U. S. Taj

It was snowing when President Coolidge and Mrs. Coolidge left Washington. When they awoke, a bright splash of sunlight was spilled over their coverlets. They were, like many another personage,* in the South again.

At Lake Wales the train stopped and the presidential party was greeted by Governor and Mrs. Doyle E. Carlton of Florida, and by Mr. and Mrs. Edward William Bok of Philadelphia. Blue-coated Marines stood at attention. The President and his party motored three miles to Mountain Lake and then they walked slowly, almost reverently, into a "Sanctuary for Humans and Birds" that Edward Bok had conceived, that Architect Milton B. Medary had built, that Landscape Architect Frederick Law Olmstead had set in an aurora of tropical colors.

Five years ago there was only sand and a few pines on this spot. But Mr. Bok caused a slender Gothic tower, of pink Georgia marble and tan Florida coquina stone, to be erected. Delicately balanced in the top is the largest carillon in the U. S./- At the tower's base is a pool, surrounded by exotic trees and shrubs. Mr. Bok calls this place the "Taj Mahal of America." It was to dedicate this U. S. Taj that President Coolidge had gone to Florida.

Before the ceremonies began Mrs. Coolidge paused to admire seven nightingales prisoned behind bamboo laced with poinsettias. She fed them several wriggling worms of a rare species raised specially and shipped from Philadelphia. Six brightly insolent flamingoes stalking near picking up their food for themselves.

Mr. Bok greeted Mr. Coolidge as "one of the best and most fair-minded Presidents the country has had in many years, who unquestionably will be regarded as more popular on leaving the Presidency than when he entered it." President Coolidge was visibly affected by this sentiment and thanked Mr. Bok before reading his prepared address.

The address was on art. Excerpts: "Our country is giving an increasing amount of attention to art. . . . We have been making a new nation out of raw materials. . . .

"There are an increasing number of individuals who have sufficient resources to enable them to minister in the most substantial way to the humanitarian and artistic side of life. . . . So many of our people have large amounts of property that it is taken on the aspect of being common.* It is doubtful if there ever was a time when great wealth gave its possessors so little power as at present. "

". . .The main purpose of this sanctuary and tower is to preach the gospel of beauty. . . .

When the President finished his address Governor Carlton invited him to Florida, saying: "One day a great President of the United States may become a great Governor of Florida."

P: The presidential special from Florida steamed to a standstill at Washington's Union Station. Secretary of State Kellogg and Secretary of Labor Davis, top-hatted, stood on the platform to greet the President. They waited five minutes, ten. The President's private car was dark. A secret service man, anxious, climbed aboard, peeped through a door, whispered, came away relieved. Another five minutes and the car lights flashed up. The President received his Cabinet officers. Riders of the Night, Western thriller, was the cinema that had held him spellbound in his dark car 15 minutes after arrival.

P: The White House is a place of many secrets, neatly typed and filed away in brown wooden cabinets that crowd the executive office storerooms. Copies of all Presidential letters, public and private, correspondence from the world over, confidential memoranda on people and things, secret reports--all are here under guard.

Woodrow Wilson, on leaving office, had the files stripped and their contents carted off to his S Street home. Mrs. Harding conducted a similar clean-up after her husband's death. President Coolidge, in turn, began file-cleaning last month. He has been spending Sunday hours at the task, sending some letters to the Library of Congress, some to executive departments for future reference, some to Northampton, Mass.

These records have a high monetary value, not per se, but as raw material for authoritative literary productions. About the President's desk have been seen odds and ends of manuscripts, random notes, obscure text references, which, with the removal of letters from the files, have led to the belief that Calvin Coolidge, citizen, will publish a book reminiscent of Calvin Coolidge, President. Some say the book is half written.

P: The White House electric horse was crated for shipment to Northampton, Mass.

P: White House callers last week included John Pierpont Morgan and Owen D. Young, unofficial U. S. experts on the Reparations Committee. Their call was brief, to pay respects before sailing for Paris.

P: The Washington Post lay on the President's desk one day last week, flaunting a page advertisement for the capital's Community Chest (united charity) drive. The Coolidge picture embellished the page, with a Presidential endorsement of the Chest. Below was the question: "How much shall I give to the Community Chest?" In answer there was a table showing incomes from $1,200 to $50,000, and graduated percentages of gifts, based on income, ranging from one half per cent to ten per cent.

The President ordered his personal secretary to prepare a check for the Community Chest Fund. He specified the amount. At noon that day he went to the front steps of the executive offices, posed for cameramen in the act of handing his contribution to Washington welfare to Robert V. Fleming, chairman of the drive. Mr. Fleming quickly folded the check and popped it into pocket.

The news-question was, of course, how much had the President given? If President Coolidge was guided by the Coolidge-endorsed advertisement, he must have signed a check for $7,500 for the Washington community chest, one-tenth of his salary.

The White House refused to reveal the amount of the Coolidge contribution. The Community Chest officials were tightlipped. But a wicked rumor flew around the capital that the President's check was for "Twenty-five dollars and no cents."

*Also in Florida last week: Herbert Hoover, Jack Dempsey, Colonel Lindbergh, Scarface Al Capone.

/-Pronounced "kareeong." President Coolidge Americanized it phonetically, said "karilon." A carillon differs from a chime principally in that its bells do not swing, and that they are tuned to a chromatic scale. A carillon is played on a keyboard like a piano but the carilloneur strikes the keys with his fists. *There are 283 persons in the U. S. with incomes more than $1.000,000.