Poet Conrad Aiken gazed happily around him, decided that things were much better between the writer and the world than they used to be. The Pulitzer Prizewinner (1929) reported in the Saturday Review of Literature that "quite suddenly, it has become not only respectable to be a writer, but even honorable. . . . What we are witnessing is the beginning of a sort of love affair between the American public and its writers."

Broadway Producer Jed Harris (Broadway, Coquette, Our Town) was not in the mood for love. "There's been a decline in the quality of writing," he told Columnist Ward Morehouse. "What do you expect, when Moss Hart can make $280,000 from the movies on a flop?" Otherwise: "Clifford Odets isn't writing because he can't. George Kaufman isn't getting any younger. ... Philip Barry never wrote anything that would draw me into a theater. The best thing Maxwell Anderson ever wrote was Ingrid Bergman." Swore Play-Producer Harris: "I hope I never have to produce another. The fun is gone." He said that he was 90 (he is 47)--"as old as Shaw. But I feel older."

Congratulations

In Manhattan, Francis Cardinal Spellman, who last July put out a fire in his bedroom singlehanded, was rewarded with: 1) appointment as honorary deputy fire chief, 2) honorary membership in the Uniformed Firemen's Association, the Uniformed Fire Officers' Association of Greater New York, and the International Association of Fire Fighters, 3) a shiny, new, silver fire extinguisher.

In Lanchow, China, where Henry Agard Wallace had distributed some honeydew seeds in 1944, appeared a new (to China) type of melon. The Chinese gratefully named it the Hua Lahse Kua.

In Washington, Marilyn Krug, 20-year-old daughter of the Secretary of the Interior, enjoyed one of those girlish honors that are tailor-made for looking back on later. At a ball she was crowned Queen of the President's Cup Regatta (speedboat whoop-te-do) by the very careful Secretary of Agriculture.

In Baltimore, hypermammiferous Cinemactress Jane Russell in The Outlaw moved Judge E. Paul Mason to comment. Her breasts, hummed the judge, as he upheld the state's ban on the movie, "hung over the picture like a summer thunderstorm spread out over a landscape. They were everywhere. They were there when she first came into the picture. They were there when she went out."

Best Luck

Egypt's Queen Mother Nazli, 50, was doing all right after a kidney operation at the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minn.

Norway's Crown Princess Martha, 46, was getting along fine after an operation for chronic back strain, at Boston's Massachusetts General Hospital.

Sweden's King Gustaf V was still doing just dandy at 89. First day out on a hunting trip in piny central Sweden, his towering majesty bagged three elk--one shot to an elk.

Persia's Hamid Reza Pahlevi, 16-year-old brother of the Shah was not doing so well. The sad-eyed Prince, who played hooky from a U.S. summer school last June and shortly turned up in Paris, disappeared last from a Washington, D.C. school but got bagged again. He entered a Hollywood hotel one midnight, settled down in the lobby when he could not pay in advance. When cops woke him, the Prince produced a passport as identification; but it was not his (he had borrowed it). He was briskly hauled off to the station house. Eventually delivered into the strong hands of an older brother, the student Prince had his pockets stuffed with extra socks, two pennies, and a $1.50 hunting knife, which he had taken along to protect himself from Wild West desperadoes.

Carol of Rumania and his red-haired Magda Lupescu, her "death bed" marriage to him last July now made good & legal, sailed off to Europe after three years of exile in Mexico, three in Brazil. The ship was headed for Portugal, and they probably would not get much closer than that to their Communist-dominated homeland. The newlyweds would not exactly be roughing it: they were taking along a number of canaries, five dogs, two automobiles, 145 pieces of luggage.

Please Remit

John D. Rockefeller Jr. had $23,902.28 coming to him: the Treasury found that he had overpaid his 1945 income taxes by that much.

Mrs. Edward L. Doheny III (whose grandfather-in-law was Oilman Doheny of Teapot Dome fame) was out a $3,000 bracelet--strayed or stolen, she didn't know which. Police looked for a clean, well-lighted bauble prinked with 41 diamonds, 113 pearls.

Franklin D. Roosevelt Jr. & wife Ethel du Pont were out $15 apiece. They finally turned up at a Long Island traffic court to face the music (after three delays) for speeding in their cars last July, were punished with $15 fines. They pleaded guilty to the speeding charge, but took exception to one detail: they were absolutely not racing each other.

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