Prayer for Fog

The late great Guy de Maupassant boasted that he could weave a short story around any subject, proved it when he was challenged to write one on a piece of string. Franklin Roosevelt could boast with equal assurance of his ability to turn any thing, event, theme or person to his own polemical uses, whether it be a national park, Thomas Jefferson, a dam, Andrew Jackson, the Louisiana Purchase or the taking of Fort Vincennes. Last week it was a bridge. Up to New York City went the President to help dedicate the $60,300,000 Triborough Bridge, biggest PWA project not only in his home state but in the whole East. Said he in a skillful, unpretentious little speech:

"Not much more than 100 years ago, my own great-grandfather owned a farm in Harlem close to the Manhattan approach to this bridge. . . . In the older days, there was no need for a great structure connecting Long Island and Manhattan and the mainland. . . .

"There are a few among us who still, consciously or unconsciously, live in a state of constant protest against the daily processes of meeting modern needs. Most of us are willing to recognize change and to give it reasonable and constant help.

"Government itself, whether it be that of a city or that of a sovereign state or that of the union of states, must, if it is to survive, recognize change and give to new needs reasonable and constant help. . . People require and people are demanding up-to-date government in place of antiquated government, just as they are requiring and demanding Triborough Bridges in the place of ancient ferries." Beginning a three-week vacation as he entrained for Hyde Park immediately after the dedication ceremony, Franklin Roosevelt eased away from the cares of Drought, Labor and Politics, reached home in high spirits. Four hundred Hyde Park Democrats, members of the 7-year-old Roosevelt Home Club, were waiting on neighbor Moses Smith's lawn when President and Mrs. Roosevelt drove up to greet them. Chatting easily from the back seat of his car, the President told his neighbors about the Triborough Bridge, about the drought, about the growth of local interest in government which he thought was "the greatest gain in the Depression and the three years of revival which have followed. I think." he said, "we have increased the function of the understanding heart in this country."

Mrs. Smith presented a basket of flowers to Mrs. Roosevelt and the crowd began to shout, "Speech! Speech!" Said Mrs. Roosevelt: "I never make speeches."

Few minutes later, in a talk from Neighbor Smith's front porch, President Roosevelt declared: "When Mrs. Moses Smith here presented my wife with that beautiful basket of flowers, I heard my wife say in response to a request, 'Oh. I never make speeches.' I never knew that before." The crowd guffawed. Mrs. Roosevelt looked flustered. Continued the President, with a grin and lift of his eyebrows: "Well, live and learn, live and learn."

P:, Early this week the President set out for Pulpit Harbor, Me., to board Manhattan Socialite Harrison Tweed's 56-ft. schooner Sewanna, lately rented by Son James, for a fortnight's cruise up the coast to Nova Scotia and back to Campobello Island. "I'm going to take a complete rest," the President told his Hyde Park neighbors last week, "except that I shall have to read 40 or 50 dispatches a day and sign a bucketful of official mail every few days. I'll have to do this unless, of course, I get lost in a fog off the Maine coast. Well, my friends, I'm praying for fog. These days most people pray for light, but I'm praying for fog."

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