Sapeloe

Than President Coolidge the U. S. people have seldom had a better tutor in U. S. geography. His person is the pointer, public prints are the textbook. Last week the President announced that he would spend his holidays on Sapeloe Island, off the coast of Georgia. Researches forthwith exhumed a history stretching continuously from the Mayan age to the U. S. tycoon age of today.

Sapeloe Island, eight miles by four, lies between Brunswick and Savannah, close to the marsh-fringed mainland. Originally it belonged to the Creek Indians, whose ancestors left trinkets and earthworks showing they were influenced by the Mayan culture of distant Yucatan.

Sapeloe is one of the southern chain of American sea-islands mentioned in Icelandic sagas of the loth century as part of Huitramanaland or Great Ireland. Portuguese sailors supplied data for a map which showed the islands in 1502. The Spanish arrived in 1512 and called the broad-beached land they found the "Golden Islands." It was from one of their missions, San Jose de Zapalo, that Sapeloe's name is derived.

The French tried and the British succeeded in ousting the Spaniards, in 1742. The battle of Bloody Marsh, won by Georgia's Founder-Governor Oglethorpe on St. Simon's Island, near Sapeloe, was one of the actions decisive in breaking Spain's grip on continental America.

Howard Earle Coffin, retired motors tycoon, bought Sapeloe 17 years ago and developed it the way other tycoons (Goulds, McAlpins, Rockefellers, Drexels, Fords, Carnegies, du Ponts, et al.) have developed Jekyl, St. Simon's and other Golden Islands.* He built a mansion Spanish in style, Southern in rambling scope. He cut bridle paths and motor roads and stocked his forest with pheasants, peacocks, wild turkeys, deer.. Quail, 'possum and waterfowl were there in natural abundance. Through no imaginable chance should the President be "skunked" again on his next shooting foray if he makes it on Sapeloe. Mrs. Coolidge, who likes swimming, will doubtless try the mansion's blue-tiled, glass-domed swimming pool.

P: President Coolidge signed the billion-dollar Treasury-Post Office supply bill.

P: President Coolidge took up a pen and wrote "Calvin." He took up another pen and wrote "Cool." With a third pen he wrote "idge" and as he dotted the "i" the Swing-Johnson bill, authorizing the Federal Boulder Dam in Black Canyon on the Colorado River, became effective. California's Senator Johnson and Representative Swing stood by, rejoicing over their seven-year job, done at last. Each legislator got one of the pens. The third pen was handed to a Hearst newspaperman. Dr. Elwood Mead, chief of the U. S. Reclamation Service (Interior Department), immediately sent a telegram to his chief engineer at Denver, directing him to mobilize a construction army and begin the $165,000,000 project forthwith. In Southern California and Nevada, people fired shotguns and banged on frying pans for joy.

P: President Coolidge consented to sit for another oil portrait, to hang in the New York Genealogical and Biographical Building, Manhattan.

P: President & Mrs. Coolidge dined with Secretary of War & Mrs. Davis.

P: Mrs. Coolidge went to Northampton, Mass., to visit her mother, Mrs. Goodhue, sicker than ever in Dickinson Hospital.

P: In New Haven, Conn., John Coolidge found a pocketbook containing $1 and a pencil. He gave it to a policeman, who asked his name. "Only a citizen," replied Son John and walked away. The policeman knew very well who he was. The pocketbook got back to its owner, a small Catherine Simpson.

P: President Coolidge restored the citizenship rights of John W. Langley of Kentucky, onetime (1907-25) U. S. Representative, who in 1926 served eleven months of a two-year sentence in Atlanta Penitentiary for conspiring to remove 1,200 cases of liquor from a distillery at Lawrenceburg, Ky. Mr. Langley wants to run for Congress again. His wife has been holding his seat for him. Other ex-convicts also got back their citizenship rights, last week, but their names were not made public, Mr. Langley's name being issued at his special request. President Coolidge granted no Christmas pardons to convicts still in prison.

P: President Coolidge asked Congress to appropriate $45,000 to inaugurate President Hoover.

*Mr. Coffin was promptly "rumored" for Secretary of the Interior in the Hoover Cabinet. During the War he was on the council of National Defense and chairman of the Aircraft Board. In 1925 he was among the citizens called by President Coolidge to reorganize the U. S. Air Forces, on the board headed by Dwight W. Morrow.