People, Dec. 18, 1972

"I feel like Rip Van Winkle, as though I'd been sleeping for four years," said Martha Mitchell, after a photographer discovered the onetime oracle peacefully dining out in Manhattan with her husband, former Attorney General John Mitchell. Now that she is out of the political maelstrom, she uses the telephone to give instructions on the redecoration of her new Fifth Avenue apartment. "It's just madness, like starting in housekeeping again," she said, "Why, I never moved into an empty place before. I'm even out buying hardware, light switches, stuff like that. I don't have time for...

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