Indianapolis Times, Volume 45, Number 252, Indianapolis, Marion County, 1 March 1934 — Page 13
Second Section
It Seems to Me By Heywood Broun MIAMI, March I.—They handed Joe Williams a telegram in the Jacksonville station. He tossed it over to me. “McGraw is dead,” it said. We knew how sick he had been, but it came as a shock. It was a shock to me because after nineteen years I was going south again to a training camp. The last time had been at Marlin with McGraw and Matty
and Merkle. I think it was during that season of 1915 that Larry Doyle said. “It's great to be young and a Giant.” I suppose it was an important part of McGraw’s great capacity for leadership that he could take kids out of coal mines and wheat fields and make them walk and talk and chatter and play ball with the look of eagles. McGraw 7 was one of the first to break down the reluctance of big and expensive hotels to cater to ball clubs. His teams went to places where the carpets were as soft and thick as the turf of one of Henry Fabians diamonds. It was a part of the McGraw 7 showmanship
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Hevwood Broun
and psychology to cultivate a swagger in his crew which ran up and down the bench from star to lowly substitute. The Giants of the fighting days feared neither God, Three-Fingered Brown nor the head waiter. man Her/nn When Freud I)id DR. SIGMUND FREUD and John McGraw never met, as far as I know—which is a pity, since they might have learned much from each other. If I remember the case histories of the physician he began his first work on a Vienna cab driver w'ho was forever falling asleep and tumbling off his high seat. It was about that time that McGraw went to work, quite independently, on the case of Fred Mcrkle. At the time I met Merkle in Marlin the cure already was demonstrated. In the little hick towns the fans still cried out when he came to bat, “don't forget to touch second base!’’ and each one shouted out the phrase as if he himself had coined it. But up and down the long lantern jaw of the ball player there was no sign of any flush, and he went through no formula of muttered curses. He simply waited for one he liked and took his cut. Merkle had taken to heart and assimilated McGraw’s philosophy, which was quite short. It ran like this: “To hell with them!” He taught the same formula to Rube Marquard, “the SII,OOO lemon.” and to Ferdie Schupp, the squirrel fancier, who still holds an earned-run record which has never been touched. nan A Shan ye Alliance BUT John McGraw molded this ego and that one like an Atlantic City beach sculptor, only one of his creations ever came fully to life as far as McGraw was concerned.' The potter knew the flaws in his models, and during a tight game John McGraw had a raging contempt for all the umpires, the members of the other club and his own Dlayers. And it w r as true that he did think faster. The difference of course, was only fractional. But many a pennant has been won or lost in tenths of seconds. In his later years as manager it seemed to me that McGraw hurt the color of his team somewhat by the manner in which he handled his pitchers. Even the greenest fan more or less got the idea that the manager was calling every shot. Perhaps after long association with Matty every other pitcher seemed so dumb and unsatisfactory. The alliance between Mathewson and McGraw 7 w 7 as one of the strangest and one of the most successful in baseball. Matty, of course, not only worked on each batter according to his theories, but shifted the team about in anticipation of the spot where the defense should concentrate. He was a field marshal with whom the little Napoleon never interfered. I don’t even remember any fights or harsh w'ords passing between them in the years when I sav? much of the Giants. They were both fighters, but according to a different scheme. McGraw in a rage at a stupid play would toss salt into the wound the moment the erring one came back of the plate. The team could fill the bases back of Matty on silly schoolboy errors, and he would merely call for the ball, dig his toes in a little deeper and break his fadeaway into a still more tantalizing sweep. And the curious part of it is that the ball players liked McGraw better than they liked Matty. a a a A Hard Loser THEY could understand the rage and the sharp edge of McGraw’s comment. Matty's silence left them puzzled. A man who made a very punishing blunder behind the pitcher more or less wished that he would say something. The failure to grumble or complain was just a little too like a god. The outfielder who trotted into the bench with his hands flagrant in their sins against the fielding averages probably felt that somewhere in a secret cupboard Matty was storing up his wrath and resentment. McGraw told you right off. He always wanted to win. and I never knew a harder loser whether the issue at stake was a world's series title or a practice game with Bridgeport. But he and Matty understood each other. Off the playing field McGraw's generosity and kindness were proverbial. No old ball player ever was turned down. In fact. I doubt that anybody evei was turned down. McGraw 7 handled money in the w 7 ay he scooped up bunts as third baseman w 7 ith the Orioles. He was chain lightning with a throw; nobody could pay any sort of check, when McGraw was around. He had just the right hands for a spender. When a Florida real estate deal in which he was interested collapsed he paid off over a stretch of years to every friend whom he had avised to buy the stock. John had his pride. And when there comes a great knocking on the gate of heaven and the announcement that McGraw of the Giants is there I hope they’ll call ’em right for him. In fact, I pity the archangel who fails to do so. And even more I pity any one of the holy saints who tries to pull a watch and banish from the celestial park John J. McGraw. I Copyright, 1934. by The Times)
Your Health BY DR. MORRIS Flgm,rm MANY of us think that, if a little of some healing method is good, a great deal is even better. But if any one factor, recently developed, has been abused by overuse, it is sunlight. The first scientific uses of sunlight in treatment began thousands of years ago. That was long before the time of the development of the modern machines which provide artificial sunlight. Since these machines came, persons expose themselves to ultraviolet rays without medical advice or supervision and. as a result, cases begin to appear in the practice of physicians which prove that these excessive exposures are not without danger. Persons who live in the tropics usually are dark skinned. This darkening of the skin is nature's way of protecting them against too much exposure to the sun's rays. One of the dangers of too frequent and too much exposure to ultra violet rays is possible stimulation to the growth of tumors. BBS CERTAIN persons are especially sensitive to the rays of the sun. and respond to the excess exposure by the breaking out of blisters and severe inflammations. The forms of skin disturbances following excessive exposure to the sun are many. Furthermore, there are eruptions of the skin, such as those of psoriasis and the condition called multiforme erythema, which certainly are made worse by severe sunburn.
Full Wire Serrloe of the United Press Association
Three times in a hundred years Ch arles Dickens dramatically has captured the mind of America. With ‘The Pickwick Papers'" in the 1830's he did. In the roarinsr ’4o's he did. when he came over from England to be the idol of every one In this country to whom he had Introduced Pickwick. Sam Weller and Mrs. Bardell. Now. with Charles Dickens dead sixtv-four years, the phenomenon has recurred with the announcement that his hitherto unpublished “The Life of Our Lord.” written for his children, is to be published here—in The Times and throughout the country in other Scripps-Howard newspapers. In a series of six articles, of which this is the first. William Enele. Times special writer, discusses Dickens’ works and life and recalls his peculiarly individualistic fight for social reforms—some at last achieved: some still the objective of reformers today—alone both the Thames and the Hudson. BY WILLIAM ENGLE Times Special Writer PROBABLY most of us who turn to bookshelves nowadays think of him as a bearded elder who looked like the Rev. Charles H. Parkhurst. But Charles John Huffham Dickens, w 7 hen with “The Pickwick Papers” he won his first conquest of America and the remainder of the Engish-speaking world, was an apple-cheeked London newspaper nonenity, and he was 24.
That youth’s coup ninety-eight years ago was a strange one. It was an unprecedented one, and it has fallen out to be one. too, with implications reaching even into the bookcases of Manhattan today. Fame came then to that young Dickens, not overnight, as to Byron, but almost as abruptly, and more dramatically. Early in the year 1836 he was the obscure and only sketchily educated son of an amiably irresponsible clerk, a father so impecunious as once to get himself into the Marshalsea prison for debtors; before the year was out his name was spoken at more firesides than was the name of George 111His Pickwick by that time had on the breeches of immortality; his Sam Weller had on no lesser garment. a a a A S the tales came to the stalls in monthly numbers London, quick victim of their vitality, began to don “Pickwick hats”; came out in plum colored “Pickwick coats’; there were ‘Pickwick canes” and ‘Pickwick gaiters,” and a dark, lean cigar, destined long to be famous, was christened "The Penny Pickwick.” It was such a grandiose reception as moon-faced, happily floundering Pickwick himself, had he been in the flesh, devoutly would have desired. Sam Weller, his servant, compounded of humor and simplicity and fidelity, would have revelled in it, too. The series began ostensibly as reports of the travels of members of the Corresponding Society of the Pickwick Club, after that imaginary band had shown its esteem for elderly Mr. Pickwick with his bland face, his bald head, his fawn colored tights and his black gaiters, by resolving: “That this association has heard read with feelings of unmingled satisfaction and unqaulified approval the paper communicated by Samuel Pickwick, Esq., general chairman and perpetual vicepresident, entitled ‘Speculations on the Source of the Hampstead Ponds, With Some Observations on the Theory of Tittlebats’.” a a a THE instalments, priced at a shilling each for the greenbound copies, did not sell at first. But the fifth number introduced Sam Welleer. Then the circulaton soared. “Lord Macaulay, not reaHy himself a comic genius, chronciled the fact that it seemed to him that with Samuel Weller something new and great had come into the English literature.” says Stephen Leacock in his Dickens biography. “This was apparently the view of thousands of lesser people. “From this point on the ‘Papers’ moved with an accelerated power and interest. The Homeric episode of Bardell vs. Pickwick (she was the landlady who sued him for breach of promise) gathers on the horizon. The vast, gigantic satire upon the law and lawyers, law courts and justice, with the tragic background of the debtors’ prison, lifts the ‘Pickwick Papers’ from the hit-and-run of nimrods to the proportion of grand romance. “A breathless interest followed each successive number.”
SIDE GLANCES
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“Let’s , finish up those caramels so we .can_concentration the show.”
The Indianapolis Times
IMMORTAL DICKENS MARCHES ON Fame Came Dramatically to Poor Newspaperman at 24
INDIANAPOLIS, THURSDAY, MARCH 1, 1934
aries LncKens cramaucauy nas b 1830’s he did. In the roarinsr ’4o's he „ \\ ■ H 1H IM n rn "I.J to bookshelves nowadays think of | J[ >: 1r f \. ked like the Rev. Charles H. Park- | • < jSy/ /P t\ - Dickens, when with "The Pickwick ii */ of America and the remainder of l /jfl£^ssg!E!j^* apple-cheeked London newspaper \ j \ ;/. /j It * I young man can hardly picture to themseh f;^ :^*, * is <g , t(%>\ V f i | ' (fry the extent of his personal pop ■•• :|9B '£/ *> £*Ur „ Ifflifflir Cruickshank) larity * When I walked with hi k. a LrUlChStianKJ j n the streets of London or els V s - J| -4 L -2~~~-rrt> ‘vn * .■,..." and in Inter where it was like a royal progre; ra, There the g“3£ he & always "had. *? . . thmicrnr n rprrain rpsprvp nnrn
SALES rose to 40,000 each number. Dickens received, besides his fifteen guineas apeace, £2.500 pound sterling for the serial numbers and a slice of the copyright. In return, he put down on paper, sometimes in caricature, sometimes in truthful harshness, the England of his time, and G. K. Chesterton, in his “Critical Study,” says that as the story
Mr. Pickwick Learns to Drive.
moved “the strange and stirring discovery which Dickens made was this—that having chosen a fat old man of the middle classes as a good thing of which to make a butt, he found that a fat old man of the middle classes is the very best thing of which to make a romantic adventurer.” Yet even at that time, with immaturity hardly past, Dickens obviously felt within him that urge for social reform which later was to flare into open contempt for vested interests, indignation over the absurdity of his country’s courts, and was to light up his crusade for better breaks for all the lowly. The year after “Pickwick” was finished, “Oliver Twist” follow r ed it—assailing abuses of the poorlaw and the workhouse system, and Dickens was on his way toward being realist rather than romancer. a a a “T HAVE yet to learn,” he said, A “that a lesson of the purest good may not be drawn from the vilest evil. I have always believed this to be a recognized and established truth, laid down by the greatest men the world has ever seen, constantly acted upon by the greatest and wisest natures, and confirmed by the reason and experience of every thinking mind. “I saw no reason, when I wrote this book, why the dregs of life, so
By George Clark
long as their speech did not offend the ear, should not serve the purpose of a moral at least as well as its frothy and cream. Nor did I doubt that there lay festering in Saint Giles’ as good materials toward the truth as any to be found iin Saint James’ . . . And therefore I did as best I could.” “For him,” says Leacock, “there were no more rules of art than there were rules of battle for Napoleon.” So he continued merely to do the best he could turning out a prodigious amount of writing. He continued almost uninterruptedly until on June 9, 1870, at the age of 58, his health affected by rigorous work, he arose from the manuscript of the unfinished twenty-third chapter of “Edwin Drood,” with his last written words, “and then falls to with an appetite.” And died. a a a IN the days between, the man who as a boy had been a label paster in a warehouse held —with his writing words—the admiration of two continents. He amassed a fortune more than modest. He had ten children whom he loved. And it was not until after twenty-two years of marriage that his separation from his wife revealed the incompatibility which had arisen, a wall, between them. Then, at last, disclosing that although fame long had beaten
Meet Claudette Colbert, the Little Lady From *Gay Paree, ’ Who Made Good
She’s Traveled a Long Way Since Her Debut on the New York Stage Back in the Days of 1924. BY WALTER D HICKMAN DO you want to meet Claudette Colbert? Not personally by shaking her hand, but to know some facts which has made this woman an important figure in the films. Bud Gray is in town in interest of Columbia's production of “It Happened One Night” and he can tell you a lot about Miss Colbert. Clark Gable and Miss Colbert are the two who carry this story of what might happen on a bus to an interesting conclusion. But to go back to Mr. Gray, Miss Colbert remembers Grandpere Chauchoin in Paris while he tried to sing grand opera while being a farmer in France, Claudette was bom in Paris in 1907 in the section of that city known as Sanite Mande. She remembers little of her early life in Paris except with the walks she had with her mother. The head of the house was not too* successful in a business way, so after much discussion, the family left for America. Claudette arrived here at the age of 6. Papa Georges landed a job in the foreign department of the First National bank. The strict discipline of a French home kept her even in this country a girl versed in the French language. It wus in high school that Claudette took on friends and began to develop her personality. She even made the basketball team!
Dickens as a young man (by Cruickshank) and in later years .
upon the walls of his several fine homes, it may not have compensated for words spoken within, he wrote: “I suppose that no two people, not vicious themselves, ever were joined together who had a greater difficulty in understanding each other, or who had less in common.” He was born, the oldest boy of eight children, son of John and Elizabeth Dickens, on Feb. 7, 1812, in Landport, a suburb of Portsea, and two years afterward was taken to Chatham. So always he called himself a Kentish man, born and bred, with Kent always in his blood. a a a IN “David Copperfield,” regarded by many as his greatest novel, and in part autobiographical, it was at Chatham that distraught little David on his lonely tramp to Dover, slept “near a cannon, happy in the society of the sentry’s footsteps.” It was there that many a Christmas tale was set. There Dickens spent most of the last thirteen years of his life, and there he died. He began to write descriptive sketches of people in hisvstreets when neighbors still called him “a very queer little boy.” But there was not much time. When his father went to debtors’ prison he went to Jonathan Warren’s blacking warehouse at Hungerford Stairs to paste labels on blacking pots. But when he was 22 the famous Whig journal, the Morning Chronicle, then in its heydey, hired him as a reporter, and that led him into fiction. “Sketches by Boz” preceded “Pickwick,” and were indistinguished. Yet for a long time they labeled him. He was known as Boz and in some of his autobiographies he is “Bozzed” through the booksTwo days after the first “Pickwick” paper appeared on April 2, 1836, he married Catherine Thomson Hogarth. They went to London, and were happy. In modest Doughty street there were not any shadows; the shadows were gathering on august Gad’s Hill, where fortune later was' to put them. U tt tt FORTUNE, meanwhile, made Dickens a citizens almost regal in the eyes of his peers. “There was, indeed, much in his life which was calculated to turn his head,” wrote his son, Sir Henry F. Dickens, last year, a little while before his death.
as well as the French Dramatic Club. A school teacher took an interest in the little girl and soon she became theatrical minded. The teacher placed her in an “arty” theatrical crowd and that was the way Claudette started to be an actress. B St B THE first place that Claudette played in was a “converted staple” used as a theater. When she graduated high school Miss Colbert sought work as a designer. She finally obtained work in a department store. She convinced the manager that she could draw a design, but %he got into trouble because of the design, and she was fired. She made her debut in 1924 on the Broadway stage by speaking several groups of three lines in “The Wild Westcotts.” She was nervous, but made a good impression, which paved the way for her father and mother to approve a career as an actress. In her struggle to become an “actress” she became a member of stock companies. Then came the break. She became a member of “Leah Kleschna.” as produced by the late Jesse Bonstell. Then she went into other plays, including “The Cat Came Back,” “High Stakes.” “The Ghost Train,” and many others. She was asked to appear in “The Barker,’ and that started her on a real career. a tt B HER marriage to Norman Foster was supposed to have been kept a secret, but it leaked out. She would not leave Norman., although Hollywood was asking tot he*. After many strange book-
“People bom in these later years can hardly picture to themselves the extent of his personal popularity. When I walked with him in the streets of London or elsewhere it was like a royal progress, the passersby taking off their hats to him as he passed, as though he u 7 ere indeed a royal personage. This was the adulation by the people w 7 hich he prized above all.” In his later years, said Sir Henry, Dickens was, as always, extremely punctual and precise in daily routine. Breakfast between 8 and 9; a stroll in the garden, with a cigar; then work in his library, usually without luncheon; down for a walk at 3. “Sometimes he would stroll into the dining room (at noon) and take a biscuit and a glass of sherry, but generally when he did so his mind w 7 as far away and he rarely spoke to us on such occasions.” a a a HE rarely spoke, either, when Sir Henry, then a youth, went with him on late afternoon jaunts along the picturesque marshes of the Thames; Sir Henry said his father was thinking up more things to write. Although he was hospitable, and through many years in ebullient spirits, he always had, his son thought, a certain reserve hard to understand. When the son received a Cambridge scholarship, and told his father, Dickens said, “Capital! Capital!” and nothing more. The boy disappointed. “Then half w T ay up the drive to Gad’s Hill,” Sir Henry wrote, “he completely broke dow 7 n. Turning to me with tears in his eyes he said, “God bless you, my boy!” and gave me a grip of the hand which I can still almost feel.” It proved—as the books so often proved, of course—that Dickens did see into men’s minds and hearts. Sometimes he caricatured. Sometimes he satirized. Anyway, he knew men. a a a HE studied his countrymen. He glorified the commonplace. He had an eye for detail like Sinclair Lewis, and a passion for the oppressed like Upton Sinclair. He had such command of characterization that the men and women of his books have got into, and have stayed in, the common speech. As well try to dwarf the personality of Queen Victoria as of Micawber or David Copperfield. Chesterton thinks some of the “fastidious” feel that Dickens was not a good writer but a great one. Chesterton rounds out the thought: “Whatever the word ‘great’ means, Dickens was what it means.” Tomorrow—Dickens in America.
ings. which kept them in different cities, Norman and Claudette arrived in Hollywood. But there was another honeymoon in 1930 when they made a world tour together. Now, after many movies, Miss Colbert arrives at the Circle tomorrow in the movie, “It Happened One Night.’’ tt tt tt In Indianapolis Theaters LOCAL theaters today offer “Moulin Rouge’’ at the Palace, “Words and Music” on the stage and “Advice to the Lovelorn” on the screen at the Lyric, “Bolero” at the Circle, “No More Women” and ‘Search for Beauty” at the Indiana, and “Palooka” at the Apollo.
YOUTH IN PATH OF TROLLEY SAVED BYALERT MOTORMAN
By United Pres* CINCINNATI, March I.—A trolley motorman’s calm judging of distance saved a boy coaster from almost certani death here. William Hampton, the motorman, saw Clifford Seig, 7, coasting from a driveway toward the path of the oncoming street car. Mr. Hampton kept his head, sped his car momentarily, then braked the car to a stop. The boy held grimly to the sled. Passengers and pedestrians screamed as they saw boy and sled disappear under the oar, but sighed relief when both reappeared on the other side. The sled had passed Just to the rear of the front trucks of the car.
Second Section
Entered as Second-Class Matter at PostofTice, Indianapolis
Fair Enough By ! Westbrook Pegler THE .only celebrity of the prize, fight profession who has opened a saloon in Chicago since tha repeal of prohibition is Mr. Dave Barry, the referee who tolled the long count over Gene Tunney in the historic civic uplift contest which was intended to make Chicago a better place in which to live. Mr. Barry, a man v 7 ith an ideal, has started a beverage parlor within the Chicago loop in which
he will endeavor to preserve the fine traditions established by the late Malachi Hogan. Mr. Hogan was a referee, too, who could clear his own bar, in a vault, from behind or in front, without touching his other hand to the wood and kept, in Mr. Barry's opinion, the most beautiful saloon in the world. There were autographed photographs of all the famous pugilists and baseball players and actors hanging on the walls and Hogan's .saloon was the rendezvous of the best people of the arena, the ball yard and the stage. Malachi Hogan was the hero of a song composed by a comedian named John W. Kelly.
the rolling mill man, called “When Hogan pays his rent.” “The idea of the song,” says Mr. Barry, “was that when Hogan paid his rent it was like Fourth of July, it happened so seldom. He wasn’t close but he was careless. He used to clean out the till at closing time and go out and spend some money with the other saloonkeepers around town. They were pretty much alike, the saloonkeepers thought, so they used to clean out their tills sometimes and come in and spend some money with him. a a a He's Not Going to lie Short “T DO not mean that I intend to be short with my JL rent in this place of mine when I say I wish to carry on the ideals of Malachi Hogan and revive all that was finest in the saloon business. What I mean is I will try to cater to a strictly high-class trade of the most famous fighters of the day and age and all the theatrical celebrities and writers. I was only a young man then, but I still have beautiful memories of Hogan’s and I can see him yet, with one hand on the bar, sailing gracefully over the top to stop any little dispute that might happen between friends in the course of an evening. I have been giving myself a little practice and I find that I now 7 can go over pretty well with two hands.” The principal deedration in Mr. Barry's window, aside from the sign reading “Regular Dinner, 45 Jents,” is an old newspaper photograph of Gene Tunney sitting in a limp attiude with his left hand clinging to the lower rope of the ring at Soldiers’ field, as Mr. Barry turns to shoo Jack Dempsey to the farthest neutral corner. This incident was Mr. Barry’s entire career as you might say because up to that time he was only a retired pugilist and only one of many ex-prize-fighters, although he fought Joe Gans and Jimmy Clabby and would prefer sometimes to speak of these matters. “I suppose,” Mr. Barry continues, “they will have me telling all about it a million times more before I am through and a friend of mine in the music business wants me to make a phonograph record of the story and just turn it on when a customer asks me to tell the true inside dope on the long count. But I wish my customers to feel that I am their pal and friends, on the order of Malachi Hogan, and $ do not mind telling it when they come in for a littlj refreshment and happen to ask how it all happened. ana He's Going to Have Pictures “\JOW, along these walls here, I am going to ga* TN some beautiful art photographs, colored like murals, of the scene at Soldiers’ field that night, with Tunney sitting there like that and me chasing Dempsey away. And I will have some other pictures of historical moments in the realm of fistiana and autographed portraits of the very cream of the ring and the. stage and journalism. Nothing but celebrities and all strictly up to the highest standards of Malachi Hogan’s old saloon.” Mr. Barry, the man whose fable was established in fourteen seconds and seems like to endure as long as he lives, does not understand the strange bashfulness of other old pugilists in the presence of their opportunity to enter that business which, in other years was the natural refuge of the retired gladiator. There are many ex-pugilists in Chicago whose names would be reminiscent to the citizens but none of them, except Dave Barry, has opened a saloon. Mr. Tuffy Griffiths, but recently retired, was urged to do so and many of his friends assured him that if he did start a saloon they would walk past many other saloons to come and drink pure, nutritious whisky with him. Mr. Griffiths declined, however, on the ground that the saloon business did not appeal to him. Ho Is thinking of opening a haberdashery, however, and trusts that his friends will walk past other haberdasheries to buy neckties from him. “That is his own affair,” Mr. Barry says, doubtfully, “but I do not think haberdashery will give a man as much action as wholesome stimulants. Can you imagine a friend walking six blocks out of his way to say, ‘Tuffy, give me a pair of drawers and have one yourself’? (Copyright. 1934. by United Feature Syndicate. Inc.)
Today's Science I—-—■■ BY DAVID DIETZ HEAVY water, small amounts of which exist in ordinary water, is deadly to plants and animals in strong concentrations. This has been demonstrated by experiments carried on by Professor Gilbert N. Lewis, famous chemist of the University of California. Life is impossible without water. Protoplasm, the stuff from which the cells of both plants and animals are constructed, sonsists of from 60 to 97 per cent water. But Professor Lewis’ experiments showed that life can not exist on heavy water. It kills bacteria, yeasts, molds, plant seeds, tadpoles, flatworms and other small creatures. He also tried the effects of heavy water on a mouse. The experiment was not conclusive because only a small amount was available, but it produced an apparent intoxication and other toxic effects. Heavy water is one of the most recent discoveries of science. It was first isolated by Professor Harold C. Urey of Columbia. It owes its existence to the fact that there are two hydrogen atoms, one twice as heavy as the other. The heavy hydrogen atom, however, is comparatively scarce compared to the light atom. Consequently, an ordinary sample of water contains very little heavy water, only one molecule in many thousands. • B ft B PROFESSOR LEWIS first tried the effects of heavy water upon tobacco seeds. These seeds, • which in ordinary water always germinate within two days, did not germinate at all in heavy water. Tobacco seeds were then placed in a solution consisting of 50 per cent ordinary water and 50 per cent heavy water. These seeds germinated, but developed at only half the ordinary rate of growth. Experiments were then’ tried with micro-organ-isms. A small amount of malt sugar and the necessary inorganic salts were put in a tube of heavy water. A yeast culture was then added to this solution. It failed to grow. The same negative results obtained when various bacteria and molds were tried. Next, Professor Lewis decided to try the effects of the heavy water on higher organisms and so experiments were carried out with flatworms. Theso were placed in a 90 per cent solution of heavy water. an hour or two, they all seemed dead.
/I
Westbrook Pegler
