The Key West citizen. [volume] (Key West, Fla.) 1879-current, 1951-12-31

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so pageS.)
With Ralph Waldo Emerson s
famed summary of the business of
entertaining at home, hospitality is
a little fire, little food. and an i'm
mense quiet.
But the pages which preeede it
give word caricatures Of guests
and hostesSes which encourage
crawling back into the corner of
your cave and putting cluster Of
skunks and porcupines at the en-
trance to discourage all visitors.
The book suggests no logical rea-
son why man should ever expose
himself to social intercourse with
other human beings
Author Lynes begins back in our
yesterdays of the morning call
when the lady going about in her
carriage or car hopes in her heart
that everyone at whose house she
is leaving cards is out dropping
cards on her. He points out that
conversation during the morning
call was required TO be light enough
not to disturb digestion or take
away the appetite.
He then devotes chapter to
bores, describing all types one
might meet at strawberry festi-
val, cocktail party, wedding recep-
ton, or other carnival There are
the crashing bore, the still-waters-
run-deep. the good listener, the fas-
cinating conversationalist. the hill
ariOuS laughter, the lapel hanger,
the non-eommital type, the one
who knows all the answers, the
poor -stupid-little-mes, the travel
bores, the statistical bores, and
even the bored bores.
Celebrating on his encounter
with the total-recall bore who is re-
lating long story about a mis-
fortune with some lilac bushes, he
says, not a detail was sacri.
feed, | was forced to examine
every sap-filled twig Of those bush
es and every damp handful of dirt
from the holes. 4"
Then he tells Of woman whose
conversation is q bounded on
the north by her servants, on the
west by her children, on the south
/ by her ailments, and on the east
by her clothes He follows this
! with description of the first meet
ing of the two great writer's James
Joyce and Marcel Proust. One is
nearly blind and the other suffer-
ing from acute asthma. Instead Of
the literary giants discussing liter
ature, they talked all evening about
symptoms.
Mr.. Lynes then goes on to week
end guests. In the abstract they
suggest leisurely hospitality with
afternoons active in the sun or dog
ing in the shade, "amiable meals
and comfortable beds, breakfasts
out of doors with grasshoppers
whirring in the nearby meadow,
log fires on nights still with snow. y
But when they become specific and
are translated into towels and food
and personalities, the host grows
concerned.
Hosts and hosteSses next come in
for lively barbs, and finally the
whole current business of informal
entertaining in this age of pot
! luck. The casserole has taken the
place of the seven-course dinner
and the living-in servant has been
replaced by woman who comes
in by the hour or by nobody at all.
He warns that the modern week
end might bring bedluck as well
as pot luck and the guest might
find himself slowed away on the
sleeping porch with q four-year.
old who wakes up at six and pre-
tends that his bed is foxhole and
that he is fighting the Battle Of the
Bulge with sound effects. -
CAS- THE SAILOR LOVES THE
SEA by Ballard Hadman, non-fic-
ton, illustrations by author, Har-
per and Bros, New York City,
2S2 pages.
If young lady artist vacation
ing in Alaska is drawing a deli
cately sailed fishing boat, and be-
whiSkered and bewhiskeyed fisher
man keeps muitering past her
shoulder, ut amt like that. She
. don't set in the water like that.
The author Of this biography
Esays no, she wouldn't go home to
California and mother.
For Ballard Hadman is no ordi-
nary lady artist. Her lively book
shows her not only possessed of an
adequate supply of the sensitivity
with which every true artist is ex-
pected to be constantly flinching.
but she has. what the old Alaskan
| fishermen refer TO as CUTS. TO her
pioneer background she attributes
her capacity to cook, keep house,
take the helm in all kinds of
weather, and get by with four hours
sleep during the months the king
salmon are running
This same instinct Of the pioneer
makes her able TO take hardships
with roars OF laughter the way
Alaskans do, to survive dangerous
illness, accept with grace and APP
petite the red beans her friend
Danish King cooks in a teakettle
and offers in Devil he's care
fullv ,yined with a dirty sock. II