Gifts from Near & Far

To help publicize a new kind of super mink fur (marketed by the Quebec Fur Breeders Cooperative Association), Eleanor Roosevelt went to Manhattan last week and accepted an $8,000 mink coat. Two days later, at her regular White House press conference, the newshens were waiting for her.

Asked the Christian Science Monitor's Mary Hornaday: "I have been asked to inquire whether you consider it a justifiable gift?" Replied Mrs. Roosevelt: "It was given to me to popularize that particular brand of mink. The gentlemen who presented it asked me to keep it, and I thought it would be ungracious to turn around and give it away."

Eleanor Roosevelt quickly explained that there is no law which prevents a President's wife from accepting gifts; the Constitution bars the President. Then she listed some other recent presents.

From Ibn Saud she and daughter Anna Boettiger had each received a silk-embroidered harem gown. "We had quite a show the other night," said Eleanor Roosevelt primly, explaining that they had merely held them up to see how they looked. Emperor Haile Selassie had sent a gold bracelet. Then she remembered a jeweled crown received two years ago. She did not remember who sent it, she added, but it was on display at the Franklin D. Roosevelt Library at Hyde Park. (At the library, the crown, 6 inches high and encrusted with jeweled birds and butterflies, is listed as a gift from the Sultan of Morocco.) As to the crown, said Eleanor with a smile, she never wears it.

Then she was asked about a trip she made to Baltimore to see a new play by Rachel Crothers. Was her trip in conformance with ODT regulations? Said Eleanor: "I don't think traveling to Baltimore in a coach displaced anybody." Besides, the play was about returning servicemen, a subject close to her heart.

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