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In TIME, Aug. 10, is a cut of Lord Kylsant entitled "Convict Kylsant." A convict in England is one sentenced to penal servitude. Lord Kylsant was sentenced to 12 months in the Second Division, and to call him "convict'' is apt to be considered libelous.
In view of the enormous ground covered by TIME its accuracy is so remarkable that we feel all puffed up with pride when we detect an error!
MILINKA WALDEN
Washington, Ind.
The status of a criminal is fixed, not by the kind of sentence which is imposed but by the verdict rendered by the court: A convict is "anyone who has been adjudged guilty of a criminal offence by a court of competent jurisdiction" (Encyclop. Brit.). Lord Kylsant was convicted of the crime of issuing a false prospectus of his Royal Mail Steam Packet Co.'s debenture stock. His sentence to twelve months in the second division merely excludes him from hard labor. Until the judgment of the court is reversed by another, Lord Kylsant remains a convict.—ED.
Limps, Warts, Canary Legs
Sirs:
I was glad to see your Aug. 3 reply to subscriber Riecher's criticism in re physical characteristics of Messrs. Capone and Chiang. These personal comments (unknown to many of us) treated in your own particular style make TIME just a little different from the other periodicals.
I hope that I may still rely upon you for my mind pictures of people whose names make news.
This is from a subscriber whose entire weekly reading consists of the morning paper, the evening paper and TIME.
JOHN W. F. HOBBS
Somerville, Mass.
Sirs:
We fully agree with the Editor's comment in answer to A. W. Riechers, apropos Capone, Chiang, Hearst (Page 2, TIME, Aug. 3) when he says: "Physical characteristics are an inevitable concomitant of personality. And personalities are the stuff of which history is made. TIME, historian, must continue to notice noses large & small, waists wasp or fat."
And may we add, by way of further comment, that there can be no clear-cut, vivid description of a person in real life or of a character in literature without mention of his dominant physical features. We must know the characteristics that differentiate him from his fellows for then, and only then, can we become interested in him. We must know, for example, that the poet Lord Byron was lame and that his schoolmates were proud to imitate the "Byronic limp." We remember Cyrano de Bergerac all the better by reason of his big nose. And this recalls Chaucer's Miller in the "Prologue" to the Canterbury Tales who sported a wart on his nose, and out of the wart grew a tuft of red hairs (lines 552 to 556 of the "Prologue"). My pupils ten and 15 years out of school will always remember the Miller by this description of his nose when they may have forgotten that he was an immoral scamp, could steal corn, and take toll three times.
Wel coude he stelen corn and tollen thrycs.