Nineteenth Century, a decade prior to the start of the Civil War—when life was slow
By the way, they really did traffick in quite a degree of mirthful mischief in that tv presentation of Huck Finn, such that the liberties taken with the original script must represent some sort of Commie infiltration of the Writers Guild probably at work. You should direct the matter to your Congressman for thorough investigation when next you get a chance. Putting such filth on the tv screens and commending it to the young, even selling it with Dodge and a recapitulation of the supporting cast of the wholesome "Stagecoach", a film with guts. It's no wonder...
Framed Edition
Links-Date — Links-Subj.