THE EYRIE
(Continued from page 504)
that Mr. Suter is just dandy—the sample is fine. Nextest, I orter do something about the finis of The Last Pharaoh—'twam't bad atall atall— somehow I really didn't feel bad that lovely Carol and her dear brother were not restored to their original bodies, but, muh goo'ness sakes, warn't thet princess Atma the hungry gal? She had a bad bad case of the 'gimmies'—wuss then some of our gold diggers. Nope, 'twarn't a bad story at that—I was wholly satisfied with it from the start. After all, the villain was defeated and that should be enough for any reader, sez I. Thank you, Mr. Kelley, for some mighty entertaining reading. . . . A very queer tale was this Thing of Darkness—I never heerd tell of quite such a ghost before. He really was a rotter, I must say. I liked the unusual note of the old Mrs. Burden's sacrificing herself that a ghost might be laid. Rather unusual form of exorcism—isn't it? The Mandarin's Ear was rather refreshing in its lightness—almost humorous in that the ear of another could hear all about its former possessor. Quite an idea that! Finlay's illustration is nice, too, although I can't say the beauty looks very Chinese. Eurasian more or less, with a strong inclination to the Russian. Loretta Burrough has something there. The Will of the Dead is a fine example of what some mothers would like to do to their sons' wives. Some mothers are intensely jealous of their sons. Don't say me nay—I know! This mother in the tale was a tyrant, no less. . . . And so Henry Kuttner tells us Dis is a city of iron! Sounds like bad pronunciation to me. Tsk tsk—HK. Yes sir, live and learn, live and learn, sez I—the old alchemists never learned to make precious metals of baser products, and those who succeeded—well, look at Droom Avista—as also King Midas. I just wonder if Mr. Wellman believes that his 'Necronomicon story to end all N stories' will really end them. Somehow I wish it would—I could never get myself to pronounce the word correctly and I'd have it wandering in my brain, popping into my thoughts at the most unweird times. Shall we wait and see if it really is the end of all N stories, Mr. W.? Now to the Eyrie—it's high time I start stepping on a few toes, and giving boosts to others. First an orchid to J. Z. Thompson who wrote from Glendale, California—I liked his catchy phrase—'pulse-pepping.' Mrs. H. L. Phillips of Quincy, Illinois, seems so very prosaic in her statement of the magazine being 'in general very interesting.' Mrs. P.—that sounds much too polite—why don't you whack down a real statement and say: 'I think it's just the bestest of all the bestest, and— well, it's just the nuts, no less.' Or don't you understand my language? I agree with Robert J. Hoyer of my own fair and windy city that Doctor Lamontaine is a fine character for a yarn—one of those rip-roaring topers—yet a he-man—and entirely lovable. We will have more of him, won't we? T. O. Mabbott is going to get a toe-trodding—perhaps it would be better for him to reread Clicking Red Heels—the young millionaire did have more than one pair of shoes, and the story ends that 'in every pair of his shoes were found these strange clicking devices'—the question I raised in regard to that was how the dooce anyone could get hold of all his shoes and insert those clickers. As for the question of the hollow appearing on the seat beside the young man in his roadster—well, don't you, my friend, have an imagination? Don't you know that when a person wants to and yet fears to, he will see what is not there? Such was the case with the young millionaire. Or perhaps Mr. Ernst can explain it better than I. That will be all this time—I am happy to see Seabury Quinn again for next month. I am also awaiting the meeting of Jirel and NWSmith quite anxiously."
A Threadbare Theme
Clifton Hall, of Los Angeles, writes: "Strangely enough, the thing that has caused me to break the ice and pen my first letter to the Eyrie is the fact that I find that your August issue falls short, in my estimation, of your usual high standard of excellence. The cover itself was the first thing to give me this impression. It seemed rather carelessly done. Then, too, where are all the pretty nudes that once made WT so attractive and readable? All of my WT-fan friends here in Los Angeles agree with me that the WT of two years ago was made far more entertaining by the well-done nudes that featured the cover and stories. There is certainly nothing pornographic about it; all
