The Coolidge Week

P:The clean aromatic smell of raw pine wood spread through the White House. Excelsior littered the floors. Busy workmen in overalls came and went. Mrs. Coolidge was packing. Into 150 new boxes, crates and barrels under her careful eye went objets d'art, china, books, whittling knives, stag antlers, desk sets, etc. etc.-- symbols of a people's free-handed affection for their President. Eight Coolidge trunks entered the White House in 1923; 16 trunks will go back to Northampton, Mass., not to mention all the barrels, boxes, crates. "It is," President Coolidge remarked, "easier to get into the White House than out of it."

P:To the press last week were released photographs of the portrait of President Coolidge painted by Frank O. Salisbury during the President's holiday at Sapeloe Island. Friends thought it was good, except that Calvin Coolidge never held his head as imperiously as that (see col. 2), and it makes him a lot younger, firmer-fleshed, cleaner cut, than he really looks. That, however, may be what a good portrait should do. Furthermore, as the late John Singer Sargent once said: "A portrait is a picture in which something-is-wrong-with-the-eyes."

P:"Now, therefore, I, Calvin Coolidge, President of the United States, do proclaim and declare that an extraordinary occasion requires the Senate of the United States to convene at the Capitol, in the city of Washington, on the fourth day of March next, at 12 o'clock noon. . . ." With this last Presidential proclamation, Calvin Coolidge summoned the Senate to confirm his successor's Cabinet and other appointments. P:To the Senate for confirmation as U. S. Radio Commissioners President Coolidge sent the names of Arthur Batcheller of Massachusetts, Cyril N. Jansky Jr. of Minnesota; for associate justices on the U. S. Customs Court of Appeals. Finis James Garrett of Tennessee, Irvine Luther Lenroot of Wisconsin; and, to sit on the bench of the Supreme Court of the District of Columbia, Henry H. Glassie of Maryland.

P: Close to the Coolidge heart is the endeavor of the Clarke School for the Deaf, where Grace Goodhue used to teach, to raise a $2,000,000 endowment (TIME, Nov. 26). Last week, some $400,000 was still unsubscribed. The President authorized the Goodspeed Book Shop of Boston to put on public sale copies of the Calvin Coolidge book plate, at $5 each, all proceeds to go to the Clarke fund. The book plate, a postcard-size woodcut by Timothy Cole, pictures the Plymouth, Vt., birthplace nestling among trees, two expectant white collies on the grass, a ready fishing pole against a maple.

P:The United Press reported that William Randolph Hearst's Cosmopolitan was the successful bidder for Coolidge manuscripts after March 4.