Life — August 5, 1926 — page 11: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

h Eo was a mous! nding T had ik it’s s con would e Tat efore, lantie js Zat “aber. ’r me com to go re de Joan Kinley’s Letters from Europe Are Correct at Last ! ELL, it’s all over but the Wisi The prize-winners are announced herewith, and never a Lire competition more deservedly won, ‘The vast number of entries were read carefully by the judges and graded on the following scale: A (practically perfect) ; B (excellent) ; C (yood); D (poor); E (hopeless). Approximately eighty-five per cent, were graded C or better, there being ouly a smattering of really bad man- uscripts submitted. Many conte: ants took particular pains to dress their answers up with elaborate trim- mings; it is interesting to note, how- ever, that all the — prize-winning answers were utterly devoid of frills. N the surface a sort of general knowledge examination, the Con- test was actually an intelligence test of an unusual kind. Practically all the information required to correct Joan Kinley’s letters, with the exeep- tion of the now famous “padlock on the Are de Triomphe,” could be ob- tained in any public library; the hard part was to present these facts in such a way that every one of her misstatements was fully corrected. Of all the entries received, not one set of corrections was absolutely perfect. Joan's letters as they appeared in Lire were probably the most in- ane aberrations of dumb sixteen that had ever _ been printed in this or any other paper (not counting the tabloids). Their very inanity, how- ever, constituted a trap for the un- wary - minded which very few were able to avoid successfully. A misstatement so obvious that it seemed hardly necessary to point it out was quite likely to involve a subtler inaccu- racy. Forin- stance,inher third letter Joan referred to Mil- ton, “who wrote that ‘Ode on First Looking at Chapman's Homer.’" Here it was necessary to indicate not only that Keats wrote the poem, but that it is a sonnet, not an ode, and that the correct title is, “On First Looking info Chapman's Homer.” Incidentally,- one contestant pointed out that “Milton was blind and therefore could not ‘look’; another suspected a confusion with Gerald Chapman's life story in the New York Graphic, and a third re- marked on the non-existence of base- ball in Milton’s day. Similar Joan Kinleyisms among the contestants were usually the result of a deter- mination to make two mistakes grow where one was intended. An espe- cially meticulous contestant listed as a correction, “Shakespeare is dead,” and a lady in Cincinnati made a record list of 269 mistakes for the eight letters, yet overlooked two of the three French misspellings—"La Havre,” “Mme. de la Pompadour,” and “Place d'e Iéna.” AS to these misspellings, it was a nice question whether — the should be classified as grammat errors or as mistakes in the Con- test sense. It was decided that, as they were not part of Joan's flapper vocabulary, they could prop- erly be called Contest mistakes, along with the simple misspelling, “Lawrence” (instead of Laurence) Stallings — a slip very generally overlooked. The most insidious of Joan's mis- takes, however, was undoubtedly the little word “here” in her letter from London in which she speaks of Stratford and the ‘‘cute little church” where Shake- speare is buried. One con- testant, by the way, stated that “There is no such ’ as Irish [* the very difft- cult task of — selecting the winners the judges had a standard in mind em- bodying concise and trenchant cor- rection of all the real mistakes in Joan’s letters, together with an essay on “What I Shall See in Europ: which should be something more than an itinerary in the manner of a travel folder. The winning essay appears on the opposite page, but lack of space un- fortunately prevents us from print- ing Mr. Hosmer’s corrections to Joan's letters; his only mistakes were of a minor character, A folder containing the complete corrections to the eight letters will be forwarded to every contestant, together with announcement of the grade that his or her answer received. Honorable Mention (The following contestants received a grade of A-minus or B-plus.) F. E. Aitkins, Ryllis Alexander, E. P. S. Allen, Gwladys Allen, Margaret Allen, W. W. Alward, Mrs. Frazer Arnold, Frances Atchinson, Edward E. Baird, H. Bay, Rosemary Carr Benet, Frani Blough, Pauline Boisot, Marie Borough, Kenneth J. Boyer, Louise W. Bray, Cameron Briggs, Nathan Broder, E. E. Burgese, C. B. Burns. Mrs, Walter Cahill, Mrs. Mary Cal- laghan, Roberta Chapman, A. B. Cheadle, Elizabeth W. Cleaveland, Leon L. Collyer, Mrs. F. Howell Colman, Helen E. Comins, Nell Cotnam, N. R. Craw- ford, Rosamund Crompton, Nelle A. Curry, Mrs. Susanna Y. Cushing, Alice H. Cyphers, E. K. Dalton, Mrs. Frank P. Deering, Dorothy Downer, Elizabeth Downer, Vida H. Dougherty, Frances Duane, M. M. English, Amos A. Ettin- ger, Claire Fellmeth, Armand K. Fidaire, L. H. Ford. Cornelia E. Gardner, Mrs, Alice Gar- rett, Florence Geiseler, Ida P, Gershoy, Dorothy Virginia Graham, Lillian Ward Grant, Margaret E. Green, Rose B. Guenther, Agnes C, Hamann, John 1, Hartman, Jean Hawthorne, Mrs, Ellicott Hewes, Gerald B. Hodgins, Mrs. F. J. Hokin, Edith Austin Holton, Nathan Honig, Gertrude Hooper, Oello Hous- ton, Frederica Howell, F. L. Hunt, Marjorie Jenkins, Grace Jewett, Mrs. E. H, Johnson, Helen M, Johnson. Miles H. Kastendieck, Blanche Kieck- hoefer, Frances FE. King, Edith L. Kraft, H. G. Kraft, Edith Leighton, Arthur (Continued on page 36) comicbooks.com