The Chapel Hill weekly., 1958-12-11
Fairy Tale Up TO Date
BY Sidney Swain Robins

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Andersen's Fairy Tales about the king
who was sold an imaginary suit Of
clothes. The statesmen fingered the
material" reverently before his eyes,
and talked about the wonderful texture
and the unusual pattern and shade OF
it. The king didn't see thing but was
ashamed to say so. Their high-pressure
lingo got him down According to the
ballyhoo, this fabric was so mighty fine
that only very fine people could be ex-
pected to see it. So they finally sold
him high priced suit.
All went well for them at first. They
dressed him up in this imaginary SUIT
TO lead parade, and had all the by
ISLANDERS warned Of superfine material
and style being shown off, for all those
with eyes to see, in sort oi fashion
parade. guess the set-up was like some
Modern Art exhibits So the people just
gaped and stared without being able
to get out word until more than half
way down the main street an eight
year old youngster called out Why,
the king is in his indies That tore 1t,
and when the king got back TO the
palace he sent for those tailors and had
their heads off.
Well, the other day | was sitting
near yoa.ig woman whq is pretty
near relative Of mine. and ] got to wond-
ering if she had on any stockings Now
am getting somewhat bold in my later
years and as ! said she was d near re-
lative. and besides that her father and
mother were sitting right there. 80 !
reached over and rubbed my fingers
against one side Of her ankle, which
10 be sure she jerked away, saying
had no business doing that. But the
point is | couldn't feel any stockings
any more than ! could see any, and
felt pretty sure she was not wearing
any. The real question is why ! didn't
Just take that for granted in the first
place The reason for that must have
been that | had already been fooled 50
many times in the past, and had noticed
that the hosiery mills keep on running
and that stockings seem to be sort Of
stylish or expected just now.
Well, it both looked and felt as if
the stockings had come up missing at
last, and | said So But then this girl
grinned at me and dropped the back
end Of one Of the shoes she was wearing
And III be darned if there wasn't
square patch Of fabric showing up on
her heel, which Of course had to be con-
nected or attached North and South
East and West. But you still had 10 get
at the factuality Of the stockings not
by your five senses but by your rea-
soning powers. You couldn't see them
but they had to be. In philosophy, that
is called priori reasoning, and whole
lot of scientists would simply despise
that way of proving that a girl had on
stockings. Science POUNDS itself solidly
on seeing and the experimental tests.
| can't claim TO be a scientist, but
! do want to ask, Just whom are you
fooling or impressng with style Of
hosiery like that? And just what is the
game Is it like these air-men who are
all hell-bent to see how fast they can
go, and who can go the fastest, no mat
ter where to? Are the coutouriers try
ing to see how close they can come
to having you with no clothes on at
all; but with formal evidence to the
contrary ready TO be produced if the
law should require it? If that is the
game, guess stockings are good
article of apparel to try 1t out on. Better
to begin on than some other articles Of
dress at least.
It may be there is some profound
mystery in the subject which the ordin-
ary mortal doesn't see, just as those
statesmen IN the fairy story told the