Hoosier Salad

Memoirs are usually about as interesting as their authors. So much is to be expected of the Memoirs of the late and quizzical Thomas R. Marshall, erstwhile Vice President of the U. S. He wrote his memoirs, just before his death. He wanted them called A Hoosier Salad*. Last week preliminary publication of them began in the press--The New York Times.

The first installments dealt mainly with his early days. The vein was light but not without its grimmer turns, as when he told about his father, a country doctor:

"I well remember, as a boy, looking through a microscope into the abdomen of a dead man and seeing all sorts of squirming worms. My father wrote to inquire whether anybody knew what it was. It was stated that the man had eaten raw pork a few days before his death."

But the lighter side was also evident:

"In the Capitol there is an organization known as Guides. For a slight compensation they lead visitors around the building and explain it to them. The Vice President's Chamber is adjacent to the Senate Chamber and so small that it is necessary to keep the door open in order to obtain the necessary cubic feet of air to survive. When he is in the room these guides point him out as though he were a curiosity. I stood this as long as I could and then went to the door one day and said: 'If you look upon me as a wild animal, be kind to throw peanuts at me; but if you are really desirous of seeing me, come in and shake hands.' "

*He wrote "To make a perfect salad there should be a spendthrift for oil, a miser for vinegar, a wise man for salt, and a madcap to stir it up."