The Coolidge Week

P:Seasickness, worst feeling in the world, is no respecter of persons. Bolstering the semicircular canals with earplugs helps some people. Shutting the eyes also helps, since the sympathetic nervous system is also affected by optical unsteadiness. Drinking champagne is another remedy. But the best thing of all, for seasick prince, pauper or potentate, is to surrender completely and lie down. . . . Returning to Key West from Havana on the swift cruiser Memphis, President Coolidge lay down.* Secretary Wilbur filled an engagement the President had made to address the ship's officers and crew.

Ashore once more, all was well with President Coolidge. He rode around the streets of Key West in an automobile, climbed into the Coolidge Special, slumbered deeply up the Keys and through Florida to Jacksonville, where he got up and called for a breakfast beginning with Spanish melon. Governor John W. Martin of Florida was at the Jacksonville station, (with Mayor John T. Alsop and many a big fruitgrower. The President shook their hands, looked around, re-entrained for Washington. The Coolidge Special's cinema that evening was Uncle Tom's Cabin.

P:In Washington, President Coolidge was pleased to find:

That debaters in the U. S. Congress were trying to observe a truce on the Nicaraguan situation and other subjects ticklish to the Pan-American Congress.

That the Jones Bill, to keep the U. S. in the shipping business, seemed unlikely to pass.

That an extraordinary session of the Havana city council had been called to rename Seventeenth Street in Havana, "President Coolidge Street."

That Prince Chichibu of Japan, brother of Emperor Hirohito, was engaged to marry 18-year-old Setsu Matsudaira, daughter of the Japanese Ambassador. (TIME, Jan. 23). (The President cabled congratulations to the Emperor.)

P:A special car rolled into Washington D. C. and on it Pianist Ignace Paderewski. He lunched at the White House with other distinguished Poles, strummed on the Blue Room piano, had some tea, returned to his private car. Other eminent callers of the week included Harvey S. Firestone (rubber), William Morgan Butler (politics).

P:To the President came the strange dilemma of William Adkins, 80-year-old Washingtonian with two sons. The dilemma was that one of the sons, President Jesse Adkins of the Washington Bar Association, had been proposed as a Justice of the Supreme Court of the District of Columbia, in which William S. Adkins, the other son, had long been a clerk. The law provides that no relative of a Federal judge shall be employed in that judge's court. Mr. Adkins Sr. asked that his able son should not be made a judge lest the other son lose his clerkship. He said: "Jesse has had his share of life's honors. This added recognition would mean little to him compared to what the loss of position would mean to William. It is a hard thing for a father to do but I am compelled to do it." President Coolidge mused.

*Chosen for the return trip because of her speed, the Memphis is less steady at sea than the battleship Texas, which took the President to Havana. While the Memphis rushed homewards at 25 knots, the Texas plowed along behind more slowly but on a more even keel.