The Chronicle-star combined with the Moss Point advertiser., 1945-06-08

cleanliness. II could be done by
screening their wagons and keep
ing their hands, ice, and syrup
bottles clean. Many af these
carts are clean and tidy little
jobs as it is, and so are many
of the youthful merchants.
a FELLOW WHO WORKS in
the shipyard tells us about the
martens who insist on making
nests in the whistles and drain
pipes of boats being outfitted in
the Wetdocks. Ii seems to be a
case OF the triumph Of the home-
making instinct over common
sense. For despite the fact that
steel and machinery and asphalt
yards are not the sort of back
ground in which n would ex-
peet bird life to flourish, the
martens nevertheless find the
dark and coy three-inch drain
pipes and whistles exactly in
line with their specifications for
the well-eonstructed habitation.
And our friend tells us that one
may see them flying back and
forth with a wisp of straw or a
a piece Of string from a lunch
sack, soaring into the drain pipes
without seeming to touch the
sides. He said that a marten
family once nested in a packing
case that rested for some time on
the wetdoeks, and that she flew
about angrily like a fighter
Hplane when the gantry finally
lifted it to the deck, And rig
gers once had to pound on the
funnel of a ship beneath the
whistle to scare out a family be-
fore letting through the first
blast of steam vapor when the
time for the whistle test finally
came around.
We got TO thinking about this,
and somehow it brought to mind
the natives of Mexico and the
South islands who sometimes
built their villages on the edges
OF live volcanoes, with no more
concern probably than an occa-
SIGNAL PRAYER to their diety not
10 let the big blow-up happen in
their generation. But always
they knew it was coming some
day, for their tribal legends were
full of accounts of past erup-
tons. and it must have been APP
parent even to their simple
minds that when a volcano gets
to kissing and rumbling, some
thing is going to happen by and
by. Probably that's how it was
with the marten families. too.
Certainly some instinct told them
that all this banging and pound
ing and kissing which vibrated
through the ship really carried
some threat Of eventual disaster,
no matter how sturdy and snug
and ready-made the dark dram
pines in the face of the steel
cliffs that were the ships sides.
But because the actual nature Of
the threat was vague to their
simple intelligenees, the sense of
convenience and complacency
won out. They We're comfortable
as they were, and so they stayed;
hoping no doubt that when the
blow-up came, it should happen
in some future marten genera
ton, when they themselves would
have been gathered to their
ancestors.
And the thought occurred to Us
that we did not even nave to go
to simple native villages to find
the human parallel For this ten
deacy toward eomplacency in the
face Of warning exists 10 some
extent in the rise and fall of all
our great civilizations of the past.
One finds if in Thomas Gibbons
classic history Of the Roman EN-
spife, where the generals and the
politicians grew ever more con-
cerned with their rivalries and
plunder while the barbarians
were laundering at the gates.
And We can see d trace Of it even