Montgomery County Sentinel

MONTGOMERY SIDELIGHTS

Greetings from "The King's Crown" in New York, on a quiet street high above the city in the Columbia University quadrangle-overlooking Riverside Drive on the Hudson.

Now don't get the idea we are going to school tho we may absorb a little "larning" along with the atmosphere. Columbia is an old institution, founded as King's College in 1774, by grant from King George, and renamed Columbia after the Revolution.

Miss Grace Roberts, principal of Laytonsville school. Mrs. Elsie Green of Damascus, Mrs. Ruth Souder Gue and Miss Martha White are among the Montgomery County teachers who are taking the summer course here. Mrs. Fern Schneider, high school supervisor was up last week, and there may be others.

We have been fascinated by the many modes of travel - subway express that shoots you downtown, zz-p-p-p-horse drawn cabs driven by darkies in long-tailed coats and shiny, top hats, clip-clopping thru the park - street cars almost as antiquated as San Francisco's cable cars - "Sky View" taxis with a window in the top so one may look up at the high buildings but few private autos or bicycles are seen.

We had long dreamed of riding down 5th Avenue atop one of those busses with an outside winding stairway-wasn't Friday an ideal day for it They have funny wooden seats like a park bench, and feel like a bucking broncho—ride on one for an hour and you are striped like a zebra for the rest of the day.

Another thing we had always wanted to do was Times Square with the theatre crowd milling around at midnight. Saw "Claudia" Friday night and came out just as all the other shows were out such a mass of humanity.

The natives are the homeliest people we have ever seen- not excepting Cheyenne's cowboys and Indians, Nevada's miners, sheepherders and Mexico or California with her polyglot population-it must be the noses -New York has the fanciest noses!

The war seems very much nearer here two of the University buildings are filled with many officers and men-they drill on the tennis courts each day the constant dim-out -the airplanes and seaplanes - small armed boats in the harbor - the Normandie lying on her side guards everywhere, and everywhere the soldiers, sailors and marines and so many foreign uniforms that we do not even recognize.

Transports go out from here, you know-so many of the men one sees on the street have no insignia and many are garbed in heavy woolen clothes-we do not dare mention some of the things we have seen-it frightens us to realize that most anyone can see them, and draw their conclusions.

We love the shops, Macy's, the "largest store in the world"-and the gorgeous stores on 5th Avenue. We also have visited, but most of all we enjoyed Gimbel's—they bought the antique collection of William Randolph Hearst -35 leading museums and art galleries have bought from them and still rooms full of the treasures remain. Furniture. china.

tapestries, paintings. a Van Dyke worth $400,000.00 now priced at $89,000.00.

Experts spent years gathering these things for Mr. Hearst.

"Imagine making all that money in newspapers we remarked.

"Lady, this nothing he had everything - wine, women and song, and he had a little left over and he bought these trinkets-let me sell you a nice suit of armor" said a clerk in a broken English accent that we cannot imitate.

We enjoy the Green at corner drug store lunch counter-"Monty is it going to rain?" I have no corns, no rheumateesm - you guess," answers Monty.

The chambermaid at our hotel is an Austrian. she does not hear from her people. Vienna before the war was beautiful as she describes it. Her philosophy and her love of this country where her children were born is wonderful. Austria will live again, she says.

We spent Friday in Radio City saw "Mrs. Miniver" in the Music Hall-the R. C. A. building with its 70 stories visited the "Garden of Nations" with its lawns and shrubs from thirteen nations; the most interesting are the English. Holland, Spanish and American native wild flower.

Saturday we left early for a boat trip up the Hudson and now on Sunday evening we planned to dine at New York's Olney Inn and found it closed.

Good-bye now-next week we will take you up the Hudson with us if you wish.