Asked, at his country home, by a telephone operator, Roy Barton White, president of Western Union Telegraph Co., personally undertook to deliver a Mother's Day telegram at a farm near Annandale, N. J. The farmer handed Mr. White a 10-c- tip.

Modish, elfin-faced Eve Curie sued E. I. du Pont de Nemours & Co. for $50,000 damages. Her plaint: Not only had a Du Pont ad used an unauthorized photograph of her well-turned legs, but the ad conveyed the false impression that she wore Nylon (a Du Pont silk substitute).

William Lyon Phelps told a Booksellers Association luncheon: "Let children read a lot of trash. And by tact and sympathy they can be led to read better books. Don't try to stuff books down their throats."

On Mother's Day in the Texas House of Representatives Governor W. Lee O'Daniel yelled into a microphone: "Hello there, mother, you little sweetheart. How in the world are you, you little bunch of sweetness?" Then he read "The Unknown Mother," a filial poem of his own composition:

I've got a mother--I had to have,

And I love her--whether she's good or bad,

Whether she's living or whether she's dead,

Whether a saint or an old dopehead.

Nicaragua's chunky President Anastasio Somoza, in the U. S. on a canal-selling and sightseeing trip, found a certain drawback to visiting-in-state. Said he: "They do things differently here. . . . In the White House, when I wanted to see my wife, I had to leave my room, go down a long corridor, and into another room to find her. Now in my own country, I don't have to do that."

From Tarzana, Calif, (named after his tree-swinging nature-man) Author Edgar Rice Burroughs issued an ultimatum to all wrestlers, boxers, strongmen, footballers calling themselves Tarzan: " 'Tarzan' is a copyrighted trademark and if these plug-uglies insist upon using it, I'm going to insist on the right to license them and stencil the copyright number on their chests."

Year ago the New Republic described bullocky Ernst ("Putzi") Hanfstaengl, onetime Nazi publicist, as "Hitler's boy friend." Last week Putzi, exiled in London, lost a libel suit against Selfridge & Co., department store which sold his secretary a copy containing the article. The judge, commenting, "Hanfstaengl will leave this court with as clean a character as . . . any man could have," ruled that nobody had libeled Putzi, assessed him the costs of the case.

In India, Mahatma Mohandas K. Gandhi publicly apologized for his recent hunger strike victory over the autocratic Thakore Saheb of Rajkot. It was coercion, said the Mahatma, to have accepted British intercession. "I should have been content to die if I could not have melted the Thakore Saheb's heart. . . ."

Visitors to the New York World's Fair:* Countess Barbara Mutton Mdivani Haugwitz-Reventlow, Son Lance, Cousin Woolworth Donahue, who were soon scared away by gawking crowds; Russian Ambassador Constantine Oumanslcy; Jang Krishnan, one of four Borneo brothers who have six-inch tails; Herbert Hoover (said he: "There is no very explosive news about visiting an exposition."); John Pierpont Morgan, for the second time; Radioactor Orson Welles read the $1,000 World's Fair prize poem by 23-year-old Smith Graduate Pearl Levison. Sample:

Here on island (O connect for all points of your travel)

With many bridges extending: Triboro, Queensboro

Brooklyn, Manhattan, Whitestone, iron harps suspended;

Here at hub of island with many spokes converging;

Radio, cable, wire bearing more than sparrow;

Train, bus, tug, trawler, clipper with bellied sail,

This is the achievement; this is tomorrow.

At San Francisco's Golden Gate Fair: Norway's Crown Prince Olav, who slipped his tongue, extolled Los Angeles; Harold Lloyd; Walter Damrosch.

*Whose total attendance, 20 days after opening, passed San Francisco's Golden Gate Fair (3,000,000) by 276,983.

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