"Names make news." Last week these names made this news: Traveling through Austin, Tex., Secretary of Labor Frances Perkins was assured by local boosters that in Texas the poor are rich in "sunshine and wide open spaces." Snapped Madam Secretary: "I can't see they help any. ... If I were making a choice I would starve in the city with a lot of other people."

Novelist Gertrude Atherton, 78, whose Black Oxen told the story of a woman who was rejuvenated, decided to tell the Press about her own two ''reactivation" treatments. "At first," said she, "I thought it was nobody's business. But I tell it now. Why not? I myself have seen the benefits." Old Novelist Atherton first had her ovaries stimulated by x-ray in 1922 when she found herself unable to keep up her literary output. Thereafter she turned out six books in eight years. Now working on a novel about Horace, she has "no trouble at all" adopting the outlook of the poet's 18-year-old niece. By way of proving her youth, Mrs. Atherton wears golden hair, red-tipped fingernails, feather-trimmed pink satin jackets. "My Dear Sir Edgar. . . . We have been to the Pole and we shall die like gentlemen. . . . If this diary is found it will show how we stuck by dying companions and fought the thing out until the end--I think this will show that the spirit of pluck and the power to endure has not passed out of our race. . . . Do your best to have our people look after those dependent on us. . . ."

So wrote the late heroic Explorer Robert Falcon Scott to Sir Edgar Speyer as he lay dying on the Ross Ice Barrier on March 16, 1912. Last week in Manhattan Sir Edgar's widow, Lady Speyer, solemnly handed the famed letter to Richard Evelyn Byrd. "Admiral," said she, "I want you to have this." U. S. Ambassador to Denmark Ruth Bryan Owen, daughter of the late great William Jennings Bryan, had a life-mask made in Washington, scrutinized it, exclaimed: "Why, I look like my father!"

During intermission at a Vienna Philharmonic concert old ex-Tsar Ferdinand of Bulgaria shuffled backstage to congratulate Conductor Arturo Toscanini, received word that the maestro was relaxing. Thinking that there had been some mistake, Ferdinand announced himself again, this time more distinctly. By messenger Toscanini replied: "Not even for a King can I break my rule of seeing nobody during a concert." To the vast delight of its owner, its maker and its chauffeur, an old Crane Simplex automobile purred smoothly over its 278,000th mile in Manhattan." The good old car is still going strong." bubbled Owner Herbert Livingston Satterlee, silver-bearded lawyer and brother-in-law of J. P. Morgan. Designed and built in 1915 by Henry M. Crane, now technical adviser to the president of General Motors, the Crane Simplex makes better than ten miles per gallon, can build up a speed of 68 m.p.h. and has all its important original parts except a set of pistons and a rear axle drive shaft. Its only serious trouble came five years ago when it took to backfiring. Mr. Satterlee, dismayed, had a new car custom-built for $14,000. First time Mr. & Mrs. Satterlee drove to their Virginia estate in it, both had splitting headaches. The new car was sold, the Crane Simplex put back in use. Last week Owner Satterlee, Builder Crane and Buttner, the Satterlee chauffeur, planned to hold a celebration when the car achieves 299,999 miles, to cover the 300,000th with Mr. Crane at the wheel.

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