Private Business

The White Mountain Express stopped one day last week at Northampton, Mass., to take aboard a sandy-haired man carrying a small black bag marked C. C. He took a seat in the Pullman drawing room, leaving the door open. School girls raced through the car, peeked in at him, giggled. He shut the door.

His train arrived at the Grand Central Terminal in Manhattan at 7.45 p.m. People cheered. He lifted a brown fedora hat in response. He went to room 1423 (a $25-per-day suite) in the Hotel Commodore, adjoining the station. There, barricaded against the world, Calvin Coolidge attended to private business.

To his room went Editor Ray Long of William Randolph Hearst's Cosmopolitan; Joseph Anthony of the Cosmopolitan Book Co.; Arthur S. Draper, an editor of the New York Herald Tribune. Reporters were held at arm's length by a hotel detective. Good Friend Frank Waterman Stearns was present as a smiling but non-communicative buffer. One man. seeking an audience but turned away, sent up by a waiter to the Coolidge suite a silver salt shaker but no explanation. Mr. Coolidge was puzzled.

After 40 hours, Mr. Coolidge left his hotel suite, descended to the station. Walking on the platform to his noon train, he confided: "Well ... I just came down ... to see a few publishers and a few friends. I have been trying to get back to private life and you fellows [newsgatherers] will have to help me."

Chimed in Friend Stearns: "Mr. Coolidge is trying hard to be a private citizen."