After a month in Moscow, Georgia-born Author Erskine (God's Little Acre) Caldwell, 55, returned to the U.S. little richer but far wiser about the Soviets' fast way with a ruble. As one of the U.S.S.R.'s most popular U.S. writers (others: Mark Twain, Jack London, Harriet Beecher Stowe), Caldwell was intrigued about his royalties, if any, from many years of publication of his books. To his surprise, he learned that each publishing house had kept a tab of a sort on its debt to him. At one of them, he was told over much vodka that he was 20,000 rubles (about $2,000) to the good. He blithely took the money, and then the fun began. Already aware that he could not just fly out of the U.S.S.R. with a wad of Soviet currency, Author Caldwell set out valiantly to spend his capitalist-size bankroll there. But he could find almost nothing exportable to buy. In the end, Caldwell returned some 19,500 rubles to the publisher for safekeeping, ignored blandishments to hang around and live like a millionaire (a Black Sea villa, etc.) until his royalties ran out.

Speaking to a reasonably square audience in Boston, opinion-crammed Anthropologist Margaret (Coming of Age in Samoa) Mead, 57, turned her withering gaze on the beatniks, did her high-level best to define one: "A person who can't tolerate the meaninglessness of the low level of goodness, and just because it is both low level and good casts his artistic rebellions in bizarre and often misunderstood forms."

The news from Pall Mall, Tenn., home town of Sergeant Alvin York, one of World War I's top heroes, was a little brighter. Teetotaler York, 71, crippled by a stroke in 1954, reported that his health is improving, allowed that he has even felt a yen to go hunting again. Another good omen: he has not heard recently from federal revenooers about the $85,442 income tax they have asked for--a kingsize slice of the royalties York got from his movie biography, produced in 1941. "They claim I owe 'em so much," drawled the old soldier. "I say I don't owe 'em a dime!"

Gadding about his native Midwest, Poet T. S. Eliot, 71, gazed nostalgically at some of his early published verses during a chat with newsmen at the University of Chicago. Then he went to St. Louis, where he was born and raised, for the centennial celebration of Mary Institute, a private school for girls founded by his minister grandfather. Recalling how he once lived next door to the school's gymnasium and playground, Eliot confessed that he used to enjoy the facilities surreptitiously as soon as all the girls scooted home for weekends. "Considering all this," said he, "I consider myself to be an alumnus of Mary Institute. I would say the one and only alumnus!"

At a convocation of the high-domed American Philosophical Society in Philadelphia, members listened closely to papers on such diverse subjects as Cytoplasmic Incompatibility in Neurospora and Bastards in the Roman Aristocracy. But the most surprising contribution was a half-hour gem of erudition, illustrated with colored slides, on The Iridescent Colors of Hummingbird Feathers. Author: Crawford H. Greenewalt, 57. whose excursions into advanced ornithology are somehow sandwiched into his workaday duties as president of massive E.I. du Pont de Nemours & Co.

Casting about for a royal guest of honor to grace a fund-raising Imperial WAIF ball in Hollywood, a committee eagerly grabbed obscure, pretty Princess Marie Cecilie of Prussia, 17, a great-granddaughter of Germany's Kaiser Wilhelm II. At the party, Marie, the shoulder straps of her gown drooping starlet fashion, had a royal time, danced with mop-topped Singer Edd ("Kookie") Byrnes, 26, comb-conscious dreamboat of TV's high-rated 77 Sunset Strip.

Touring in the Far East, aged (85) Author W. Somerset Maugham remarked that he has one more book up his sleeve. But he will never know how his public will greet the work. It is already written, will not be published until after his death.

It was still a big secret in Lebanon, but at the southern end of the United Arab Republic, Cairo's daily Al Ahram noisily ripped the wraps off an Israeli spy ring ferreted out by Lebanese security sleuths. The spies, crowed Al Ahram, had operated "in the guise of dancing and singing troupes that include world-famous artists." One of the "Israeli agents": hot-lipped Trumpeter Louis ("Satchmo") Armstrong, who has tooted his horn in Israel, is openly fond of Israeli cats. In Manhattan, Accused Spy Armstrong broke up on hearing the Arab cats' complaint, graveled to a newshen: "Why, honey, I don't have time for spying. I got a young wife and a trumpet. That occupies all my time. You know what I mean?"

Winning a 25-year battle for freedom, oldtime Bootlegger Roger ("The Terrible") Touhy, now 61, was slated for springing this week by the Illinois Parole Board. Sentenced in 1934 to 99 years for the celebrated and controversial kidnaping-for-ransom of Swindler John ("Jake the Barber") Factor, Convict Touhy did little to help his cause by escaping from prison in 1942, drew a 199-year stretch for that indiscretion. As the gates of the Big House in Joliet were about to open for him, Touhy was also set to publish a claim of innocence--The Stolen Years (Pennington Press; $4.50).

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