Play 'Em As They Fall

It was not quite true to say that New York simply loved him. But New York was certainly impressed by Ellis Arnall. He had retired from Georgia's governor ship, amid glory and catcalls, leaving Herman Talmadge, the man he called The Pretender, to exercise an uncertain reign. What were Mr. Arnall's plans now? He planned to stump the 48 states with a message for the nation. Why all 48? "I find so many delightful people every where," declaimed the little ex-governor of Georgia. "I find it a good idea to meet them."

His visit was a whirlwind. He spoke forcefully at Town Hall on "Whose Country Is This, Anyway?" He went to a party at the Wendell Willkie Memorial Building. He was interviewed by Tex McCrary & wife Jinx Falkenburg for their chatty-patty breakfast radio program. And for the climax he appeared on Information Please, where Willkie first budded into radio popularity. Mr. Arnall did not bud, he bloomed.

He knew that Charley Trippi starred in the 1943 Rose Bowl game after Frankie Sinkwich was injured. He knew that Hughes succeeded Taft as Chief Justice. He recited from Byron's Maid of Athens, Burns's Tarn o'Shanter and Moore's The Time I've Lost in Wooing. He sang I Surrender, Dear and Dixie, until snippety Oscar Levant gasped: "From now on call me The Pretender." Neither Levant nor John Kieran nor Franklin P. Adams had a lookin. Everyone agreed that he was wonderful.

The Other Shore. It had certainly been a crowded month for Ellis Arnall. He had made a last gesture of splendid defiance toward Herman Talmadge. He had posed for photographers, lower lip outthrust, round face fixed in a fighting expression.

His banner was unstained, or very nearly so. He could and often had played the politicians' game; he had even accepted Talmadgeite help four years ago to get himself elected. But he had left Georgia the heritage of a good, and also well advertised, administration. He had left the state a new constitution, even though there was that legal hole in it through which Hummon had been able to charge to power.

He had lecture bookings which would bring him in at least $40,000. His book on liberalism, The Shore Dimly Seen, was selling almost as well as Memoirs of Hecate County, Edmund Wilson's book .on sex, had sold. Chaotic Georgia held nothing more for him at the moment. So he had struck out for other shores.

The shore he had dimly seen was already a little clearer. Reporters, of course, had asked Mr. Arnall if he had any presidential aspirations. He gazed modestly at the ceiling. "I think that you play the cards as they fall. I can't see forcing one's luck," said Mr. Arnall.

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