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You like accuracy so please get this straight. In one of your last issues, I have forgotten which, as I find them lying around my mother's apartment here, a week or more old, and read the wisecracks without looking at the dates. you copied an article in the division called People, from the Herald Tribune to the effect that Hendrik van Loon, Hendrik Willem van Loon to be exact, had arrived in America and groaned at the prospect of his son's becoming an interpretative dancer (TIME, July 20). And that son you called Hendrik Willem van Loon Jr. That's all very well except for two mistakes, first of all Hendrik van Loon is not at all displeased at his son's conduct and secondly that son is not Hendrik Willem Jr. In fact a jr. in this family does not exist, my parents being neither of them unoriginal have never been at a loss to find brand new names for their offsprings and my older brother and I have gotten sick of seeing ourselves Hendrik-van-Loon-Jr.'ed so I hope you won't mind my putting this straight. My brother, in America, is Henry Bowditch van Loon and I am Willem Gerard van Loon. On the dancing stage I leave off the van Loon as I don't believe in family parties. As to the Iragic parental groan and the reference to the great and understanding liberty Otto Kahn granted his son. that is all a lot of h0013r. Is America still so puritanical that a dancer is held as something inferior to a painter, a sculptor or even an historian? I don't see the difference. An historian merely tells old stories in new words and an interpretative dancer expresses already existing music in movements suitable to his body, which, as every body is different must naturally become new movements. Or is there something disgraceful in a free and healthy body?
I don't know what my father said or did at the dock when confronted with the question of what I was up to but in any case it must have been greatly magnified by gossip-hunters, but I only wish that my parent would desist in future from giving rise to such rotten and unhelpful publicity.
Also I wish many smug writers my waistline.
WILLEM GERARD VAN LOON
Paris, France
16-Year-Old Bankers
Sirs:
I am very interested in finance and have been reading the financial section of TIME for about a year. You would be surprised to know how much a 16-year-old boy can learn about banking, stocks, etc. just from reading that section. I am 16, so I know.
At present I hold the position of president of Purcell Dexter & Co. We make loans to the fellows at school and do a little investing in The New York Stock Exchange. Now, I was wondering if you would suggest anything else we could do along the lines of banking. We are rather handicapped because nobody in the company is over the age of 16. Our authorized capital stock is 25 shares of common stock at twenty-five cents ($.25) par value and 100 shares of preferred stock at one dollar ($1.00) par value. The dividend on the preferred is 12% per annum. The market value of the comnnn at present is eighty cents ($.80). We have two offices in Seattle and one in Victoria, B. C. . . .
HUGH D. PURCELL
Seattle, Wash.
Let wiser banking heads than TIME'S suggest stunts for able Purcell Dexter & Co.—ED. How Amory Looks Sirs: