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Silken Pathway. Although Mrs. Roosevelt was traveling as a private citizen, she was treated almost like a visiting head of state. She addressed the Indian Parliament, was feted by scores of officials from Nehru on down. Newspapers ran her every word as front-page news. "Please," she pleaded at one point, when she was questioned about American race problems, "do not read Uncle Tom's Cabin and believe it represents the United States today." Indian Statesman Sir Benegal Rau spoke of her as a U.S. phenomenon comparable to Niagara Falls. In Bombay an admiring Indian textile worker spread ice yards of silk in her path up a tenement district stairway. She went right on being Mrs. Roosevelt. She "performed namas-kar" repeatedly, once giving some wealthy hosts the jim jams by using it to salute the footmen at dinner. She crept into native mud huts, worked an ancient spinning wheel in New Delhi, accepted a handmade revolver from Khyber Pass tribesmen, showed some Pakistani teen-agers how to dance the "Roger de Coverley." In the seven years since she has become the world's most famous widow, Mrs. Roosevelt has hardly been still a moment : kind, literal, awesomely helpful and endlessly patient, she has trotted up & down the stairways of the world, year after year — straightening its curtains, eying its plumbing, and occasionally admonishing the landlords of those political slums be hind the Iron Curtain, in sharp but hope ful tones. Sense & Sensibility. Her own country men are divided on the question of wheth er or not Mrs. Roosevelt is a woman of sense; but even the hardest-shelled Republican or deepest-Southern Democrat would probably agree (with oaths) that she is a woman of sensibility. Ever since she first appeared on the scene as the faintly ridiculous but somehow not altogether laughable national hostess — and on through the accelerating days when she became the galloping delegate of the New Deal and advocate of its social (and socialistic) suggestions — her calmly ladylike assumption that she is on the side of the reforming angels has turned her opponents livid with impotent and incoherent fury. They are positive that something about her is just plain wrong, but they can't quite put their finger on it. In their phrase (severely edited), she doesn't make sense. One of her favorite expressions, which appears often in her conversation and in her column, is "I feel ..." Not "I think," but "I feel." It might her motto.
The harsh limelight of publicity beats upon her as fiercely as it ever did during the years of the New Deal. Her vigor has prompted her friend & admirer, Anna Rosenberg, to call her the "jet plane with a fringe on top." But Mrs. Roosevelt has changed during her years alone. For one thing, in her appearance. Although she has aged visibly, more than one fascinated Frenchman, watching her speak this year in Paris, murmured: "Madame Roosevelt is becoming beautiful." This new look stems, in part, from an automobile accident which occurred one day in August 1946, as she was driving down New York's Saw Mill River Park way on her return from Hyde Park. Her car collided with two other automobiles. Mrs. Roosevelt's face was smashed against the steering wheel. Four other people were also injured.