Evening star., 1926-08-09
By GERTRUDE EDERLE,
English Channel and World Woman Swim
ming Champion.

ming Champion.
BY Cable to The Star.
CAPE GRIS-NEZ. France. August
81 never dreamed that being
celebrity entailed so much. Since !
set foot on the sands of England Fri
day night. I haven't had a moment
of my waking hours to myself. The
congra t,iIat tIons and the celebrations
in my honor are mighty fine and !
appreciate them all with all my heart,
but the hubbub and the obligations
on me are so continual and so trying
that | have to fight off the question
that now and again vaguely forms in
my mind-the question whether, in
the end. success I'm a great endeavof
is worth quite all the grief.
Why, do you know. l haven't had
a chance until just now to get off Il
personal cable to mother and my sis
ters and brothers and other kinfOlk
back in Highla nds, y. j. And fve
honestly been trying a dozen times
a day to squeeze in time to write
and dispatc it.
The furore may he less soon. how
ever, for on Wednesday afternoon
pop and sister Margaret. Miss Julia
Harpman and | will leave for BisSin-
with my paternal grandmother before
proceeding to Paris for shopping be-
fore we start back home.
Thought Of Mother.
I'm really distressed about not hav-
ing gotten off a word to mother
sooner. Why, back there on Friday
vening-although 1t seems so short
ly ago-when the Cha annel water was
so rough and old Bill Burgess soft
heart told him to take me out for
fear I'd drown-I thought mostly Of
mother being at the other end of our
wireless-if you can call it the end
waiting for word Of me every minute,
and that made me more determined
than ever to succeed.
It's today or never" / said to my
self. III never make another at
tempt at this thing, SO Id better fin
ish now
| kept saying that over and over to
myself after l quit talking to my pals
on the Alsace, and settled down to
faster stroking for the last hard miles
of the pull against the tide that had
tricked us and turned against us two
hours before we calculated it should
this because Of the gale that was
blowing with increasing velocity all
the while for the last six or seven
hours Of the swim.
The best part OF it all was that /
never once got cold until after | got
out of the water. l had expected to
suffer from the cold, particularly in
the last stages on that tide sweeping
down from the North Sea. but to me
L. Il
although. of course, there were
changes of temperament as the cur
rents shifted.
Entertained by Consul.
My party and were entertained at
dinner last night by United States
Consul William Corcoran. stationed at
Boulogne, and his French wife, and by
United States Consul CASTOR Smith
stationed at Calais.
Consul Smith has invited us for a
reception at Calais before we catch
the train Wednesday for Germany.
We can accept that conveniently as
our train leaves from Calais.
Ill be busy the intervening days, in
part because l have to do big batch
of washing. All my lingerie is in the
soiled laundry basket. | didn't quite
expect 10 Sel lutO tIc N~lid iIIiVi S'
early, and when the sudden decision
to take off was made l hadn't washed
clothes for three weeks.
1t is great that this is only the 9Th
OF August and | am through with the
Channel, except for sailing for home
from one of it's ports. | don't have to
train now, and so l can do my laun-
dry carefully, as l am accustomed
to do.
That is a beautiful part of it all
that everything went off so quickly
and so smoothly. We decided only
Thursday night at 10 o'clock that we
would start the next morning soon
after dawn. And by 10 o'clock the
next night we had crossed the Chan
mel.
Would Like to Go Home.
wish we could go home immediate
ly. I have a will to get there and get
into that roadster Pop is to give me
for having made good. And, by the
way Pop seems to be getting more
kick out of the whole thing than any
OF the rest of us. At times he's almost
irrational with JOY.
After those English Cha ports
Gris-Nez seems more like home. 1t
seemed like ! was as glad to get back
to our starting point 8 | was to get
ashore at KingsdOwn. And / can't
vet quite realize that I've ma anaged
to swim that English Channel stretch.
When Bill Burgess told me after I'd
been swimming more than nine hours
Friday that I would have to swim five