Often I am stirred to envy by garments I see on other men, but I do not remember ever having broken the Ninth Commandment so violently as I did the other day upon the sight of Lenoir Chambers’ hat. I asked him what the color was called and he said the merchant from whom he bought it called it gull gray. I had heard of light gray and dull gray but never of gull gray. This unusual name made me admire the hat all the more.
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As the day of going-to-press approaches I am relieved not to have been sued for libel by Parson Moss for chronicling the fact that he wore spats in London.
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There was a time not so long ago when preachers and teachers were supposed always to wear solemn clothes. Happily that day has passed. These two important professions are not damaged in popular esteem, but, it seems to me, rather gain good-will from the circumstances that their representatives are less gloomily clad than they used to be. I am sure that my feeling of brotherhood toward Mr. Patten became instantly keener the other day when I saw that he was wearing his hat tilted slightly to the side. It gave him a “real fellow” look that was distinctly appealing.
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A.B. Andrews of Raleigh writes me that W.C. McAlister, secretary of the Oklahoma board of elections, which is figuring so conspicuously in the news these days, graduated from the University of North Carolina in 1895.
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The very name “coffee house” conveys the atmosphere of a big city. One thinks of the London resorts frequented by Addison and Steele and their cronies in the days of Queen Anne, and of Doctor Johnson. (Or were the loafing places being called something else by the time Doctor Johnson came along? I don’t know.) Chapel Hill now has a place called Nancy Battle’s Coffee House, and its simple yet colorful furnishings give it an unmistakable metropolitan tone. It is quartered in the old Seaton Barbee home next to the Methodist church.
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One of the residents along the Chapel Hill-Durham highway has spread a mattress over a mud-hole in the private road leading to his garage. This carries one’s thought to the story-book story of Sir Walter Raleigh’s spreading out the cloak on the ground to keep Queen Bess from getting her feet wet. A mattress is more substantial than a knight’s cloak, but so are automobiles heavier than queens. I do not think much of this sort of road repair.
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When I was starting out to explore the new road south of the campus the other afternoon, I met a mule-team beside the class athletic field. Automobiles and a tractor snorting by did not worry the mules at all, but when one of the practicing football groups burst into sudden speed, at a signal from the quarterback, the mules reared up on their hindlegs in a spasm of fright.
Speaking of frightened mules, one is reminded of Vernon Howell’s experience when he brought the first automobile to Chapel Hill 15 years ago. He tells me that one time a farmer’s team, coming over the brow of a hill and catching sight of the strange noisy object, turned straight about and ran away in the other direction. Several of the ladies of the town, when they wanted to go driving in their phaetons, would call Mr. Howell on the phone and ask him if he would please stay off the street for the next two or three hours. Under the circumstances automobiling was no fun, and he got rid of his car. There was a long gap of time then when Chapel Hill had no automobiles at all.
From the front page of The Chapel Hill Weekly, October 11, 1923, Louis Graves, editor.
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