In an African Market Place

1884

An African market, with so many commodities to sell and so many eager sellers and loungers, is a most animated scene. The din of voices may be heard afar off, and when you enter the great open square, where, under the shade of great trees, perhaps a thousand people are disposed in little chaffering groups around their heaps of wares, it is worse than the parrot-house at the Zoological Gardens.

The women are the keenest traders; they haggle and scream and expostulate, and chuckle aside over their bargains, while the hulking men lounge about in good-humored uselessness, or squat in rows stolidly smoking. Although the strife of tongue is great, few real quarrels occur. There is in most cases a chief of the market, perhaps an old Fetish man, who regulates all disputes, and who so heavily fines both litigants that all are chary of provoking his arbitration.

This babel lasts but one day, and then for the rest of the "week" or "fortnight" the market place is void and desolate; only the old wicker baskets, banana skins, corn-shucks, feathers and egg-shells remain to witness to the great assemblage which has taken place. Of such a kind is the great market near Isaugila, and there are similar gatherings at Manyanga, Lutete, and in proximity to most of Mr. Stanley's stations. — Johnson's Congo River.


A Zulu belle is like the proverbial prophet. She has not much on'er in her own country. — Chicago Sun.


1926:

If the amount of tea drunk in England in one year were held in one teapot it would require a vessel as high as the cross on St. Paul's Cathedral, and in proportions of a teapot that high. Four trains could race abreast through its spout.

Movie Theater Orchestras Developing Taste for Classical Music

1926

GOOD MUSIC IS MORE POPULAR

MOVIE THEATER ORCHESTRAS HAVE TENDED TO DEVELOP TASTE FOR BETTER CLASS OF MUSIC

Chicago. — Disguised as hand maiden of the cinema, classical music is becoming popular.

Popular, "that is, compared with the classical taste in this country ten years ago. In Chicago, the change is perceptible in all the larger picture houses. One company for instance, which operates six of the largest houses, has announced it has already spent more for music this year than for pictures.

Boon For Good Music

Adolphe Dumont, former Chicago grand opera conductor now directing music in one of the theatres, evaluated this changing public taste as a boon not only for good music but also for good musicians. His own orchestra, he said, has just been increased to more than fifty pieces.

"More grand opera music is played in the large motion picture houses each day," he said, "than played by grand opera orchestras in week. We play grand opera four times a day, week days, and five times Sunday. The grand opera orchestras and Symphony orchestras hardly ever play a program more than three times a week.

Opera Interprets Emotions

"A public demand for more and better music has been recognized. Eight years of patient work, interpreting the emotions of the movies, as only grand opera music can do, created the demand.

"Day after day, showing sometimes slapstick comedy to the tune of the Ride of the Valkyries; love scenes to strains from Tristran and Isolde and Charlie Chaplin's antics to Debussy's 'Girl of the Flaxen Hair,' the moving picture orchestras have given audiences a taste for classical music that many of them would have formerly disavowed. Great music consequently has found a new significance, and importance. It gives motion pictures dramatic intensity."

—Wisconsin Rapids Daily Tribune, Wisconsin Rapids, WI, Aug. 12, 1926, p. 12.

Quips – A Dentist Whipped For Kissing A Patient

1926

TOM SIMS SAYS—

You can travel better with a wooden leg than with a wooden head.

The world gets right along now. In Columbia University, 51 law seniors flunked.

A man is trying to go around the world in 35 days, but if he succeeds it won't get him anywhere.

In Exeter, N. H., a dentist was whipped for kissing a patient, perhaps after telling her it wouldn't hurt a bit.

Our busiest citizen is one trying to make a living without working.

Strong language usually comes from a weak mind.

Camouflage stockings are the latest, but they won't become popular.

Here's a fine symbol for a 1928 political party: Camel in a canoe.

There's quite a bit of static in handling our radio industry.

—Wisconsin Rapids Daily Tribune, Wisconsin Rapids, WI, Aug. 12, 1926, p. 6.

Deceased is a "Graded" Body in This Cemetery

August 1926

Folkstone, England — Folkstone's new cemetery is to have first, second and third class graves.

The question whether the graves should be graded has been agitating residents here for months, and the controversy was finally settled by the town council which adopted a resolution in favor of the grading system.



Miners' Dogs Have Day

London — Miner's dogs had a "day out" at the fashionable and exclusive Ranelagh club to which they were brought by their owners to compete for the Sporting Chronicle Lonsdale trophy for "whippets."

Fashionable Mayfair dames rubbed shoulders with miners' wives and West End aristocrats hobnobbed with miners during the excitement of the racing. The Duchess of Newcastle acted as judge.



Dog Wrecks Car

London. — When his pet dog leaped into his lap, K. B. Harris lost control of his automobile. It ran into a ditch and turned a somersault. The man was unhurt, but the dog suffered serious injuries.

Couple Wed in Funeral Parlor

California, 1926

Superstition?
It doesn't bother MISS ELIZABETH G. EDWARDS, Berkeley girl, who became MRS. ERNEST FRANDSEN yesterday at a wedding in an Oakland funeral parlor.

COUPLE WED IN FUNERAL PARLOR

Undertaker's Helper Finds No Gloom in Chapel, He Tells Friends.

Love laughs at lots of things and yesterday it chuckled at the supposedly traditional gloom of an undertaking establishment when Ernest Frandsen claimed Elizabeth G. Edwards as his bride amid surroundings dedicated to the softening of grief instead of aiding and abetting Dan Cupid.

The wedding took place in the chapel of a funeral parlor at 2935 Telegraph avenue, with Elder E. A. Adams of the Seventh Day Adventist church as the officiating minister.

A group of close friends of the couple and business associates of the bridegroom were present.

"Unusual? Well, maybe," said Frandsen in explaining the choice of the wedding scene. "But you see I work here and it suggests no gloom for me. And it'll suggest even less now."

Frandsen's bride is the daughter of N. B. Edwards, 956 Ventura street. The romance is the outcome of an acquaintance of several years.

—Oakland Tribune, Oakland, California, July 2, 1926, page 1.

Note: According to Social Security Death Index, Elizabeth Frandsen was born Dec. 23, 1907 and died in June 1986. And Ernest W. Frandsen was born Sept. 2, 1907 and died August 24, 1994. The last residence for each was 95448 (Healdsburg, Sonoma, California.) So assuming they were married all that time, 1926-1986, just missed 60 years by a month or probably less.