The Birmingham age-herald., 1918-03-12
Horrors of Substitution
 In War Time-London
Typewriter Shop With Its Stock Cut Off by Import tions, Offers Gramophones Instead-Rough May Be Offered in Lieu of Marmalade Ella Wheeler
 Wilcox for Winston Churchll-Barley Water
 Already Tap Instead of Real Booze"
By HAYDEN CHURCH

London, February 14-Wouldn't this
 jar you? Supposing that you happened
 to be, like the humble writer of these
 lines, newspaper scribe by trade Or
 that you had as you may happen to
 have, such a heavy correspondence that
 you could only cope with it by means of typewriter. Possibly after while you might get tired of lifting a heavy nlachine from floor. to table and back again, or yearn for one that you could tote with ease from the office to your home. And thus make up your mind, SC soon as you could afford the outlay to invest in one of those handy, light .. weight typewriters, mostly made in the U. s. A., that go into a case not much bigger than a light valise, and that can be shifted with as little exertion as il takes to lift a bird cage up to it's sus- pending ring.
 | Suppose that you save up for that type. writer for many moons. At last you have | the money to buy it. Blithly you make ! your way to the shop where they sel l these cute little machines and enter witt
 the air of the literary Pierpont Morgan | that you are. But now shock await. you. Forward comes a trim damsel, tt whom you confide that now, at last, vol 1 have so many times lonsfngly, but vain | ly, feasted your eyes on the alluring dis play in theri window and are at las ] in a osition to buy one. For thi; l is the petrifying statement that come, l from the lips of the trim damse.
 | I'm very sorry, we don't sell typewrit CTS now. We can't get them. Wouldn' you like gramophone? We have { | very nice selection of them?
 | TRUTHFUL EXPERIENCE | Now wouldn't that jar you?
 | The above, and no other, is the shat i tering experience that befell me the oth | CT day. The shop where 1 suffered it is an attractive one in London's busy Strand. Ever since it was opened month: ago, it's windows has been full of iittl, typewriters. Beautiful little typewriters 1 that were alluring in themselves, so neat, so compact were they as compared with big, heavy typewriters, such as th' I one I am now sadly rapping this out upon, and made more fascinating stil l by means of many-hued artificial How CTS set among them, a bright bow of rib 1 bon here and there, and other varietie! of commercial ''camouflage. And, 1T 1 the shop itself infinite more little type writers could be describ ed on tables ane l in neat leather cases, and in rows upor rows on shelves.
 l Now, however, I looked helplessly about me, but could glimpse not so mucf
 as one lorn, lone typewriter Nothing | but gramophones-gra -gramophoEes big ane l little with horns and without horns gramophones that could give you one ol Caruso's arias with such fidelity that 1 you might imagine that the world-fam ous tenor was giving a recital in the l back room of the shop; inexpensive lit tie gramophones that, no doubht couc blare out Where the Black-eyed Susar | Crows so amazingly that you could al most tell what the tune was
 l In the window more gramophones, witt l a sign which might have warned me o l my fate had l happened to notice it. l read thus: Owing to the government restrictions upon imports from America we are unable at present to continu, | to sell 'Avonas But we are offering { ! splendid selection of gramophones' STONES FOR BREAD"
 Imagine wanting a typewriter and be | ing offered a reproducer of canned meIo
 dies. There has been nothing like i since the historic incident of the ill-use,