Into the Sunset

Sun-shot Florida is no place for a man with work to do. Impatient with its seductions, Herbert Hoover last week boarded his train at Miami, sped back to Washington against the advice of several good friends. Inauguration was still a fortnight off. All precedent opposed such an early return. But Mr. Hoover had lots to do, many people to see. Besides, his home is in Washington.

The sunset of an old administration is generally a strange, distorted hour. Shadows are longest then and the last red glimmer of official prestige is at its richest. Would the President-Elect eclipse the outgoing President? Probably not, for Mr. Hoover is ever cautious. He will sequester himself in his S street home, strive to cast no shadows at all. P:Mr. Hoover and his party skipped all over southern Florida last week. Bad weather drove him back from his west coast tarpon fishing. He inspected the Okeechobee flood area, saw tent colonies, praised sugar cane and truck growing in low black muck, heard politicians wisecrack about the election and fish for federal aid. At Palm Beach he was feted at the Bath and Tennis Club. At Fort Lauderdale, 3,000 excited children mobbed him, swept him two blocks from his car. P:At Brighton, Fla., Mr. Hoover lunched with Glenn H. Curtiss, aviation pioneer. He remarked to his host that Col. Lindbergh should fly no more, lest he be killed by the law of aviation averages. The Pan-American Airways, Inc., Mr. Hoover suggested, should give him a good safe ground job. Mr. Curtiss, a-twinkle, replied that the situation would probably be met, in view of press reports that Mr. Hoover was going to appoint Col. Lindbergh to his sub-cabinet in charge of civil aeronautics. Mr. Hoover promptly changed the subject of conversation.