Back to his old job as flagman on the Dallas-Tulsa freight run of the St. Louis-San Francisco Railroad, after being laid off month ago for a minor infringement of rules, went Ora Thomas Hutt of Sapulpa, Okla., father-in-law of Thomas E. Dewey.

In Paris, a court seized 100 shares of Suez Canal Company stock owned by crafty Nazi Propaganda Minister Paul Joseph Goebbels-who had been regularly receiving interest through the Banque Generate du Luxembourg.

Comely Evelyn ("Evie") Robert, wife of Lawrence Wood ("Chip") Robert Jr., secretary of the Democratic National Committee, once kicked a portrait of herself full in the face, once threw a monster birthday party for her horse. In Washington last week Ringling Bros, and Barnum & Bailey circus made a deal with her: if Mrs. Robert appeared in one regular performance, the circus would give a benefit show for sick children. Game, Evie Robert dressed up as an Indian princess, timidly mounted, confidently squatted on the head of a much-enduring pachyderm.

Erudite Writer Mortimer J. Adler

(How to Read a Book), in a keynote address at the American Booksellers Convention, damned solitary reading as comparable to solitary drinking, clarioned a call for "bookish conviviality."

Mrs. Ole Hagen, wife of the U. S. Naval attache in Stockholm, landed in Manhattan carefully carrying a pouch which she had been told contained the ashes of Captain Robert M. Losey (U. S. attache killed in Dombas, Norway during a Nazi air raid). Opened, the pouch was found to contain affidavits of Losey's death, nothing else.

Critically ill of apoplexy in Port Chester, N. Y. lay ex-Explorer Dr. Frederick Albert Cook, 74, who insists he beat Peary to the North Pole on April 21, 1908. Convicted in 1923 of using the mails to defraud, he was paroled in 1930. On his sick bed he was informed last week (by his Explorer Friend Ralph Shainwald von Ahlefeldt) that President Roosevelt had granted him a full pardon, restored his civil rights. Gasped Dr. Cook: "Thanks -happy," sank back into a coma.

While a Purdue University professor of speech was listening to some old recordings of Franklin Roosevelt's voice coming to him over a private NBC radio channel, the President himself was making his Defense Speech to Congress (see p. 18). For five minutes, those of Manhattan's radio audience who were tuned in to WHN heard, not the start of the President's speech, but an excerpt from an old recording. Reason: WHN engineers, fiddling around for the President's broadcast, tuned in on the private channel, recognized the familiar voice, did not discover their mistake until five minutes later when the same voice boomed: "Tomorrow is Labor Day."

In Hollywood, Artist Richard Decker unveiled, with flourishes, his latest portrait: a smug, somewhat sinister Queen Victoria, with white wig, ample bosom, the unmistakable face of Funnyman W. C. Fields.

*If Other Decker "portraits": Harpo Marx as the Blue Boy, Fanny Brice as Mono, Lisa, Mickey Rooney as a Van Dyck sissy.

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