Joyhopping Publisher

Priests in your pulpits, Taxpayers in pews, Kings on your thrones, You know as well as me, Ye'-ve only one virginitie to lose And where ye lose it, There your hearts will be. The heart of Chicago's Joseph Medill Patterson, is in the air. Thus, a month ago, he wrote the above Kipling (with emendations) for his nickel Liberty. Then he boarded his $75.000 Sikorsky amphibian, Liberty, flew to the Caribbean (TIME, Dec. 10). With him flew a vivacious married daughter, Alicia Patterson Simpson,* 22, who a while ago preferred reporting for her father's Manhattan tabloid (Daily News) to dancing with Chicago's eligibles. He also took Lieut. Frederick Becker as pilot, Engineer Sutter, Radioman Roe and Newsman Floyd Gibbons. In Liberty's red leather and lacquer cabin Publisher Patterson studied maps and winds while Daughter Alicia snuggled on a chaise-longue reading. . . . They stayed at Havana four days. A "norther" swept across the bay. nearly bumped a bulky launch against the Liberty. The crew watched a jai alai tournament and cock fights. Finally they took off for Santiago de Cuba, stopping en route at Manzanillo to avoid a squall and because Publisher Patterson liked the name. At Santiago they visited Spanish War battlefields, ate melons, saw the straits where much-kissed Hero Richmond Pearson Hobson sank the Merrimac.

While Daughter Alicia napped and Publisher Patterson read Spanish papers, the amphibian proceeded to Port-au-Prince, Haiti. Waspish U. S. Army pursuit planes rose to greet it. Luncheon was served amid bougainvillea blooms, mango trees, pomegranates. From the air the party later saw the craggy citadel where Blackamoor Christophe. self-appointed Henri I of Haiti, once dared Napoleon to come and get him. They saw the ruins of his palace of Sans Souci where the ebony ruler, stricken twice with paralysis, split his weary brain with a golden bullet from a jeweled pistol. They descended to visit the castle where Pauline Bonaparte, sprightly sister of the Emperor, held a tropical court filled with tropic passions.

Pilot Becker, ill, was quarantined in Port-au-Prince. The rest went to Panama, inspected submarine bases, game preserves, laboratories, spied on the canal from the sky. After ten days Pilot Becker, convalescent, joined his companions in Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic. He flew from Port-au-Prince in 90 minutes. The others motored the same distance in nine hours. At the capitol they were wined and dined by President Horacio Vasquez. Later Daughter Alicia went bathing, kicked a sea porcupine which retaliated with a dozen barbs to the foot. A native Indian shaman extracted most of them with the aid of a burning coconut shell and hot candle grease.

On Dec. 29 the Liberty cut air funnels toward San Juan, Porto Rico. From that point a tangential trip was made to St. Thomas in the Virgin Islands. Governor Waldo E. Evans played host. Bewailed was the lack of famed Virgin Island rum, but St. Thomas is U. S. territory. Back in San Juan, Publisher Patterson and Daughter Alicia paid a call on Governor Horace M. Towner, who still hears hurricanes in his ears. During the following evening some gasoline floating on the harbour water exploded. Engineer Sutter was blown off the nose of the Liberty. Radioman Roe came hurtling out of the cabin saloon. Dexterously swimming and fire-extinguishing, they saved the amphibian. Two days later the Liberty left San Juan, bound back for Port-au-Prince. Radioman Roe stayed behind, his eyebrows singed away, his face and arms stinging. ^

*Spouse of James Simpson Jr.. son of James Simpson, potent president of Marshall Field & Co.