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About The Sunday Oregonian. (Portland, Ore.) 1881-current | View Entire Issue (July 27, 1913)
10 ' THE SUNDAY OREGOXIAN. PORTLAND, JULY 27, 1913. BERNHARDT ATTACKS DESTROYERS OF RELIGIOUS BELIEF Faith, Hope, Ideals and Confidence in Future Existence Should Not Be Killed France Now Has Boy Scouts Wide Use of Celluloid Highly Dangerous Inimodest Fashions Prevail in France. BT MADAME SARAH BERNHARDT. . Translated by Lo Marqui, de castelthomond. (Copyright. 1313, Koehambeau Newspaper aynaicate, f nuaaeipma. (All rights reserved.) SrRONG-MINDED people, or those who represent themselves as such, declare that religious traditions should be abolished, and they prove to children from even their earliest years the absurdities of the mysteries. Such people, in my opinion, are either fools or they are dishonest. Their only ambition is to create an atmos phere of discussion in which their names will be prominent, and they care little whether they grain a. good or a oaa reputation, so long: as thei ' names are mentioned. . Such people are very gruilty. They 'want to destroy faith and thev ire ' powerless to give anything- in its place. Ana laiui is a powerful cuirass in resisting the shock of troubles when tney assail living- people. Pfrvrrttr of Youth Most Feared, The perverters of young minds are mure 10 De reared man professional rogues. Tney attack by plausible ar Kuments, well reasoned, the traditional religious faith. They overthrow con victions, and they give birth to un belief In some of the simple mysteries. Toung people who are too much In clined to modernism are over-ready to adopt the doctrine of unbelief, and In this unbelief are the germs of doubt, of cynicism and of crime. Hence It is that latter-day assassins are always of 16 and 20 years of age. "Criticism is easy, but the art of building up is difficult," wrote Boileau. One could apply this saying to those who destroy so easily and are incapable of finding an idea to fill the void which they leave behind them. Thus It is that weak characters and people without balance fall Into the void and find no other means to get out of It except by crime. But why abolish the mysterious? All people should have Ideals, and myste ries always lead one upwards. Religion Consoles Many. How many people there are who are consoled by religion! The life beyond! How many poor mothers there are who hope to join their little ones. Oh, do not hinder hope from float ing in the soul! Leave human beings their faith. It aids in creating the great things which, astonish the world. I It sustains courageous spirits. ? Faith is the sister of Hope. France Has Boy Scouts IMITATING the great English na tion which created the Boy Scout movement some years ago, and America, which also has Boy Scouts, France has organized a little battalion called "Les Eclaireurs de France." Do not Imagine that there Is any military tendency in It, however. It Is a battalion of young people of 11 to 18 years which has as its end, honor, self esteem, respect for others, bravery under every moral and active form, love of country and the love of peace. It was the newspaper Le Martin which took the initiative In this great movement and already more than 30 battalions have been formed through out France, Algeria and Tunis. I give here the code adopted by the Eclaireurs. I think they are excellent. In the first place the youths take the following oath: "I promise on my honor to act In every circumstance like a man who Is conscious of his duties. To be loyal and generous. To love my country and serve it faithfully in peace as well as In war. To obey the rules of an Eclalr eur." The following is the text of the rules: 1.' The word of an Eclalreur is sac red. He puts his honor above all else even above his own life. 2. An Eclalreur knows how to obey. He knows that discipline is a necessity to the general good. 3. An Eclalreur Is a man of initia tive. 4. An Eclalreur takes responsibility for his acts on all occasions. 6. An Eclalreur Is courteous and loyal to everybody. 6. An Eclalreur considers all other Eclaireurs as his brothers, without dis tinction of social class. 7. An Eclalreur Is generous ' and courageous, always ready to lend as sistance to the feeble, even to the peril of his life. 8. An Eclalreur does some good ac tion every day, iPmatters not how mod est the act may be. 9. An Eclaireur loves animals and opposes all cruelty in their treatment. 10 An Eclaireur Is always gay, en thusiastic and looks -upon the bright side of things. 11 An Eclaireur Is economical and respects the goods of others. An Eclalreur has the thougnt of his dignity and self-respect always before him. If the boys who are enrolled among the Eclaireurs practice but half of their rules, It elves fair promise of a new generation which will make the splendid virtues flourish again In France and the germs of virtue exist in every French heart, but political ev olutions have stifled them by their violent upheavals. Women Actors Grateful AT the- moment when I left my hotel In New York two months ago to go and catch my steamer, which was to take me to France, I was stopped at the door by a very, very old woman. She was led by a child of about 16 years. "Will you do mo a great service, madameT" he asked. "Tes, if it is in my power." I re plied. Then she took from the boy's arms a packet which she opened. Here, sue said. Is a bed auilt at which I have worked for four years." .ine Dea cover, which she spread on the steps of the hotel, was made of hundreds of pieces of different colored silks arranged with great taste. I expressed my delight Dolitelv at the beauty of her work, intending to pay the poor woman for the fruit of her toil. " She seemed to understand my thoueht and suddenly raised her thin and bony hand. "No, no," she said. "This bed cover Is for Mr. Henri Cain, the celebrated French literary man." This time I gave more attention to her. "Yes, that good gentleman sent me my well beloved monkey " She would have continued but some one told her that time was passing and that it was necessary for me to go to my steamer. I took the quilt and promised to give Henri Cain the grate ful souvenir of the poor woman. Nevertheless I fell Into reflection and wondered if I had been treating with a lunatic. Story Reveals Small Tragedy. When I arrived in France. Henri Cain came with his charming wife to bid me welcome and I gave him the precious souvenir, telling how I came to be the bearer of the present. Ohl that good woman, so she remem bered, did she? Five or perhaps six years ago I met a company of operatic singers who had just returned from New York. I wanted to conclude a cot- tract immediately with, a singer whomi, wanted to have in my new comtu opera. I had Invited the performers I to dine at the Francetl. Before dinner I we dropped Into the Havre! We stopped a bird-seller who was buying I something from a sailor. "Ah, see the pretty little monkey," cried a young singer, "I so much want to buy It." 1 satisfied the amiable girls desire oy immediately buyinsr the monkey and giving It to her. She took it in her arms and covered It with kisses. "Oh," said the sailor, turning at the door out of which he was just going, 'if the old woman who sold me the monkey saw how you treat her treas ure, it would dry a few of the tears in her eyes." The little singer listened attentively. ' "Oh,"she cried, and her pretty face took on an expression of such, regrets that I called the sailor back. "Stop there, my friend, come back here. Tell us about this old woman. "Oh. that is simple enough. She lived in the same lodgings where I did and one morning I heard her sobbing so hard that I knocked at her door. "Why do you cry?" I asked. "Because the landlord is putting me out into the street. . . "And why?" "Because I cannot pay my rent." "How much do you owe him?" "Thirty francs." Sailor Bays the Monkey. "I am not rich enough to give them to you, I said, "I have only 60 francs altogether, but If you give me that monkey on your shoulder for 50 francs I am sure to sell it for the same amount and it leaves me with 10 francs to spend on a pretty girl." "She hugged the pretty animal in her arms as she wept In the fashion of Madame Madeline, the tragedian. Then the eame idea took root in the minds of all the actors present. The monkey would have to go back to the poor woman. O, what kind hearts in the breasts of those foolish young peo. pie. I went down to the boat, followed by the whole band. Captain Polrot came up to us and I told him the little drama, and I handed him the monkey in a pretty cage I had bought for him. Finds the Old Woman. The sailor told me as well as he could the name and address of the wo man, but It was principally the address of the apartment which was to serve as the captain's guide. We collected, furthermore, a little sum of 600 francs, to which he added 60 francs himself and promised to hand over the monkey and the money to the poor woman if he had to knock at all the poor tenements in New York, one by one. He told me later that he had found this poor woman, who had kissed his hands in delight. "I must thank you," he said, "for having allowed me to join you in that kind act. The woman was very inter esting and her poverty was appalling." "That is the story," added Cain, and he handed over the bed-quilt to Julie Cain, his wife. - It is true that actors have many faults, many foibles, but It Is in the heart of. actors that the most gener ous Inspirations often exist, and it is they who know how to show it with most tact. Celluloid Highly Dangerous IT is incomprehensible why all the municipalities of civilized countries do not revolt against the dangers of celluloid. They make combs, brushes, hairpins, imitation flowers, false col lars, cuffs and a thousand other ob jects of celluloid. And no one seems to occupy himself with the danger that Is so apparent from fire. For example: A New York friend sent me a mag nificent pot of jacinthes of all colors. It was placed on a table In the cabin of my steamer and was greatly admired by the passengers who thought they were natural flowers. I had them sent to my house in Paris, where they were put in my dressing-room. One of my housemaids lighted a spirit lamp close to the pot of flowers and in an instant they were In flames. So high did they leap that they reached the ceiling-, for this particular kind of celluloid creates much flame. The cries of my young maid soon brought others who extinguished this Incipient fire, and, forthwith, I - ban ished everything made of celluloid from my home. Seven Girt Died. Three years ago seven young girls perished in a fire in the fifth story of a house on the boulevard au Sebas topol in Paris, where was situated a small manufactory of combs, hairpins and the like, made of this material. There has lately been Introduced into the German markets & new material which replaces celluloid. It Is called galaleth. which Is Greek for "stone of milk." This new material Is taken from caseine, which is one of the prlnolpal elements of milk. Articles made from it offer no dan gers whatever, while they give the same practical and pretty results in articles for the toilette and ornamenta. tlon. Cannot our municipalities put this abominable celluloid on the Index and force the comb makers to change their material? But, helas! the public welfare Is something which occupies but little the representatives of the country the deputies. Senators and munlolpal coun sellors. I hope with all my heart that it will not be the same in America. Fashions in France Alarming FASHIONS at the present moment are taking a turn that is altogether dis turbing. At the Grand-Prix de Paris the women of the underworld have openly advertised their nakedness, which they barely hid by transparent and light folds of material. One young woman from a little comic theater excited general indignation and was very politely taken up by the po lice and conducted to her house. New dresses designed by small dress makers who hope to beoome celebrated by creating a scandal, have been turned out which are open at the sides as high as the hip and allow the leg to be seen, at intervals, in its whole length. Tights, the same color as the gown, cover the limb. Corsages Are Very Decollete. The waist is short. The corsage is very decollete and has long sleeves covering the arms, which descend to the hand. Falling straight from the corsage in front and behind is a mass of small, close pleats, then those little pleats become wider at the hip, where the material becomes wider, without pleats and clings to the shape of the body. In the middle of the back, the same pleats re-commence in very close order following, absolutely, the same lines as the pleats in front. This is very pretty for a statue, but it is of a dreadful inconvenience for women when the material is transpar ent and with flowers figuring as a dec oration. The public has revolted and I do not think this new fashion will have success. It is altogether odious. But one fashion which I think Is charming is the perruque. At the Grand Prix there were a number of young women wearing white perruques. Others were very powdered when not wearing perruques. On their heads were Greek hats covered with flowers, or little three-cornered silk hats carry ing a tall bunch of feathers. The ef fect was charming. The success of the white perruaues was complete, and particularly in the case of young women, fashionable women and young actresses, who were dressed with great elegance, but with out the least Immodesty. Doesn't LI lie Dress Resolsted. For my part I do not understand the new laws by which certain states In America pretend to regulate the fash ion by forbidding the bare-necked dress. Nothing Is more chaste than the bare neck of a young girl. This law should also order that the petals of flowers should be covered up! One should keep proportions in all thtng-s. I think that beauty should do every thing to preserve itself. It should have the character of allowing itself to be felt, but never the Imprudence of thrusting itself forward. Simple Seasickness Remedy The solar plexus and great sympa thetic nerve are, one thinks, the two amiable personages which cause sea sickness so grievous and, at times, so dangerous. These two organs are burled In the peritoine, but the grand sympathetic runs as high as the neck by numberless ganglions. In the question of fighting or sub mitting to these two organs lies the prevention of odious seasickness. Dr. Marot. with whom I traveled in America, is one of our greatest chem ists, and he has admirably diagnosed suffering by seasickness which seems so puerile and yet makes one suffer so atrociously. On board my steamer a young woman was made so sick by the perpetual roll ing of the sea, that one - was really alarmed for her life. Dr. Marot went to her and wrapped her stomach around with a Velpean -band in such, a way as to compress and prevent every move ment of the Plexus-Solaire. For the first few moments the young woman felt oppressed, but the doctor did not leave her for some hours, en couraging her to keep on tie bandage. Every hour he gave her a spoonful of bromure. -Became Better at Once. Vomiting became rare and four hours later the poor creature was able to take the beaten yolk of an egg in Madeira wine, and 10 drops of elixir of pare goric The next day the patient made her first appearance on board, to the great surprise of all the passengers. Until the end of the voyage she kept on her bandages, which had been renewed two or three times by my amiable and Intelligent friend. Dr. Marot. On leaving the ship the grateful hus band asked the doctor to be the god father of her child, which he consented to do with his habitual good grace. Here, then, is a sufficient remedy and one. that also is sure and I counsel its use' to all sick travelers. The doctor says the bandages would be excellent to prevent even the least appearance of sickness and that they triumph over the solar-plexus and Its neighbor, the great sympathetic nerve. Girls' 'Sports Too Strenuous THERE is a new fashion - which would seem to have taken Its or igin in America and Wellesley College deserves the credit for the Innovation. It is a question of sport. The young women in that college want to develop their muscles like young men. They go in for foot races, they jump obstacles with their feet tied and they row boats with ardor. Now I think these exercises are use less and too violent for women. American women who were formerly grace Itself have already lost some thing of their womanliness. And the young generation of women walk like men, which is very ugly. I see no reason why the future moth er of a family should want to Jump over obstacles with her legs tied to gether. It might, indeed, be very harm ful for future motherhood and it is to be feared that these frequent jumps would spoil the muscular fibers and the tendons of the chest. I do not wish to see muscular wom en, but I want to see them esthetic, and I think there is nothing so abom inable as the hand-shake of a sports woman. Intellectually Man's Equal. The brains of woman can and should be adorned with the same science as the brains of men, but they should keep their grace. How many girls perform hygienic .gymnastics, playing golf, tennis or canoeing with precaution? All that Is perfectly right. But that they should become foot-racers and compete against professional runners Is ridiculous. When a woman is married, what good to her -Is fleetness of foot, unless It be to run away from her husband? What occasion would she ever have to make prodigious leaps in the air? No, a hundred times no. A woman should never try to become masculine. It is enough that men should be what they are. The balance of human beauty cannot be kept except by the difference of the two sexes, each one well define'd and well recognized. I remember. a question that my son asked me when he was 14 years old. I was traveling in Brittany with him. Arriving at a little village called Pont l'Abbe, we stopped at the market place to see the curious spectacle presented by the villagers of that place. Couldn't Tell the Difference. Suddenly the child, who was scan ning everything to right and left, cried: "Mamma, which are the men and which are the women?" It was indeed impossible to tell them apart. One was as ugly as the other, dressed in their wide breeches or In their heavy skirts, both sexes wearing square vests and wooded shoes. The women had their hair completely cov ered by a tight head cloth. I do not think the young girls at Wellesley would wish to arrive at such a point of imitating men, but if they continue practicing rough and useless exercises they will lose their graceful ness and their beauty; in a word, their fiminine charm, and that would be the greatest pity. LONDON WRITERS WOULD HAVE CHILDREN IMAGINE Invisible Playmates to Be Treated as Real Things and With Grown-TJp Respect Fairies No Longer Regarded as Infantile Dreams. LONDON, July 26. (Special.) An ex traordinary effort has been made this Summer in London by authors of the stamp of Maurice Hewlett and Algernon Blackwood, in succession to Barrie and RudjArd Kipling, to give the Imaginations of children a fair chance for development on their own clear and easily understood lines. Fairies, therefore, are no longer to be regarded as infantile dreams. Invisible playmates are to be treated as' real things, and with grown-up respect. The Land-That-Never-Was is to be conceded a better and brighter sphere for chil dren than the Country-That-Is-Always-Here. And British authors are tumbling over themselves to seize and adjust the mantle of Hans Christian Andersen on modern figures and styles and themes. The latest recruit to their ranks, is Richard Middleton, the poet, who in "The Day Before Yesterday," a delight ful book of studies of child life and character, holds forth on the folly of education In these brief but pregnant phrases: Imagination Not Chained. "An age will come that will shrink with horror from the excesses we com mit In the name of education, and will regard us who force children to do their lessons against their will very much in the way in which we regard the slave owner of the past, only with added in dignation that our tyranny is Imposed on the children's minds, and not on the bodies of adults. Let those conservative readers who find this comparison a little strained reflect for a moment on what it is that we have to teach the next generation, with what manner of wis dom we chain children's imaginations and brand their minds. "We teach them in the first place to express themselves in sounds that shall be intelligible to us, and this, I sup pose, is necessary, though I should like to doubt It. Further, we invariably in struct them in the sciences of reading and writing, which seems to me frankly unfortunate. In Utopia, as I conceive It, the child who thought there was any thing worth reading would teach itself to read, as many children have done be fore it, and in the same way the rarer child who desired to express Itself on paper would teach itself to write. That any useful purpose is served by the gen eral possession of this knowledge I can not see. Even civilization cannot re joice that her children are able to read the Sunday newspapers and scrawl sen timents on the walls of churches. "Earth Robbed of Charm." "Beyond this." declares Middleton, "we teach children geography. whicH robs the earth of its charm of unex pectedness and calls beautiful places by ugly names; history, which chron icles inaccurate accounts of unimpor tant events in the ears of those who would be better employed in discover ing the possibilities of their own age; arithmetic, which encourages the hu man mind to set limits to the infinite: botany, which denotes the purposeless vivisection of flowers; chemistry, which is no more than an indelicate unveiling of matter; and a hundred other so called arts and sciences, which, when examined without prejudice, will be found to have for their purpose the standardization and ultimate belittle ment of life. "In Utopia the average human being would not know how to read or write, would have no knowledge of the past, and would know no more about life and the world in general than he had de rived from his own impressions. The sum of those impressions would be the measure of his wisdom, and I think that the chances are that he would be a good deal less ignorant than he is now, when his head is full of confused ideas bor rowed from other men and only half comprehended. I think that our system of education is bad, because it chal lenges the right of the individual to think consecutively for himself. In rustic families, where the father and mother have never learned to read and the children have had the advantages of 'scholarship,' the illiterate genera tion will always be found to have more intelligence than their educated, de scendants. The children were learning French and arithmetic when they should have been learning life." Some men spend so much time talk ing about working double time that they don't get time to work any of the time. EMBROIDERY DESIGN FOR PILLOW SLIPS AND TOWEL ENDS These attractive designs may be worked either in solid or eyelet, or done in outline, with scallops button holed. Detail drawing shows method of working. If your material Is sheer such as handkerchief linen, lawn, batiste, and the like the simplest method is to lay the material over the design and with a well pointed pencil draw over each line. If your material is heavy secure & piece of transfer or Impression paper. Lay it face down upon this, then draw over each line of the paper design with a hard pencil or the point of a steel knitting needle. Upon lifting, the pattern and the transfer paper you will find a neat and accurate impres sion of the design upon your material. There are two points to observe in this simple process if you would exe cute it satisfactorily. One Is to see that your material Is level cut and folded by a thread and that your de sign is placed upon it evenly at every point. The second Is, when placed accu rately, secure the design to the mate rial with thumb takes or pins, so it cannot slip during the operation. SfiiTtN, BtrrrotJ-HotiE, Err e: let, outiang AND $TEnSTlTCHtt o o O ,rs -U U O V J: -; o-o o S3 vv l 1 fc I I " l X i 0 1 : : i j i i i Q- O O t 5