Saliva

Sirs:

Your come-back to A. C. Whitaker's letter (TIME, Dec. 4) "Saliva is saliva, distilled or not--ED." is the most inept and unsnappy that I can recall. In fact I might say it was positively dumb. What Mr. Whitaker tried to tell you in a nice way was that the moisture that accumulates in musicians' wind instruments was not spit but actual water, and he was right. . . .

Take a piece of toast hot from the toaster tomorrow morning and lay it on a cold plate. When you pick it up you will note the plate is beaded with drops of moisture. And it won't be saliva. . . . The air the musician takes into his lungs is not saturated with saliva when he blows it into his horn, it is warmed in the lungs so that its natural moisture is more easily condensed when it passes into the cooler metal coils of the horn, and this natural moisture of the air (water) is what is precipitated within the horn and has to be dumped out.

E. M. KRUSEN Drexel Hill, Pa.

Sirs:

Millions of amateur distillers from the prohibition era will join me in agreeing with A. C. Whitaker (TIME, Dec. 4), against the editor, that the juice from a French horn is condensed hot air, and not a product of the salivary glands.

HOWARD B. POTTS Byesville, O.

Sirs:

. . . Saliva consists of that liquid derived from the three pair of salivary glands proximate and discharging into the mouth. The fluid substance removable after the playing of wind instruments consists mainly of condensed exhaled breath whose source is the lungs.

You have a good Department of Medicine --why not use it for pertinent consultations ?

VICTOR G. RUBENSTEIN, M.D. Los Angeles, Calif.

Sirs:

. . . The lungs normally excrete almost a quart of water a day, roughly 1% ounces an hour. Horn playing is not normal breathing, and in two hours' playing time a horn will act as a condenser and easily catch a glassful of water from the lungs, sir, not spit!

MARY STEICHEN, M.D. Bellevue Hospital New York City

Sirs: . . . Shame. . . .

G. S. FRAPS College Station, Tex.

Sirs:

Second shame. .

CHARLES L. CLAY Boston, Mass.

Sirs:

. . . Similar shame. . . .

SAMUEL H. BROWN Westtown, Pa.

Sirs:

Still shame. . . .

P. K. TELFORD, M.D. Los Angeles, Calif.

--To Reader Whitaker and his 33 champions (to date), TIME'S shamed Ed.'s apologies.--ED.

Boyer's Pate

Sirs:

Under picture of Charles Boyer and wife, TIME says: "Mrs. Boyer is quite adequate." Is Mr. Boyer's hair adequate? Did he leave it "somewhere in France," or has trick Hollywood photography been used on us poor fans all these years?

MRS. LEVIS HALL JR. Sherman, Tex.

Sirs:

Might as well beat the ladies to this one. Is Charles Boyer as bald as your cut on p, 60, TIME, Dec. 4, would have us movie fans believe ?

KERWIN HOOVER International Falls, Minn.

P: Actor Boyer is bald halfway back on top. He wears a toupee (hairpiece or divot in Hollywood) for cinema and most public appearances.--ED.

One-Room Schools

Sirs:

In TIME (Dec. 4--Education "School-marm") I was surprised to learn that a one-room schoolmarm would pay boys 15-c- a week for chores. From my experience in a one-room school I found that the pupils thought it a great privilege to get away from that inimitable humdrum of a one-room school to gather wood and fetch water. To the teacher it was a relief to be rid for awhile of the annoyances of the slothful, ne'er-do-well pupils. . . .

The carriers of water and the hewers of wood were never encouraged to hurry, for both the teacher and boys knew that it was drudgery and took much time. Each understood the other's surreptitiousness.

HOLBERT ALLISON Draper, Va.

Sirs:

Your article on schoolmarm Campbell's one-room Iowa school brings back many, fond memories. I spent the first eight years of my schooling in just such an institution including the black stove in the centre of the room. Such an educational beginning has always seemed to me to be adequate, providing one is a consistent and thorough reader of TIME.

But your writer failed to make clear one point: did the kids raise one finger or two fingers before going out to the privy ? As I recall, schoolmarms were sharply divided into those advocating the raising of one finger and those advocating the raising of two fingers. There was always considerable suspense among the kids at every change of teachers until that detail was settled. We were never told how many fingers to raise, and the schoolmarm never wrote such instructions on the blackboard in our presence. But after a recess period, or coming to school in the morning we found the instructions written neatly on the blackboard and the teacher very preoccupied with something on her desk.

As I remember, I preferred the two finger category of schoolmarms.

PAUL COREY Cold Spring, N. Y.

P: The distinction is a fine one. -- ED.

Juke Box

Sirs:

Perhaps I am getting behind in my knowledge of slang, but where did you get the name "juke box" for nickel phonographs in your article about Glenn Miller? (TIME, Nov. 27). In Michigan, Indiana and Ohio, everyone calls them "Groan Boxes" and the expression, "Flip a nickel in the groan," is generally understood.

Have you any other nicknames on file?

G. CARLTON BURANDT Coldwater, Mich.

Sirs:

TIME (Nov. 27, p. 56) refers to a coin-operated phonograph as a "juke box." Since Gainesville is -- if not the birthplace -- at least the incubator and nursery for the term, I feel a more-or-less fatherly interest in it and ask that you conform to our usage in the future. To the Florida Man such an instrument is a jook-organ and nothing else.

My efforts to point out reasons for our usage would be puny compared to Will McGuire's excellent "A Note on Jook," so I will simply enclose a copy of his work for your information. This is taken from the spring 1938 edition of The Florida Review, published at the University of Florida.

T. F. KOCH Gainesville, Fla.

P: Says Authority McGuire: "jook as noun means a rather ordinary roadhouse outside the city limits . . . where beer is for sale, and where there is a coin phonograph, or nickelodeon, and space for dancing." -- ED.

Wyoming's Ross

Sirs:

RE TEXAS DEC. 11TH YOU WILL HEAR FROM ADMIRERS OF NEWDEALISH NELLIE TAYLOE ROSS OF WHICH I AM NOT ONE.

FRED W. PARROTT Newport, Tenn.

Sirs:

In your issue of December nth, appears the statement that Texas is the only state that has been "big enough" to elect a woman governor. Permit me to call to your attention that Wyoming was the first State in the union to have a woman governor.

Nellie Tayloe Ross of Wyoming and

Miriam Ferguson of Texas were elected on the same date, November 4, 1924. However, due to provisions of the Wyoming laws' Governor Ross assumed the duties of her office 15 days before Governor Ferguson. Mrs. Ross was sworn in on January 5th; Mrs. Ferguson took oath of office on the 20th.

Not only was Wyoming "big enough" to elect a woman governor, it was also the first State in the union to bestow suffrage upon its women citizens. Wyoming women have enjoyed the privileges of enfranchisement since 1869, when Wyoming became a territory.

EDNESS KIMBALL WILKINS Washington, D. C.

Personal Record

Sirs:

In your issue of Nov. 13, you spoke of Julian Green's Personal Record as the kind of book which "once or twice in any year . . . adds itself to the serious and valuable writing of the world." I am mystified at the omission of Personal Record from your list of the Best Books of 1939.

ELEANOR FITZGERALD New York City

P: Julian Green's book was omitted by an inexcusable oversight, is hereby restored to TIME'S list.--ED.

No Such Retaliation

Sirs:

I would indeed be quaint if, as reported by TIME in its issue of Dec. 4th, I had "retaliated by barring the team from all college laboratories and libraries for five days (one day for each victory)." In fact, I would be so droll that I would expect the question of my being safely at large to be raised, let alone the question of my fitness to be the president of a college which prides itself primarily upon its capacity to interest its students in the interiors of its laboratories and libraries.

Of course, I indulged in no such retaliation. I assume that your apparently solemn pronouncement that I had done so arose from your misunderstanding of joking suggestions of appropriate "punishment" for an undefeated football team at Reed College, where athletics have always been treated as a strictly amateur sideline in the pursuit of the higher learning.

DEXTER M. KEEZER President, Reed College Portland, Ore.

Finlandia

Sirs:

In these determining days when the fate of Finland hangs in the balance, may I submit to all TIME readers who have the spirit of good will in their hearts a new set of words to the music of Sibelius' Finlandia? Music lovers everywhere are always trying to find the best words for this one-of-the-best of songs. It seems to me that here is a likely candidate for that classification: "This is my song,

O God of all the nations,

A song of peace for lands afar in mind.

This is my home, the country where my heart is,

This is my hope, my dream, my shrine.

But other hearts in other lands are beating

With hopes and dreams, the same as mine.

My country's skies are bluer than the ocean,

The sunlight beams on clover leaf and pine;

But other lands have sunlight, too, and clover,

And skies are sometimes blue as mine.

O hear my song, thou God of all the nations,

A song of peace for other lands and mine." This was written by a man, one of those rare creatures with a passion for anonymity, whose deepest desire is to see an inclusive spirit of brotherhood flow around the world among all groups: all nations, races, creeds. Would it not contribute to such a high ideal if groups of people everywhere--children in the schools, church congregations, clubs, etc. --were to put these words on their lips, in their hearts, in an increasing rhythm of good will for like-minded citizens of all countries? Would not the grand old man himself, Sibelius, respond wholeheartedly to such an idea ?

MRS. CURTIS CRUMP Asheville, N. C.

Sirs:

Time Out in the war game for an innocent question from a muddled bystander: When did Helsinki get run in for Helsingfors? Way back in my geography class, when Finland played, Helsingfors was captain; now, that Moscow is on the one-inch line, Helsingfors' number has been changed to Helsinki --some time while I wasn't looking.

Will TIME give me and some others the why and wherefore on this substitution?

Thanks.

JOHN NEWFIELD New York City

P: During the seven centuries (12th to 19th) that Sweden ruled Finland, the cities where the Swedes lived acquired Swedish names. Helsingfors is Swedish; Helsinki, Finnish.--ED.

Sirs:

I see TIME still, with the rankest exaggeration, calls what is going on between the line-up of powers a war.

TIMOTHY G. TURNER Los Angeles, Calif.

P: And a serious one, too. -- ED.

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