Having read “The Great White Fleet” [in the February issue] I strolled down to the local hobby shop and bought a plastic model kit for the Oregon, Olympia and the Maine. I have no quarrel with the Oregon or the Olympia but when I got to the Maine, I made a revolting discovery —it was the same ship and kit as the Olympia except that one smokestack was moved.…
Now as you are probably familiar with these model kits, you are probably aware that they are usually very accurate in their data, detail, proportion, etc.—that is, they are authentic scale models and are sold as such. In this sense they are history in the hands of kids (and some not quite kids any more) and may be the only history that ever makes an impression on these kids—nothing like the visual impact, you know.
The Olympia kit and the Maine kit are both manufactured by Pyro Plastics Corporation, Pyro Park, Union, New Jersey. Locally, these kits sell for $1.95 each, so I am enclosing my check for $4.00. Send the office boy out and buy one of each so that you may see for yourselves what I am talking about.
Dr. R. E. Maltesen
Brookston, Indiana
We checked with the ship-model expert at Folk’s, one of New York’s big hobby shops, and were told that Pyro Plastics has voluntarily withdrawn the model of the Maine, at considerable cost. The trouble apparently stems from the fact that no precise plans of the Maine survive in the Naval Archives. According to Folk’s expert, Pyro’s model of the Olympia is “fairly accurate,” but not as much so as the one made by Réveil, Inc., of Venice, California. We bought both, and they are slowly being assembled here in the office for a comparison which will take place, we estimate, along about Christmas. Incidentally, the real Olympia is still afloat, preserved at Philadelphia by the Cruiser Olympia Association as a public memorial to the ship’s great record.
WIVES AND SWEETHEARTS
Being a veteran of the “Great White Fleet,” I read your article on its famous cruise with great interest, and I congratulate you on it. My wife was also interested… she and I met on that cruise, first at Monterey and later at San Francisco, which was her home.
…The picture of officers drinking a toast was apparently a Junior Officers’ Mess, the more elderly gentleman on the left being the pay clerk, who was usually in that mess, and the others, from their collars, being Passed Midshipmen or Ensigns. It was probably the traditional Saturday night toast to “Sweethearts and Wives.” … The toast was, “Here’s to our sweethearts and wives—may our sweethearts become our wives, and our wives ever remain our sweethearts.” Sometimes the last phrase was parodied to “—may they never meetl”
H. Kent Hewitt,
Admiral, U.S.N. (Ret.)
Orwell, Vermont
DAYS OF GLORY
As an octogenarian I cannot help telling you how much I enjoyed your article on the Overland Limited [December, 1963].… I am a railroad engineer’s daughter and all my family were railroad people.… More than once, until his death in 1906, my father was taken off his regular run to haul Theodore Roosevelt’s special train. Mr. Roosevelt always came forward to shake hands with the crew at the end of a division and left $5 in the hand of each member of the crew. Andrew Carnegie never came forward but left a generous tip for each man.… My father was eventually crushed to death by his own engine between the doorway of the round house and the tender of his engine as the hostler was taking the engine out onto the turntable. … Thanking you again for the pleasure of the article on those days of the glory of the railroad.
I note on page 112 of the December 1963 AMERICAN HERITAGE a broadside referring to Bishop Talbot’s visit to Wallace, Idaho. Regrettably I must inform you that you have been taken in by a forgery committed by that remarkable old bamboozler and pioneer printer, Thomas J. Easterwood of Dundee, Oregon, whose papers it has fallen my lot to administer until they are made available for public use in 1970.
If you will examine page 87 of Bishop Talbot’s My People of the Plains, you will find that the broadsides were printed on green paper. The two copies extant, one at the University of Oregon and one in the Easterwood papers, are printed on white stock of casein content which was not manufactured until some time after the Bishop’s visit. On the margin of page 88 of Easterwood’s personal copy of this book is a phrase in his handwriting, “set and print.” … [He] discovered that collectors paid well for Western … broadsides. …
Alexander Brown
University of Illinois
Urbana, Illinois
We had noted the reference to green paper in My People of the Plains; unfortunately the photostat we worked with, obtained from the University of Oregon, showed no color, so we missed this clue to the forgery.
NOT PURELY SOCIAL
I have just received the February, 1964, issue of AMERICAN HERITAGE, and note with much interest the cover illustration which reproduces a water-color drawing by the Russian Paul Svinin. The caption which describes this illustration contains references which are not strictly factual, however. The First Troop Philadelphia City Cavalry has two existences; and all of its “gatherings” are not purely social ones. The Troop … serves today as an armored reconnaissance company of the 28th Division, Pennsylvania National Guard.
Donelson F. Hoopes, Curator
The Corcoran Gallery of Art
Washington, D.C.
BROWN IS GREEN
I am green with envy at the [February] cover illustration which I did not know existed, though I have Svinin’s book. Bravo to you for smoking it out and getting it into the light of day.
Mrs. John Nicholas Brown
Providence, Rhode Island
Mrs. Brown is one of the foremost collectors of military pictures in America.
GUNTER’S CHAIN
In the February, 1964, issue, I was particularly interested in the Mason and Swindler article on the Mason and Dixon Line. On page 29 the following sentence appears: “Horizontal measurements were taken with a Gunter’s chain of sixty-six links on level ground.…” Perhaps the authors will be interested to know that the Gunter’s chain had one hundred links, even though it was only sixty-six feet long. It was one of those developments of the unfortunate English system of measurements which foisted such units as the yard, the rod, the furlong, and the acre upon this country. Four rods of 16½ feet made a “chain” of 66 feet.…
J. M. Barker
Skokie, Illinois
A CORRECTION
The bibliographical paragraph at the end of Francis Biddle’s “The Ordeal of William Penn,” in our April issue, gives the publication date of Catherine Owens Peare’s biography of Penn as 1907. The book was in fact published by the J. B. Lippincott Company in 19^, and we regret the error.
