Optimists

'Twixt optimist and pessimist

The difference is droll:

The optimist a doughnut sees,

The pessimist a hole.

P: "An optimist is a jackass who hopes his ears don't show."

Bringing bathing beauties from Hollywood, thirsts from Kentucky, boasts from Chicago, members of Optimist International poured into Denver, Col., last week for their ninth annual convention. Denverites put on cowboy and Indian costumes, fired blank cartridges, stuck up welcoming signs.

Optimist International is a glad-hand organization of "big brothers" (grown men) devoted informally to grinning horseplay, formally to welfare work among boys. It is called "International" because some members live in Canada.

Characteristic remarks by Optimists last week:

"Denver is the Super-Optimist, I'll tell the world. . . . Denver is ten miles high in hospitality. You can't tell me it is only 5,280 feet above sea level."--Thomas B. Elliott of St. Louis, international secretary-treasurer.

"It's great to be an Optimist. I travel all over America and in every city where there is an Optimist club I am made a guest of honor. I never get unpacked in my hotel until the telephone begins to ring and the invitations come pouring in. Am I hungry? Am I tired? Am I thirsty? Am I in need of anything? Do I want an automobile? Will I come to a banquet? Will I take a drive about the city? Every Optimist is ready and eager to serve the stranger in a strange city."--George O. Griffin of San Francisco.

"That American Legion band, with its gigantic bandmaster is a sight I shall never forget and I saw London after the armistice." --A. R. Gatter of San Francisco.

"[Judge Ben B.] Lindsey had acquired nation-wide publicity with his works and methods [in the Juvenile Court] and was doing great work here in Denver. It is too bad that he went off on a tangent as he did during the past few months."*--Judge E. S. Matthias of the Ohio Supreme Court.

Baletic

In Allentown, Pa., two women prepared to leave a railroad train as it pulled into the station. One Stefan Baletic, fisherman of Buras, La., who had ridden in the same car with the women from Pittsburgh, sprang from his seat.

Snarling, he bit both women, made them scream. Mr. Baletic was conducted to Bellevue Hospital, Manhattan.

Son

In White Plains, N. Y., one Paul Mateyoke, 30, was surrounded by angry neighbors, turned over to the police, for ejecting Susie Mateyoke, 75, his mother, from his house and making her live in the chicken coop for two weeks; also for allegedly breaking her left arm with a hurled stone, for blacking her left eye and breaking her left eardrum with right hand punches.

Fingers, Toes

In Cornelius, N. C., Mrs. G. M. Burton, Negress, does not sing "Ten baby fingers and ten baby toes" to Bettie, a daughter she bore three years ago. Bettie, taken last week to a Charlotte, N. C., clinic for examination, has 18 fingers, 25 toes, on the normal number of hands & feet.

*After almost 30 years of experience with juvenile delinquency and the marriage problems of young people, Judge Lindsey lately published magazine articles (TIME, Jan. 24) advocating recognition and control of widespread practices by legalizing "companionate" (childless) marriages and birth control.--ED.