Robbed: ex-Showgirl Patrice Amati Runyon Coffin, ex-wife of the late Damon Runyon, and her husband Richard Coffin, New Bedford printer; of some $200,000 (her estimate) worth of jewels.

Disturbed: the Rt. Rev. Geoffrey C. L. Lunt, sixtyish Bishop of Salisbury, in the middle of the night. A maid heard prowlers in the Cathedral yard, woke the bishop. He dashed out in pajamas and dressing gown, chased the villains over a high wall, hurried shivering back to bed.

Robbed: the London home of Diana Bowes-Lyon, 23, cousin of Princess Elizabeth and one of her bridesmaids; of -L-2,000 (about $8,000) worth of jewelry--most of it her mother's (the Queen's sister-in-law).

Wartime Premier Hideld Tojo's 48-year-old brother, Kikuro, was jugged for 18 months for lifting odds & ends from Tokyo train passengers.

The Furrowed Brow

"The presence or lack of poetry," observed U.N. Delegate Sir Alexander Cadogan before the Academy of American Poets, "is a touchstone of the freedom or servility of a particular political system." He noted happily that "in both our countries today ... the old fountain of poetry is still flowing freely."

Unless Americans breed with more science and less abandon, declared tireless Walter B. Pitkin (Life Begins at Forty), five generations from now they will be "the stupidest great-great-grandchildren of the stupidest great-grandchildren of the stupidest grandchildren of the stupidest children of parents now living."

"There are only two foolish peoples in the world," observed Atomic Physicist Harold C. Urey, "the U.S. and Russia. . . ." Basis for his observation: they "are making and intend to make atom bombs, and they think themselves powerful." There is no military defense against the bomb, said Urey. He gave the U.S. about a year more of monopoly.

Fits & Starts

The litterateurs were having their ins & outs.

Louella Parsons "was dashing into the revolving door at the Waldorf and [the Duke & Duchess of Windsor] were dashing out with three dogs following them, laughing and apparently in high spirits."

Elsa Maxwell sounded an alarm. It seemed that Tyrone Power, in Rome, had hung up on Lana Turner when she telephoned him from Manhattan. "Lana walks around the Reservoir at Central Park at night," Elsa went on nervously, "sometimes until 2 or 3 in the morning. This is a real tip to MGM, which has a valuable star in Miss Turner and should watch after her."

Playwright Sacha Guitry, the 62-year-old Noel Coward of Paris, took on a new chore for Luxembourg radio listeners, Guitry, and his sponsor. From Paris the much-married jack-of-all-theatrics would make small-talk in his plush, bedroomy voice for 15 minutes a week. The old heartthrob's sponsor: Scandale Corsets.

For John Masefield, Britain's 69-year-old poet laureate, life was getting to be the title of an old Masefield novel, Odtaa.* He had scarcely given the world his prothalamion, On the Coming Marriage (TIME, Nov. 10), before he upped with an epithalamium, 20 Lines on the Occasion of the Wedding . . . Concluding quatrain:

To such a Crown all broken spirits turn;

And -we, who see this young face passing by,

See her as symbol of a Power Eterne,

And pray that Heaven bless Her till she die.

Minnesota's Congressman Harold Knutson, 67, who thinks a lot about taxes, suddenly burst out with a Barefoot Boy of his own:

Little man with cares so few,

We've a lot of faith in you;

Guard each merry whistled tune,

You are apt to need it soon.

Have your fun now while you can;

You may be a barefoot man.

Rising Sons

John Roosevelt, 31-year-old youngest of F.D.R.'s five, was coming right along. After nearly two years with Grayson's clothing stores in California, he announced that he was about to open his own women's ready-to-wear business.

The late Wendell Willkie's son, Philip, 27, was doing all right too. While he waited in Manhattan to take his New York bar exams, he was elected vice president of the Rushville, Ind. National Bank. He would do long-distance commuting to the monthly directors' meetings till he moved back among the Hoosiers, as he planned to.

To Herbert Hoover Jr., 44, a successful California geophysicist, was awarded Patent 2430983 for a "seismic amplifying system providing, in geophysical prospecting, for the controlled variation of seismic wave sensitivity during recording."

In Chester, Pa., an interested visitor to the Freedom Train was Colin Kelly III, son of a hero father, now a redheaded seven-year-old. He stared at the historical document which most concerned him: Franklin Roosevelt's recommendation that he be appointed to West Point in 1956.*

Quiet Zone

General Dwight D. Eisenhower, who might be anticipating a year of particularly strenuous activity, was at Washington's Walter Reed General Hospital for a "routine physical examination."

Wagnerian Soprano Helen Troubel went into a Dallas hospital to lick a "stubborn low-grade" infection after an attack of flu.

Rita Hayworth, who had been working in the chill outdoors in costumes best suited to her talent, spent a spell in California's Mt. Whitney Hospital, with neuralgia.

Senator Alben W. Berkley of Kentucky, who had been feeling sore ever since he was in a smashup (TIME, Nov. 10), discovered that he had a busted rib. The Senator wore tape on his 70th birthday.

* One damn thing after another.

* "To the President of the United States in 1956," Roosevelt wrote on Dec. 17, 1941: "I am writing this letter as an act of faith in the destiny of our country. ... My request is that you consider the merits of [this] young American of goodly heritage ... for appointment as a cadet."

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