"Names make news." Last week these names made this news:

("Philadelphia") Jack O'Brien, old-time light-heavyweight champion, gymnasium proprietor, was announced as violin soloist at a concert of the New York Schools of Music, Jan. 23, in Manhattan. After his retirement from the ring in 1913

Fighter O'Brien evolved a theory that punch-timing, shoulder-weaving, head-bobbing and footwork all depended upon a perfect sense of rhythm. He proved his point by taking up the violin and becoming expert. Mr. O'Brien, who will be 54 the week of his recital, is also author of a booklet written when he was chief second to Jack Dempsey for his 1926 fight with Gene Tunney: Duties of Men Assisting Big Boy Night of 23rd. Sir Reginald Beatty ("Dick") Wolseley, tenth baronet of Mount Wolseley, 49, failed to show up for work as elevator operator in the Black Hawk Building of Waterloo, Iowa. Reason: Lady Wolseley finally persuaded him to give up his job, which he had held for 13 years, and assume his baronetcy in Devonshire. Lady Wolseley was plain Marian Elizabeth Baker a year and a half ago when she journeyed from England to find "Dick" and notify him of his succession. She had come in fulfillment of the dying wish of Dick's mother, whom she had nursed. Miss Baker and Sir Reginald were married but quarreled when she wanted him to return to England with her. Lady null went home alone; Sir Reginald remained, happily running his elevator, and got a divorce on grounds of desertion last September. Fortnight ago Lady Wolseley appeared in Waterloo again. After a series of visits with her ladyship Sir Reginald announced that the divorce would be set aside and they would sail for England together this week. Through depreciation of their railroad securities the Vanderbilts were estimated by the investment house of Louchheim, Minton & Co. to be $43,152,499 poorer the beginning of 1931.* Other shrinkage in rail stocks (estimated): Bakers, $30,882,713; Harrimans, $6,756.546; Arthur Curtiss James, $9,004,516; Edward Stephen Harkness, $7,508,050. A white-haired Negro named "Old Uncle" Daniel Hill, 87, feeble in mind and body and nearly blind, fell from the window of a New York tenement and was killed. It was revealed that "Uncle Dan" was the last of the slaves of Cool Spring Plantation, N. C., birthplace and early home of Lawyer George Gordon Battle, 63. When Uncle Dan's daughter Georgiana discovered the tragedy she notified Mr. Battle who hastened to take charge of things, provide a fine funeral. According to Georgiana her father went to the Battle Plantation about "two years before the freedom . . . and stayed on ... for 37 years. . . . He grew up with Mr. George. . . ." Her theory about Uncle Dan's death: "I just reckon he climbed through the window, thinking he was crawling into Cap'n Battle's silo." Lawyer Battle, Manhattan's most determined Southerner, is a member of the Southern Society, the North Carolina Society of New York, the Virginians. Over his luncheon table at Doom, Wilhelm Hohenzollern gave a Hearstman an interview. Excerpt: "You may have been told that the Babylonians built the Tower of Babel in order to prove themselves gods. That is to say, out of arrogance. . . . We know now that that is not so! There actually was a Tower of Babel, but our newest German excavations show that both the Babylonians and their predecessors, the Sumerians, hoped that if they built the towers high enough the gods would descend upon them to the sons of earth, and help them. So you see. the Tower of Babel is not a monument to arrogance, but to piety and humility." Sir Robert Baden-Powell, founder of the Boy Scouts, urged Scouts everywhere to destroy, as senseless and dangerous, any "chain letter" they may receive. Said he: "Letters I have received have threatened me with all sorts of disasters if I disobeyed their instructions. I have destroyed scores of them in my life but the disasters have never come."

Sportsman William Henry Vander-"hilt, whose four-in-hand coach was used as a model for the current edition of Christmas seals of the National Tuberculosis Association (TIME, Dec. 7). complained because the artist placed the driver on the left side of the box instead of the right.

The Most Rev. Cosmo Gordon Lang Archbishop of Canterbury admitted authorship of a "highly romantic" novel in his youth. Said he: "Nothing would induce me to reveal the name of that dreadful book [written under a pseudonym]. I had forgotten all about it until Hugh Walpole mentioned it before a meeting the other night."

Someone sent an infernal machine, in Christmas wrapping, to Film Actress Marion Davies.

*In last week's Liberty appeared an article by Cornelius Vanderbilt Jr., eccentric chatterbox of the family, stating that "half of society has ceased to splurge because of depleted income; while the other half, with as much money as ever, is afraid to cut capers. . . . Several of my friends placed 'sell short' orders with their brokers ten days before the great market crash. And, while uninformed investors were renting twentieth-story hotel rooms for purposes of self-destruction, the gentlemen I speak of sat sipping their brandy, blowing blue perfecto smoke to the ceiling. . . ." The fortunates, he wrote, are concealing their extravagances, keeping much of their wealth abroad, "and at the first sign of any nation-wide disturbance they would be off to foreign lands in their yachts."

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