Who Paid Tebbetts

Sirs:

In regard to the Coolidge-Tebbetts story (TIME, April 11), the general public is not aware that the New York Life rather than Coolidge himself paid the $2,500 to the St. Louis insurance man. You will no doubt be interested in our story of the case, it being an authorized one from the New York Life.

J. D. C ALDER WOOD

Assistant Editor

Eastern Underwriters

New York City

New York Life's story says that

"Mr. Coolidge is one of the most kindly of men and would never deliberately hurt anyone's feelings. Least of all would he attack an individual by innuendo. He had never before been sued and furthermore his experience in public life and with newspapers had taught him what he could expect in the way of publicity if he were to appear in court as a defendant. It would mean taking him away from the privacy which he so much enjoys in Northampton, Mass., and subjecting him to a tremendous amount of limelight for days with constant besieging of reporters and cameramen.

"Everett Saunders [sic] ... went to St. Louis and has arranged for the New York Life to pay to the attorney of Tebbetts the costs and legal expenses incurred since the beginning of the action. The impression that Mr. Coolidge sent his own check is incorrect." --ED.

Where Roosevelt Was

Sirs:

I notice on p. 17 of the issue of TIME of March 28 a footnote indicating that Vice President Theodore Roosevelt was mountain tramping in New York State when word came to him that President McKinley was dying in Buffalo.

For the sake of accuracy, I want to suggest that President Roosevelt was attending a banquet of the Vermont Fish & Game Club at the home of ex-Lieut. Governor Nelson W. Fisk at Isle La Motte, Vt. when this news reached him. He arrived in Vermont September 5, 1901.

RAWSON C. MYRICK

Secretary of State State of Vermont Montpelier, Vt.

Roosevelt addressed the Vermont sportsmen the evening of Sept. 6. Just as he was finishing, word came that McKinley had been shot. He rushed at once to Buffalo, stayed two days. Then, when the President's physicians declared their patient out of danger, the Vice President joined his family in the Adirondacks. As reported by TIME, it was in the Adirondacks, while he was climbing Mount Tahawus Sept. 13. that word reached Roosevelt of McKinley's impending death, which came before Roosevelt reached Buffalo.--ED.

"The Beautiful Youth"

Sirs:

Perhaps Florence Crabbe may not believe it, but it is true that when James Montgomery Flagg attended the Art Students' League during the '90s he was spoken of as "The Beautiful Youth," and with no sarcasm attached to it either. I must confess that when I looked at the cut in the March 21 issue of TIME I could hardly realize that he was the same Flagg who used to attract so much attention for his good looks, the Flagg with the straight, slender figure and the quiet manner touched with just a bit of blaze.

His criticism of the college girls may have deserved rebuke but not such a savage onslaught as in the letter under the caption "Flagg Flayed'' (TIME, April 11).

The cut referred to calls to my mind the verse of Garreta Busey:

This earthen mask that is my countenance

Was modeled skillfully and set away

Achieved. But lesser artists--Circumstance,

The passions--tinker with it every day,

And oh, the ruin they arc like to make!

Exasperation scratches up the brow,

While Time keeps sidling forward, now to take

A little clay from either cheek, and now

To mar the clear formation of the throat.

The month, retouched by disenchantment, shapes

Wise characters whose drooping lines denote

The residue of ash when youth escapes.

The mask is sad. But under flesh and skin

Stretches, bone deep, a wide enduring grin.

EMMA L. R. WHIT:;

New Brighton, Staten Island

Surgeons Taft & Leale

Sirs:

In your April 4 number I notice an error . . .

"Birthdays. Dr. Charles Augustus Leale, 90 (first surgeon to reach Abraham Lincoln in Ford's Theatre after he was shot by John Wilkes Booth); . . ."

My brother Surgeon Charles S. Taft was the first surgeon to reach Lincoln after Booth shot him. Col. Osborne Oldroyd in his book The Assassination of Lincoln, which is authentic, tells of Surgeon Taft being the first surgeon to reach Lincoln and he says Surgeon Taft had charge of the case until the arrival of the Lincoln's private physician and the Surgeon-General.

My brother told us, "When I saw Booth's face and heard the shot I knew what had happened.'' He climbed on to the stage and was helped into the box the same way Booth had come down. Col. Oldroyd says, "Surgeon Taft stood at the head of the dying president all that dreadful night controlling the flow of the blood from the wound with his finger."

The Surgeon-General ordered Surgeon Taft to report to the artist for the official picture of the Deathbed of Lincoln. That picture may be seen in the house on Tenth Street where Lincoln died, in the museum of Lincoln relics, formerly kept by Col. Oldroyd. In the picture my brother is shown standing at the head of the bed with his hands on Lincoln's head. I have seen some incorrect pictures of the Deathbed, but this is the authentic one. . . .

I remember a man told a reporter once that he was the first one by Lincoln. This Dr. Leale may have been one of those asked by my brother to assist in carrying Lincoln from the theatre across the street to the house where he later died. . . .

JULIA TAFT BAYNE

May I add that mother is 87 years old, still writes and publishes books and articles, still gives her delightful talks on "My Memory of Lincoln," and still keeps up to date by reading TIME, which she very much enjoys.

LILIAN WEST

Urbana, Ill.

Surgeon Taft was a second cousin of the late William Howard Taft. Surgeon Leale's claim of first-to-Lincoln rested largely on his own sworn statement on reporting the autopsy to the Surgeon-General. Dr. Leale also claimed to have put the half-dollars on the dead Lincoln's staring eyes, to have bound up the drooping jaw with a pocket handkerchief.--ED.

Boyer's Cellar

Sirs:

I should like to correct a statement made in the section on music in your issue of April 4. You mention a phonograph record of Mlle. Lucienne Boyer, and say that "Parisians go to the swank Monseigneur to hear her sing" or something of the sort.

Mile. Boyer has not sung at the Monseigneur for many moons. During the season of 1931-32 she has had her own night club in Paris, Chez les Clochards, where she has become even more popular than before. This club is located in a very historic old cellar in the Rue du Depart, off the Boulevard Edgar-Quinet, in Montparnasse.

I have always admired TIME as a newsmagazine, and it should gratify you to know the many Americans on the continent who depend on TIME for accurate information on the U. S.

MARGOT JOHNSON

New York City

Jeffers' Mother

Sirs:

In the interesting and quite full account of Robinson Jeffers in your issue of April 4 you casually refer to his mother as "His father . . . had married an orphan 23 years his junior." It is true that Mrs. Jeffers was an orphan, but she was 25 when she married Dr. Jeffers, and had a happy home of culture and means with a childless cousin of her father, and the former's wife. She was a woman of unusual beauty of form and character, great charm, well educated, with finely matured mind, and a good musician. To his heritage from her and her influence and training Robinson Jeffers owes much, as well as to his able Father.

Having been named for the cousin above referred to of his maternal grandfather he received a moderate legacy. It is encouraging to know that in lovely California one can be independent, retire from work, marry, have children, and pass "time swimming and writing verse" on a modest amount of capital.

A. C. ROBINSON

President

Peoples-Pittsburgh Trust Co.

Pittsburgh, Pa.

Important Citizen

Sirs:

It has been brought to my attention that in the March 21 issue of your publication, in an article dealing with Brooklyn newspapers, you have, in a footnote, referred to the Brooklyn Citizen as "relatively unimportant."

This gratuitous slur, I take it, is not due to malice but to ignorance of newspaper conditions in Brooklyn. For your enlightenment, therefore, I beg to acquaint you with certain particulars. ...

. . . The Brooklyn Citizen, "relatively" is in a sounder financial condition than either the Brooklyn Eagle or the Brooklyn Times-Standard Union.

The Brooklyn Citizen is unincumbered by bonds, mortgages or indebtedness of any kind. Furthermore, it is the only Brooklyn newspaper which pays dividends. It has for years paid an annual dividend of 6% which is proof that it is not a "relatively unimportant" paper but a going concern.

It is the representative Democratic newspaper in a county in which the Democratic party is in the ascendant and in which the Democratic voters are in an overwhelming majority.

The Brooklyn Citizen is a nationally-known newspaper and no newspaper which is nationally-known can be said to be "relatively unimportant."

During the 46 years of its existence, the Brooklyn Citizen has advocated conservative principles and this has won for it the confidence and support of the leaders in finance & business circles generally. While its circulation is not as large as that of the Eagle or the Times-Standard Union, it is more solid and substantial.

The Brooklyn Citizen has made no effort to obtain circulation--transient at most--by premiums, promotion contests, cooking schools or carrier boys. Such circulation is not helpful to advertisers.

The efforts of the Brooklyn Citizen are directed to the sale of the paper on its merits. Its circulation of 40,000 represents a larger purchasing power than 100,000 circulation obtained by promotion methods, such as referred to above.

The Brooklyn Citizen, in conclusion, is as much a home-owned paper as either the Eagle or the Times-Standard Union. It has the advantage over both in the continuity of its homeownership. Unlike the Eagle and the Times-Standard Union, it has never undergone any change in its ownership from the day it was first published. The owners of the Brooklyn Citizen are not only residents of Brooklyn but natives, which is more than can be said for the owner of the Thnes-Standard Union or the owners of the Eagle, all of whom hailed originally from upState.

SOLON BARBANELL

Editor

The Citizen

Brooklyn, N. Y.

Rumanians & Popcorn

Sirs:

I refer to TIME'S Foreign News of your April 22, in spe to those concerning Rumania.

The age you are giving my country, it is rather a matter of interpretation. Applying the same method of reasoning what age would you give to the United States of North America?

As to "Baby Fascist" Filipescu may I inform you that he does not need any self-advertising. He is the son of a famous Rumanian statesman-- Nicholas Filipescu--who by the way killed in a duel a political adversary, and served a term in prison for it.

Unfortunately those few Rumanians who choose the duel as a means to ''satisfy their honor" do not shoot with popcorn. Two years ago a Capt. Dimancescu,* now an officer in the King's Guards Regiment fought a duel with a civilian from eight in the morning till six in the afternoon. There were 15 florette encounters and five sabre, before the poor civilian was put out of fight with the muscles of both hands cut to the bone.

It is unlawful to fight a duel in Rumania, though the unwritten code of the Army requires that officers should defend their honor with sword or gun. After they do it, to satisfy the law, they go to jail.

DACUS VIATOR

Pittsburgh, Pa.

*Ioan Dimancescu of the 2nd Royal Guard Regiment, Bucarest, against a bank clerk Tebeica.

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