ON BEING ECCENTRIC

New Zealand Listener, Volume 1, Issue 10, 1 September 1939, Page 19

ON BEING ECCENTRIC

Americans Aren't The Only Crazy People

T’S not so long ago since a ] news item announced that America’s Father Divine had sent a cable to Hitler which read: "Peace, it’s wonderful!" Then there was the gentleman who recently started tearing apart a U.S. department store. Said he, when arrested, "I guess it’s all these war scares get me this way.’ Or words to that effect. "Time" reports another American citizen who devoted days to looking for, and finally locating, a needle in a haystack. The same fellow also sold a refrigerator to an eskimo. A little further back in history is the legend of the famous Daniel Webster. It is said that he used to go out in the fields with buckets of paint and smear it on the faces of the cows. All this kind of thing may provide Sigmund Freud with raw material, but it’s apt to put a strain on the "hands-across-the-sea" idea. One can hardly blame the staid Englishman who regards all Americans as slightly sunstruck. Whether to vindicate the species and prove that curious idiosyncrasies are not limited to his section of the human race, or just out of idle fancy, an American broadcaster compiled the following list of exotic eccentricities, and put it on the air recently: —

Jules Mazarin, the famous French statesman, was convinced at times that he was a tulip, and had himself sprinkled and set out in the sun daily. Samuel Johnson, the English writer, collected orange peels, often searching for them in alleys and trash heaps. He saved them all, Richard Wagner, the composer, used to greet guests by standing on his head; and Balzac, the French novelist, was so conceited he tipped his hat every time he spoke of himself. Bishop Munster, the 18th Century divine, was so absent-minded that when he saw a notice on the door of his room which read: "The Master of the house is out," he sat down and awaited his own return. Hans Andersen, fairy tale writer, even as a middle-aged man, would cry at the table if he wasn’t helped first, or wasn’t given more jam on his bread than anyone else. Sarah Bernhardt used to take her coffin with her wherever she went and would often sit in it while serving tea to guests. Catherine the Great, of Russia, used to think she was a cat, and would go screeching up and down the hails of her castle at night giving what she called "Cat Concerts." The whole truth of the above is not vouched for, and you may be pardoned if you entertain suspicions that some of the items are the product of an eccentric American imagination!