Outraged Senator Henry Fountain Ashurst, self-styled "peripatetic bifurcated volcano of language," wrote to Secretary of the Interior Ickes: "The press quotes you as saying Senator Vandenberg is the Senate's greatest mumbler of long words. Why did you do that to me? What have I done to you? You know very well that I am a greater mumbler of long words than Arthur Vandenberg. ..."

Wounded somewhere in England was Bernard Marmaduke Fitzalan-Howard, 16th Duke of Norfolk, second in command of a battalion of the Royal Sussex Regiment, by a fellow officer who peppered His Grace by mistake for a rabbit.

Ear to the ground as always, Kansas' cadaverous Senator Arthur Capper invited a farmers' meeting at Topeka to tell him what was wrong with the world. Up popped Constituent A. F. McHenry: "The trouble with our Senators and Representatives is we farmers aren't getting anything from them but hot air and oratory. Two fellows down at Baker University won an oratorical contest and now they're in an asylum. I think some of our Senators and Representatives should be there with them."

Shaggy-browed Connie Mack (Cornelius McGillicuddy) celebrated his 77th birthday, admitted that he had picked his son Earle, 47, to succeed him as president-manager of the Philadelphia Athletics, hastily covered his slip: "But he'll be wearing long, grey whiskers before then."

Fluttery Hilda Davis (wife of Dance-Band Leader Meyer Davis), who owns a lock of Lord Byron's hair, a page from the Gutenberg Bible, a promissory note for $100,000 made out to E. L. Doheny and signed by Ex-Secretary of Interior Albert B. Fall, announced with pride her purchase for $15,000 of the original manuscript of Johannes Brahms's First Symphony. Said she: "Isn't it thrilling?"

As honorary colonel in chief of the Oxfordshire Yeomanry (antitank regiment) King George VI appointed his mother, Queen Mary.

Children of diplomats from 30 countries attended a Washington Christmas Party in their native costumes. Guest William O. Douglas Jr., son of the Supreme Court Justice, went in the dress of his native U. S., did his best to improve Pan American relations with Isabel Recinos, daughter of the Guatemalan Minister.

In the personal column of the London Daily Telegraph, Lady Harwood, wife of newly promoted Rear Admiral Sir Henry Harwood, pocketer of the Admiral Graf Spee, ". . . wishes to express her sincere sympathy with relatives of the officers and men who fell in the gallant action in La Plata Dec. 13."

Some 250 years ago, Cockney Nell Gwyn, self-styled "Protestant whore" of King Charles II, unable to write her own name, initialed a 12-shilling receipt "for a pair of rich embroidered garters." Sold at famous Sotheby's in London in 1939, the voucher, without the garters, brought -L-70 ($280).

Campaigning for brother-in-law Governor Earl Kemp Long, limpid-eyed ex-Senator Rose McConnell Long, widow of Louisiana's loquacious Kingfish, made an eleven-word speech to expectant voters of Donaldsonville, La.: "I am happy to be here and thank you very much."

Two recruits to the French Army: Seydon Nouron Toll, Grand Marabout Chief of Black Islam, who joined at Mamou, French Guinea, was made France's first Capitaine-Aumonier (chaplain) of its black army; Monireth Sisowath, Crown Prince of Cambodia, in the French protectorate of Indo-China, who became a private in the infantry.

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