NAMES Walt Prothero Strange names and distant places always have fascinated me. Aromatic, spicy names. Colorful and romantic names. Weird and mysterious names. The tinkle of bells from Marco Polo's Cathay. The golden Indies, turbaned blacks from Malabar. Malasia and Malacca, Basra and the Baghdad of the Arabian Nights. Curved, damascened scimitars and heavy, heady musks from the Moors of Beirut. Ancient galleons stranded in the other-worlded Sargasso Sea, sea-weed creeping up around their rudders and age-old skeletons gaming for Plutonic stakes in the rotting, musty cabins. Bombay and its perfumed tigers; dark-eyed, lush-lipped, shapely Sultanesses from Jaipur, Mangalore, Delhi, and Multan. The distant, purple mountains of Isfahan with their strange secrets. Herat, forbidden to white men, remote and unknown. Mecca, into which Infidels may not go; and the furnace-hot cliffs of the Gulf of Aden. Lithe Malayans in their prahus slipping through the sultry, tepid lava Sea where the water and heavens are blended together in the distance and the sun is like a brazen disk in the sky. The old slave roads of the Ivory Coast and the hawk-faced Arabs wielding heavy whips and the black men praying to their mumbo-jumbo gods for revenge on their inquisitors. Muscular blacks leaping and gesticulating towards the full moon of Ubangi-Shari, their bizarre shadows macabre around the ceremonial fire and flickering on the trunks of the trees of the encroaching jungle. Chanting priests and priestesses under the shadow of Popocatepetl, and the head-priest with his arm bloody to the elbow from reaching into the body of a writhing human sacrifice and drawing forth the still-pulsating heart, and the ancient stone cities of Oaxaca and Tehuantepec perched on their mountain sides overlooking abyssmal chasms. The Voodoo rites of Port au Prince and Ciui-did. Ancient Atlantis, lost somewhere in the green depths of the sea; long trails of waving sea-weed undulating through the open windows of the great halls and peopled by strange forms of sea life, reigned by a mossy skeleton still seated at a throne, his bony jaws set in a premonitional grin. The Pyramids of the Nile and the ruins of Thebes with their great, stone sarcophagi and statues of their strange gods: Set, the god of evil; Osiris, the judge of the dead; Nu, the god of the watery mass of which the world is made; the sun god, Re; Annubis the jackal-headed diety; Toth, the ibis god; and Bast with the Cat's head. Lovely Senoritas from Seville and Toledo, their coquettish eyes flashing in flirtatious glances; and their red lips shaped for hot-blooded Latin kisses; guitars in the evening mingled with the smell of flowers and the laughter of the girls of Valencia dancing in the square with their tanned, handsome partners. CHILD OF NATURE (Continued from page 7) Sears-Roebuck special made little difference. One summer she managed to save enough of her meager wages to indulge in a new dress. She handled it as a precious object, her calloused hands caressing its lacy folds tenderly. It is not difficult to imagine the way she would wear it. Her straight form would lend dignity to the inexpensive gown. She would be a queen in a catalogue dress. Like most mothers she regarded her children as intelligent off-spring, but she didn't fail to see their faults as well as their virtues. She did her part in correcting these faults. I believe the only time she really wished for wealth was when she wanted to help her children accomplish something in life. Perchance the emptiness of her own ambitions influenced her. She had an intense desire to travel. Yes, she had been places before; but what joy does one derive from having to push a creaky, slovenly automobile over every hill it comes to? She longed to revel in the ecstasy of the hills and mountains and listen to the ocean as it lapped against the shore. Hers was the soul of a vagabond that longed to lie at night under the lights of heaven, to feel the winds of the road kiss her weariness, and to delight in Autumn, that vibrant gypsy who flings her vividly-hued cloak across the hills. twenty-four Compliments of THE COLLEGE BOOK STORE