The White House Week

P: Neutral lavendar was the tint of table chrysanthemums for the season's second state dinner--an appropriate shade, since the guests were the diplomatic corps. The new gold plate service was used, embossed with the U. S. seal and coat of arms. Two days earlier, the President and Mrs. Coolidge had dined with Secretary of State and Mrs. Kellogg at their home on 19th Street. There they chatted at table with General Pershing, Princess Cantacuzene, other agreeable and prominent people, including Lawyer and Mrs. Silas Hardy Strawn, of Chicago.

P: The President's meeting with Mr. Strawn over Secretary Kellogg's hors d'oeuvres came on the evening of the day when the President had let it be known that Mr. Strawn, onetime Chairman of the Chinese Extraterritoriality Conference, was no longer connected with the Government, and that he, the President, had not read Mr. Strawn's recent report.

P: The President signed the bill increasing salaries of Federal judges (TIME, Dec. 20).

P: Through the White. House lower corridor, without a card, walked a lady whom one or two attendants were impressed to see. She entered the East Room, where, on Nov. 25, 1913, she had been married. She was Mrs. Francis Bowes Sayre, onetime Jessie Wilson, War President's daughter, now wife of a professor at Harvard Law School. Said she (to a guard) : "I just wanted to see the place and the East Room again," She did not meet any member of the Coolidge family.

P: President Coolidge accepted an invitation to speak Dec. 29 in Trenton, N. J., at the celebration of the Battle of Trenton. The Governors of the 13 original states are expected to be there.

P: A vest was presented to the President, who, however, has not been seen to wear it. It is a Christmas gift, a home-tailored garment, from one Joe Stinson, of Rumsey, Ky. It is neatly pieced together from strips of the skin of a seven-foot rattlesnake. Five rattles went with the offering, in a pocket.

P: John Coolidge, accompanied by his secret service guard,* Col. E. W. Starling, returned from Amherst College to spend Christmas vacation with his parents.

P: Representatives Burton, Porter and Tinkham went to the White House, hoping to revive the President's interest in calling a Hague conference to codify international law. He told them that the nations of the world are too absorbed in economic problems to be interested in international codes at this time.

P: The U. S. Steel Corp. having declared a 40% stock dividend, President Coolidge, among 90,000 others, heard the news with personal interest. Holder of some 50 shares, he will receive 20 more, the dividend taking that form. It is estimated the shares should yield a profit of from |2,000 to $3,000.

*In reply to various stories concerning the wherefore of his guard, young Mr. Coolidge last week told a newsgatherer at Amherst, Mass.: "They have to take someone for a ride. I suppose I might as well be the one. I don't mind it. It's probably some Democrat who wants to get something off his chest."