Letters, Nov. 27, 1944

(2 of 3)

Here's one on TIME (Oct. 23). You say the contrabassoon plays lower than the piano, while the reverse is true. The lowest note on the contrabassoon is BBB flat; the lowest note on every piano is AAA, a half step lower.

BURNET C. TUTHILL

Conductor

Memphis Symphony Orchestra

Memphis

> Reader Tuthill should listen to a more resourceful contrabassoonist. The lowest note on the standard contrabassoon is BBB flat (the fourth B flat below middle C) but a length or two of extra tubing will take it down to AAA, or even AAA flat.—ED.

Dissent

Sirs:

In TIME, Oct 16 you say: "Natives of the jungle learned through the centuries that the best clothing was no clothing ; the best shoes no shoes; the best rations, whatever grows in the jungles. But the white man, with his civilized stomach, his vulnerability to ringworm, malaria and leeches, is far from being acclimated."

I have been in a jungle area for almost a year. . . . Compared to our "unacclimated" American boys, the natives have proportionally much more malaria for lack of clothing after sundown; more ringworm and other foot diseases because they go barefoot; and are more susceptible to tuberculosis, pneumonia, and other diseases because of improper nutrition. . . .

MORTON M. SCHMIDT

Lieutenant, U.S.N.R.

c/o Fleet P.O.

San Francisco

Rewriteman Wanted

Sirs:

The two short paragraphs in TIME (Oct. 30) on the British War Office action against long-winded and stilted writing are important. One of the great stumbling blocks in our society is the archaic, devious and unnatural way we use language in expressing our laws, our insurance policies, our leases, mortgages and government directives. . . .

TIME writers could find better, clearer ways to express our laws. Better because they would be more widely understood, briefer, better obeyed and fewer. A large number of laws would not be on the books today if the average man knew what they said.

Suggestion: A "rewriteman" for the administrative and lawmaking bodies to remove this obstacle of "officialese and legalese" and make things say what they mean in TIME'S "curt, clear and complete" way.

ALFRED D. MCKELVY

New York City

America's First Co-Eds

Sirs:

Preposterous! Villainous! TIME must be in the pay of the Yankees! LETTERS (TIME, Nov. 6) quotes Dixie Cornell Gebhardt's barefaced claim that Elizabeth Blackwell (1847) was "the first woman in the U.S. to gain admittance to a man's college."

All literate, right-thinking Americans know that the first college in the nation to admit women students was Blount College (now the University of Tennessee). William Blount, Governor of the Territory South of the Ohio, secured admission of his daughter Barbara, Kittie Kain, Colonel McClung's daughter, and three other young ladies of the capital's aristocracy to the institution named for him.

If your editors have a genuine passion for verification, you can go to Knoxville and get all six names from the doorplates of the dormitories named for America's first coeds.

[SERVICEMAN'S NAME AND ADDRESS WITHHELD]