To London's Royal Ocean Racing Club, the Duke of Edinburgh, no mean hand at the tiller himself, made a bubbling, ketch-as-ketch-can appeal for greater nautical display in a sailient age: "I hope that more and more crazy people will defy inflation and beggar themselves for the sheer joy and discomfort of ocean racing." Downplaying his own sure yawlmanship, the Duke slyly added: "I know just enough about sailing and the sea to have an unbounded admiration for anybody who belongs to this club. If I had any more knowledge of sailing and the sea, I would probably think you were all nuts."

Including the almost $800 he got for nine months of performing an Army private's varied, humble duties, the 1958 income of shorn Dreamboat Elvis Presley, a guitarist out of practice, proved to be only a squirm less than his earnings last year as a fulltime civilian crooner--about $2,000,000.

It took the Rome Medical Association two hours to decide that bumbling Oculist Riccardo Galeazzi-Lisi, former Vatican physician, had "gravely compromised" the dignity of his profession by hawking stories and snapshots of Pope Pius' last hours (TIME, Nov. 3). Ordered expelled from the association (which means, explained one member, "he can't remove a cinder from your eye or look at your tongue" anywhere in Italy), Galeazzi-Lisi threatened to appeal the decision, snarled to newsmen: "It will not end like this."

Her brunette tresses high-piled in bouffant style, Princess Margaret was on hand at Her Majesty's Theatre to cheer in the London opening of the musical West Side Story, joined the professional critics in giving the brassy tale of love among delinquents top marks. Sighed she later: "I'm still so excited I haven't got down to earth."

Bulked out by red long Johns for the ribbon cutting at a new $5,500,000 bridge at Peoria, Illinois' Republican Governor William G. Stratton noted the smallish crowd quivering in the 5DEG chill, thoughtfully sliced the verbal fat from his speech to make it one of the leanest on record. The text, complete: "This bridge is a great achievement." Murmured oratorical G.O.P. Senator Everett Dirksen, in frosty gratitude: "You should get a gold medal for such a short and great speech."

Mindful of another milestone in the life of "the best friend Alaska ever had," the Fairbanks Chamber of Commerce airlifted a 250-lb., book-shaped birthday cake, with reindeer, Eskimos and such outlined in the frosting, to Washington, D.C., for Secretary of the Interior Fred Seaton, turned 49.

Venerable (74) Operetta Composer Rudolf Friml (The Firefly, The Vagabond King) settled down for a hi-fi afternoon of recorded music (his own) last week, plopped too heavily on a glass-topped table in his Palm Desert, Calif. home. The glass shattered, and Friml, bleeding heavily from his thigh, fell to the floor. Applying makeshift first aid, Friml's quick-witted wife Kay, 45, grabbed a towel, twisted it tourniquet-fashion around her husband's leg above the cut, drove him 2 1/2 blocks to a doctor, who took 23 stitches to close the 2-in. gash.

With campaign rancor apparently stowed away for other years, the current occupants of New York's executive mansion at Albany invited the future tenants in for a look-see. Taken on the grand tour of the century-old, four-story brick building by Outgoing Governor and Mrs. Averell Harriman, Governor-elect Nelson Rockefeller pronounced himself content: "I think it's a very friendly spot. It has a lot of warmth and charm." Not quite so sure of the relic's creaky beams, a friend thoughtfully suggested that the Rockefeller Foundation might well kick in a few dollars--for slum clearance.

One look at the story line of The Buccaneer, a gory epic of the lusty Old South by veteran Cinemogul Cecil B. DeMille, was enough for Henri de Balther Claiborne of Center Cross, Va. Big as Vista-Vision, he claimed, was a foul Yankee libel against the family honor: Mogul DeMille had plotted a nonexistent romance between Pirate Jean Lafitte, slightly smudged hero of the piece, and a tender daughter of Claiborne's great-granddaddy, Louisiana Governor (1812-16) William Charles Claiborne. DeMille let his lawyers mull out Claiborne's legal demand that he appear in court next month in New Orleans for a hearing on who was responsible for the dastardly deed.

At a luncheon marking the opening of a new Russian art show at London's solemn, dignified Royal Academy, solemn, dignified R. A. President Sir Charles Wheeler assured guests: "Everyone is very stiff and formal at the Royal Academy, I know. But we like to think we can be a little human sometimes." Showing just how human he could be, Sir Charles, a nimble 66, arched a leg over a wrought-iron railing, demonstrated to gaping onlookers (including two baffled Soviet officials) the approved R. A. technique of sliding backwards down the balustrade.

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