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Rudyard Kipling, 63, amazed last week England's Royal Society of Medicine with an after-dinner speech. More amazing, however, was his practical prudence. What words he uttered, as he knows best, have a money value to him. So he carefully announced that publishing rights to his speech would revert to him after 48 hours. In England, the copyright law covers oral works.
Assistant Postmaster Ensley E. Rogers of Red Bank, N. J. sent Philatelist George V of England an issue of U. S. stamps commemorating the victory of General Washington over British General Clinton at Monmouth Court House, 1778. Last week, the King's private secretary courteously sent the stamps back.
Capt. Sir Arthur Rostron, commodore of the Cunard fleet, skipper of the Berengaria, was shaving, one morning, last week. He paid little attention to two U. S. customs officials who entered his suite on the Berengaria and began a search for liquor. First, they ransacked the lounge. Then they went into the bedroom, poked about in closets, put their hands into pockets of clothes hanging in the wardrobe, opened luggage. When they left, Sir Arthur laid down his razor, said to some friends: "Well, these are your customs and I suppose we will have to abide by them."
William Kissam Vanderbilt, with wife, scientists, servants and elaborate fishing tackle, sailed last week from Miami, Fla., on his famed yacht, Ara, on his first cruise around the world.
Arthur Train, newly elected president of the Authors' League of America, said, last week, in his inaugural address: "I believe that those members of the League who command the highest artistic respect should confer annually some distinction for the best work of that year in every branch of literature. An award of—let us say—the Literary Council of the Authors' League of America, composed of a group of the first literary talent in the country, would carry far greater weight than those of the judges of magazine contests or the literary eunuchs who now gratuitously presume to declare what is best of everything, or the self-constituted committees of busybodies and publicity-seekers who bestow birthday honors to the clatter of coffee cups and the tinkle of ice cream spoons."
John Early, 54. most obstreperous leper the government has ever tried to cure, cut one of his native North Carolina capers last week at the National Leper Home, Carville, La. Doctors had declared him cured by injection of chaulmoogra oil derivatives and were discharging him. Fellow inmates decked him joyously with flowers. His leprosy-scarred face beamed. Deems Taylor, famed composer of the King's Henchman went to see the Manhattan opening of a play called Hotbed. Just before the curtain he, resplendent in evening clothes, strode down the aisle to his seat near the front of the theatre. A noise ran through the audience something like a titter and something like a rumble. Soon Composer Taylor discovered to his amazement that around his neck was no collar, no tie.