It was one of those spontaneous expressions of people-to-people friendship that can take even a more practiced U.S. diplomat by surprise. After inspecting the new USIS library in downtown Algiers, G. Mennen Williams, 52, Assistant Secretary of State for African Affairs, was on his way out when up dashed an enthusiastic gentleman. Soapy got the hand, but the beard got him—in a bristly, both-cheeks embrace. The Algerians were all for Williams because he observed the sunrise-to-sundown Moslem fast of Ramadan—plus the fact that their government had decided to headline the U.S. emergency aid (40,000 tons of foodstuffs monthly) that helps nourish the country. Glowed Soapy, when he recovered his tongue: "I shall tell President Kennedy of the gratitude of the Algerian people."
Some four months after her husband, George, won the Michigan governorship, his sprightly missus, Lenore Romney, 52, explained how to keep winning the marital match. "Don't serve your husband a drink in a jelly glass," she told a group of conventioning beauticians in Detroit, "or serve his meals while you've got curlers on. He's the one who cares the most about you, and you owe it to him to look your very best." Then, wiggling her new light brown wiglet, Mrs. Romney let the ladies in on another secret: "It's the first time I haven't been all me."
With all the adulation going on for Whistler's Mother in her guest appearance in Atlanta, everyone seemed to forget another notable lady in art, who was peacefully tending her needlework in the Boston Museum of Fine Arts, where she has been a stay-at-home for five years. She was Whistler's Mother-in-Law, a postcard-sized pen-and-wash drawing of Mrs. John Birnie Philip, whom James McNeill Whistler always respectfully called "Ma'am."
Bedtime for Israel's most distinguished philosopher, Martin Buber, is 10 o'clock. But his 85th birthday was an exception. At the stroke of 11, some 400 students from the Hebrew University, where he taught before his retirement, paraded up Jerusalem's Lovers of Zion Street to the door of Buber's villa, carrying torches and singing in Hebrew "For Martin's a jolly good fellow." On the veranda, a pretty coed garlanded the white-whiskered Hasidic sage with flowers and soundly bussed his cheek. "What?" asked Buber with a merry twinkle. "Is there only one girl student here?" Then the students presented him with honorary membership in their student union. "I have a drawer full of honorary degrees, in everything from theology to medicine," said Buber. "But this is the first time I've been made an honorary student. This is a great honor for me."