The Curtis Week

Twelve swart women wrapped in garish blankets squatted around a picnic ground on the bank of the Arkansas River near Kaw, Okla. Five old men the color of tanbark squatted in the middle of the clearing, balancing a broad tom-tom on their crossed feet.

"TOM," went the tom-tom.

Chief Bacon Rind of the Osage tribe arose and intoned, nasally, the saga of "Cousin Charley" Curtis, Republican nominee for Vice President of the U. S.

"Tom-tom-tomma-tom, tom-tomma-tom-tom," went the tom-tom. The squaws rocked on their haunches, crooning. Out leaped an Osage brave in a stamping dance. Other braves followed, a shuffling, foot-thumping, swaying line. One of the dancers was covered with small mirrors. Now and then some one whooped. Emmet Thompson, a young Kaw who has made millions in oil, directed the proceedings. He and most of the 2,000 other Kaws, Pawnees, Otos and Osages present had come in first-class automobiles.

When the dance--a "Kaw Special"-- was over, there were more speeches. Mrs. Elizabeth Curtis Colvin, sister of "Cousin Charley," stammered: "It isn't my fault, but I want you to know that I--that we-- are all very proud of Charley."

Short, swart, smiling "Cousin Charley" was not there. After poking things into and taking things out of his desk at the Capitol in Washington, he proceeded to Providence, R. I., to stay with his darkly handsome daughter, Mrs. Leona Curtis Knight. Mrs. Knight's father-in-law, C. Prescott Knight, took the Nominee out on his yacht to watch sailing races in Narragansett Bay.

Came a curious revelation. Some one looked up the baptismal record of Charles Curtis. It was at the Immaculate Conception (Roman Catholic) Church in St. Mary's, Kan. Dated April 15, 1860, it was signed by L. Dumortier, Jesuit priest, missionary to the Potawatomies. In St. Mary's it was recalled that Ellen Pappan Curtis, the nominee's mother, attended St. Mary's Convent. Interviewed about the discovery, Nominee Curtis said: "I learned for the first time only a few years ago that I had been baptized a Roman Catholic. . . . My mother died, you know, when I was very young. ... I was brought up a good Methodist and that is my faith now."

News photographers begged Nominee Curtis to pose for them in the act of farming. Honest, he retorted: "You've got to take me as I am. I'm not farming."