Evening star., 1944-02-02
This and That
BIZ Charles E. TrdcelUeH.
BRENTWOOD, Md.

BRENTWOOD, Md.
Dear Sir:
II look for your bird column the first
thing when my Star comes and am
always relieved when find you writing
about our well-beloved feathered folk.
1t is so good to feel that they at least
are normal in our warning world.
Il am very sorry that your column
has been shortened l could more easily
have spared the whole sports getup.
Il do not care much more for Tenn
pleton Jones than for the Great Gil
dersleeve, whom I have learned to tune
out at the first oh, ye-es!' Even your
Templeton Jones about the penny-in-
the-slot l1ummingbird left me cold. OF
course you can write well on any sub
ject, making even such disagreeable
subject as dandruff funny. and the
Magic Mirror was beautiful until I
knew it was a substitute for our birds.
Maybe you get tired writing about
them, but your readers do not get tired
reading about them
Sincerely, G. R."
**
There is no arguing about questions
Of taste, as the old Roman proverb
put it.
All one can do is state ones pref
erences, and this our correspondent has
done very we'll, we think There was
more Of it, all good, but we had to leave
the rest out because the column has,
indeed, been shortened, and someway
or other long letters do not look so
we'll in it now.
We assure this correspondent that
sports and all other features have their
places and their readers by the thou
sands, who think quite as much of
goalie, whoever or whatever that is,
as many others do about chickadees and
the foibles Of human nature as some-
times exemplifed by that dignified gen.
tleman with a sense of humor, Tenn
pleton Jones, esq.
The beauty of the modern newspaper
is that it contains something for every
one
No greater fallacy was ever held (and
unfortunately 1t is held by great many
newspapermen) than the belief that
all readers read everything.
Nothing could be farther from the
truth. All readers of books, for instance,
do not read Shakespeare. No doubt
there are thousands of persons who
honestly hate Shakespeare.
This only means that the famous
Bard makes no more of a genuinely
universal appeal than any other writer,
large or small
There is none of us who loves books
who cannot admit secretly with shame
that there are literally dozens Of fine
writer's into whose books we have never
dipped, and perhaps never will.
This means nothing except that
though the spirit may be willing, the
flesh is weak, and so many things occur
and come up in the lives Of all of us
that we find it impossible to read every
thing we would like to, just as we find
1t impossible to do all the things we
would like to, if only the gods and
nature had conspired differently for
us in the first and last places.
Our correspondent also drops a hint
(and we left that out, but should have
put 1t in) that if any of the arts had
to be abolished 1t should be music.
No one really could mean that, Of
course. except in a way of turning a
phrase. Maybe the "Pathetique" SYM
phony Of the great Russian is de
cidedly unwholesome" to some, but
not to others. We know famous New
York music critic who has never for
gotten how it made him feel when he
was small boy
Music and the birds and sports and
politics and war and high heaven and
earth and all the things above and
beneath the earth are for our pleasure
and instruction.
Often in the end we can get more
pleasure out of one than another ac-
cordlng to the instruction we receive
from lie as we go along and no one
snail say us nay, or tell us what to like
or what not to like. Let our happy
oellef be that If we stick to our guns,
ana are honest with ourselves, it is no.
nooy elses blooming business what we
like or do not like.