The McDowell times. [volume] (Keystone, W. Va.) 1904-1941, 1941-04-11
WHO'S
NEWS
THIS
WEEK
By LEMUEL F. PARTON

EW 4ORk.-Our old friend Ben
Lucien Burman, the author who
became the leading impresario of
rivers, is off by clipper to take a
RiDer Inpresario look at West
Had Nickel Placed erts, for a
On Career, Won S 6nan g, IL on
writing assignment One of his most
exciting travelling adventures was
promoting five cents for the subway
ride which started his writing ca
reer. Mr.. Burman will be with Gen
eral Wavell's army and with the De
Gaulle forces, accredited by mag
azine and a syndicate.
Mr.. Burman's first river book,
Steamboat Round the Bend"
became the last film in which
Will Rogers appeared After
that he did a stretch at Holly
wood, and then got under way
with some more river books and
magazine stories, riding not only
rivers, incidentally, but camels,
in this same desert country to-
ward which he is heading now.
On this trip, Mrs. Burman, who
Is Alice Caddy, the artist who illus
trates his books, is going with him,
to supply black-and-white obligato
for his stories. Mrs. Burman scores
heavily in both his travelling and
arriving, as disclosed by the story
Mr. Burman once told me.
Il quit my job as a reporter on
the Morning World to write stories.
l wrote plenty of them and they
kept on making extraordinarily quick
round trips to the publishers. One
day was fondling and caressing my
last dime when l passed a bakers
shop, with some freshly baked buns
IN the window. 1 am instinctively
plunger. The dime went for four
buns.
"After the banquet, sang
The Star Spangled Banner and
went home, bordering various
plans for making q fresh start
In life. There was a letter from
the Pictorial Review, saying
they liked my story, Ministries
OF the MIST and would print it.
my dime was gone, and while
the buns had bucked me up a bit, 1
was too weak to walk to the maya
zine office. There just wasn't that
much mileage in four buns. Then
l thought of pretty girl / had seen
going In and out of her nearby
Greenwich Village studio / called
on her, told her my story and sug-
gested that she invest a nickel in
my gilt-edged career.
"She said it looked like good
bet, but she, too, was short on
liquid assets-but she had six
cents in stamps which she would
be glad to risk. I converted the
stamps into fve-cent piece at
stationery store, and bought a
subway ride. The magazine
people gave me a check for
$780," Of course he went right
back and married the girl.
Mr.. Burman was badly wounded
In the World war and walked with a
cane and clutches for several years
afterward. He returned to Harvard.
and was graduated in 1920.
CIR ARTHUR SAKTER, British
- economist and philosopher, has
been building bridge of ideas be-
tween Britain and the u. S. A. for
British HeaUy-Dufy qulte lew
Thinker Foresaw as parlia-
Bridge of Ships r notnsar y: sec .,
ministry of shipping, he comes over
to help build bridge of ships. "
News from Washington is that he
will be a powerful councillor in de-
vising ways and means to run the
gantlet of German submarines and
keep goods moving to England.
This isn't his specially, but he is one
OF Britain's heavy-duty thinkers.
When he delivered the JOna-
than Peterson lecture in New
YOr, FIVE years ago, he stirred
some sharp criticism in the
American press on the ground
that he was assuming too much
about our fraternal cooperation
with Britain. He urged this cOun-
try to join other nations in fend-
Ing OF war and insisted that
we could do this without dan
gerous entanglementS or COM
mitments. Our intellectual elite
Of banking, finance, foreign pol
Icy and economics heard and ap-
plauded, but were not so per-
turbed as the somewhat gloomy
Sir Arthur.
Sir Arthur is a shrewd, wary, grim
little man. He is short, muscular.
vigorous and alert, and endowed
with a skeptical mind which has en-
abled him to score heavily as q
prophet. However, he is of the in
tuitive or launching" school of
craftsmanship. When he feels in
spiration stirring, he goes swimming
and floats on his back, looking up
into the sky-preferably in the sun.
shine. This seems to have the ef.
feet Of disjointing rigid cause-and-
effect sequences and enhancing his
"extrasensory perception" the gift
- Ill