They began crowding into the cemetery four hours before the funeral, and by 11 a.m., 25,000 had squeezed in while nearly as many more were outside the gates. Pushing, shoving, screaming, trampling other graves, they surprised the outnumbered police, who helplessly shrilled on their whistles trying to maintain order. Women fainted, and were laid out on tombs. (One was carted off to a hospital in the funeral hearse.) And amidst the tumult, the body of Edith Piaf, along with her cherished good luck charms, a stuffed rabbit, squirrel and lion, was lowered into its grave. It was 6 p.m. before the last of the mourners departed, leaving behind on her grave notes, poems, pictures of her favorite saint (Theresa), a sailor's beret and a French Foreign Legionnaire's epaulet.

As the twin-engine Caribou Army transport swooped in for a landing at a dirt airstrip 110 miles northwest of Saigon, General Paul Harkins, 59, U.S. military commander in Viet Nam, noticed a small problem. Hey, wait! Look! Too late. And the plane touched down with its landing gear firmly up and locked. Harkins and all aboard emerged unhurt. But definitely unhappy. "That's one hell of a way to come down," roared the general. "Well sir," explained the pilot helpfully, "I forgot to put the wheels down."

Nowadays it is a rare occasion that brings Elder Statesman Bernard Baruch, 93, out for a black-tie evening, but he wanted the pleasure of presenting the President's Citation of the People-to-People Sports Committee to "a little girl" he used to know. She was Joan Whitney Payson, 60, co-owner of Greentree Stable and fairy grandmother of the New York Mets baseball team. The first woman recipient of the Citation admitted a penchant for athletes "with two or four feet," but as for herself, well, she was "strictly a spectator sport." Then, as flashbulbs popped, the "little girl" filed a smiling complaint. "Why is it," she said, "that I always have my picture taken between Eddie Arcaro and Johnny Rotz?" The two jockeys could only grin and try to look bigger.

Two days later, the other half of Greentree Stable had some sharp words about the treatment of four-footed athletes by two-footed businessmen. Speaking at the Thoroughbred Club of America, Mrs. Payson's brother, John Hay ("Jock") Whitney, 59, told horsemen that with the "monumental exception" of Kelso (see SPORT), thoroughbred "mediocrity has been so spectacular that it can no longer be ignored." Why so? Simply because commercialism is taking over the sport, said Jock. "The rewards, whether for winning or for losing, offer almost irresistible temptations to race a two-year-old more than is good for him." In one race, he recalled, his own horse had finished dead last, 17 lengths off the pace, and he still wound up with a silver bowl.

His position, he says, is "unemployed parson" and thus he has more time for travel. So Lord Geoffrey Fisher, 76, retired Archbishop of Canterbury, flew into Sydney with his wife to visit their son. "We've come to Australia to see him and his wife before they've forgotten they're both English," he explained. As for the rest of his time since retiring, Lord Fisher has been doing what he likes--"going to schools and universities to give talks and be heckled."

The National Association of Investment Clubs was meeting in Manhattan, and the delegates went down for a tour of Wall Street. "I want to learn some thing about the financial community," said Mrs. Genevieve Funston, who with 13 other ladies belongs to the Wise Investment Club in Greenwich, Conn. Her interest was understandable since her son, G. Keith, is president of the New York Stock Exchange. But she isn't getting any tips. "He warned me not to expect any help," she explained. How is the club doing? "Well," she welled, "we're doing all right."

He is that rarest of royalty, a monarch who was voted peacefully out of office, and his reign lasted only 35 days in 1946. But Italy's ex-King Umberto If of Savoy, 59, now living in Portugal, was clearly the center of attention at Manhattan's annual Alfred E. Smith Memorial Dinner. Francis Cardinal Spellman spent nearly ten minutes introducing him, and "Happy" Rockefeller was one of the many paying him court. In fact, everywhere the royal tourist went he was treated like a king. He was flown in and out for a private visit with Ike at Gettysburg. Jim Farley and other New York types took turns feting him nightly, and Boston, his next stop, eagerly awaited its turn. As for Umberto, he was just pleased to be in the country that "has been enriched by millions of emigrants from every land and nation who, working together, helped to achieve the 20th century miracle which is the United States of America."

A minor heart murmur discovered during a routine physical last November led the Air Force to ground Major "Deke" Slayton, 39, in the midst of his work as a Mercury astronaut. The grounding was to be reviewed a year later, when a permanent decision would be made. But Slayton isn't waiting until the year is up. Afraid that he would fail the rigorous flight physical, he announced his resignation after 21 years in the Air Force. As soon as it becomes effective, Slayton will rejoin the NASA space program as a civilian pilot. In that category he will be allowed on orbital missions as a member of a two-or three-man crew.

Ill lay: South Dakota Republican Senator Karl Mundt, 63, in Bethesda Naval Hospital, Md., after "routine" surgical removal of a cataract in his right eye; oft-ailing New York Yankees Superstar Mickey Mantle, 32, in Manhattan's Lenox Hill Hospital, after surgery to remove the external cartilage in his left knee; Sophia Loren, 29, in a Milan hotel after treatment for a throat abscess; Lady Churchill, 78, "for rest and investigation" in London's Westminster Hospital, where Husband Winston, 88, was wheelchaired in for a one-hour bedside visit, without his usual cigar.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.