Let's Go See

THESE are the weeks when life seems to part itself neatly in the middle. The part is Labor Day. . . . No matter how tranquil and organized you may be, the first Tuesday after the first Sunday in September feels and tastes and thinks differently from the first Tuesday after the last Sunday in August. . . .

BROADWAY theaters begin to stir in their uneasy sleep. . . . Plenty of rumors of new shows.

One already so successful that no one in the cast is looking anxiously at the call lists in Variety. . . . From Vienna, musical revue by and with Austrian refugees. As gallant and heartwarming an evening as New York has seen in a long time. . . .

NOT that it’s cold yet. . . . The National Singles are at Forest Hills from September 7 to 16....And this is a nice time of year to go out to Fort Tryon Park and see the Cloisters. If you’re a gardener look sharp and you’ll get some valuable negative information from the Cloister gardens. The things that are not there are those which, however romantically they may flourish along the Mediterranean, will not survive a winter on the Hudson. . . .

THE fashionable, looking terribly healthy, drift into the Colony or the Ritz. . . . Or the barberry, where the food is good. Used to be that super-exclusive super-gourmet club called the Elbow Room. Seems there was room and to spare. . . .

WAY down at the other end of the town the Whitney Museum is reopening on September 13, after months of alterations. . . . Special show of twentieth-century artists. Apt to make you wistful in the same way as Billy Rose’s Diamond Horseshoe, which Fritzi Scheff and other old troupers have managed to make this year’s most popular night place. . . .

LUNCH near the Museum at the Jumble Shop....All the endless machinery of Grace Church’s activities is beginning to move. The place is like something out of an English novel set down on Broadway. Eighty little boys from nine years up in the Choir School. . . . By the way, the Little Bed School House has a few scholarships for refugee children. . . .

IF you’ve got to think about getting people off to school, Lewis and Conger has a fine laundry box — stout enough to defy the expressman’s effort to reduce it to pulp in two trips. . . . But if you go for grace and prisms, Gregory Sales can make, or repair, chandeliers and candelabra for any room from pre-Louis XIV to post-Chamberlain. . . .

OF course, on the luggage subject, Louis Vuitton trunks are for no one under twenty-one. Or under the higher-bracket income group, for that matter. But the collection at Saks Fifth Avenue causes the mildest woman to wonder wistfully when the Grim Reaper will gather in rich Great-Aunt Mathilda. . . .

IF you go to Rockefeller Center to see the Museum of Costume Art (it’s well worth it) the Linguaphone people have a shop there. If you’re really earnest you can get a set of, say, Rumanian records, take them home to Muncie, and turn up in Jassy six months later able to be conversationally subtle. . . .

THE Sculptors’ Guild has a new exhibit outdoors at Park and 39th. Till the end of August. . . . And Wildenstein’s very large, very good, loan exhibit of French paintings from the fifteenth to the nineteenth century lasts until October. . . .

WE took that speedboat from 19th to the Fair the other day. . . . Maybe River House, and the rest, made us real-estate-minded. Anyhow, on the Astoria side between Welfare Island and the Triborough Bridge, three small wooden houses sit on a big-enough garden plot, with water on two sides, as pretty as though they were part of a sleepy New England fishing port. . . .Not so long ago Carl Schurz Bark was a place you could rent a house for fifty a month. . . . We are wondering. We’re not going to talk about it. Just edge up casually and see. . . .

THE silly season is in full blast at the Fair. The jitters they have been having about finances have got everybody mixed up. . . . I he day they were going to give away the Packard right after the fireworks always turns out to be nextweek Friday. . . . The Day for Someone business has gone so far that next thing you know it will be People-with-a-Cast-in-the-Left-EyeBorn-West-of-Texarkana Day. . . .

HOWEVER . . . The American Arts show is exciting in spots. By and large the best pieces are the contemporary urban scene. Saul Berman’s (No. 31 in the catalogue) we specially coveted. The girl at the desk takes infinite, amiable pains to tell you prices. . . .

WHEN it comes to buying, there are plenty of lovely things in the foreign exhibits. . . . Beautiful leather objects in the French Building. . . . Fabulous needlework in the Hungarian. . . . Denmark’s things will mostly be at Georg Jensen’s later, or you can order them. The silver, of course, is particularly fine. . . . To our mind the Swedish Building has more ideas and pretties to the square foot than any other. I he Swedish House in New York will have lots of these things. The enchanting yellow china, the pewter, and the glass, for example. But probably not the fabrics, nor lots of the furniture. . . . An official told us the huge yellow horse outside might be bought when the Fair closes. . . . We want it. . . .

DON’T look now — but as this is written it is already possible to do a leetle haggling and get things most places-below the marked price. . . . Our thought for the month is: The very latest closing date will he October 31. . . . So how about a spot of lunch in the Turkish Building around the 28th, if you see what I mean?

No more Shakespeare at the Globe Theatre. Forty minutes of vaudeville called Hollywood Star Doubles instead. . . . There’s talk about an International Jitterbug contest in the Court of Nations. . . . What I always say is life is sad enough without being depressed at a show. . . .

THE Hot Mikado is doing three a day at the Fair. Bill Robinson’s first entrance is approximately twenty-five minutes after the curtain goes up. He’s no more capable of giving a bad performance than George Cuban. . . .

THE Amusement Area. . . . Well, in most places Queen Victoria would find her immortal phrase very handy. But while you’re trying to think what quip to write on an ash tray look at the Incubator babies, and the Baby Giant Panda. All clean, cheerful creatures. . . . The Dali show is so cockeyed that it’s really decorative after all. . . .

THE houses in the Town of Tomorrow are decorated with vast taste — mostly very bad. But out of the rubble look at the plant house to the right of the door in the Pittsburgh I louse of Glass. . . . And the table which swings out from a bookcase in the Little House of Brick is a honey. Several good things here, all from Sheltered Workshops. . . . The Franklin Stove in House 21 comes from Jackson’s, East 57th Street, and they have several other good copies from original models. . . .

SOME of the eating places stay open all night. Jammed with Fair employees, and people from the shows, and people who want to see Fair employees and people from the shows right there at the next table. . . . But walking around after midnight is spectacular in an eerie way. . . . ‘They say the leopard and the lion keep . . .’ Oh, well, shoot — It’s been awfully hot and dry. . . .

NEW ENGLAND seems to brighten now, and focus all its color. Very blue water. Very red sumach. Very yellow goldenrod. . . . Lots of strictly summer-folks activities are ending. Bill the lobstermen, the dairy men, the Banks boats, don’t pay much attention anyhow. . . .

LAST two L»i fr sailing events are the Cruising Club’s Jeffrey’s Ledge race September 9, and the Eastern Yacht Club Chowder Race out of Gloucester on the 10th. . . .

AN archer friend says the tournaments in Newton on September 4 and October 12 are pretty keen. . . . Same man says the Paul Gordons in Beacon, New York, make superlatively good bows and arrows. . . . Names of archery woods are nice: Port Orford cedar; lemonwood; yew; orangewood. . , .

NEW HAMPSHIRE had its Craftsman’s Show last week. Native products: mittens and rugs and silver and baskets. . . . They’ve nineteen shops in the state. One in Hampton Falls, in the house where Whittier died. Farthest north at Lancaster. . . . Things make most of the antique shops look silly. . . .

VERMONT and Maine are peppered with Old Home Weeks and Fairs. . . . Rutland’s fair is September 4 to 9. A good one. . . . The barn knockers (trade name, we find, for the men who rush around the country and deface the landscape with billboards) have been pretty well run out of Vermont. . . .

IN Maine: Fairs at Presque Isle, Blue Hill, Lewiston, Cumberland, all between now and September 20. . . . But actually this is trotting-circuit season. The light-harness men have been warming up since July. Grand finale is the Overcoat racing in South Paris the second week in November. ... A little boy called Artemus Ward used to shout himself hoarse at the spinning spokes. . . . Fair and race dates are too numerous to list. State Chambers of Commerce will send them.

IT’S such a big state. . . . Aroostook County lives on its potatoes, and here you’ll hear French and Swedish spoken. . . . Tend potatoes all summer; truck them through the drifts all winter. . . . Sardine season in Lubec lasts long after the summer houses on Campobello are boarded up. . . . Long after Elizabeth Arden’s little sanitarium at Mount Vernon closes. . . . Lots of ladies there now, though. Building up from the summer so there’ll be something to tear down in the winter. . : . Reservations ahead. Around $250 a week. . . . Takes quite a lot of egg money in the blue sugar bowl before you feel downright able to afford it. . . . Elizabeth Marbury’s rest farm for working women is in Mount Vernon, too. . . .

BUT you can eat or stay at the Danish Village, Scarborough, just below Portland. . . . The Desert is near Freeport. . . . In Freeport is L. L. Bean’s famous store. Probably the best outdoor clothes and fishing equipment in the country. ... In near-by Shiloh is what’s left of the Holy Ghost and Us colony. They are still waiting for revelation, and will be definitely less than cordial to you. . . .

THE Ogunquit Playhouse is open till the 9th. . . . At Wiseasset is a house which legend says was made ready for Marie Yntoinette. . . . And there, where Head Tide straddles the Sheepscot, E. A. Robinson was born. . . . At Wiscasset the Lilac Tea Room. Teeny-weeny bit too lovely, but grand food. . . .

BAR HARBOR’S International Tennis is August 22-29. . . . Not what it used to be when the navies played. But as good an excuse as any to see those beautiful, fashionable mountain islands. . . .

ALL, the islands are straight magic. You can get passenger or mail boats out of Stonington, or other places. . . . On Swan Island, Howard Rich raises his famous tuberous begonias. Ask him how they’d do as winter house plants, in peat moss. . . .

THE snow folds thick and early along the eaves of the beautiful old houses. . . . The trotters go on the ice at Camden. . . . The dogsled people come to lile. Mrs. Ricker in Poland Springs has some promising puppies. . . . The coon cats nest in the woodsheds. They’re unique to Maine, and if you can get a kitten it’ll live to make your Siamese-fancying friends pale with envy. . . .

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