The Indianapolis times. [volume] (Indianapolis [Ind.]) 1922-1965, 1935-12-21
Squaring
The Circle
With
McCREADY HUSTON
McCREADY HUSTON

THE christmas cards have be-
Il gun to arrive. The congress-
mems come first. A representatives
secretary must be exhausted by the
time he gets his chiefs Christmas
cards in the mail Sometime I in
tend to find out whether the secre-
tary initiates the great mans sigma
ture or whether the Christmas
cards are actually signed by the
statesman.
believe Rep. Samuel B. Petten-
gill of Indiana signs his own. No
body could initiate his script and
make it look authentic.
There is a card from Herman
Schilling, showing the five members
of his family in reverse with
patches predominant where patches
usually appear. What I can't under
stand about this card is that the
picture shows the family cat inside
the canary cage. That must be
symbolic of something touching the
present state of affairs but I can
not make out the meaning.
TINE Christmas greeting card
L. trade this year has been the
heaviest in years. Not only have
more cards been sold, but, a dealer
tells me, people have gone in for
the more expensive kinds. That is
a comment on the end of depression
which is significant. People are
withdrawing from their shells and
beginning to get in touch with their
friends again.
But there is one greeting card
problem which remains to be solved.
Perhaps Jim Farley will issue an
order solving it before he leaves Of
flee. What to do about people who
fool you by sending cards when you
haven't sent them any? They ar
rive, say, the day before Christmas
and you are in a other. If the
Postoff1ce Department would agree,
tor small extra fee, to turn the
dating machines back to, say, De-
'cember 20, for people thus caught
off guard, real public service would
be rendered.
Nothing can upset a household at
Christmas as much as receiving a
greeting card from somebody it had
crossed off the list. The kind of a
card which causes the master to
grunt "Humph!"
I see by the papers that 10 un-
employed writer's are to get to work
under Ross F. Lockridge, the Indi-
ana historian, on sort of history of
the state. This must be good news
to the wives of the writer's. There is
nothing worse around the house
than writer with nothing to do.
I know whereof I speak. I have
been an unemployed writer myself
and know I was obnoxious to the
family till I got back into the swing.
MOST American writing is done
AVE- on salary and most of the
short stories and novels are by
products, written on the side, in
spare time. When the authors
salaried job is taken away he is
likely to become jittery, unable TO
produce his other work.
What makes his situation more
difficult is that writer's are usually
temperamentally hard to handle.
They are sensitive, sometimes sus-
picious, and apt to feel the world
is against them. Few can discipline
themselves to days of toll with no
master but themselves. The out
standing example of one who quit
daily newspaper work and made
himself do a union day in the study
is Irwin S. Cobb.
+
Ray Millholland, indianapolis boy,
crashes through with a marine story
in Golfers. That is hard fiction
market to make. Kenneth Littauer,
the fiction editor, is not easy to
please So, congratulations to Mr.
Millholland.