How To Write Special Feature Articles Part 19

If he has not waited too long, he finds himself within the chamber in time to see nine justices of our highest court, clad in long, black robes, file slowly into the room from an antechamber at the left.

Every one within the room has arisen, and all stand respectfully at attention while the justices take their places. Then the voice of the court crier is heard again:

"_Oyez, oyez, oyez_! All persons having business with the Supreme Court of the United States are admonished to draw near and give their attention, for the court is now sitting."

Then, after a slight pause:

"G.o.d save the United States and this honorable court!"

The justices seat themselves; the attorneys at the bar and visitors do likewise. The Supreme Court of the United States, generally held to be the most powerful tribunal on earth, is in session.

(2)

(_Collier's Weekly_)

JAMES WHITCOMB BROUGHER, A PREACHER TO THE PROCESSION

BY PETER CLARK MACFARLANE

Imagine the Hippodrome--the largest playhouse of New York and of the New World! Imagine it filled with people from foot-lights to the last row in the topmost gallery--orchestra, dress circle, and balconies--a huge uprising, semicircular bowl, lined with human beings. Imagine it thus, and then strip the stage; take away the Indians and the soldiers, the elephants and the camels; take away the careening stage coaches and the thundering hoofs of horses, and all the strange conglomeration of dramatic activities with which these inventive stage managers are accustomed to panoply their productions. Instead of all this, people the stage with a chorus choir in white smocks, and in front of the choir put a lean, upstanding, shock-headed preacher; but leave the audience--a regular Hippodrome audience on the biggest Sat.u.r.day night. Imagine all of this, I say, and what you have is not the Hippodrome, not the greatest play in the New World, nor any playhouse at all, but the Temple Baptist Church of Los Angeles, California, with James Whitcomb Brougher, D.D., in the pulpit.

(3)

(_The Independent_)

THE LITTLE RED SCHOOLHOUSE A "FAKE"

What the Country Schoolhouse Really Is, and Why

BY EDNA M. HILL

The schoolhouse squats dour and silent in its acre of weeds. A little to the rear stand two wretched outbuildings. Upon its gray clapboarded sides, window blinds hang loose and window sashes sag away from their frames. Groaning upon one hinge the vestibule door turns away from lopsided steps, while a broken drain pipe sways perilously from the east corner of the roof.

Within and beyond the vestibule is the schoolroom, a monotony of grimy walls and smoky ceiling. Cross lights from the six windows s.h.i.+ne upon rows of desks of varying sizes and in varying stages of destruction. A kitchen table faces the door. Squarely in the middle of the rough pine floor stands a jacketed stove. A much torn dictionary and a dented water pail stand side by side on the shelf below the one blackboard.

And this is the "little red schoolhouse" to which I looked forward so eagerly during the summer--nothing but a tumbledown shack set in the heart of a prosperous farming district.

(4)

(_New York Tribune_)

THE ONE WOMAN OFFICIAL AT PLATTSBURG

BY ELENE FOSTER

The tramp, tramp of feet on a hard road; long lines of khaki figures moving over the browning gra.s.s of the parade ground; rows of faces, keen and alert, with that look in the eyes that one sees in LePage's Jeanne d'Arc; the click, click of bullets from the distant rifle range blended with a chorus of deep voices near at hand singing "Over There"; a clear, blue sky, crisp autumn air and the sparkling waters of Lake Champlain--that's Plattsburg.

(5)

(_Good Housekeeping_)

NEW ENGLAND MILL SLAVES

BY MARY ALDEN HOPKINS

In the pale light of an early winter morning, while a flat, white moon awaited the dawn and wind-driven clouds flung faint scudding shadows across the snow, two little girls, cloaked, shawled, hooded out of all recognition, plodded heavily along a Vermont mountain road. Each carried a dangling dinner pail.

The road was lonely. Once they pa.s.sed a farmhouse, asleep save for a yellow light in a chamber. Somewhere a c.o.c.k crowed. A dog barked in the faint distance.

Where the road ascended the mountain--a narrow cut between dark, pointed firs and swaying white-limbed birches--the way was slushy with melting snow. The littler girl, half dozing along the accustomed way, slipped and slid into puddles.

At the top of the mountain the two children shrank back into their m.u.f.flers, before the sweep of the wet, chill wind; but the mill was in sight--beyond the slope of bleak pastures outlined with stone walls--sunk deep in the valley beside a rapid mountain stream, a dim bulk already glimmering with points of light. Toward this the two little workwomen slopped along on squashy feet.

They were spinners. One was fifteen. She had worked three years.

The other was fourteen. She had worked two years. The terse record of the National Child Labor Committee lies before me, unsentimental, bare of comment:

"They both get up at four fifteen A.M. and after breakfast start for the mill, arriving there in time not to be late, at six. Their home is two and one-half miles from the mill. Each earns three dollars a week--So they cannot afford to ride. The road is rough, and it is over the mountains."

(6)

(_Providence Journal_)

HOW TO SING THE NATIONAL SONGS

To Interpret the Text Successfully the Singer Must Memorize, Visualize, Rhythmize, and Emphasize

BY JOHN G. ARCHER

The weary eye of the toastmaster looks apologetically down long rows of tables as he says with a sorry-but-it-must-be-done air, "We will now sing 'The Star Spangled Banner'"; the orchestra starts, the diners reach frantically for their menus and each, according to his musical inheritance and patriotic fervor, plunges into the unknown with a resolute determination to be in on the death of the sad rite.

Some are wrecked among the dizzy alt.i.tudes, others persevere through uncharted shoals, all make some kind of a noisy noise, and lo, it is accomplished; and intense relief sits enthroned on every dewy brow.

In the crowded church, the minister announces the "Battle Hymn of the Republic," and the organist, armed with plenary powers, crashes into the giddy old tune, dragging the congregation resistingly along at a hurdy gurdy pace till all semblance of text or meaning is irretrievably lost.

Happy are they when the refrain, "Glory, Glory, Hallelujah,"

provides a temporary respite from the shredded syllables and scrambled periods, and one may light, as it were, and catch up with himself and the organist.