Notes from the Hill

In the chambers, cloakrooms and corridors of Capitol Hill last week, these congressional names made conversation:

P: To Senate Majority Leader Lyndon Baines Johnson from wife Lady Bird Johnson came bad news on the L.B.J. front: Little Beagle Johnson, 7, pet of Lucy Baines Johnson, 11, had not come home for dinner. Alert reporters sounded alarms all over Washington, carried the stray's description into New Hampshire Avenue Animal Hospital, where an unidentified motorist had left a slightly battered beagle. Sure enough, it was the Johnson dog. The good word, couriered to the head of the family at a Democratic Steering Committee session, raised relieved senatorial cheers all around. Recovering after cortisone treatment for shock, and eased by phenylbutazone tablets. Little Beagle Johnson returned home under escort of Lucy Baines and a fifth L.B.J.--Lynda Bird Johnson, 14.

P: As befits a freshman in his first Senate days, lanky Maine Democrat Edmund Muskie spoke only when his name was called. But he listened hard, developed some ideas about the proper way to address a colleague during debate. "If you and he are in complete agreement," he told a shoe and leather men's banquet last week in Boston, "you address him merely as 'The Senator from such-and-such a state.' If you are not too sure he agrees wholly with you, you should refer to him as 'The able Senator from--.' But if you know there is violent disagreement on an issue, there is only one way to address him: The able and distinguished Senator, my friend from --.' " P: Democratic Speaker Sam Rayburn gaveled through two friendly relief measures for his longtime opposite number and friend, Joseph W. Martin Jr., ousted Republican Floor Leader (TIME, Jan. 19). The resolutions: authorization for Martin (as the only living former Speaker of the House) to keep the chauffeured Cadillac and most of the extra staff of the leadership office he lost to Indiana's Congressman Charles Halleck. Mr. Sam grandly ruled unanimous consent on his surprise package, despite a noisy objection from Tennessee's loose-tongued Ross ("Largemouth") Bass,*who said it was "an unusual precedent." P: Pennsylvania's six-term Republican Congressman Carroll Kearns, onetime Chicago Symphony soloist (baritone) fights a lonely battle for his muse on lawyer-dominated Capitol Hill. Says Kearns, who, at the request of Secretary of State Dulles, recently conducted four Air Force Symphony concerts in Iceland: "If I could put a Sputnik into the air, I would like to have it wired for sound and have it play 'Peace on earth, good will to men,' instead of 'beep, beep.' I mentioned this to President Eisenhower. My idea got across, because he did send such a message up with our last moon. Next time I hope it will play music." P: House Majority Leader John McCormack insisted on turning over his chairmanship of the exotic new Committee on Space and Astronautics to Louisiana Democrat Overton Brooks. Reason: the move took Brooks, whose abilities are lightly regarded, out of the line of succession to Georgia's aging (75) Carl Vinson as chairman of the powerful House Armed Services Committee. Succeeding Brooks as Vinson's heir apparent: Texas' able Paul Kilday.

P: Drawing for office preference with 81 other new Congressmen, New York Republican Seymour Halpern drew No. 82. Not until last week did he finally get a real office, after working for days in a hole in the wall -- an 8-ft.-by-12-ft. gap between the circular foyer and the straight outer wall of the Old House Office Building. P: More than half (47) of the House's big freshman class trooped into the Library of Congress' Coolidge Auditorium to attend a new institution: a school for Congressmen, bipartisan brainchild of such considerate upperclassmen as Maine's Democrat Frank Coffin and New Jersey's Republican Peter Frelinghuysen. In the first class, frosh heard New York Timesman James ("Scotty") Reston tell them how to make news. Senator Hugh Scott, Pennsylvania Republican, and Senator Eugene McCarthy, Minnesota Democrat, both lately risen from the Lower House to the Continuing Body, rubbed in a delicate point by scheduling a discussion this week titled "The House: Changing Institution in a Changing Society."

* Not to be confused with New Hampshire's tight-lipped Representative Perkins ("Small-mouth") Bass (see cuts).

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