Each day begins at 5:30 in the morning, ends around 9 at night. And it has been that way since last July for James Roosevelt Jr., 18. That's when he entered the Mont La Salle Novitiate of the Brothers of the Christian Schools near Napa, Calif. The newly named Brother Matthew David got parental permission from both his divorced Episcopal father, James Sr., and Catholic mother before accepting his religious vocation. At 25, the grandson of F.D.R. hopes to leave the layman's life for good, take final vows of poverty, chastity, obedience, stability, and teaching the poor.

Horse shows can be dull if you're not really old enough to appreciate the fine points. Charles Race, 21 months, is not really old enough. So he quickly lost interest in England's annual Badminton Horse Trials and began wandering. Pretty soon he spotted the mud-covered straw that was spread around because of the rain and got a great idea. He tossed a handful of the gooey stuff at a kind-looking lady standing near by. The kind-looking lady turned out to be Queen Mother Elizabeth. She was surprised and laughed politely, but she didn't move away. So he threw a couple more handfuls. Then someone stopped him, and Charles Race had to think of something else to do.

Angelo Rizzoli, 74, does not speak the English, but as Italy's richest publisher (Oggi, L'Europeo), he doesn't need to. Still, it can be a handicap at a Manhattan party. He was in town from Hollywood where 8 1/2, one of the 150 movies he has produced on the side, won two Academy Awards, and his New York branch threw a do. Mostly no capisc Americans made the scene until Christina Austin, 34, Italy's current reigning beauty (Manhattan division) appeared, and he greeted her with a heartfelt hand buss. Since she's still linked with Henry Ford II, they probably didn't discuss a film career, but they both have ties in Milan. With Italians, that's good for an hour.

The tide of most men's lives begins to turn after 75 years. And though their vital energies are not yet sapped, three men who reached that mark last week could be pardoned if they paused for a moment to consider their own three quarters of a century:

Fresh from a fishing vacation in Ireland, Charlie Chaplin reported that he is getting ready to produce, direct, write and score a film starring his son Sydney. "If it wasn't for the cinema," he confessed, "I'd probably be digging ditches--or a traveling musician. But I wouldn't be first-rate, and I think that is what I have been."

In Kansas City, Mo., Thomas Hart Benton was as crusty as ever. His paintings have never sold better, for which he gave a true realist's explanation: "Everybody figures they ought to go out and get a Benton now because the old codger is going to be out of production before long." But a warm and happy birthday party, thrown by his admirers, finally produced an infinitesimal crack in the crust. Said the painter: "This is the kind of thing that comes to you when you've outlived your critics."

The start of his fourth quarter-century caught up with Historian Arnold Toynbee at the University of Libya in Bengasi during a lecture tour of Africa. At the request of his longtime publishers, Oxford University Press, he had left behind an essay, which was released on his birthday. His exploration of history from its start to the present, wrote the much-honored author, provided the "fulfillment of my aim. For my aim was to expand my horizon and my field to the limits of my capacity." Concluded he, in Greek verse:

I was running a race with the Reaper.

I hastened; he lingered; I won.

Now strike, Death! You sluggard, you sleeper.

You cannot undo what I've done.

After a 29-day, twelve-hour, four-minute, 55-second absence, Jerrie Mock, 38, flew into her home town of Columbus, Ohio--from the direction opposite the one she left in. In between, she had lost three pounds, flown the Atlantic and Pacific, covered 22,858.8 miles with 21 stops and become the first woman in history to fly solo around the world. Mrs. Mock had moxie. A pilot for only seven years, the petite blonde had logged just 750 solo hours before setting out. Her single-engine Cessna 180, Spirit of Columbus, was eleven years old, and even Lloyd's of London refused to underwrite the trip. Why had she chosen a small plane like that? Simple, the mother of three explained: "We happened to own one."

Love affairs have a way of lingering on beyond good sense. In 1956, Investment Banker Cornelius ("Corny") Shields, then 61, suffered a serious heart attack, was advised to give up competitive sailing. But by 1958, "the grey fox of Long Island Sound" had becalmed his doctors and masterminded the Columbia's victory in the America's Cup competition trials. In 1962 he again overruled medical protests to help out in Columbia's unsuccessful bid to be the U.S.'s Cup defender. But now it is over. Last week, acting as executor for the estate of his brother Paul, who had owned Columbia, Corny announced the sale of the twelve-meter yacht to a California syndicate. The group plans to be the first from the West Coast to enter the Cup trials, will go up against two-year-old Nefertiti and a pair of brand-new yachts. Said Corny with undisguised longing: "Columbia is going to give those new boats a tussle."

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