Aunt Jane's Nieces Out West
"
"He has succeeded," grumbled Arthur, as he took his place at the end of a
long line of ticket buyers.
The picture, as it flashed on the screen, positively thrilled them. First
was shown the crowd of merry bathers, with Patsy and Maud standing in the
water a little apart from the others. Then the boy--far out beyond the
rest--threw up his arms, struggling desperately. Maud swam swiftly toward
him, Patsy making for the shore. The launching of the boat, the race to
rescue, Maud's effort to keep the drowning one afloat, and the return to
the shore, where an excited crowd surrounded them--all was clearly shown
in the picture. Now they had the advantage of observing the expressions
on the faces of the bathers when they discovered a tragedy was being
enacted in their midst. The photographs were so full of action that the
participants now looked upon their adventure in a new light and regarded
it far more seriously than before.
The picture concluded with the scene where Uncle John lifted the body
into the automobile and dashed away with it to the hospital.
Maud Stanton, used as she was to seeing herself in motion pictures, was
even more impressed than the others when observing her own actions at a
time when she was wholly unconscious that a camera-man had his lens
focused upon her.
"It's a great picture!" whispered Flo, as they made their way out of the
crowded theatre. "Why can't all our films be as natural and absorbing as
this one?"
"Because," said her sister, "in this case there is no acting. The picture
carries conviction with a force that no carefully rehearsed scene could
ever accomplish."
"That is true," agreed her Aunt Jane. "The nature scenes are the best,
after all."
"The most unsatisfactory pictures I have ever seen," remarked Uncle John,
"were those of prominent men, and foreign kings, and the like, who stop
before the camera and bow as awkwardly as a camel. They know they are
posing, and in spite of their public experience they're as bashful as
schoolboys or as arrogant as policemen, according to their personal
characteristics.
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The Story of the Leopard, the Tortoise, and the Bush Rat
Category: Nigerian folktales
Read times: 66
There was once a king who was very powerful. He had great influence over the wild beasts and animals. Now the tortoise was looked upon as the wisest of all beasts and men. This king had a son named Ekpenyon, to whom he gave fifty young girls as wives, but the prince did not like any of them. The king was very angry at this, and made a law that if any man had a daughter who was finer than the prince's wives, and who found favour in his son's eyes, the girl herself and her father and mother should be killed.
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