Radio mirror (Nov 1936-Apr 1937)

RADIO MI RROR During Colds adopt the KLEENEX HABIT in your office! • When sniffles start, put aside handkerchiefs and adopt the Kleenex Habit! It saves noses, saves money as it reduces handkerchief washing. Kleenex Tissues tend to retain germs, thus check colds from spreading to others. Simply use each tissue just once— then destroy, germs and all. Once you have Kleenex handy in your desk, you'll find the Kleenex Habit makes many tasks far easier— just as it does at home! Keep Kleenex in Every Room. Save Steps— Time — Money To remove face creams and cosmetics 444 To apply powder, rouge iuTo dust and polish... For the baby... And in the car— to wipe bands, windshield and greasy spots. No waste! No mess! Pull a tissue — the next one pops up ready for use! KLEENEX A disposable tissue made oF Cellucotton (not cotton) Ripley's Thrilling Search for India's Weirdest Cult {Continued from page 33) detours and stopovers and he sticks to the back country. That's how he finds his "Believe-Its." So his first stop on the way to India was Greece. He'd never been to that strange community of monks who live atop a bald stone mountain, north of Athens. Their only connection with the world below is a basket hauled up the gaunt rock on a thousand-foot rope. Bob reached the monastery, to find that it consisted not of one community, but of several, scattered about on adjoining peaks. There was only one way for him to find out what one of them was like inside; and Bob took it. He climbed into a rickety basket and signalled to the watchers on the heights above to pull him Bob admits he was a little scared, going up in that basket. It swung back and forth and around and around, and he knew that a home-made rope and a homemade windlass up at the top were the only things that were holding him. "But in a case like that the only thing to do is to do your worrying before you get there," he said. "I just closed my eyes and said to myself, 'Well, here I am!'" ON the mountain top were a dozen bearded, dark-gowned creatures, more like half-wild animals than men. They stared at this strange intruder from another world in fear and distrust, until at last he convinced them he meant them no harm. He stayed with them for several days, sharing their lives — or rather, their existences. Their days were all alike — up at dawn, work and pray until their bedtime at dusk, eat meals of black bread, goat cheese, and a bitter wine with resin in it. The monotony and solitude had worked on their minds until they were almost insane, in their eyes the far-off, vacant gleam of fanaticism. Leaving Greece, Bob went on to Cairo in Egypt. Nothing at all interesting happened to him in Cairo, except that students at the University of Cairo objected to having him take pictures of them and threw rocks at him, succeeding in breaking the lens of one of his finest cameras. Really nothing at all exciting in Cairo. To get to India from Egypt you have to drop down far enough south to cut around the bulging peninsula of Arabia. On his way south, Bob stopped at Khartoum in the Anglo-Egyptian Sudan. When the English captured Khartoum the native population — to show what it thought of the English — had moved out bodily and built a new town across the river at Omdurman. Because it is the largest Arabian city in existence today, Bob wanted to see it. Exploring late one night in a highly disreputable quarter of the town, he ventured into a native saloon. Feeble lamps winked along the walls, casting black, evil shadows. Natives and their women squatted on the mud floor drinking Kaffir beer. Everyone was drunk — and in a fighting mood. There was a sudden silence as Bob stepped through the low arch of the door. Every eye in the room was on him and his white suit. Then he heard a low, sullen mutter. A huge black giant, stark naked, with trickles of sweat running down his sooty skin and an ugly scowl on his face, rose menacingly and moved toward Bob. It was a bad spot to be in. White men had no business in that section of town, Bob knew. They went there at their own risk. He might be found dead in the gutter in the morning, and if he were, the English police would be unable even to avenge his murder. The native was almost on him now, his huge bulk towering in the smoky air. Bob could have turned and run — he wanted to turn and run — but he knew it would be fatal. The only possible way out was to bluff. ; And Bob bluffed. Bob's arm shot out and grabbed the black by the shoulder. "Here, what do you think you're doing?" he barked. "Do you want me to knock you down?" He didn't expect the man to understand English, but the tone of voice was what counted, and he made it as authoritative and angry as he could. In an instant the man's face changed. "I beg your pardon, sir," he said in perfect, Oxford-University English. Then he bowed politely, turned, and barked a few words in Arabic — and everybody in the place got down on his knees and made the white stranger welcome. After that, everybody had a good time, Bob included. Flying from Bengazi in Arabia to India, Bob rode in an Italian army transport plane. It was a hydroplane, designed to fly over water, but the daredevil youngster piloting it decided to save an hour by flying over land. The next thing they knew, they ran into vertical air currents which flung the plane up a thousand feet at one moment and down a thousand at the next. They were soon flying below the level of the surrounding mountain peaks, and they couldn't seem to climb high enough to get over them. The currents were so strong that twice the plane was nearly flopped completely on its back in the air. Bob and another man were the only passengers. Thinking quickly, they crawled down inside the two pontoons, one in each, and lay at full length on their stomachs, giving the plane a counter-balance. If you can imagine lying in a pitch-black little coffin, knowing that you may bump into a jagged mountain top at any instant, you know about how you would have felt in Brjb's place. And then at last — India. Bob contacted the British authorities. They had been notified of his arrival, and they were polite. "Is it true," he asked them, "that these Saddhus spend their lives lying on beds of spikes, and staring into the sun until they go blind, and holding up their arms until they wither away, and things like that?" QUITE true," he was told. "They depend on the people who pass by for their food, but they aren't beggars. If no one leaves them food they're quite willing to starve to death." "Where can I find them?" Bob asked eagerly. "Where can you find the Saddhus? That we can't tell you. Anywhere. Everywhere. It depends on where you run across them." He began his search. For a long time he had no luck. He tried the leper colony of Magar Pir, where men with the lion faces that are one mark of the dread disease hobbled about on feet from which the toes had fallen away. In the Kalighat Temple he found the most horrible living being he has ever seen — a beggar woman whose entire face was eaten away — but still no Saddhus. Everyone he asked told him where to find them, but when he got to the place they were never there. He tried the Vale of Kashmir. A romantic spot, Kashmir, as celebrated in 80