Small Package

People in Luxembourg like to give small parties at which the guests sit around and talk quietly about business and the weather. The Grand Duchess Charlotte rarely ever mingles with her guests; at the receptions in her toylike palace, she prefers to remain secluded in a small side room. Last week Luxembourg, whose national motto is Mir welle bleiwe wat mir sin (We want to stay as we are), suspected that its social life, at least, would not long bleiwe as it was. For Mrs. Perle Mesta, famed Washington hostess and new U.S. minister to the Grand-Duchy, arrived with plump aplomb, and her ideas of a good party were known to differ from those held in Luxembourg.

Minister Mesta was a little late getting to her post. When her Packard-borne party (with a luggage-laden Ford in the vanguard) motored from Paris to the border, they were stopped cold by strangely hostile frontier guards. After lengthy palaver, it appeared that Mrs. Mesta had picked the wrong country: the frontier she tried to cross was not Luxembourg's, but Belgium's. Two miles away an official welcoming committee was waiting, all set with flowers and speeches. By the time the party finally found little Luxembourg, the welcoming committee had become discouraged and gone home.

Once inside the Grand-Duchy, the Mesta motorcade cruised about, unable to find the U.S. legation. At length, greeted by the squealing of several hundred well-voiced pigs at a nearby fair, Minister Mesta settled in her official residence. Even before arranging twelve photographs of her great & good friend Harry Truman, she received the press in her brown & ivory salon. "My President," she said, "thinks you are very, very, terribly important. You may be small, but we have a saying in my country that precious pearls come in small packages."

The minister, finding only a cook and a maid at her residence, forthwith made plans for hiring a butler, a chef, an assistant chef, a parlor maid, a chambermaid and a personal maid, and announced that she was ready to give a few parties to further international understanding. Said she: "I came for service." Unfortunately, Grand Duchess Charlotte was out of the country, shooting grouse in Scotland, so the new minister could not even present her credentials.

On Mrs. Mesta's first evening in Luxembourg, a torchlight procession, including a brass band, appeared beneath the legation's windows. The band played Anchors Aweigh and the crowd sang a greeting to Madame la ministre. The bandleader made a speech, which was followed by the Star-Spangled Banner. The demonstrators marched off to Marching Through Georgia. Said Minister Mesta, looking after them from her front porch: "That was a real sweet thing for them to do."

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