San Antonio light. [volume] (San Antonio, Tex.) 1911-1993, 1923-10-14

lui WHICH, SorCeTers, lnaSlcldHs, ant
the workers of secret spells.
In all ages, and in all countries
the ingredients of the fairy tale are ex
actly the same, and it is only when
one is quite grown-up-seven or even
eight years old-that one learns, with
mingled reinsurance and regret, that II
is all Just pretend"
And then how staggering, how
astonishing, to gradually come TO the
fresh revelation as the years go by
that fairy tales and witches and drag
ons are the realest and truest things
in the worh--are far truer than his
tories and statistics and all the things
one learns in books,
For that is the real secret of the
fairy story's power. and the reason
We all love to go back TO it, and 10
dream over Grimm and The Arabian
Nigl :" and the wonderful adventures
of Nils-thcy are fundamentals and
most satisfyingly true, and they will
be true when the last historian is
dead and the last statistician has spun
himself into a fuzzy web of figures
ana disappeared from sight.
T0day's Dragons.
remember thinking of dragons
once when l was quite young, and
watching the first motor car / ever
saw.
The little fiery creature fled down
n watching street, and il occurred to
ago and the motor car dragons have
| its living meals. like tine old dragons
that deyoured "twelve of the fairest
maidens and the strongest youths"
every year.
That was more than twenty years
ago. and the motor car dargons have
had their full meals since then, hun
dreds and hundreds of them.
The locomotive dragons have de-
voured their scores. too. and the BIZ
cycle dragons have not gone hungry.
Every ship that is launched into the
deep is a dragon, Turing some man to
| his death. and every enormous build
ing that goes up in the city eats one
! little living human at least before 1t
is satisfied.
What, after all. could be more like
an actual monster than the big tram
that lays its smoking head ard glaring
/ eyes upon a trestle, moves forward
wriggling its sinuous length after IT,
and brushes into red paste whatever
happy, innocent living thing chances
to cross its path?
Only we poor humans are so blind
that because it is not marked Drag
on-Beware :" we do not see it. How
differently the mothers of small chill
dren would feel toward the public
highway il every motor car that tore
by was marked "Dragon-We ate -
1S3 little children last year."
The Dragon of the Mills.
@Wouldn't it be frishtful," ask the
children. their eyes wide with fearful
delight. If there was dragon down
by the mills. and he'd come out in the
dusk and eat children right up, every
little while:"
"Yes, but there aren't any" we
answer, absent-mindedly and unalarm-
ed.
And If a day or two later we happen
to pass the big mills and we see the
long lines of employees filing out
after the hard, hot day-fifteen-yaa:
old girls pale and anemic. sixteen
year-old boys lean and weary and dis
| tNtIA Oflt OL LutLl diItduA
touched by the ugliness and badness
of life-it never occurs 10 us to put
two and two together.
But suppose there was a sign on
that mill: Dragons Castle. l eat
youth, hope, beauty, confidence,
health. Seven youths and five maid
ems died because of me last year, and
seventy and fifty more who creep into
my big mouth every day would be
happier dead"
Then we would see clearly enough
that all the old dragons are not quite
dead, and We would buckle on the
| armOr of civilization and love and do
battle with them.
The Liquor Dragon.
Hundreds of us then. for example,
who do not sec alcoholic drink as
dragon, desroying the weak and
weakening the strong, lying in wait
in the finest cabins and the greatest
castles, breathing its hot breath on
the baby as soon as it is born, would
have only to read the sign about his
neck. "Dragon-I have caused more
misery. shame, suffering and sin than
any one other dragon alive" to have
no further doubt as to the proper
treatment of him.
And wouldn't there be an end to the
temptation of bank clerks and trusted
officials of all kinds if baleful green
eyes looked up from the tray of green
backs and voice breathed from the
money drawer:
Dragon. You will be my SO4th
victim this year.
And then the potions! Is il any
more effective TO place in the cup Of
a certain man the powder that will
make him suddenly turn in hatred
against the Princess Isabella. whom
he now adores, and fall madly in love
with the Princess Celestina. whom he
now detests. than to quietly, insidi-
ously poison his mind against the
wife who loves him?
Family Dragons.
How many mems families, every
Where. all over the Union. have de-
iiberately fixed the poisoned cup that
shall darken his eyes with hate for his
wife?
The family made trouble" we say
casually.
His family hated me-" saws his
Wife, after the divorce, They exag-
gerated and misrepresented everything
| did and said. They deliberately pre-.
JUDGED him. They Influenced him"
You remember that in the old fairy
tales witch often came to the side
OF the baby's cradle and put some sort
, OF horrid blight or curse upon him :
, Wen, don't you and | know elderly
aunts and even grandmothers who
have done that?
: You can't do it, John" croaks
,, the discouraging old voice. there