Letters, Sep. 16, 1935

(2 of 5)

Not so long ago Dothan experienced a hot campaign to decide whether to sell the town's power system to the Alabama Power Co. The Eagle took the side of the private ownership advocates and won. After the fight a man interested in the private ownership of the plant left a substantial sum of money at the Eagle office. When Julian Hall found the money in the office safe he wept with rage, sent the money back.

Hot-tempered, stubborn, pugnacious Editor Hall is such a stickler for fairness in his papa's news columns that beside it even the august New York Times appears purple with prejudice.

Noteworthy is the fact that the Eagle's new plant and equipment are completely paid for and that its staff, headed by able Managing Editor Dorian Stout, is generously paid in comparison with the larger State papers, that its circulation has increased 50% in a year.

And Dothan, by the way, is no "drowsy market town." Thirty years old and spanking new when compared to the other cities of Alabama, it retains much of its early frontier-like vigor. It was only a couple of decades ago, as I remember the tale, when the chief of police, sitting in front of the police station, made 17 arrests without getting out of his chair.

CHARLES ALLDREDGE

Oklahoma City, Okla.

Buddha's Sit

Sirs:

TIME, Sept. 2, errs in saying "Buddha . . . sat six years under a Bo tree."

Vol. I, The Great Events by Famous Historians—"For six years he gave himself up to the severest penance until he was wasted away to a shadow by fasting and self mortification." Finally Siddhartha saw the futility of physical discipline to attain mental ends, and coming to a large tree sat down in its shade to eat.

He remained there all day pondering upon what next to do, and at the end of the day he had become "Buddha" the enlightened one, having grasped the four noble Truths: "Life is sorrow." "Desire is the cause of sorrow." "The extinction of desire is the ending of sorrow." "There is an eight fold way to happiness, or right living."

RICHARD WEISFIELD

Seattle, Wash.

Buddha's Bone Sirs:

. . . Regarding the tiny bone, reputedly that of the Buddha, brought to San Francisco by Japanese Bishop Kenju Masuyama, one should be reminded, perhaps, that when the Buddha died . . . his ashes were divided among eight towns and buried in separate dagabas, or tombs. Seven of these were opened by the Indian Emperor Asoka . . . in 264 B.C., and the ashes distributed in 84,000 urns among the peoples, nations and cities he had proselytized.

The Borobudur, in mid-Java, erected between 760 and 850 A.D. . . . is the most notable memorial to the Buddha's ashes extant. Contrary to popular conception, the Borobudur (meaning "Many Buddhas," because of 432 images of the Buddha enshrined in niches and latticed dagabas among its upper galleries and terraces) is not a temple, but a reliquary for just such a trivial bone as that San Francisco remnant.

DEANE H. DICKASON

Producer of "Port o' Call," Travelogs

New York City

This England!

Sirs:

As a worthy TIME reader, I am deprived for the first time of reading you from cover to cover. Oh, this England! Or is it you?

RICHARD S. MINER London