POINTS FROM LETTERS
OLD LONDON SIGNS.
Time was when almost every shop had its sign over the door just as many country inns still have them to-day, but it is not widely known, I think, that the sign-painters included famous men like Holbein, Hogarth, Morland, Watteau, Millais, and David Cox. I am exploring the possibilities of hanging reproductions of interesting old shop signs over the stands in the International Exhibition of Antiques and Works of Art at Olympia next month, and I should be grateful if any of your readers could tell me of the existence of any of the original shop signs of London. Is there in existence, for example, the sign which hung over the shop of Pasqua Rosee, the flest man in London to sell coffee ?—SYDNEY CARROLL, Link House, 4/8 Greville Street, Holborn, E.C. 1.
Tnr. " SPECTATOR " GARDEN IN THE EAST END.
If any of your readers would care to see the Spectator Garden here will they write to me at the address given below ? It looks splendid. The irises are out now and the lupins flourish. The old caretaker is proudly eyeing the roses which are climbing. Really it is a wonder that the multitudes of babies and children who come to the meetings don't grab the lot as they are turned out to play. If any one who helped would care to give the kiddies a load of sand it would secure the safety, of the flowers—or any worn-out chairs or tables— Mission folk always need, but if you only saw the _street and the pleasure the Hut and Garden give you would understand. —R. KNOWLES, 42 Prince Regent's Lane, Plaistow, E. 12.
NEWSPAPERS AND .GAMBLING.
How long will even respectable newspapers continue to lure their readers to destruction through the medium of their- "Lacing Sorrespondents ? I have no animus against gide gentlemen, nor aka'ulst the noble army of sportsmen who invariably pretend to know the winners of big races. They are all clever, most of them are honest, and all sincerely try to name winners for the benefit of their clients. But when the selections of eighteen of these eminent racing men are tabulated daily, what do we find ? That not one of them succeeded in naming the winner of the Derby, the Coronation Cup, or the Oaks. I always fuld pleasure in reading their confident predictions beforehand, but it is nothing compared with the joy of reading them after the results are known.—
CHARLIE TRANT. .
THE PROBLEM OF BEING A WOMAN. -
- The interesting And humorously thoughtful letter in your last week's issue prompts some observations. May 1, not being a woman, and therefore knowing nothing about it, make a few ? The one thing that the Higher Education seems to do for the modern woman is to make her intensely conscious of being a modem woman. Whether she acquires a superiority complex or an inferiority one the complex seems to form. She is her own biggest problem. Partly, I suppose, it is youth. She is new. Her critical abilities are sharpened and experience has not had time to soften their edges with sympathy. Time, perhaps, will help that. But surely. her "profound understanding of life" is not really profound— or understanding. It doesn't go deep enough. She finds herself in a cage with a companion called Despair ; she looks out on the world through the bars that are her problem. But there are very few cages that haven't a door. With all humility.—A DISABLED OFFICER, New Forest.
EDWARD GIBBON WAKEFIELD.
In his notice of my biography, The Amazing Career of Edward Gibbon Wakefield, your reviewer says that I would have the reader believe that Wakefield "was a benevolent and public-spirited man, well bred, well educated, and well intentioned, whose beneficent life was tragically overshadowed by an act of youthful folly, the result of ambition and bad company." This, I submit, is not justified by what I have written. On the contrary, the book shows that Wakefield had given little or no sign of beneficence or philanthropy before the abduction of Ellen Turner. I describe him; in fact, as gay and shiftless. Although Wakefield was a widower with two young children at the time of the abduction, that does not mean that he was not young. He was left a widower at twenty-four.—A. J. HARROP.
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