'J{p. of Smucker House has been a center since...
Transcript of 'J{p. of Smucker House has been a center since...
o/o{. 2, 'J{p. 24 'Tuesday, 9vfay 2~ 1993 Section of tfie Salem 91&-ws
Smucker House has been a center since 1953 ct or's w-if e saw
ed for f e era ti on f w-om.en's clubs By Lois Firestone
T HE PATTERN OF LIFE was changing in the
1950s - ranch houses built without the once-vital dining room were replacing the venerable two-story, the time-saving home freezer permitted housewives to buy food ahead for next month's dinners, and television sets were placed prominently, and proudly, in living rooms.
What hadn't changed, though, were the needs of the people and the towns where they 1i ved, and the women more often than not met those needs. This was true of Salem women in the mid-1950s, in the days before social services agencies came into their own. As far back as February 22, 1895, the city's women's groups banded together in a unique project which earned $500 for their charities - club members took over the Salem Daily News for the day, February 22, 1895, and wrote copy, sold advertisements, and laid out the pages. A silk copy of the day's edition was auctioned off; W. H. Mullins was the highest bidder at $25.
By the 1930s women, aware of the value in finding a way to get things done by joining forces, were forming federations. A Salem doctor's wife was enthusiastic about the success of the Middle East District of the Ohio Federation of Women's Clubs; for several years Ruth Smucker was active on,committees and held offices in the state federation, and was eager for Salem's groups to have one of their own.
She'd become involved in town activities since moving there in 1911. For 14 years she taught the Wesleyan Class of the First Methodist Church and was a member of the board of trustees for 22 years. Over the years, she taught 2,500 youngsters and often said her church work was· the- job of· her -life.·
Ruth Tucker was teaching in Shelby, Ohio public schools when she met her husband-tobe, a homeopathic physician, Roy Edward Smucker in 1905. Smucker had practiced in Toledo before coming to Shelby after studying at a long list of schools and hospitals, including Ohio State University, McGill University, Mayo Clinic, Johns Hopkins and hospitals in New York and Chicago.
Orphaned at 15, Ruth was raised by an aunt and uncle who encouraged her to continue her studies at Shelby High and Shelby Normal School. The Smuckers had been married six years when they moved to Salem and the doctor took over Syrian-born Dr. Sallume' s practice.
For decades, South Broadway was referred to as Doctors' Row because so many physicians opened offices there. The Smuckers bought the handsome 10-room brick home along 271 South Broadway which had been used as a combination doctor's office and living quarters since it was built for that purpose in the 1860s.
Dr. Smucker took over the practice of Syrian-born Dr. Sal-1 ume and the Smuckers adapted easily to life in Salem, in many ways adopting the bustling city as their hometown. Avid travelers, the two toured 40 countries over the years. The doctor died in the fall of 1951, and his wife passed away three years later at age 70 - enroute from a Florida vacation, she had stopped to visit an old friend, Nell Vernon Sheehan in North Carolina.
In her will she bequeathed her family home to the women of Salem to be used as a center for their clubs. Thirteen groups responded to the invitation and named the home the Smucker House.
Five hundred women were represented at the first meeting
· on March 51 1953.· Mr&. Maurice
Ruth and Roy Smucker pause on the steps of their home-doctor's office along Salem's South Broadway during a winter day in the late 1940s.
Sadler of the Book Club was named interim head of the project. Other officials included Mrs. Chester Kridler of Garden Club, secretary; and Eleanor McMurray of Quota Club, trea~ surer. Ms. McMurray kept the job for 16 years.
Clubs included Book Club, Garden Club, Garden Study, Business and Professional Women, Council of Jewish Women, Travelers, Junior Mothers, Leornians, Music Study, Quota, Xi Pi, Beta Psi and Xi Gamma Beta Chapters , of Beta Sigma Phi Sorority. The Democratic Women's Club, Republican Women's Club and the Phoebe Fraunces Chapter of the Daughters of the American Revolution joined later. Each dub paid $100 as an initiation fee - the Book Club members cashed in a savings bond to get the money.
The Quota Club met twice monthly for a dinner meeeting and the Business and Professional Women, too, held dinners. The Book Club and Leornians and the Book Club and Travelers met together annually. Only the Travelers, Garden Study and Music Club met in the afternoons.
The Smucker House was one of numerous homes used jointly as doctor's offices in the early 1900s along South Broadway, known as Doctor's Row.
The women had their center but they needed furnishings and basic household necessaries. By the fall of 1953 they'd rounded up chairs, divans, china and silver and were still accepting offerings from dub members and friends. George Bowman Sr. donated nine dozen glasses, salts and peppers and sugars and creamers; Mrs. Potter sent in a bed,
springs and mattresses; Mrs. Astry, two tortiers; Ruth Bogar and Mrs. Robert Rheutan, lamps; Belle Golliday, a chicken Fryer; and Helen Thorpe, a Fostoria candlestick, among other gifts.
The federation purchased 9 dozen services of china with the initials SFWC in gold letter-
See ~SMUCKER, page 6
By Lois Firestone
D URING THE BARREN days of the Depression
when most people were scraping enough money together just to pay rent and buy food and clothes for their own families, Otis Flick was thinking of others - years later, grown-up sons and daughters would tell stories of the kind man who anonymously left milk, bread and candy bars on their doorsteps in the 1930s.
Otis was barely 17 and attending classes af the Salem Business College in 1923 when W. H. Matthews placed him with William S. Arbaugh's furniture store and mortuary as a temporary employee. Matthews had bought the school 27 years before and built it up into the largest and best in eastern Ohio. In this case his ability to match up employee and employer worked well: Otis would stay with Arbaugh for the next 41 years, until he retired.
Ray Pearce, who later became a partner, was still attending mortuary school when Otis joined fhe business which was housed in the Pioneer Building at the comer of Lincoln A venue and Main Street. J. T. Brooks built it in the late 1800s on land that had been the property of early settler Benjamin Hawley. The site was a field Hawley had cultivated when Dr. John Cope bought it and put up the original frame building, sluicing water from the nearby Hawley spring for bathing and medicinal use - the doctor believed cold water would cure all diseases, but it didn't work and finally the enterprise dwindled
Otis Flick stands beside the company delivery truck in front of the W. S. Arbaugh furniture store at the corner of Lincoln and State in this 1930 photo.
to an end. Charles Davis converted the
building into a chair and cabinetmaking shop, as well as a grocery. Later it was dismantled and the Salem Roller Skating Rink was built; still later, the structure became an annex to the Barckhoff Organ Co.
After Brooks put up the Pioneer, a variety of businesses and organizations rented rooms there - fhe YMCA, Elks Club, Salem Public Library and the A. W. Jones Dry Goods Company, among them.
In 1922, Arbaugh bought the building from R. S. McCulloch, renting out rooms on the upper floors but keeping the ground floor for his furniture business. A small building next door was
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Otis and Bessie Flick moved to East Palestine from Kokomo, Indiana when Otis Jr. was a youngster. After he started working for Arbaugh he moved to Salem and a house his employer owned along 194 Fair Ave. Later, Arbaugh moved the company to a East Main Street house adjacent to the Fair Street property. Today, Ray, Ernest and Robert Greenisen continue the business at
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that site, 1617 East State Street. When he wasn't behind the
wheel of the company truck enroute to deliver a piece of furniture, Otis was on the showroom floor, order pad in hand, pointing out the best buys to prospective customers. For years, he was the ''handyman" on the premises. Adept at fixing practically everything, he liked revamping antique docks; in later years it became a full time hobby.
He drove the ambulance, too,
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for Arbaugh and helped out with a variety of undertaking chores in the funeral parlor next door - an exception was the embalming work which he couldn't do since he wasn't licensed.
In the days before paramedics and Emergency Medical Technicians, Otis often helped mothers bring their babies into the world - all told, he deliv-
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Long time driver Otis Flick stands in front of the company hearse at the Arbaugh-Pearce home.
Otis Flick and Mabel Raynes pose for their wedding picture on ]an. 30, 1929 in the Salem studio of photographer R. T. Curtis.
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ered 17 infants while on duty. His first, which took place shortly after he started work as a teenager, was a woman who was having her· ninth child. Later he would say that she guided him through the procedure, and taught him techniques he catalogued for future use.
At other times, emergencies forced him to take medical action. During the World War II days, Otis was taking a patient to a Salem hospital when he started to choke; sterilizing his pen knife with his cigarette lighter, Otis performed his first - and last -
, tracheotomy. The patient recovered.
A tragedy he never forgot took place in the early 1950s when a tractor-trailer driver burned to death while Otis and a State Highway patrolman stood helplessly by, unable to extricate the trapped victim.
Otis married Mabel Raynes, a Petersburg, Ohio girl in 1929, and the couple had two children, Arnold Raynes Flick who passed away in 1985; and Phyllis Virginia Flick Gibson. Otis was 61 when he passed away three years after he retired from Arbaugh's. His widow, Mabel resides at the Century. House on Salem's State Street.
The background information for this article was gathered by Salem resident Lee Engler.
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Akro Agate produced millions of marbles
By Cheryl Caswell Thomson News Service
TO CITY OFFICIALS, THE abandoned Akro Agate
Company building in Clarksburg, West Virginia may be a dinosaur. To Roger Hardy it represents a dream come true.
Hardy hopes to turn the building into a museum in which to preserve the history of West Virginia glassmakers, primarily Akro.
Akro was a major United States manufacturer of marbles, but also produced sets of children's play dishes and a large line of decorative glassware. At the height of its operation, the Akro plant turned out 2 million marbles a day and was responsible for producing 60 percent of all the marbles worldwide.
"We have spent some 20 years digging at the Akro site," said Hardy, who along with his wife, Claudia, has given over much of its Clarksburg home to a massive collection of Akro products manufactured in the first half of this century.
Their digging efforts produced plenty of marbles and glass for their collection. But the treasure hunt wasn't limited to picks and shovels. It also included a thorough investigation into the history of the factory, which opened in 1915 and closed in 1951.
"Out of 130 employees, only a few were not willing to sell me their Akro glass. But if a museum was here, I think
they'd give theirs up, too." Hardy went into the antiques
business as a young man, and has always been a dealer in old furniture and various other collectibles. But over the years, his fondness for the company's marbles and glass became his personal passion.
"I just like Akro, because I've dug over there all my life," Hardy said.
Hardy said marbles are in demand among collectors. His own inventory -- shelf upon shelf of popeyes, sparklers, corkscrews held in old canning jars -- form a striking kaleidoscope that dominates his home.
'1'11 show my collection to anybody," he said. "I like people to stop by and talk to me about it. But what I really want is to move it all to the old Akro factory and make it available for everyone to enjoy."
The city has agreed to give the building to Hardy for his museum, but until he has the funds, the collector can't say for sure when it might become a reality.
"The building has a leaky roof and needs other repairs," he said. "We're going to have to look into funding possibilities, and we're going to try to get it listed on the National Register of Historic Places."
But Hardy has no doubt he will open the museum, expand it to include other West Virginia glassware, and donate it all back to the city.
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Federation president Evelyn Robbins relaxes in one of the sitting rooms for rent at Smucker House on the upper floor.
ing. At a later time, the group collected green stamps to buy candlesticks for the piano and candelabra for the dining table, among other items. Helen Deming gave the home a photograph of Mrs. Smucker which Mrs. Joel Sharp later framed.
With money donated by dub members they bought new window shades and drapes, repaired windows, painted walls and woodwork and wallpapered the upstairs rooms. Workers removed hte doorway partitions between two room on the south side of the house - having one room was more comfortable and convenient. An open archway near the staircase ana-front entrance was enclosed with a doorway, ensuring privacy for meetings in the large room.
Christie Hanson was hired as live-in housekeeper at an $80 monthly salary plus Social Security payments. Helen Labbe has been housekeeper at Smucker House since May 1983. In all, eight women have held the job: Mrs. Miller followed Mrs. Hanson in 1959, Mrs. Boughton in 1960, Mrs. Hilda McGranahan in 1962, Mrs. Corle in 1971, Mildred Shasteen in 1972, and Virginia Long in 1976.
In the beginning, federation members decided not to rent the upstairs rooms but changed their minds a month or so later and have been renting the rooms since September 1953. The rents back then were $7 a week with kitchen privileges and $5 a week for room only.
Mrs. Joel Sharp was elected president at the first annual meeti!tg held on Oct. 4, 1954;
others -chosen included Mrs. Nat Walken of the Jewish Women's Council, first vice president; Mrs. Roy Roller of Junior Mothers, second vice president; Mrs. Holzwarth, secretary; and Mrs. Vernon Broomall of Leomians, assistant secretary-treasurer.
The major problem at the beginning - and the big one today -- is raising money to run the house. At first, the women held benefit card parties, hosted a feature movie at the local theater, and had rummage benefits.
In 1955, the federation held its first antique show, a threeday event coordinated by H. 0. Wintermute at the Memorial Building and continued for four years - an antique mahogany tilt table was grand prize in a drawing, and members donated the food items. Fliers were sent out with Select Dairy's milk deliveries and a puppet show based on the Kukla, Fran and Ollie television show was performed announcing the show. An antique doll collection was displayed in a downtown store window. The third day of the first show fell on a Sunday and the federation received a letter from the Salem Ministerial Association protesting holding the show on a Sabbath day. An $1,843. profit was realized that first year.
The rummage sales continued - $856 was brought in one year - and in 1966, the first flower bulb sale got under way, guided by Ethelyn Roth. Orders were taken in June and delivered in time for September plantings. The first year the federation made a profit of $209. Profits increased every year until the project was discontinued in 1977 and the Garden Study Club took over the project.
The Travelers is the oldest dub in the federation; organ-
ized in 1895, the club ceased meetings for a time in the 1920s when 15 members died during a typhoid epidemic. Members have helped with Smucker
·House over the years, including a new sidewalk installed for Salem's 175th birthday in 1981.
The Book Club was formed in 1910 - the first president was Mrs. D. A. Wilhelm. Mrs. C. A. Greenisen was head of the group in 1953. In the early years the club held sewing classes at the Salvation Army and in 1925 opened public restrooms in the city's downtown area.
Mrs. G. E. Stiver headed the Music Study Club when it was organized on Feb. 29, 1924 to promote music consciousness in the area. Mrs. Fred Sweitzer was president in 1953 when the federaion was formed. Sponsors of the Junior Music Study Club, the group gives an annual advent choir festival and gives a variety of music awards every year including the Marie Bums, Grace Dyball, Esther Odoran and Lois Frost awards. Opal Taylor, a piano teacher for years, has held numerous offices in the local dub and at the district and state level -she was the first recipient of the Opal Taylor Award in 1972.
Martha Wire was president of the Quota Club when it was organized in 1925 as a community service dub, emphasizing aid to the hearing and speech handicapped. Goldie Schwartz headed the group in 1953. In ensuing years, members gave hundreds of hours, and continue to work with the Red Cross, RSVP, Salem hospitals, Mobile Meals, Salvation Army, county welfare groups, Tobin Youth Center, public library film programs, Project HELLO, and the first sign language class in local high schools, among others.
From 1971 to 1989 Quota
financed and staffed the Salem Area Speech and Hearing Clinic.
The Mona McArtor Quota Award was established in 1971 with a bequest from the former president; the grant goes to freshmen college students majoring in audiology and speech pathology.
Esther Messersmith was named Quotarian of the Year in 1986, an honor continued annually since. Ruth Hoch was named in 1987, Augusta Ibele in 1988, Mary Eckstein in 1989, Melba Smith in 1991 and Florence Spack in 1992.
Bess Hansell has been a member for 64 years, since she joined in 1929. An early sponsor of the Quota annual fashion show - the club's big money maker - she produced outstanding productions for year~.
Mrs. W. E. Bunn was president of the Salem Garden Club, organized on April 23, 1931, and Mrs. Chester Kridler was president in 1953. The first flower show came in 1936 and through the years the clttb has won innumerable state awards: in 1957, and again in 1986, it was named outstanding Garden Club of the Year. Member Betty Jones was elected president of the Garden Club of Ohio in 1962. Betty Jones, Ethel Parker and the late Leona Zimmerman have been the backbone -0f the club and federation
Ruth Smucker posed for this photo shortly after coming to Salem in 1911.
for years, beginning with the first flower and shrub plantings at Smucker House in 1957.
Leornians was formed on Nave. 12, 1934 and Harriett Percival was the initial president; the only charter member living is Margaret Klose Baker. Mrs. Claire Early was head of the group in 1953.
The club's worthy causes have been the local historical
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.~~&:b ~~- 6·~ -,,,~Continued from page ~:.~ :"
<:£·1'-.._ ./f.'' .. .......______--. society, Project HELLO and band boosters groups. Leornians has supported Salvation Army projects and the local library and for years helped decorate Smucker House at Christmastime. Leah Broomall and Edith Mercer are remembered for their enthusiasm and dedication, Leah as a charter member.
Epsilon Tau Chapter of Beta Sigma Phi Sorority began as Xi Pi in 1939, with charter members Mary Ruth Hundertmarck and Ethelyn Roth still active. While not primarily a service group, Epsilon Tau has given to numerous causes, including Girl Scouts, Camp Fire, Retarded Children Multiple Sclerosis, YWCA, Nurses Association and library. The main service project has been scholarships to Hannah Mullins School of Nursing.
The club's fund-raising project is the annual sale of homemade chocolate Easter eggs.
Mrs. Elmer Kerr was named president when the Garden Study Club was formed in 1941. Caroline Lehwald headed the dub in 1953.
Over the years, the club has continued several planting projects: at Buckeye School, the Century Home, Salem Library and Smucker House. At Smucker, members have fixed and painted fencing and the garage and redonC' the rear yard; in 1983 the received a state award for beautifying the Smucker House Gardens.
One of the members, Margaret Massa, is a nationally accredited master flower show judge and member of the National Council of State Garden Clubs Inc. She is a life member of both the state and national Garden Club and served on the state board for over 30 years.
For 39 years, Ethelyn Roth has taken care of the Smucker House draperies, bathroom necessaries and carpeting -any maintenance necessary, members say, people can rely on Ethelyn to see it's done.
Gertrude Butera was president when the Business and Professional Women were formed on Oct. 23, 1946; Margaret Lamoncha headed the group in 1953. Mrs. Lamoncha, a charter member, was dedicated to scholarship for women and bequeathed a substantial sum to lhe club for scholarship and grants to students.
The federation will celebrate the Smucker House 40th anniversary at a tea on Sunday, June 27 from 3 to 5 p.m. when former presidents and officers of member clubs will be honored. A slide show prepared by Judy Herron and Mary Horn~ ing who have done extensive research on the history of the house and members will be shown.
Federation officers pose at the first annual meeting in 1954 (from left) Mrs. Joel Sharp, Mrs. Nat Walken, Mrs. Roy Roller, Mrs. John Holzwarth and Mrs. Vernon Broomall. Absent was Miss Eleanor McMurray.
Members of Xi Gamma Beta donate a $50 check for classroom equipment to a staffer at the Retarded Children's School at Elkton in the 1950s.
Mrs. Guy Byers, book reviewer extraordinaire, sits with other federation members in this photo taken in the 1980s.
Debbie Montgomery, daughter of Mr. and Mrs. Wayne Montgomery of East Palestine, responds to a voice command from a verbal audi!ory screener, part of the Quota Club's program for youngsters.
A Beta Sigma Phi member stands beside the wishing well the sorority placed in downtown streets on July 30, 1959 tc ~rc;;,;.·r~gsters,
Fred Jones stands with members of federation.
Music Study Club madrigal singers perform (from left) Edna Zeigler, Jeanette Hutchison, Lynn Hunston, Lois Frost, Tim Keen and H:J111er
Letters e give us
a look at history
By Nancy Shulins AP Correspondent
A DISGRUNTLED NAPOLeon once wrote Joseph
ine: ''You never write me, vou do not love your husband; you know the pleasure your letters give him, yet you haven't written him six lines1 dashed off casually!"
'I\vo centuries later1 it's easy to empathize with the lonely emperor. In this era of cellular phones, faxes and electronic mail, the low-tech letter is becoming a quaint relic, amounting to just 2.5 percent of America's first-class mail. Per household1 that's less than half a letter a week.
Compare that with the four dozen letters Victor Hugo received on a good day, or the 65 letters that awaited Edith Wharton upon her return from a three-day trip in 1924. Virginia Woolf wrote 20,000 letters in her lifetime. Henry James' correspondence would have filled 50 large volumes, before he chose privacy over posteritv and burned much of- it. '
Clearly, for them, novelists letters were more than a
means of communication. They also were tools for honing writing skills and rehearsing plots. But what about those like Napoleon, who didn't write for a living but still wrote tens of thousands of letters? That so many of their letters also survive suggests another purpose: a painstaking record of events and relationships by prominent people who knew - or sensed - their place in history.
Today's decline in letterwriting has been more than offset by the increased volume of credit card mail, good news for the postal service. But who races to the mailbox in hopes of finding a Mastercard bill?
Most scholars agree that the graceful and leisurely 17th and 18th centuries marked the gold1m age of letter-writing, one reason why histories and biographies of that era are so rich.
Tomorrow's historians and biographers won't have it so good. "Phone bills won't tell you much, and as a result, contemporary history has less perspective," the late historian Barbara Tuchman said, a notion amplified by writer Ian Frazier in his satiric essay, "Igor Stravinsky: The Collected Phone Bills."
The purpose of letters, British man of letters Lytton Strachey once wrote, "is to reveal to us the littleness underlying great events~ and to remind us that
Epsilon Tau Sorority members decorate and lay out (above and below) some of the dozens of chocolate eggs they made every year as a money-making project at the Scott's Candy Store along State Street.
Federation officers on Sept. 25, ,1953 are (front, from left) Ruth Cosgrove, s~cond vice president; Mrs. Maurice Sadler, president; (standing, ~eft) Mrs. Chester Kridler, secretary; Mrs. John Holzwarth, assistant secretary-treasurer; and Miss Eleanor McMurray, treasurer.
A section of the award-winning yard plantings won by the ' G~rd~ Studk Club for ii;or~ at Smucker House. The newly Junior Gardeners from the Garden Study Club arrange flowers laid suiewal and fence ts m this photo taken in 1981. for a show during the 1950s.
history was once real life." Indeed: "I slept somewhat
late owing to my slight cold, which seems now to have subsided," future Roman emperor Marcus Aurelius writes his lover, Fronto. He tells of gargling with honey water, going to lunch, gathering grapes, chatting with his mother, taking a bath, and enjoying "hearing the yokels chaffing one another." Just another day in Imperial Rome; Real Life, circa A.D.144.
Along with chronicling everyday life, letters provide first-person accounts of events ranging from the fall of the Eternal City to Operation Desert Storm. "These are the things the foremost men of historv fought, bled, and died for
- and ~also the things they lived by," publisher M. Lincoln Schuster wrote in his 1940 anthology, "The World's Greatest Letters."
Through letters, we know how the image of Rome in ruins affected St. Jerome ("My voice cleaves to my throat; sobs choke my utterance ... The world sinks into ruin ... "), and how the Great Plains looked to a weary forty-niner ("a barren, trackless waste ... I would not give 25 cents for ... ")
The spread of Christianity can be traced in part to a letter. So can the development of the atomic bomb, urged on in a letter to President Franklin D. Roosevent signed by Albert Einstein but drafted, say scho-
lars, by Hungarian-born physicist Leo Szilard.
The letters of Paul the Apostle laid the foundation for Christianity. Written during the first century, they read as though they'd been written last week. "I have fought a good fight," Paul wrote just before his death in A.D. 67. "I have kept the faith."
Besides faith, letters have inspired poetry, art, even justice. ''What a clod of mud is flung upon your name ... " novelist Emile Zola wrote the president of France in 1898. Zola's letter, printed in the liberal newspaper L' Aurore, was in defense of Captain Alfred Dreyfus, the victim of a :military conspiracy. Zola's words,
on - behalf of a man he never met, cost him his own freedom; convicted of criminal libel, he fled to England for a time. But his letter, headlined "J'accuse," ultimately won Dreyfus his freedom and Zola a place in history. Novelist Anatole France called it "a moment of the conscience of man."
Some of the most beautiful lines ever written were inspired by or rehearsed in love letters. Before it ever occurred to John Keats to write /1 A thing of beauty is a joy forever," he was writing Franny Brawne: ''Why may I not speak of your Beauty, since without that I could never have lov'd you?"
To be continued next issue