Most readers of the Ladies' Home Journal could take a lesson in thrift from the magazine's part-time correspondent Lynda Johnson Robb. Seven months pregnant, L.BJ.'s older daughter rode a Trailways bus from Washington to New York to turn in an article on young marrieds. Aghast, the editors rented a limousine to drive her back to D.C. But when Lynda learned that the car would cost the magazine $150, she politely declined and returned home on the bus.

English Novelist Lawrence Durrell, traveling in the U.S. to promote his latest opus, Nunquam, announced a discovery. "What I thought was a slight earthquake going through the whole place that made me thirsty all the time," Durrell reported, "is actually your gin. It's 90 proof. Ours in London is 60."

A leading customer suggested that those high-fashion models at the House of Christian Dior are considerably less comely than they used to be. Quite so, replied Dior's chief designer, Marc Bohan--and by design. Dior once spent a fortune collecting Europe's choicest lovelies, only to lose them to rich husbands. Today's Dior girl, explained Bohan, is "elegant, but not so marriageable."

A costume race on skis is a yearly feature at the Storlien mountain resort near Stockholm, and an enthusiastic contestant for the fourth straight year was Crown Prince Carl Gustaf, 23. Dressed as a field surgeon in gown and rubber gloves, Sweden's future king made a sprint for the finish line and wound up on his back with two broken skis. Two days later the costumed "surgeon" needed the ministrations of a genuine medical man. After clipping a slalom gate, he wound up the season with a broken left arm.

The visitor was not impressed by America: "The desperate contests between the North and the South; the iron curb and brazen muzzle fastened upon every man who speaks his mind . . . The stabbings and shootings, the coarse and brutal threatenings exchanged between Senators under the very Senate's roof, the intrusion of the most pitiful, mean, malicious, creeping, crawling, sneaking party spirit intc all transactions of life ... I believe the heaviest blow ever dealt at Liberty's head will be dealt by this nation in the ultimate failure of its example to the earth." The date: 1842. The commentator: Novelist Charles Dickens, in a newly discovered letter to a friend back home.

Not too inaccurately, one overenthusiastic official called Chicago's Mayor Richard J. Daley "the greatest Democratic phenomenon in the country." He was topped by a colleague, who went through Daley's name, supplying a laudatory adjective for each letter --D for diligent, A for adorable, L for loyal, E for energetic, Y for youthful. It wasn't a testimonial dinner--just a routine meeting of the Cook County Democratic Committee.

"It certainly does not seem typical of Her Highness," said a royal spokesman stiffly. But an Australian reporter who was standing much nearer to Princess Anne as she struggled with her billowing four-foot-long scarf on a windy day in Sydney, insisted he heard her say: "Hell, I can't see in the bloody wind." Prince Charles also showed the Down Unders some of the same style verbal versatility. Approached on a beach near Sydney by a Greek-speaking Aussie who asked him if he spoke the language, Charles replied with a blunt but colorful Greek phrase that means--approximately--"push off."

Three small businessmen with big names, appearing before a U.S. Senate small business subcommittee, all urged tighter controls on celebrity-linked franchise operations. The most glamorous stockholder in Edie Adams' Cut & Curl Beauty Salons was flanked by the founder of the Here's Johnny's (Carson) restaurant chain and the board chairman of Mickey Mantle's Country Cookin'.

Moische, a white poodle, almost got a fatal shock when he bit through a lamp cord. His mistress, Actress Sue Lyon, best remembered as the blonde nymphet in Lolita, used mouth-to-mouth resuscitation and saved the pup's life.

Baseball's most publicized scandal in 50 years ended with a tap on the wrist and a mild half-season suspension for the Detroit Tigers' Denny McLain, the high-living pitcher whose foray into organized gambling nearly cost the sport one of its brightest performers. Baseball Commissioner Bowie Kuhn dismissed the athlete as "gullible and avaricious." "I'll have to get me a dictionary," said McLain. Informed that the adjectives mean "stupid and greedy," Denny said, "Yes, I am stupid and greedy."

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