Trivia

The world is so full of a number of things I'm sure we should all be as happy as king--.

The world, one knows, is always full of a sufficient number of portentous things. Miners strike; Chinamen war; cities fall; Borah talks; art, music and education trend; crime waves, tongs war, elections recur with a certain regularity.

But gossip, tales of little doings of important and unimportant people, is always half the news. In the small towns on the boarding house porches of lesser Broadways, rocking-chairs squeak out a dissonant and complaining chorus, thin-lipped ladies swell like croaking frogs into the temporary importance of unofficial news-mongers. Over bored back fences, down dumbwaiter pits, gossiping voices shrill. In cities, the churning presses of newspapers join the rocking-chair chorus, give the daily pabulum of gossip, dignified in print, to stenographer and businessman. Shanghai may fall, Prohibition flounder; the names of "Peaches," Chaplin, Rhinelander still strike responsive chords.

Last week many trivia held their own in the news.

"CAN PEACHES" said black type more than an inch high, in a Pittsburgh newssheet. Frances Heenan Browning, blonde, buxom, onetime darling of the tabloids, had signed a contract to expose her nether limbs to the gaze of Pittsburgh's night-clubbers. Pittsburghers, righteously indignant, "canned" "Peaches," forced the cancellation of the contract. Meanwhile, Dr. Henry J. Schireson, Chicago plastic surgeon, surveyed the aforementioned nether limbs with interest; gossip said that "Peaches" agreed to pay him $10,000 to remove her acid burn scars and bring slender shapeliness to her amply-built legs.

"BUD FISHER MEETS GIRL" said New York headlines. Down the bay "Bud," genial cartoonist who gets about $200,000 because he created "Mutt and Jeff," climbed on board the S. S. Conte Rosso. He greeted Trava Dawn, late of the Greenwich Village Follies. In a New York courtroom, a Supreme Court Justice listened to the once famed divorce proceedings brought against Cartoonist Fisher by the Countess de Beaumont.

"MISS PANKHURST FINDS NO THRILL" remarked the press. In London, Christabel Pankhurst, onetime militant suffragist, window-smasher, picket of Parliaments, had sighed meekly. Parliament was soon expected to pass legislation that would give the vote to all women of 21 or more in England. Suffragist Pankhurst said: "It would have been the Seventh Heaven of delight years ago if this had come to pass. But I have changed since then. Now ... I know we can make the same mistakes as men."

"HEIRS OF MRS. HILL LOSE," heading a small item, brought echoes of mighty days and mighty men. Mrs. Mary T. Hill was the widow of James Jerome Hill, the "Empire Builder." He thrust railway lines to the Pacific, made millions in the process. The heirs of his widow have paid over $3,000,000 in inheritance taxes to the U. S. government; last week they lost their suit to recover it.

"CARROLL MUST SURRENDER" said a modest headline. Some vaguely remember that Earl Carroll, theatrical producer had been convicted of perjury months before; everyone knows he gave the party where Joyce Hawley splashed and wept in a bath-tub full of alleged champagne. A fortnight ago the U. S. Supreme Court turned down his appeal: Producer Carroll must go to Atlanta to spend a year and a day. Gossip said he would pay his own way to Atlanta to keep his appointment with the government on time; the U. S. Marshal's office, left without money to pay his fare by the Senate filibuster, can only give him temporary reservations in the Tombs prison in Manhattan.

"TEXAS GUINAN FREE, HOLDS KISSING BEE" euphonistically wrote a New York headline writer. "Texas" Guinan, night club hostess, once virile out-of-door woman, helped her brother "Texas Tommy" herd cattle at the age of ten. Last week, freed by Federal Judge Thomas Thacher of charges of contempt of court for alleged violation of the Prohibition Law, she said: "Thank God, that's over," and plastered "Texas Tommy," Herman Edson, the club manager, ''Mike" Edelstein, her lawyer, with smacking busses. Dry agents testified in the trial, that they found the court's injunction reposing sedately in a cuspidor.

"NO BLUES FOR PAPA AND MAMA BERLIN," "BERLIN GOES WET" said New York picture captions. Irving Berlin, singing waitter and song writer, captured fat headline space when he ran off with Ellin Mackay, daugher of the Clarence Mackay who runs the Postal Telegraph. The occasion: the first picture since the preciptous honeymoon. The "papa and mama": a coy reference to their baby daughter. The "wet": Composer Berlin entering the surf at Palm Beach.

"CAN'T FIND ZIEGFELD" said papers. Florenz Ziegfeld Jr. who can spot "a woman of parts" for his shows as quickly as a jockey can spot a likely bit of horseflesh, was sought in vain last week by process servers. Producer Ziegfeld lately announced that his chorines in the future would be decently dressed. Now he seems to have found chorine-wrappings expensive; the Eaves Costume Co. claims he owes them some $30,000 for costumes for his last three shows. Justice Ford came to the aid of foot-weary process servers, said they could serve the papers by nailing them on Mr. Ziegfeld's office door.

"RHINELANDER FAILS TO ANNUL MARRIAGE" headed nearly a column of type. Another act of the melodrama of miscegenation that followed the marriage of blue-blood Leonard Kip Rhinelander to mulatto Alice Jones dragged by as the Court of Appeals upheld all previous decisions denying the annulment application. Mrs. Alice Jones Rhinelander, cast off, said: "This shows that my case was founded on truth." With the judgment, her $300 a month alimony stops; she must start a separation suit to gain an allowance.

"RUMOR CHAPLIN PAYMENT" a sedate New York daily gossiped. When Lita Grey Chaplin left Charlie, the clown, she made many full-blooded charges for the press to print. Last week it was gossiped about that Charlie had agreed to part with $500,000 if Lita would call off the hounds of the law. Mrs. Chaplin questioned, said: "My attorneys instruct me not to talk." Her attorneys, more voluble, issued a flat denial.

"HECKSCHER DENIES HOUSING PLAN IS RED" papers said. August Heckscher, German-American philanthropist, made his millions in minerals, railroads, coal and real estate, he spends them on little children. Last week he turned his efforts to tired mothers and disabled fathers, charged the State with the responsibility of keeping them in adequate homes. He said: "This is not communism. I seek no redistribution of wealth. Let every man and woman, so long as they are honest and play the game, accumulate the wealth that seems to mean so much to them. But let them be held, through taxation, to contribute the modest share that will be needed for our plan of providing for the poorest classes, unable to protect themselves, the comfort and the health to which they are entitled."

"JOHN A. STEWART ESTATE APPRAISED." Thus people were reminded of John Aikman Stewart, long known as Wall Street's oldest financier. Born in 1822, he knew most U. S. Presidents since Jackson, served Lincoln ably as Assistant Secretary of the Treasury. The appraisal of his net estate, filed last week, showed he had accumulated a little more than $3,700,000 in his 104 years.

Trivia are all these; of such trivia was last week's news compiled. But newspaper publishers tremble to think now soon their vaunted circulations would fade away if there were no trivia to intrigue the eyes of gossip-hungry readers. And last week's trivia were the more remarkable in that the sole value lay in echoes. There were echoes of old scandal, old romance, of famed names. Or, perhaps, they were more like bones than echoes, musty bones dug up by the professional gravediggers of the press for the wayfaring reader, who might cry "Alas, poor Yorick, I knew him well."