At Manhattan's annual Renaissance for Italian Youth Ball, the seasons were elegantly personified in a maypole pageant by Janet Neff (summer), wife of Investment Broker Joseph A. Neff; Lydia Melhado (autumn), wife of Investment Broker Frederick Melhado; and Viscountess de Rosiere (winter), Ohio-born wife of French-born Jewelry Sales Executive Viscount Paul de Rosiere. Gentle spring: evergreen Actress Joan Fontaine. Commented Cosmetics Entrepreneur Elizabeth Arden from her ringside table at the Plaza Hotel benefit: "We had all forgotten that charity can be such fun."

Word leaked out last week that a new game, donated to the inmates' recreation room at Montgomery County (Pa.) prison, had arrived simultaneously with the electric-company price riggers, who were convicted in February's antitrust case. The donor: James B. Carey, prickly president of the International Union of Electrical Workers. The game: Monopoly.

Waxing bullish on Republican chances in Manhattan's mayoralty election next November, F.D.R.'s only G.O.P. son, Manhattan Brokerage House Executive John Roosevelt neglected to cull the army of possible candidates (of which he is one), instead nominated the Republicans' "best campaigner": Democratic Incumbent Robert Wagner, "because of his utter inefficiency, his barren planning, his total lack of leadership, and the long and sorrowful list of scandals that he has permitted to flower during the seven years he has hibernated at City Hall."

After her coronation as "Miss World" in London last fall, sinuous Argentine Mannequin Norma Gladys Cappaglis, 21, predictably found someone who could get her a part in a movie. While in Rome waiting to start, she was immortalized by Italian Painter Gioacchino Parlato as she sat for the newest version of the old classic: a portrait of artist and model.

As relentless as the cherry blossoms, 2,528 Daughters of the American Revolution burst upon the Potomac for their 70th annual seance. With nary a dissent, the Continental Congress passed resolutions condemning federal grants-in-aid, "demoralization in the entertainment world," and the issuance of postage stamps commemorating foreigners. In other actions, the Founding Mothers endorsed the Monroe Doctrine, engaged in a minor skirmish when a lone maverick opposed censure of the Peace Corps. Summarily shutting off the debate ("You've had your two minutes"), D.A.R. President General, Mrs. Ashmead White, gaveled through a resolution to keep the U.S.'s "inexperienced youth" at home.

After 11 1/2 years with the prestigious Boston Symphony Orchestra, Music Director Charles Munch, 69, last week announced that he would retire following the 1962 Tanglewood season. Beamed his designated successor, Metropolitan Opera Conductor and Musical Consultant Erich Leinsdorf: "I have always considered the Boston the pinnacle of orchestras--it is very rare wine."

As his first anniversary approached, Antony Armstrong-Jones, 31, explained how he had been spending his spare time. With old razor blades and matchsticks, Princess Margaret's husband had whiled away the hours putting together a spiky, architectural fantasy to house the London Zoo's exotic birds. Tony nervously told his first press conference: "We have tried to achieve an exciting design in architecture as well as allowing the birds as much light and freedom as possible." London critics looked at a model of the angular, chichi aviary and formed their own opinions. Among them: "An attempt to disprove some geometric theorem," "An Aeolian harp gone awry." Said the Guardian: "The idea of a bird in a gilded cage occurred to many of us."

Would she marry again? Quoth raven-voiced Bette Davis: Nevermore. Back in Hollywood for a remake of Lady for a Day, the 53-year-old veteran of some 70 films and four husbands renounced star-crossed matrimony: "This business is timeconsuming, and there is the matter of making more money than your husband does. It's too bad. I like men, but I just can't stay married to them."

"Should we be alarmed by the difference between the behavior of Airman Powers and of Nathan Hale?" asked Fund-for-the-Republic President Robert Maynard Hutchins. He did not wait for an answer. He has already seen dark "signs that the moral character of American society is changing," and has ordered the fund's Center for the Study of Democratic Institutions to take a two-year look at the problem. With an assist from such men as Supreme Court Justice William O. Douglas, University of California President Clark Kerr and Jesuit Philosopher John Courtney Murray, Hutchins hopes to turn up "various viewpoints on what the Good Life shall be in America," to reach "dependable conclusions about our national strength and weakness."

In Hamburg for minor surgery last month, Sheik Abdullah Al-Jabir As-Sabah, 65, Justice and Education Minister of oil-rich Kuwait, received tender loving care from a 19-year-old secretary, casually married her, quickly got a telephone squawk from one of his three other wives. But by last week, the contrite ("It was beyond my control") sheik was back at his palace near Beirut, had shucked his German bride of ten days and placated his complaining spouse with gifts among them a $10,000 diamond ring. Neither action came hard. The divorce was his 27th, and the baubles were covered by an income once calculated at $200,000 a day.

"In our time, the church's fault is not, as some would say, that she speaks too seldom. Rather, she speaks too often and on too many subjects." This was the unlikely counsel of outspoken Manhattan Methodist Ralph W. Sockman, minister since 1936 to a congregation now numbering some 500,000 on NBC's Radio Pulpit. "Churchmen," his sermon continued, "act as though they feel they have to pontificate on any problem and, having spoken, tend to assume that there is little more to be said. This is boorish behavior as well as bad theology. It leaves little alternative for those who disagree but to stay away. Thoughtful members of contemporary society are doing this in droves."

After months of cavorting in Florida and New York with her divorced second husband, Joe DiMaggio, Cinemactress Marilyn Monroe returned to Hollywood alone and, reaching for the oldest Sunset Boulevard cliche, told all and sundry that she and Joe were "just good friends." Then, displaying her enlarged vocabulary, she added: "Really."

For seven years, the stylistic elegance of Nobel Laureate Franc,ois Mauriac graced the back page of Paris' lively L'Express with a conscientious Catholic conservatism that seemed startlingly out of place in the left-wing weekly. Last week the agreement to disagree came to an end when Mauriac quit, flew to the side of his President. "Mauriac loves De Gaulle as the English love their Queen," said L'Express Editor Jean-Jacques Servan-Schreiber. "For us, De Gaulle is only a politician and love is not a problem. Franc,ois Mauriac has abandoned his fight and his readers." Meanwhile, De Gaulle took time out to salute "this very, very great writer, who explains and lifts up mankind and casts glory on France."

Enjoying a one-night stand at Michigan State University one year after he was booted out of the University of Illinois for boosting free love, unrepentant Biologist Leo Koch declared that "fidelity is a wonderful thing for people who like it," promptly found someone who did. Unsatisfied by the ex-professor's personal promise of propriety ("As for myself, I would never commit adultery without my wife's consent"), M.S.U. President (and Civil Rights Commission Chairman) John A. Hannah announced: "While Michigan State University cannot reasonably be held responsible for what every speaker on its campus may say, in this case it must specifically disassociate itself from his point of view."

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