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I have thought of all these, but I still can't figure it out.
LESLIE R. KAUFMAN
New York City
— When a captain gets an order to stop, hears the sound of a blank shell being fired, sees a puff of smoke, he usually stops. If he does not stop, a real shell may cross his bow. Real shells whistle.
—ED.
Shumlin's Advertisements
Sirs :
You describe me as "short, bespectacled, intellectual." I am pleased about the "intellectual" and have shown it with great pleasure to all my friends. But I am hurt at being called short. I am no giant, but I am 5 it in height. You also say that I wear my hat indoors in order to conceal my baldness. Whenever you like I'll arrange a public unveiling.
As for being the only Broadway producer to advertise in the Daily Worker, no one has ever accused Broadway producers of being smart advertisers, and I try to follow the advertising policies of the large motion picture companies like the Radio City Music Hall and Twentieth-Century Fox. What's good enough for the Rockefellers and the Chase Bank is good enough for me.
HERMAN SHUMLIN
New York City
P.S. By the way, did any masked informer point out that as of April 3, 1939, Herman Shumlin was the only Broadway producer advertising in TIME? If so, what deduction was drawn and/or quartered, what brands burned in whose hides?
Chicory, Chickery
Sirs:
May I rise to a point of order? In your issue of Jan. 29 Radio, p. 50, you describe one of the Grand Ole Opry sponsors as a chicory manufacturer.
I believe that this is an error. You probably refer to Carter's Chickery, Eldorado, ILL., which is one of the Grand Ole Opry sponsors.
Carter's Chickery, you may be interested to know, is one of the country's larger producers of baby chicks. . . .
The business of hatching baby chicks has become such a fine art that it is now possible for hatcherymen to ship their customers broods made up either of all-pullet chicks or all-cockerel chicks. Formerly, the poultry raiser had to take pot luck with his chicks, which were usually divided 50-50 as to sex by Mother Nature.
JACK HEWSON
Evansville, Ind.
—Reader Hewson's point is well taken.
—ED.
Dead Men's Pistols
Sirs:
In TIME for Jan. 8, you had a story that . . . reads as follows:
"Yesterday, in a hand-to-hand fight, I was separated from my men and surrounded by Bolsheviks. Three of them, armed with automatic pistols, started hunting me. I killed two of them and the third one ran away. Thank heavens for that! . . . By that time my old pistol, which wasn't very good as you know, was so hot that it broke to pieces. ... It is now, as you know, that your brother's life is depending on his knife."
This letter was written by a Finnish soldier to his sister. We were just wondering why the soldier would ask his sister for a gun if there were two dead soldiers with automatic pistols. . . .
DOUG HORNBECK AND JACK DEDRICK Grade 8 Sidney Junior High School Sidney, Nebr.