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"If you are not gone for good, Mr. Riderhood, it would be something to know where you are hiding at present. This flabby lump of mortality that we work so hard at with such patient perseverance, yields no sign of you. If you are gone for good, Rogue, it is very solemn, and if you are coming back, it is hardly less so. Nay, in the suspense and mystery of the latter question, involving that of where you may be now, there is a solemnity even added to that of death, making us who are in attendance alike afraid to look on you and to look off you, and making those below start at the least sound of a creaking plank in the floor."
MARION T. MACMILLAN
Oxford, Ohio
Sirs:
His soul remained attached by a tenuous chord to his heart within seven feet of his mortal body. . . .
E. M. SMOLA
New York City
Doldrums
Sirs:
You complain about the midsummer doldrums in literature. It is barely possible that you may be helping to cause these doldrums. Many of your readers might be interested to know about a best-selling novel called Dragon Harvest.
UPTON SINCLAIR
Monrovia, Calif.
¶ By Upton Sinclair. TIME reviewed Wide Is the Gate, vol. 4 of Author Sinclair's serial-in-progress. Dragon Harvest is vol. 6. And the doldrums are more than midsummer.—ED.
Sirs:
You feel that the Russian soldier [TIME, Aug. 20] "thrusting a fistful of rubles" while "liberating" a German bicycle is "confused perhaps by the peculiar customs of an acquisitive society."
You may be right. For in all similar "liberations" by American troops of German bicycles, automobiles and household goods which we have witnessed, the rubles were entirely omitted.
(T/4) PHILIP JOHNSON (T/5) SIGMUND H. STEMBLER (T/5) GEORGE GRANT CARR (T/4) ROBERT B. NOTESTEIN (T/5) ROBERT J. SHAUGHNESSY
% Postmaster
New York City
Debut
Sirs:
All my life I've wanted a few things a young girl needs and prays for. So today I read about a $40,000 debut. Then I think that a thousand of American girls like myself could have gotten a watch or a coat, maybe braces for her teeth with a bit of money spent so lavishly and foolishly. . . . While we skimp and save and do without so much that could make us happy. I am a private in the Army . . . draw monthly $36. ... I'll bum cigarets when I am broke, but I'll never admire or respect these people who throw thousands of dollars away to show off their kids. . . . Maybe some day I'll have a fur coat and a swell watch, nice home and family—but damn I'll work like hell and raise my family with more sense and value of love and security than any of those 400 class kids will ever have. . . .
(PVT.) DAWN VAN HORN
Miami, Fla.
Sirs:
Betty Tyson's recent society splurge [TIME, Sept. 3] makes me snort at the exhortatiohs on unemployment. There's a lot of us who will never see that much money—the estimated $40,000 coming-out party—in our whole lives and it won't be because we don't work hard to earn it. ...