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About The frontier. (O'Neill City, Holt County, Neb.) 1880-1965 | View Entire Issue (July 22, 1937)
tfoyd QMohs' ADVENTURERS' CLUB HEADLINES FROM THE LIVES OF PEOPLE LIKE YOURSELFI “Secret of the Tides” By FLOYD GIBBONS Famous Headline Hunter HELLO everybody! Here’s a yarn that can be told now, for a long time it was a secret. Frederick V. Fell of Bronx, N. Y., is spinning the yarn for us and he’s letting it out of the bag now because—well—I guess it’s because F red has grown too old to be spanked by this time, so it doesn t make much difference who knows it. Fred says he can’t trot out any adventure story laid in some glam orous place like India, or North Africa, but he sure had a honey of a thrill once out at Rockaway beach. And as a matter of fact, I d just as soon have a yarn from Rockaway as I would from Rio or Rhodesia. For as Fred says, it isn’t where it happens, bdt what happens, that counts. So here she comes—and hold onto your hats. Fred was just fourteen years old when, in 1924, his folks rented a cottage at Rockaway for the summer. Fred and his brother Harvey had never been around the water much before that, but they made up .'or lost time. They spent every spare minute in the big drink, and in two weeks both of them had learned to swim. It was about that time that a strong blow set in from seaward and the ocean began to kick up and get rough. Fred’s parents, playing safe, took to bathing in Jamaica bay, about twenty blocks inland from the ocean, and Fred and his brother Harvey did the same. It was shortly after that that Fred’s cousins from the city came down one Sun day morning, and they hadn’t been there ten minutes before all four of those kids were in their bathing suits and on their way to the bay. Caught in a Death-Dealing Riptide! Near the point where Fred and Harvey always went in swimming was a long pier with a diving board on the end of it They had never used that pier before, because mother and dad had forbidden them to swim around it. But this Sunday Fred wanted to show off his newly acquired proficiency at swimming before his city cousins, and with a yell of, “Last The pier kept getting farther away every second. man in is a monkey’s uncle,” he ran down the pier, onto the diving board and out into the water, with Harvey right behind him. ‘‘We both caiqe up nicely about a yard apart,” Fred says, “and turned around to swim back to the pier. And then my heart stopped beating! That pier was about a hundred yards away and it kept getting farther away every second. In that same moment we both knew what had happened. We had jumped into a racing, surging rip-tide that was sweeping us out into the deepest part of the bay and toward Broad channel.” « The tide was carrying them out at express-train speed and only a man who has been caught in one can realize how powerful a rip-tide can be. For a few seconds the kids drifted, and then they began try ing to swim back. “But bucking that tide was like trying to dam a flood with a matchstick,” Fred says. “Harvey and I tried to join hands and hold each other up, but in another minute we were torn apart and drifting away from each other. Harvey shouted to me to turn over on my back and float, but I didn’t know how to float. Treading water madly, I started shouting for help.” • Lucky Fred Encounters Real Hero. Away off in the distance, Fred could see people dashing about ex citedly. One man ran swiftly along the pier Fred had just left, and jumped off the end. Swimming strongly and swept along by the tide he slowly caught up to Fred, and as he came up, Fred was almost in hysterics, crying, “Save me, mister—save me!” That fellow was a good swimmer and a resourceful man. He told Fred to put his hands on his back and kick the water. “I did this,” Fred says, "and he set off diagonally toward shore, fight ing the tide with tremendous effort. Meanwhile, my cousins on shore had not been idle. Yelling like mad they ran down the beach until they came to a rowboat with two girls sitting in it. The girls launched the boat and, rowing with the tide, soon picked up my brother. My rescuer changed his course and made for the boat, and soon we too were pulled in. The three of us who had been in the water lay on the boat bottom, breathless and exhausted, but apparently safe. The girls started to row back.” But do you notice how Fred says APPARENTLY safe? The truth was that they weren’t out of trouble yet, by a long shot. The girls started to row, but anybody who has rowed a boat against any kind of a tide at all knows it is no easy job. And here was one of those express-train tides carrying along a boat loaded down with five people. The girls made no headway at all. In fact, for every two feet they went forward they drifted back five. And ahead of them was the channel—and the ocean. “It began to look,” says Fred, “as if that tide would be the winner after all—and this time with five victims instead of two.” Safe!—Six Miles From Starting Point. But the man who had saved Fred wasn’t the sort to give up easily. He was just about all in, but he pulled himself together. He grabbed one oar, while the two girls worked the other. Then all three of them started rowing frantically to beat that tide—to get the boat to shore be fore it could be swept out into the ocean and foundered by the roaring breakers. Bit by bit they approached the shore, but at the same time they were approaching the channel too. They were practically in the shadow of the Broad Channel bridge, and not very far from the ocean when at last they got to shore. "And the spot where we landed," says Fred, "was a good six miles from Sixty-fourth street where Harvey and 1 had jumped into the bay.” And then came the solemn and secret oath. Fred says if his folks had ever found out what happened they’d have quit the seashore that same night. And I’ve got a sneakin’ hunch that maybe Fred and Harvey might have got a good licking for going off the end of that pier in defiance of parental orders. Anyway, everybody in the crowd, including the two city cousins, promised they’d never tell a word, and if Fred’s ma and dad ever learn about it, it’s because—well—because they read the Adventurers’ club column, too. ®—WNU Service. Body Must Have Salt Perspiration is chiefly water, but it contains a fair amount of salt which is discharged from the body. The body is constantly absorbing salt and getting rid of it again, but the operation of absorption and dis charge must be so balanced as to insure a regular quantity of salt in the body at all times. Salt is neces sary for the body and lack of it may be serious. Human blood contains exactly the same amount of salt as sea water—unquestionable evidence that man originally came out of the sea, says a writer in Pearson’s Lon don Weekly. About Noses The nose that is squat or flat, or negro type, indicates an animal mind devoid of finer feelings. The nose that sags in the middle shows a similar nature, cruel and treach erous. Pointed noses are ‘‘sticky beaks,” says a writer in Pearson’s London Weekly. This applies to all sharp features. Like knives and spears, they penetrate. These sub jects are objectionably inquisitive and are liable to read your letters if you leave them about. If the nose is long and thin as well it shows a narrow mind—sometimes found in the “religious hypocrite.” BEAUTY’S DAUGHTER By Kathleen Norris © Kathleen Norris WNU Service. CHAPTER XV—Continued —17— Vicky’s eyes found the little round violet puncture of the bullet hole at the flawless marble temple. Se rena's sleeping face was placid, but the once scarlet mouth was pale and flecked with blood, and the beautiful pale gold hair was loos ened into a careless cascade that hung in a web over the side of the ted. There was a horrible sprawl ing relaxation in her position, a dreadful mysterious shutness in the colorless lips that made Vicky trem ble. ‘‘Is there anything to do, Quent?” “Not now.” He did not turn from his contemplation of the wreck of what had been so soft, so lovely and alluring and fragrant and warm only a few hours ago. "No, it was instantaneous, Vic,” he mut tered. “Killed herself!” “She thought he was dead, d’you see?” the older man supplied sud denly. “The Chinese woman had come out of his room. It was while we were all in the hall there, awhile back, when we all thought that poor Morrison had no chance.” “I thought, from the way you all talked,” Quentin said, “that he was! I was amazed when Amah said he wanted to see me. And cer tain she must have thought so. Poor woman!” An hour later Victoria and Quen tin walked across the Morrisons' side garden, and through the gate into the lane and through their own gate. A perfect spring dawn was strengthening over the world now; it was four o’clock; the east was flushed with exquisite delicate pink, against which shoals and galleons of delicate silver and gray and paler gray cloud made long bars. “I feel—reborn,” Vicky said. “Reborn. I’m terribly grateful, Vic,” Quentin said. "Oh, grateful! If you knew what I was thinking of all night long. Every horror that anyone can imag ine seemed to be sweeping over me. I had you in jail; I had us all moving to some remote place.” “Perhaps you think I didn't, Vic, while we were working over him. Perhaps you think I didn’t have a chance to think how I’d taken my life and destroyed it with my two hands. But thank God it’s all over now!” “I am tired. Quentin, doesn’t the tea for the Vienna doctors and our lunch at the St. Francis seem longer ago than yesterday!” "That wasn’t yesterday!” he ex claimed. “That s all it was. “My God,” he said again, struck. “She did do it, didn’t she, Quent?” “Yes,” he said with a serious look. “I guess she did." “Her killing herself”—The words sounded so strange that Vicky had to stop short and think of them— “her killing herself looked as if she did,” she mused. “She had that—I don’t know what to call it—ruthless quality,” Quen tin said. “She went over any ob stacle that was in her Way.” “He roused the very worst in her; he always did,” Victoria mused. “He seemed to sit back and laugh at her, and he never let her have enough money even to get away. She tdld me—she came to see me every few days, you know—that she had to charge even her lunches at hotels. That day she seemed to me desperate. She looked so beauti ful, too; she was in a sort of corn color, and her eyes looked so blue. Mother said after she left, ‘All dressed up and nowhere to go!’ I suppose it was death-in-life to her to live in that quiet country house.” Quentin nodded, listening. “You’ve been a trump all night long, Vic,” he said, after a while. “If you’d been like most women, and refused to go over there, we might be in bad trouble this morn ing. If you were like most women, you'd have kicked me out years ago, I don’t know why you act the way you do, but I want you to know—this sounds damn flat—but I want you to know that I admire you and that I’m grateful! I owe everything I’ve got in the world to you. I’m ju&t beginning to realize that it’s an awful lot. You know I’m not good at speeches, but when I think about you—and this is what I wanted to tell you—I get all choked up. I’m—I’m grateful.” “Thank you, Quentin!” Vic said from the other end of the table. “We’ll go on here, and some day I’ll have a chance to show you that I’m changed,” Quentin said. “It’s taken me a long time to wake up. I've been a fool. I did the rottenest thing to you a man can do to his wife; it’s just my luck, it’s my in credible luck that you’ve—well, I won’t say forgiven me; you don’t forget those things, and you can’t forgive them — but that you've worked it out your way.” "You did something of which you are ashamed," she said simply. "I— didn't. Why should there be any question of forgiveness? If I did something — something wrong, to morrow — you'd ba sorry—you’d think a little the less of me; but you wouldn’t be personally touched because I forged a check—your own honor would be just what it was! My life isn’t yours. I’m me.” "I wish to the Lord you would do something dumb,” Quentin said with ineloquent force, after a pause. "I sound smug," Vicky said, "but I’m not. And I do dumb things every day. Thousands of them. There were months—there were actual years when your home life was nothing but mistakes, nerves, uproar, my crying and being tired and sick, the children going into mumps and whooping cpugh, bills piling up.” "But, good heavens, Vic, what’s that!" the man said roughly, in im patience. "What's all that compared to the’ other thing, compared to hurting your pride, and killing your love for me. and putting the thought of another woman eternally between us? Why. lots of the fellows go home to women who are extrav agant and nagging and nervous, and who don’t have a houseful of gorgeous kids to show for it! There’s no comparison between the two.” "I think there is. I think nagging and extravagance and nerves are serious things too, and I think wom en who won’t have children, who hate home, who are always running about with other men, are just as bad! Even if they don’t go to the limit—even if they fool along, get ting everything they can out of a “Killed Herself."' man and then stopping short, never giving anything—it seems to me de testable,” Vic said. “My own temp tations are different,” she added. “I think maybe I’m a mother first and a wife afterward; I’ve never gone in for pink baby pillows and long-legged dolls!” The words brought back with a moment of horror the memory of her last sight of Serena’s bedroom, and she was still. “Serena loved you,” she said thoughtfully, in the silence. “She never loved anyone but her self,” Quentin said. “Everything she said and did revolved about that. She loved her own "beauty and power. She used them to get what she wanted. I knew it, after a while. Morrison must have dis covered it as soon as they were married. Her first husband tried twice to kill himself. She was cold and vain, poor girl! And she was the woman,” he ended, “for whom I broke your heart!” “No, you didn't break my heart.” “Breaking a person's heart is a cheap way of putting it," Quentin said. “It sounds romantic, when it wasn’t anything but damn stupid and selfish. You said what it really did, a minute ago. It made you think less of me; that’s the real price. We never can go back of that. You'll never be able to trust me again. There’ll always be that feeling, somewhere, ’way back in your mind, that I failed you!" Vicky, her elbows on the kitchen table, her chin in her hands, looked thoughtful. “I suppose so,” she said slowly. “But I don’t know that it matters. You’ve seen me looking pretty hor rible, ugly and crying and fright ened and only anxious to be let off pain; it doesn’t seem to make you like me any less when I’m all gotten up in my new Paris clothes. Luck ily people forget those things, when —‘under it all—they love each other." Quentin answered her with a long look. "I think you really believe that," he said after a while. “You’re not like anyone else in the world!” Vicky in her turn was thoughtful. “Perhaps we’re both tired,” she said. “For that matter, what's hap pened tonight is enough to throw us into nervous breakdowns. We don’t often talk this way. But it’s only fair to tell you something, Quentin, that may partly explain the way I feel, the way I act. When we were married, eleven years ago, I talked about marrying for reasons, about not being carried away by excitement, about not falling in love. “I told you my idea of marriage was companionship, home, children. You were a widower with a deli cate youngster—" She laughed. “It seems funny now to think of Gwen as delicate, doesn't it?" she said "Women were making your life a burden, and you needed just what I had to give. I remember our talk ing of it once, and your saying that whatever the agreement was before marriage, however reasonable and dispassionate the feeling was, no man could have a young wife around and not come to love her, that is presuming that he didn’t come to hate her. Do you remember that?" "Vaguely." “Well, the joke was on me," Vicky said, “for I had it—had it desperate ly, the whole time! I trembled and got silly when you spoke to me, 1 thought of you all day long and lay awake dreaming of you all night. I was the love-sickest woman who ever knelt down and thanked God that the most marvelous man in the world had deigned to look at her! I never told you, I was too proud. I tackled the big house and the serv ants and Gwen; 1 even went to the hospital and had your babies, Quent. But I never dared tell you! You never asked me to; you took me calmly for granted, meals and fur nace and Gwen and babies and an swering the telephone and buying you new shirts, and that was the way I wanted it to be. I didn't want to be the one to introduce the silly, the sentimental side of it, cry when you forgot my birthday, and expect you to compliment me every night on the way my hair was done! I’d said I wanted a certain kind of marriage—work and responsibility and companionship, and plenty of criticism if I didn't do my* job, and I got it! But I've loved you all the time! Quent, when you come home tired at night and go to sleep with your big heavy head on my shoulder, I lie awake sometimes for joy. Juliet has nothing on me, nor Beatrice, nor Nicolette!” She stood up, smiled at him. “There!” she said. “That’s my awful confession. I’ve made you a speech.” Quent took Victoria in his arms. “You’ve made me a speech, Vic. I’ll never forget it.” [THE END] In our next issue! CATTLE KINGDOM by Alan LeMay A now story of the West . . . cattle ranges . . < adventure... romance—and murder! It was murder that struck once, twice, three times ... a series of puzzling crimes that made detectives out of cow punchers, that left the finger of suspicion pointed at innocent men. Here’s an unusual drama that adds real mystery to the ever-thrilling story of outdoor life in the Rockies. You’ll enjoy “Cattle Kingdom,” a truly great story by a popular Western author—Alan Le May. Read Every Installment! _ _ Fashion Is in Mood for All-White Bv CHERIE NICHOLAS AFTER all when it comes to look ing your sweetest and prettiest is there anything in the way of a lovely party frock more flattering to endearing feminine charms than all-white? Really now, is there? Evidently fashion feels the same way about it for with all the excit ing, the glamorous, the esthetic, the hectic, the eye-appealing delectable tones and tints on the color card this season, comes all-white on the scene and the contest is on, written all over the style program and in big headlines—white versus color! The chic and the charm and the immaculate nicety with which the all white costume dresses you up during the daytime hours is exceed ed only by the magic and the irresistible loveliness of the dine and-dance and the formal party frocks that designers are treating of frothy white silk sheers this sum mer such as moussdline de soies, silk organdies, finest dainty silk nets and soft “drapy” filmy chif fons that sway and flutter and dance to the strains of rapturous music. Then there are the stiff silks that are such favorites and which re quire such queenly styling to do them justice. Their vogue in all white is outstanding with particular emphasis on gleaming white satin which this summer is more than ever holding sway in ballroom and at formal night functions. A most fascinating white silk satin gown is shown centered in the illustration. Its stately princess lines are de lightfully in keeping with the exqui siteness of the fabric itself The Jenny Lind shoulder line adds in Jescribable charm and the square inclined neckline and the majestic sweep of the skirt so expertly styled so as to slenderize at the same time that it achieves a full hemline, are all details that glorify. The sophis ticated simplicity of this gown and the elegance of the all-silk satin are its big appeal. An interesting feature about pres ent party dresses is that their sil houettes go to such extremes. Some are sheathlike to the knees with flaring hemlines and slenderized fit ted waistlines, while others are that bouffant it requires yards and yards of material to make them. For the airy-fairy types that are so en trancing and so beloved this sea son by the younger set, vaporous filmy chiffons and billowy tulles and nets are the logical answer. Beautifully draped in classic lines is the dress pictured to the left. It required yards and yards of white silk chiffon for its fashioning. The girdled straps of narrow ribbon re flect Greek influence. To the right a most exquisite silk chiffon evening ensemble is shown. The girlish simplicity of this dainty gown and cape commends this cos tume to the young debutante. This lovely creation naively informs you that not all the honors are going to all-white for in this instance the chiffon is in the new exquisite desert dawn tint, which is a delicate pink shade that is too lovely for words. The gown has a halter neck which is most becoming to the wearer. The cape is grace itself. By the way, you really should have a cape of chiffon or of net or of some type of silk sheer to wear with lingerie dresses, for the transparent cape is one of fashion’s pet vanities this summer. £) Western Newspaper Union. RIBBONS TAKE ON ADDED IMPORTANCE By CHERIE NICHOLAS Ribbons have not been so impor tant for a long time as they now are. They are used for sashes, for girdles, shoulder straps that are part of the design of the dress, for bandings and for entire jackets and toques. Many of the better styled frocks and tailored suits have their edges finished with grosgrain ribbon bind ings. The new idea of these bind ings is carried out both in mono tone and in contrasting effects. Beige finished with black or brown ribbon bindings is a favorite theme, also black bound with white gros grain. Perky velvet ribbon bows trim print frocks while many dress fronts are fastened with narrow tied rib bons. Ribbon trims on hats are widely advocated and there is con siderable use of broad belting rib bon to artfully band high crowns. Use of All Kinds of Lace Revived for Summer Wear The use of all kinds of lace has been revived for summer wear. Helene Yrande uses pure white lace for a fitted deshabille which has enormously full, puffed sleeves to the elbow. The low cut front decol lette is filled with doubled bands of chiffon in pale yellow and pale green. These two colors are repeated in the chiffon sash which is twisted about the bodice Grecian fashion, and tied in back with the floating chiffon streamers hanging in back and forming a suggestion of a train. Use Pink Chiffon Roses to Trim Evening Jacket Pale pink roses of shaded chiffon are applied cleverly as trimming on an evening jacket of sheer, white chiffon in the new Schiaparelli col lection. The same type rose$ are used as a back shoulder yoke on a blue satin evening cape. Pale yellow and green chiffon is usoi effectively to make sprays of mimose applied on a white organdie evening gown. _ NET OVER PRINT By CUERIE NICHOLAS Broad brimmed hats which fash ion has decreed for summer wear combine well with this type of af ternoon dress which is of black cable net worn over an underslip of gay print on dark background. It is made with puff sleeves and sailor collar. Catalin costume jew elry, including a bow clip-brooch and bangle bracelets in the new “pepper and salt” design by Schia parelli add chic to this costume. The hat is of black baku with a large white poppy.