Evening star., 1926-09-30
BACKGROUND OF EVENTS
BY PAUL Y. COLLINS.

She answered that, as she did not
know the young man, she could not
give a definite answer. A few months
later they were married. Chino-Amer-
ican customs are rapid.
X X X X
In the midst of the 1912 presidential
campaign former President Roose-
welt, speaking intimately with GER
tain friends at luncheon, referred to
his own record and candidacy for
what some critics designated a third
term" and he chuckled characters.
tically, as he remarked:
Some say 1 want to be king; they
don't know kings and do"'
Perhaps he had special reference
to the veXations and difficulties which
majesty had to face, even before the
War-difflculties which have multi.
to make the world safe for democ
racy." There remain kings and
queens more democratic in their as
pirations than is many citizen of
the United States. When queen
comes incognito to America, she
comes in the guise of her democratic
personality to study a democracy.
Maybe she will emulate the Queen
of Sheba in finding that "the half had
not been told" and maybe, too, she
might find things of which she, in
mercy, will not tell us half, for, with
all our pride, how much frankness
can we stand?
We have not yet forgiven Dickens
for his aspersions and sneers. Why,
he even spoke disrespectfully of our
Nations Capital!
1T is sometimes called a City of
Magnificent Distances, but It might
with greater propriety be termed the
City Of Magnificent Intentions.
Few people would live in Washington,
I take 1t, who were not obliged to
reside there; and the tides Of emigra-
ton and speculation, those rapid and
regardless currents, are little likely
to flow at any time toward such slow
and sluggish water"
Americans have boasted to Lafa-
yette that they were "here," but why
not the same boast to Lafayette's COM
patriot. Max O'Rell, the lecturer? He
astonished his mother when he told her
he was going to America to lecture.
Lecturer" inquired La Mere. "In
what language"
"Well, mother, 1 will try my best in
English"
do they speak English out there?"
"H'm-pretty well, / think
When his mother wrote him her
farewell, she proved her femininity by
leaving the important part of the let.
ter for her postscript: II shall not tell
any one in the town that you have
gone to America"
Maybe Queen Marie will return to
Rumania with equal "incognitism"-
not mentioning that she has been to
America. Yet news concerning queens
will leak out.
About 100 years ago, Mrs. Francis
Trollope of England visited US, and
wrote:
THE ladies have strange ways of
adding to their charms. They powder
themselves immoderately, face, neck
and arms, with pulverized starch; the
effect is indescribably disagreeable by
daylight, and not very favorable at
any time. They are most unhappily
partial to false hair, which they wear
in surprising quantities; this is the
more to be lamented, as they general
ly have very fine hair of their own
VIII Queen Marie fine that our la
dies have reformed in the century. and
abandoned pulverized starch and CHG
mons?
1t remains for that dear friend of
America, Mr.. Rudyard kipling, to
show nice discriminating appreciation,
similar. perhaps, to what he expressed
in his recent poem about how America