New Britain herald., 1915-10-15
|zir Raising Hnmor Crops
 Dut at Bald Heads Dinner
|Luminant Discovered in Connecticut's Fun Firma-
 ment-Riggs Tells How Brandy Made His G0g'' -> Scalp An A rid Desert.

Perhaps you will expect from me a confession as to the cause of my badness. Well. here goes. My bald ness was caused by brandy! brandy. brandy! nothing but brandy! This is a sorrowful tale to tell, but it is ut terly truthful.
 "A number of years ago I was eX- ceedingly ill of typhoid fever in neighboring state. The town was no license.' During my convalescence. my beloved father, now with the great majority, thought his son might like a little brandy to build up on. He went back to New York and sent several bottles of the finest brandy that that wicked town could produce. A month later, when I returned to the parental roof, he asked, Well, my boy, how did you like that bran dy?'
 What brandy?'
 Why, the brandy I sent to you to help you to recuperate.'
 |. Never had drop of it, not a smell of it.
 "In those days we did not have as nurses the ministering angels, whose tenderness, loveliness and eff ficiency have often so fascinated the patient that the twain became one We had men nurses! Men nurses Think of that! Think of a man down ill the depths of the misery of ser ious illness being compelled to open his eyes and look upon a man nurse: {: Ye gods, that is but one form of he'll, And l am bald because those men | nurses swiped all that brandy which so soddened their picayune intellects that they forgot to shave my head :: , That's why l am bald. This is the practical, truthful explanation and not that any struggling mentality has l dried up the hair cells in my skull. 1 T appreciate the honor of this op- portunity and I want to treat my sub l Ject seriously. It is serious. I shall l be frank. I did not come here this evening to deliver a finished address on the subject which is upperm ost with all of us. But in the limited time at my disposal, I should like to en- phasize the intellectual ascendency Which this organization undoubtedly has over the rest of mankind
 The Terrible Handicap of Hair.
 The laugh today is on the long, haired man. He can't belong to our organization. That is a distinct hand leap. Intellectually, we bald-headed men are very much in the open. I do not want to claim everything for the bald-heads. I am willing to ad- mt that some men have done pretty well with hair-handicap, especially poets and musicians. On the other hand, gentlemen, I want to assert, as LOOK down on you, that hersute ster- lilty is not incompatible with mentaI Verility. I rather like that phrase.
 was thinking it over in the train com. ing up here today, and as is my GUS
 tom, allowed my hand to play witt the fringe of hair on the back o1 my head Too much hair abstracts mental effort. A fringe that can bt gently toyed with on the back of tht
 head, ana perhaps a sparse forelocl that can De trained, help mental ef
 fort. While l was thinking Of wha
 I was going to say to you my rigl.
 hand automatically sought out tn,
 fringe of hair on the back of m,
 head. Everything lovely until a man
 behind me finally leaned over nc
 whispered hoarsely, Drive 'em III
 into the clearing, friends, and the1
 you can catch 'em' I hope he wasn'
 serious. I am-today. We bald-head ed men have efficiency statistics witt us and in these days anything that i
 labeled efficiency whether it is o 1 not, gets the popular vote. Morevel
 we have got Nature with us. Tax
 a look at Nature and you will be con vinced. Potatoes, for example. Pc tatoes are no good until their foliag above the ground is dead It is tn
 same with brains. Until the hair
 dead, the brains are not ripe.