Evening public ledger. [volume] (Philadelphia [Pa.]) 1914-1942, 1919-12-30
PERPLEXlTY AT THE STATE
HOUSE
How to Ring Nothing" on the Bell

How to Ring Nothing" on the Bell?
L1EELING a bit short of news, we walked
l. oyer to see our good friend Fred Eckers
burg, the engineer at Independence Hall.
We went down into the nice warm cellar, but
Fred was not there. We waited around n
few minutes, hoping to either him or
Martha, the wellknown State House cat,
1t plain that Martha had had her lunch,
for on the little table were spread out all the
delicacies that much pampcred animal en-
joys. There the coffee pot, the milk
saucer (cmpty), the pot of jam and the little
jar of vaseline that Martha uses to keep her
fur in good condition in this cold weather.
And on the desk were the photographs Qf
three men who are Nartha's particular
hcroes-George Washington Thomas A.
Edison and the Hon. David Martin.
But we met Fred outside, and he told us
that he is in II good deal of perturbation
about the annual ceremony of ringing in
the new year in the State House belfry.
Last year." he told u.s. Eve rang it
ono nine one nine, any everything went fine,
it was cold, wet night but when came
down from the tower there was an old man
here on the steps. lie said he had been
coming every New Years Eve for twenty
years. Now this year how we going to
work it? You sec, We'll have to ring
one nine two and then nothing. How can
YOU ring nothing on the bell?"
That's pretty hard luck we said.
you'll have to ring one thousand, nine
hundred and twenty times in order to get it
accurate. | hope it'll be a nice night. 1t will
be too bad to keep that old man out here so
long"
Fred smiled family, but his heart was
troubled. Il don't see how we're going TO do
it," he said. "Onc, nine, two nothing
How are we going to ring that nothing on
the bell?'
Frcd's dilemma reminds us of a Christmas
card we saw or Chestnut street last week
The motto rather tickled our fancy. 1t ran
thus:
Christmas oHhout You pW be just
tVhole lot Of nothing at all.
And a friend of ours, with whom we once
went TO France when neither of us could
talk enough French to make any serious
nroads upon the minds of the natives, coined
an ingenious and rather similar phrase.
When he was asked at Il restaurant if he
would have anything more, and didn't want
any, he always uttered fragments of mis-
pronunciation that can only have meant "A
little bit of nothing
This same friend. who is now professor of
mathematics at Gettysburg College, en-
| countered another mystery of the French
tongue that caused him much suffering. He
was passionately fond of hot chocolate as
| prepared by the French cooks, and about
| the time he finished his first cup he used to
| begin shouting PLUS de chocoat,' which,
! according to our ideas of language, ought to
! imply 'more chocolate" Unfortunately, the
perverse French diom interprets it as mo
more chocolate I'm fact, as a very en-
phatic intimation that the chocolate is
| atrocious. So the louder and more pleadingy
| our friend uttered this remark the more
| deprecatingly the waiter would bow and
| express his regret that the beverage was not
satisfactory. To see our friend hotly crying
| "Plus de chocolat" and pointing eagerly to
his cup, while the waiter hovered in panied
| anxiety, is one of our cherished memories.
We read in our sprightly contemporary
| the Sunday PUBLIC LEDGER, the compara-
| tive measurements of the Nenuses de Milo,
! de Wellesley, de Swarthmore and de Bryu
| Mawr. In particular we were pleased to
observe that the Venus de Bryn Mawr has
chest expansion of 80 inches as against Il
paltry two inches for the Venus de Milo
But, as Fred Bigelow eagerly inquiries, how
| do they know the chest expansion of the
Venus de Milo? 1t seems to us that two
inches is pretty good for a lady with such
! hardened arteries.
Tvrn mor" ir'rr'cio y ~ rr~n Mawr