The Mermaid and the Prince by Stanley Johnson THERE dwelt in an ancient city in an ancient time a prince who was lord and master of the most beautiful gardens on earth. Abibdul was his name, and the palace where he lived and ruled was of white marble ornamented with gold leaf and studded with rare gems. The country of Haz-I-Sim, which was the land Abibdul ruled, was at peace. It had undergone no turbulence for many years, and so was entering into a golden age of the substantial happiness that comes from economic security and emotional settlement. There was in reality little for Abibdul to do. He had no wars to declare, few disputes to settle (and those only minor ones), and few pomposities of state to which he must addict himself. He spent the day mostly with his books and his friends, learning from the one and discussing with the other the philosophies of the ages. In his court were musicians and dancers to whom he gave audience upon occasion, but he preferred rather than their manufactured songs and rhythms the voices of the wind in trees, the birds in the air, and the soft swayings of willows and rushes along the riverbank. Abibdul was given to wandering often from the grounds of his palace land to the nearby sea. When at the day's end he was missed from the palace, his courtiers were not alarmed, for they knew his love of the sea. They knew that Abibdul marveled at the roll and surge of the waves, at the pounding breakers on the water's beach, at the white-tipped cups of foam that launched themselves into the air to catch the full color of a sinking sun. Abibdul walked habitually on the beach at twilight. It was the favorite hour of the day for him. He walked without direction, fancy alone turning his footsteps this way and that. He felt the quiet peace of solitude on these excursions near the sea. His thoughts he then regarded as his only companion; he basked in beauty and meditated on the universe. But Abibdul was never alone when he came to the seashore. Upon him constantly were eyes from the ocean. Beneath the beach and extending back under the land was a sea cavern where water swirled in gentle eddies and soft green moss cushioned the rocky floor. Here living their happy sequence of days in play was assembled a host of the fairest mermaids the ocean floor did ever see. It was one of these, Necile, whose eyes were given to gazing at the strolling prince of Haz-I-Sim. Necile's bewitching beauty made her the pride, albeit the envy, of her sister seawitches. Her hair was golden as the capped waves in a copper sunset, and finer than the most silken moss; her eyes were the color of the sky reflected in the sea. The gleaming flesh of the upper half of her body, the girl part, was milk-white; the lower part was covered with beautiful blue-green scales that gleamed all the colors of the rainbow when the sun struck them. Her lower body tapered to a fish's tail that ended in two fins. Necile had been lying on a rock sunning herself the first time she saw Abibdul. Swishing her tail gently in the water, she was preoccupied with her own reflection in the sea. She was startled to hear a sudden swish as a smooth flat pebble skipped across the water very near to her. She looked up and saw Abibdul on the beach, skimming pebbles along the top of the water. He had not seen the mermaid on the rock; so Necile silently dropped into the water, then peered around the rock at the prince. She gazed at him with growing rapture, thinking him a handsome fellow. She had never seen a human before, and so was puzzled at the way he motivated himself. It seemed awkward to the mermaid that the prince must extend one part of his tail (for such she thought it to be), then, balancing on it, draw up the back limb and advance it in front of the first one, and thus propel himself. It seemed that Necile had always glided through her watery ways gently and quickly by means of her slim yet powerful tail. But though the mermaid did not recognize Abibdul as a human and a prince, she was fascinated by him, drawn to him by an attraction that may have been curiosity. "What a lovely merman he would make," the fish-girl thought. She watched the prince until he left the beach that evening. The next afternoon Necile went alone to her rock where she would be out of sight of the beach, and there waited to see if the prince would come again. She did not wait in vain, for again the prince came, and the mermaid spent another afternoon looking at the face and figure that puzzled yet at the same time enraptured her. Continually after that the mermaid saw the prince whenever he came to walk on the beach, though she always hid from his eyes. She thought of him no longer as a mystery; he had become so much a part of her living. Then one day when the prince did not come, the mermaid found that she was in love with him. She sorrowed as the afternoon waned; she still sat alone on her rock when the moon arose out of the sea. "My prince, my prince," she murmured, when she knew that he was not coming, "my heart tells me now that you are something more than a thing for my brain to play with. Whatever kind of man you are, I love you." She sat all night thinking of the prince she loved, and would not return to her sea-cavern, much to the despair of the other mermaids, who could not understand her sorrow. The next day when afternoon came, Necile swam not to the rock where she had kept herself hidden from the prince's sight, but to a spot near the beach where she could float on the water's surface, for being a mermaid she could not leave the sea. The prince came that afternoon. He approached slowly, feeling at peace. Necile saw him coming, and with her tail worked herself up to the water's edge. She raised herself up on her tail so the prince would see her. Abibdul stopped short in his steps as he saw the mermaid rising out of the sea. Seeing only her upper half, he thought her to be a human girl. He stood still for one startled moment, then turned hurriedly away, thinking he had come upon some one of his kingdom enjoying a lone swim. "Do not go," a soft, low voice flowed after him. Abibdul turned again to the girl. "Do not go," she said again. "I like you to be here so much." "Are you of my kingdom ?" Abibdul asked. "I have never seen you." "I am of my own kingdom," Necile answered. "My kingdom is of the water." "Well, come, let us talk," said the prince. He seated himself on the sand. "Oh, no," the mermaid told him. "I cannot do that." "I shall go while you dress, then, and come back." "That would do no good. I can never go from the water. I am not like you. Here my home is; here is where I must stay. See ?" (Continued on Page 16) page four Soup to Nuts...Especially Nuts by Rolfe Peterson THE world is becoming more and more aware of a far-reaching trend in entertainment appreciation the accumulation, mastication, ingestion, and digestion of foodstuffs. Philosophers and interested bystanders are concerned over the extent to which these biological processes are being carried on by theater audiences, radio listeners, concert-goers, and literary enthusiasts (people who read books). This is no new fad. Movie fans were eating peanuts in theaters before Don Ameche got his second teeth or Charlie McCarthy was even planted. The most credible theory on the origin of theater-eating pardon me, I mean eating in theaters is generally conceded to be the Einstein Theory. Its author, of whom I am sure you have heard much since the formulation of his now famous theory, is Joe Einstein of Brigham, Utah. He has deduced that it all began back in 1903 in the Palace Theater (known at that time as the "Palace Theater") when one Angus McTavish, four calories short of his daily quota, nibbled experimentally on a turnip which the man in the next seat had brought along to throw at the actors. Since the actors were very bad, the man in the next seat yearned passionately to throw his turnip at the juvenile lead; imagine then his grief at discovering the loss, via the McTavish gullet, of his ammunition. His grief was so great, in fact, that Angus suddenly found himself in the em-barassing position of being pitched headfirst out of the Palace Theater's balcony (matinees twenty-five cents). Angus McTavish, heaven rest his soul, succumbed (died). But his memory is immortal, for he had given to a waiting world the joy of eating in a balcony. The fad quickly spread, and soon dignified first-nighters were smuggling ham sandwiches under their high hats, and peanut vendors were fighting for spots near theaters. One after the other, almost every food known to man has undergone consumption in movie audiences; something had to be done, however, after the introduction of talking pictures. The speaking screen found itself running competition to the piercing crack of peanut shells and the spine-tingling crunch of peanut-brittle. Affairs came to a head when a communistic labor-agitator, in protest to working conditions among ushers, leaned over a balcony rail during the death-scene in "Camille" and devoured eleven stalks of celery. What happened was inevitable: helped along by the well-aimed foot of a nineteen-year-old stenographer who was secretly in love with Robert Taylor, he met the same fate as had Angus McTavish. Another tragic phase of eating in theaters is shown by a case brought to light recently in San Francisco: the stomach of a Polish stevedore (who had just consumed in the order named, a thermos-full of corned-beef-and-cabbage, a slab of apple pie a la mode, though how he got the ice cream past the doorman is still a mystery, a full bottle of dill pickles, one dozen day-old cream puffs, and a bag of jelly beans) unexpectedly growled. The audience, thinking that the theater's foundation was crumbling, rioted, and in the mad rush toward exits seventeen women and children were trampled to death. Two pernicious by-products of audience eating are the troubling questions, "What the hell shall I do with this gum?" and "How the hell do you get this cellophane off?" The answer to the first query is always the same: Unless the man in front of you is bald, stick it under the seat. The result is the painful and humiliating experience of walking up a theater aisle only to be suddenly snapped back into your seat by the irresistible pull of a wad of Wrigley's which some movie-diner has planted on the nearest seat. Things like that have popularized radio. The second question is the direct result of the insidious workings of the Dupont interests. After the discovery of Cellophane, Dupont sent slinking agents out among innocent theater-goers to give away cellophane-covered bags of peanuts "for advertising purposes". Little did the naive victims realize that they were carrying into the theaters of America the most horrible menace to movie enjoyment since the rise of the Ritz brothers crackling sacks. Climax to the ghastly career of cellophane is the report from a recent nation-wide survey on theater nuisances. Cellophane outranked women-who-won't-take-off-their-hats in national unpopularity! But take heart, for things are blackest before the dawn. Although theater irritants are at their peak, the snowball of reform has begun to roll; revolution is in the offing. Proof is the sign which glared dic-tatorially at me from the box-office of an Idaho movie palace: "Because of numerous complaints, no popcorn will be allowed in this theater!" In the case of concert-goers, eating while listening has become an actual menace, as in the case of the New York Philharmonic's second flutist, Thorstein Tweep. Mr. Tweep, dozing during a performance of Bach's Concerto for Piano and Cuspidor, was suddenly awakened by the pop of a pistachio in the audience. (Continued on Page 2l) page five