Yankees

In 528 A. D., when Mark Twain's Connecticut Yankee was condemned by King Arthur's Court to be burned at the stake, he saved his life by a Yankee trick. Knowing that a solar eclipse was imminent, he predicted the end of the world, got himself a saving reputation as a magician. Last week, with another solar eclipse imminent (April 7), another court scratched a match, lit a fagot for the Yankee from Connecticut. This time it was the Connecticut Public Welfare Council, which proclaimed: "The typical Yankee seems to be disappearing from the Connecticut scene." According to the Council, returns of the 1940 census will prove that immigrants now work Connecticut's farms, that there are more Italians in New Haven, more Poles in New Britain, than in many large cities in Italy or Poland.

To the defense of the 20th-century Connecticut Yankee sprang many a friend in court. Declared Connecticut's Governor Raymond E. Baldwin: A Yankee is "just someone who lives in Connecticut, someone with plenty of grit, determination and get-up-to-go to him. We're all Yankees up here. Why, everybody here except an Indian has always been a Yankee." Said ex-Governor Wilbur Cross: A Yankee is "a reasonably honest, good citizen, who obeys the laws--pretty well." Added the New York Herald Tribune: "A Connecticuter of the old line in a New York penthouse may have less of the 'old traditional Yankee perspective' than an immigrant who is still willing to dig stones out of the hillside pasture."

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