Like many another big and busy man, President Hoover last week began a ten-day winter vacation. The Senate was poking along on the Tariff. The House with its robot membership could not conceivably get into mischief. The well-reefed London Naval Conference sailed cautiously over well-charted seas of diplomacy. Therefore the President packed a trunkfull of fishing tackle, stuffed a few papers in a small brief case, ordered a private car tacked on the end of the Atlantic Coast Line's Havana Special, and, with Mrs. Hoover, departed for Florida. His guests: Associate Justice Harlan Fiske Stone, Dr. Vernon Kellogg, Mark Sullivan. Secretary George Akerson was left behind to temporize with White House callers while Secretary Lawrence Richey accompanied "The Chief."
The most private of public men, President Hoover insists upon absolute seclusion for his run. On the journey south he talked fishing with his guests, napped, ignored clamorous citizens along the way who wanted to see him. At Jacksonville where he got off to stretch his legs, he bumped into Gilchrist Baker Stockton whom he had lately appointed U. S. Minister to Austria. Cried the President: ''Hello, Gilchrist, come on over and join the party." To Jacksonville's Mayor Alsop President Hoover remarked: "Gilchrist is a mighty fine boy!"
Before dawn the next morning the Hoover car was cut off at Long Key, a barren palm-studded island 80 miles south of Miami. The President and friends detrained, walked a sandy way to the wharf where lay in spick & span readiness the white seagoing houseboat Saunterer. Its owner, Manhattan Capitalist Jeremiah Milbank, eastern G. O. P. Treasurer during the 1928 campaign, greeted the President, turned the boat over to him, got off. The President's ensign, a blue flag with four white stars around the seal of the U. S., was .broken out, cameras clanked and clicked, President Hoover waved his hand, and the Saunterer moved out to sea.
The President planned to eat and sleep on the Saunterer, to spend his days fishing for sailfish, kingfish, barracuda, perhaps tarpon, from small speedboats. His only contact with the shore would be a courier in a launch. Newsmen, left behind as they always are when the President plays, settled down at Long Key to amuse themselves the best they could, to welcome whatever scraps of information were daily brought in by the courier from the Saunterer.