The Birmingham age-herald., 1920-05-08
MEN, WOMEN
 AND THINGS


 consider the potato. for in Merry Wives of Windsor" we read: Let the sky rain potatoes. l will shelter me here"
 Now. to show how quick the Bard of Avon was to catch on to new things and put them down somewhere in play, get it in your mind that the po- tato was brought to England from Vir- g1nia in 1886. and Shakespeare was born in 1884 It seems Sir Francis Drake introduced it, though Sir Walter Raleigh is said to have brought it with nim the year previous.
 According to Sir Joseph Banks, how ever. it was the sweet potato, and not what is known as the Irish or white po- tato, and it's this variety I am now considering, for recently I went to seed store to buy a peck and to my dismay found out that the price was $1.s0. and that even at that figure the demand was much larger than the sup ply.
 Many will recall the old slang phrase. "Oh, he is smal potatoes" and the ex- rression found its way into DeVere's Americanisms, for he quotes, "All the American poets are but small potatoes compared with Bryant But the fun niest instance I ran across was one With a theological bias in the Widow Bedott Papers, which says: T took to attendin' Baptist meetin', because tie Presbyterian minister here is such small potatoes that 't'wan't edifying to sit under him." Had she lived in Birmingham she couldn't have truth fully said such thing with McNein, MacSporran and Edmonds filling pull pits.
 It was only by courtesy that the tubers imported from North America could be called Potatoes of Virginia" fer it is to the Spaniards that we owe this valuable esculent Note the word "esculent'' and how carelessly I handle it as though it were an old friend. I oecdSlOHdlIy llke to rlnB III d new one, and somehow the one I am trying out seems to describe the potato very much better than to set it down as one of the edible faranaceous tubers of the nIghtshade family.
 English as "she is spoke and some- times writ' is not only puzzle to the foreigner who comes to our shores, but gives him some excuse for not tackling it. Possibly this is one reason why we have aliens who have lived in America a score or more years anl yet cling to into a big question, and as I do not intend now to take up the mooted ques- ton of permitting the publication of papers in foreign languages I will pass on.
 I have always loved words and their study, but the trouble is when one strives to get at their roots it's an in- terminable job with the many diction- aries and encyclopedias. I get in- terested in a word and want to get speaking acquaintance with 1t and turn to, say. the Century, Webster. Standard or Worcester's dictionaries and the first thing I know I am absolutely over whelmed with information, and not wishing to qualify as professor of English just abandon the search
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 I am at that age where I have to conserve my gray matter and when find the roots running back into Latin. Greek, Hebrew. Armaic, Syriac, French. Scandinavian, old English, German, or what not, I find myself getting wool gathered" For example take potato" and run down the line and you'll find ptatus, potades, botatas, potet potatoes, potatis, patate, patata, battata. etc. Samples taken from early modern Eng fish, Greek, Swedish French, Spanish. all of which I stood for. but when they run in Haytien on me I quit cold
 But the thing which caused me to sit up and take new hold was some in- formation in the Cronica de Peru of Pedro Cieca, in which the potato is mentioned under the name "batata" or papa" This started me off like rabbit dog on new trail, for there was something unspeakably funny to think of the affectionate term used by chill dren in speaking of their father being applied to potatoes. I would be grieved to learn that my boys could ever bring themselves to think of their daddy as "small potatoes"
 I thought I would chase down the word papa" for it seemed to me it ought to be simple matter, but got bigger jolt when I ran up against the fact that it was title formerly bestowed in the Christian church on Bishops, and often on the inferior clergy, but now restricted to parish priests in the Greek church. The dic- tionary gives the following to show it's use: "As in the Primitive church the younger bishop called the elder papa
 That was news to me, but when an- other citation was made from the En- cyclopedia Brittanica as follows I was more at sea than ever; Although he tthe Roman pontiff) had not as yet. assumed the distinctive insignia of his office, the triple crown and the up- right staff surmounted by the cross. he more and more discouraged the ap-