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Until she broke her hip in 1922, her habit was to sleep under the stars on a wall-less, roofless porch. She arose early, greeting milkmen and "newsies" on her morning walks. She would have no automobile until very lately, when she could not refuse her brother's gift. "Woman of character" her biographers call her, keen-minded, a voracious reader, benevolent, an alert citizen, "one to know whom is a benediction."
Of her father's 13 children (he married thrice), four were newspaper people, James E., George H., Edward W., and herself. Of these only Edward W. survives with her, having founded the Scripps-McRae syndicate of 28 newspapers. Aged 71, he is a hermit-millionaire, a sea hermit (like the late Publisher Joseph Pulitzer) sailing the seven seas on a yacht with padded decks. Again like Pulitzer, he cannot bear noise; his officers run his crew by dumb show. He smokes 50 cigars daily, sits in the saloon while two women alternately read to him. Satiated, he calls for his checkerboard. He cruises a course mapped to keep the Ohio in balmy climes. Last week he was forced to go ashore at Cape Town while the Ohio was dry-docked. Seizing rare opportunity, a correspondent wrote: "Like a crowd of ghosts the sailors lowered the landing launch. They suddenly stopped when the machinery made some squeaks. The officers rushed forward with oil cans. . . ."