Peanut Man

One day last October one of Washington's oldest merchants who has done business on the same spot for 28 years proudly issued a press release. The spot: intersection of Pennsylvania and East Executive Avenues, northeast corner of the White House grounds. The merchant: Nicholas Stephanos Vasilakos, proprietor of a peanut stand. The Press release, written in pencil on an empty popcorn bag: "Was certainly a great pleasure for me to wait on a new customer today at noon. The First Lady of the Land stopped by my stand and purchased a bag of fresh roasted popcorn for pastime while she was walking with another fine lady and with one of her favored dogs."

One afternoon last week Anna Eleanor Roosevelt Roosevelt, perusing the Evening Star, saw another press notice about Steve. It reported that the local Chamber of Commerce's transportation committee had recommended to the District Commissioners that Steve's stand be removed as an obstruction to traffic, that Steve, who has certain ancient and vague connections with California, was about to appeal to his Senator William Gibbs McAdoo to save his business. The First Lady took shears, neatly clipped the paragraph, pinned it to a sheet of paper, scrawled on the paper: ''Must this man go? E. R." A servant carried the paper to Presidential Secretary Stephen T. Early. Mr. Early started to set the executive office machinery in motion, then abruptly halted it. The President's Negro valet, Irvin Henry McDuffy, friend of Steve and also a reader of the Evening Star, had shown it to the President and the President had already sent word to the head of Washington's police traffic division that Steve was not to be molested.

P: The executive pen in the Presidential hand decreed: 1) That the work of the Civilian Conservation Corps should be extended one year beginning April 1; 2) that all discriminating duties and imposts on Soviet vessels and their cargoes should be forthwith ended; 3) that veterans pension regulations should be eased.

P: By way of diversion: The President and Mrs. Roosevelt gave a dinner and entertainment (Miss Jessica Lee, diseuse; Master Ruggiero Ricci, violinist) for a number of Senators, rear admirals, major generals and newspaper correspondents. Mrs. Roosevelt took a number of Cabinet wives to a morning concert attended by many diplomatic corps members, at which Eide Norena. soprano, and Mrs. Roosevelt's White House guest, Flautist Rene Le Roy, performed. The President and his Lady held the third of their five annual State Receptions, for Congress. Notable absentees: the Vice President and Mrs. Garner, the dean of the Senate and Mrs. Borah (ill).

P: To the Poor Richard Club in Philadelphia, celebrating the 228th birthday of Benjamin Franklin, President Roosevelt sent a message praising his namesake's sanity. The club thereupon awarded its annual Poor Richard Achievement Medal, in absentia, to Walt Disney on whose behalf it was accepted by Eddie Cantor.

P: Mrs. Roosevelt: 1) visiting Orange, Va., lunched in a tearoom where the proprietor's dog jumped in her lap; when the embarrassed proprietor hastily called "Come here. Hoover!" Mrs. Roosevelt smiled, patted the terrier affectionately; 2) was speaker at a dinner of 500 women conferees on the Cause and Cure of War, told them: "I believe any one who thinks must think of the next war as they would of suicide, but most people don't think. . . . How deadly stupid we are. . . ."; 3) turned over her regular press conference to Mrs. Mary Harriman Rumsey who told the disappointed newshawks how female consumers can complain to the NRA about the cost of what they buy and to Miss Mary W. Dewson of the Women's Division of the Democratic National Committee who told what plans were afoot to make women Democrats out of women Republicans.

P: The President summoned to the White House Ernest Tener Weir, chairman of Weirton Steel Co. (National Steel), ordered him to settle the labor row in his mills (TIME, Dec. 25). He also received Rev. Charles E. Coughlin of Detroit. When the priest emerged from the White House, he reported: "I discovered that Mr. Roosevelt is about 20 years ahead of the thought that is current in the country today."

P: In Augusta. Ga., Archbishop Athenagoras. hierarch of the Greek Orthodox Church in the Western Hemisphere: "President Roosevelt is a man sent by God to help His people, as near divinity as a temporal ruler can possibly be." P: In San Francisco, Joseph P. Whitwell. president of the National Spiritualist Association, declared that, although the President did not know it, spirits were guiding his acts: "Maybe it is George Washington who is his chief guide. More likely it is Abraham Lincoln. It might even be Theodore Roosevelt, but I think not. In any event they are spirits who are thoroughly informed on national affairs." P: Macmillan Co., publishers, announced on their spring list of forthcoming books: "Scamper: The White House Bunny by Anna Roosevelt Dall. . . . Suppose you were a bunny, living in a New England backyard, and one day your owner gave you a suit of clothes and sent you by mail to the White House. . . . After some exciting adventures, Scamper decided that the White House was a real home after all." P: William Green of the American Federation of Labor took up with the President a resolution adopted by the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters asking for a New Deal. Their chief complaints: low wages; tips almost at "the vanishing point''; the high cost of uniforms and shoe blacking; lack of sleep. C. The President admitted to newshawks that he was thinking about a rest--next spring when Congress is ready to adjourn. His tentative plan: a voyage to Puerto Rico. Virgin Islands, Panama Canal, Hawaii, California. P: William H. Egan, 67, veteran stationmaster of Manhattan's Pennsylvania Station, ill at home with pneumonia, received a large box containing four dozen roses picked out with occasional carnations, all cut from the White House conservatory and sent with a message from the President and Mrs. Roosevelt. Stationmaster Egan planned to have the parcel's wrapper, bearing 48-c- in stamps, framed. P: The President took a two-hour automobile drive in an open car, under sunny skies, across the Potomac into Virginia. En route he stopped at the Naval Hospital to visit Secretary Swanson laid up there for a month with coryza. P: By an oversight the President neither visited nor sent flowers to Ahmet Muhtar, 67. Turkish Ambassador and dean of the diplomatic corps, who had his tonsils out.

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