Journalists' Luck

A tousle-haired, middle-aged artist carrying his charcoal and sandpaper in a tin cigaret box went to Washington one day last week on a routine assignment for the New York Times Sunday magazine. Samuel Johnson Woolf, 57, had done this many times before. He would draw a picture of a newsworthy personage and, while doing it, interrogate his subject enough to make a one-page interview to publish with his charcoal sketch. Sometimes he would jot down a few notes about what the person said on the edge of his drawing, but mostly he relied on his amazingly accurate memory. When he was all finished he would ask the famous one to autograph the picture.

On this particular morning Artist Woolf arrived at a Senator's office promptly at 9 a. m. as agreed. The Senator wearing a white suit came in at 9:30, apologized for being late. They joked about the weather, arranged chairs to get the right light. Artist Woolf squinted through his horn-rimmed glasses, went to work while the Senator first smoked, then chewed a cigar. Looking down on them was a large oil painting of the Senator's wife dressed in blue; scattered around the walls were some WPA art works.

The interview ended with Artist Woolf's saying. "Well, Senator, I hope that you will let me draw your picture again . . . when you assume the next office which I am sure you will hold."

"I don't believe in counting my chickens before they are hatched," said the Senator.

That night in Springfield, Mass., a linotype r of that rock-ribbed patriarch among U. S. newspapers, the Republican (founded 1824), set up an editorial which read: "Such an emotional spectacle as that of Senator McCarran of Nevada speaking after a prolonged illness, in passionate opposition to the Supreme Court Bill, is by no means unprecedented in the annals of Congressional debate. Other Senators have also taken the floor, disregarding their physicians' orders, with the knowledge common in the Senate galleries that the effort might cost their lives. . . .

"The country is familiar by this time with the parliamentary device of indefinitely continuing the same 'legislative' day by 'recessing' instead of 'adjourning' at the close of each session and the consequent application of the rule that a Senator shall not speak more than twice on the same subject during the same day. But study of precedents at Washington has brought out the fact that in the past the invariable custom of the Senate on the announcement of the death of one of its members has been immediately to adjourn, not recess, for the day in respect to his memory.

"The effect upon the Administration forces in the Senate, if this custom should now be adhered to on the death of any Senator, is apparent. ..."

Next morning the nation heard news that made the Springfield Republican a prophet of doom and caused Artist Woolf to fly his drawing to New York for immediate publication in the Times. The leader of the Administration forces in the Senate and the man who refused to count unhatched chickens, Joseph Taylor Robinson of Arkansas, was found dead (see p. 10). The penciled signature on Artist Woolf's drawing was one of the last copies of that loyal autograph and, at the very hour in the night when the Springfield Republican was coming off the presses, one of the Senate's stoutest hearts had stopped.

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