Chapter & Verse

For national Brotherhood Week, Collier's asked some leading citizens to quote their favorite Bible passages. Harry S. Truman: "Give therefore thy servant an understanding heart to judge thy people, that I may discern between good and bad . . ." (I Kings 3:9). Senator Robert A. Toft: "A good tree cannot bring forth evil fruit, neither can a corrupt tree bring forth good fruit . . . Wherefore by their fruits ye shall know them" (Matthew 7: 18-20). U.S. Steel's President Benjamin A. Fairless: "Where there is no vision, the people perish; but he that keepeth the law, happy is he" (Proverbs 29:18). General Dwight Eisenhower: "When a strong man armed keepeth his palace, his goods are in peace" (Luke 11:21).

In a letter to the London Sunday Times, Author Charles (The Fountain) Morgan deplored the flood of postwar novels that are "grossly brutal in subject and in language." Such writing, said he, is not only puerile, but out of date. "Those who today are trying to out-Zola Zola or to undertake the scatological education of Lady Chatterley are, in effect, scrawling on their grandparents' lavatory walls."

In Chicago with the road company of T. S. Eliot's The Cocktail Party, old Cinemactor Reginald Denny told members of the drama league: "I'm having a very good time on this trip, probably because I understand the play the least."

Arriving in Manhattan for a tour of universities, Welsh Poet Dylan (rhymes with penicillin) Thomas found time for some shop talk with the New York Times. Who was his favorite poet of the century? "Thomas Hardy," said Thomas. His favorite word? "I like to put down the word blood. It's a curious kind of word; it means insanity, among other meanings.

It's part of the tilt of my mind that I put it down often." His feeling about poetry in general? "I like to think of it as statements made on the way to the grave." The Academy of American Poets announced that its 1952 fellowship, worth $5,000 (the biggest poetry prize in the U.S.) has been awarded to Irish-born Padraic Colum, 71, now a lecturer at Columbia University.

The Air Is Filled With Music

In Fall River, Mass., ig-year-old Shirley May France, who tried without success to swim from France to England two years ago, was having better luck on another channel: as a teen-age disk jockey on radio station WSAR.

Suffering from a touch of sciatica, terrible-tempered Sir Thomas Beecham arrived in California to conduct the San Francisco Symphony Orchestra, waggled his sharp tongue again at another music form: "There is no future in opera . . . Most operas are in the hands of grocers, so how can you expect good music? If I want to see pretty pictures, I go to the movies. If I want to hear orchestral music, I go to a symphony concert."

Actress Diana Barrymore decided she had had just about enough of Australia. First she was fired from a Sydney nightclub singing job. In Melbourne, she walked out of the lead part in Noel Coward's Fatten Angels. Last week the manager of Brisbane's Theater Royal canceled her contract after "she used language which offended the audience, forgot her lines and sang an unscheduled song." Said Diana, "All I want to do is sleep, and then I want to go home." Then she changed her mind, signed for a six weeks' vaudeville tour of Tasmania and South Australia doing impersonations, including one of Aunt Ethel Barrymore.

On the Go

In Troy, N.Y., Grandma Moses, painter of primitive landscapes, registered as a self-employed person, at 91 received her Social Security number.

In Washington, Bess Truman, who was 67 last week, gave glamour reporters an up-to-date fashion item when she appeared with a new lavender-blue, almost-poodle hairdo.

When Georges Carpentier, 58, onetime (1920-23) world light-heavyweight champion, arrived for a visit in Buenos Aires, he made it a point to call on Eva Peron. The little chat in the presidential mansion gave photographers a rare chance to record the wan and peaked appearance of the First Lady, who is still recovering from an operation performed last November.

Back from his on & off-the-court battles in Australia, Dick Savitt, 24, announced that after next summer's national championships he would probably give up bigtime tennis and "go to work. I'll just play on weekends and in my spare time."

Konrad Adenauer Jr., 42, son of the West German Chancellor and an executive of a Rhine utilities works, arrived in Washington as a guest of the State Department's Exchange of Persons program. On a $10-a-day allowance from the Department, he will tour U.S. public and private utilities. Items on his sightseeing list: the Tennessee Valley Authority, Hoover Dam.

In Manhattan, TV Actress Maria Riva, 27-year-old twice-married daughter of Cinemactress Marlene Dietrich, offered some leap-year advice to would-be brides: "Be natural and frank. Be honest with him and with yourself. I would hate to get a man with coy tricks, because then I would have to go on using the same tricks to keep him."

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