"Names make news." Last week the following names made the following news:

Edith Wharton (for excellence in literature), Julia Marlowe (for excellence in stage diction), Milton John Cross (for excellence in radio diction) were awarded gold medals last week by the American Academy of Arts and Letters (founded 1904, headquarters in Manhattan).

Albert and Charles Boni, shrewd Manhattan publishers, announced last week the formation of a "Paper Books Club." Object: to sell twelve new paperbound books per annum for $5. Frankly commercial, they will not advertise their offerings as "best" books of each month. They said they would need at least 200,000 subscribers.

Mrs. Thomas Alva Edison headed the staff appointed last week by the Fort Myers, Fla., Women's Community Club to publish an issue of the Tropical News. She wrote editorials: extolled Adolph Simon Ochs (New York Times), flayed handshaking as too hard on President Hoover, attacked billboards. Robert Cedric Sherriff, London insurance broker, amateur playwright of super-successful Journey's End (TIME, April 1), announced last week he was writing a play about the antarctic death (1912) of Explorer Robert Falcon Scott.

Mrs. Booth Tarkington, wife of the novelist, was hospitalized last week in Indianapolis. Cause: celluloid combs in her hair had caught fire.

Grover Aloysius Whalen, Police Commissioner of New York city, is an elegant gentleman. Lately he eyed with annoyance the shabby bootblack, one Giuseppe Carnozzi, who shines the Whalen shoes twice daily at police headquarters. Whalen commands were issued. Carnozzi dimensions were taken. Last week a new bootblack shined the Whalen shoes--still named Giuseppe Carnozzi but now clad in blue livery with brass buttons, with the title BOOTBLACK embroidered on cap, on breast pocket.

Elinor Smith, 17, world's female endurance flight champion, lying abed recuperating from 26 hours in air (see p. 53), announced that her next feat would be a solo flight from New York to Rome. Said Mrs. Agnes Smith, her mother: "Try and stop her."

Lady Eleanor Smith, dark daughter of Lord Birkenhead, made public complaints, last week, when she heard that Gypsies were to be excluded this year from Epsom Downs during the running of the Derby. Lady Eleanor knows the Romany language, likes to visit Gypsy caravans. The ban was imposed for sanitary reasons and to prevent a neighborhood nuisance.*

Anne Morrow, with her mother and sister Elizabeth, last week headed home towards Englewood, N. J., from Mexico. At Houston, Tex., she resisted newsmen with her fiance's phrase: "I have nothing to say." Said Sister Elizabeth: "One of the things which helped Col. Lindbergh to his fame was his silence on personal affairs."

"You have profaned the House of God. outraged the decencies of nature and broken the law of man," cried Sir Ernest Wild, K. C., Recorder of London, at Old Bailey court, last week. After elaborating these thoughts for some minutes he sentenced to nine months' imprisonment, for perjury in swearing falsely to her marriage declaration, famed "Captain Barker, D. S. O.," the transvestite, Mrs. Lilias Irma Valerie Barker Arkell-Smith, who for five years masqueraded successfully as a male War hero, who eloped with and married Miss Alfreda Howard, a chemist's simple daughter (TIME, March 18, et seq.).

Martha King Reybttrn, daughter of President Samuel Wallace Reyburn of Lord & Taylor (Manhattan smartmart), driving an automobile last week through Ravenna, Italy, hit and killed one Thomas Minguzzi, 70, riding a bicycle. She was released.

William Kissam Vanderbilt, pausing last week at Malaga, Spain, on his round-the-world yachting trip, gave a too large check to a Malaga merchant. Honest, the tradesman offered change. The Vanderbilt answer, as reported by the New York Times: "Keep the change, and the microbes with it."

Sir Rabindranath Tagore, Indian poet, playwright, mystic, last week abandoned his intended tour of the U. S., sailed for home from San Francisco. Reason: disgust with treatment from U. S. Immigration officers; disgust with "the prejudiced and despicable American view of things and people Asiatic."

* Last week in Szopsi, Slovakia, 19 Romanies confessed to a dozen deeds of cannibalism.