"Names make news." Last week these tames made this news: John Jacob Astor III, 21, returned to Manhattan in high spirits after an 88-day world tour on which he sailed the day after he was to have married 18-year-old Socialite Eileen Gillespie (TIME, Jan. 29). Said he of his broken engagement: "Miss Gillespie's parents wanted to come on our honeymoon--and that is going pretty far. [ think we probably could have a reconciliation if I had time to think it over. Miss Gillespie's parents took the engagement ring away from her and the last I heard of it, it was in a vault down town. I don't know the exact value of the ring. You know, it is a 32-carat diamond, a part of the crown jewels of France. My father's mother bought it. . . . She willed it to my father, Col. John Jacob Astor. He willed it to me. I hope they return it. It's one of our oldest heirlooms." Of a report that a $2,000,000 breach of promise suit would be filed against him, young Astor declared: "People can sue for lots of things, but she can't sue me. She was the one who broke the engagement." Of his tour, wistfully: "I don't suppose that you want to know anything about my trip?" Said Miss Gillespie's mother: "The incident is closed. . . . The incident is closed. . . . The incident is closed. . . ." At a Manhattan auction of the furnishings of the home of the late great Mrs. Whitelaw Reid (New York Herald Tribune), a Gainsborough portrait brought $5,100, a pair of 16th Century Brussels tapestries, $8,000, the entire collection, $155,897.50. Following a threat on the life of Kentucky's Governor Ruby Laffoon, two guardsmen were placed on patrol duty between the executive mansion and the State Capitol at Frankfort. Said Governor Laffoon : "If I get a few minutes notice before anyone starts shooting. I'll outrun any of them in spite of my game leg."* In Manhattan Bibliophile Abraham S. Wolf Rosenbach paid $10,100 for the small, precise squiggle of Georgia's Button Gwinnett, signer of the Declaration of Independence, affixed in witness of a farmer's will. In 1927 Bibliophile Rosenbach bid higher than any man had ever before bid on a single piece of Americana, paid $51,000 for a letter by Signer Button Gwinnett. Four years ago Yale University awarded its Rowland Prize for distinctive achievement in architecture to Swede Ragnar Ostberg, designer of Stockholm's famed $2,500,000 Town Hall, hoped he would give a lecture or two in return. Last week Prizeman Ostberg returned to the U. S. for the first time in 41 years to lecture at Yale. Later in Washington he will receive from President Roosevelt the No. 1 gold medal of the American Institute of Architects. Said Prizeman Ostberg of U. S. buildings: "As I know of them from drawings they seem things of astonishing beauty." To all living "children and children's children'' of Hameln, Germany, went invitations to return for a summer-long observance of the 650th anniversary of the child exodus led by the Pied Piper. On June 26 a monument to the Piper will be unveiled and dedicated. Poet Henry Wadsworth Longfellow's Hiawatha of the Algonquian Ojibwas ceased to be a legend, was proved a person when the Smithsonian Institution announced that, an Iroquois, he lived between 1550 and 1600, was a cannibal by tribal custom.

*Because Governor Laffoon has suffered from infirmary from tuberculosis arthritis of the right kneejoint, he uses a cane.

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