Word: wirkus
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Dates: during 1930-1939
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...Faustin Wirkus, son of a Polish miner in Pennsylvania, wanted to see more of the world. He decided when he was eleven to enlist in the Marines. When he did, he was sent to Haiti. He missed the War because of a compound fracture of the arm, but had plenty of fighting against Haitian bandits, rose to be a Marine sergeant with rank of lieutenant in the native gendarmerie. A crack shot, he personally potted many a Caco (bandit), but in off hours he made friends with the peaceful natives, did many queer, unsoldierly things, such as acting as emergency...
...many white men really like black men. But Faustin Wirkus, lately of the U. S. Marines stationed in Haiti, likes them; and Traveler Seabrook likes them ''on the whole . . . better than whites." These two not entirely unvarnished narratives should clarify much current opinion of unvarnished, kinky-haired Negroes; neither book mentions Harlem...
...Gonave (though Wirkus did not know it) was a socialistic matriarchate, ruled by Head Queen Ti Memenne, fat, squaw-like but executive. Under her were various sub-queens who presided over societies "which were actually labor unions." Ti Memenne took a great liking to Wirkus, treated him like a son, and used all her considerable influence to back up his authority. Another thing Wirkus did not know was that he shared the name "Faustin" with one of Haiti's black emperors, Faustin Soulouque...
...Queen Ti Memenne's support Wirkus soon added the genuine confidence and friendship of her subjects. He discovered they were being impoverished by grafting tax collectors; got the grafters removed and put in his own men. When he wanted to build a house he had his policemen round up vagrants whom he turned into paid workmen. Some of his other activities: judge, lighthouse keeper, sanitary inspector, census taker, doctor. The baby problem he solved by sending for the late Dr. Luther Emmet Holt's Care & Feeding of Children...
Author Seabrook, though he looks like a timid college professor, has been in many outlandish places, done many outlandish things. Insatiably curious and unabashed, he has seen, done and told about things few other white men would. Wirkus looks upon blacks as children; Seabrook regards them as primitives, with primitive knowledge and dark secrets which no civilized man can fathom. A onetime reporter and short story writer, his reports of his own adventures have been bestsellers. He has lived with a Bedouin tribe, with Druses in the Arabian mountains, in a whirling-dervish monastery at Tripoli, with Yezidee devil worshipers...