Latest addition to the heartwarming legend growing up around Pope John XXIII: at a recent audience for a group of Italian bishops. His Holiness, who served as an NCO with an Italian medical unit during World War I, spied the Rt. Rev. Arrigo Pintonello, chief chaplain of the Italian army, wearing a general's insignia. As the bishop prepared to genuflect and kiss the papal ring, the Pope stepped up smiling, saluted, reported in: ''Sir, Sergeant Roncalli, at your command."
As Brooklyn's Judge Samuel S. Leibowitz, a hot-tempered scourge of the underworld during the day, slumbered peacefully in his seaside home, a sneak thief lifted His Honor's pants from a bedroom chair, made off with $72.
Taking a routine item over the phone about a Masonic lodge meeting in Louisburg, Kans. (pop. 677). a Kansas City Starman perked up slightly when told that a jut-chinned visitor named Harry S. Truman had been present. "You know,'' said the caller, thoughtfully clarifying his report, ''he is the former Grand Master of the Masonic Lodge in Missouri.''
By ancient custom, a Japanese fiancé seals the engagement by buying the bride. Last week Crown Prince Akihito made a small investment (two fish, five rolls of white silk, six bottles of sake), officially sealed his troth to Michiko Shoda, who then knuckled down to the weary task of studying the archaic imperial wedding lore under Palace Ritualist Osanaga Kanroji. His bride in hand, the prince was free to join his parents. Emperor Hirohito and Empress Nagoko, at a heady gala: the annual poetry-reading contest. Fired by this year's contemporary topic (windows), an astounding 22,427 waka fanciers had submitted the stirrings of their muses. Eleven of the 15 winners were able to join the imperial family in the palace's drafty West Room to hear professional chanters drone the formal. 31-syllable verselets. The Emperor, who is above the burly of competition, had again delighted all by submitting a waka himself. Five times, a chanter intoned the tiny poem:
'Tis spring at last
As by the window I stand
Watching the pheasants playing happily.
Turning guest for a change, chirrupy Washington Hostess Perle Mesta showed up towing a "friend from Newport," Sportsman Cornelius Vanderbilt, at a convivial "victory"' party honoring the new Congress, was soon chuckling brow-to-brow with the first Democratic table-hopper to arrive for the jollity. Rhode Island's venerable (91) Senator Theodore F. Green.
Sharing the lot of her snow-plagued subjects. Queen Elizabeth II plowed her station wagon into a drift near the royal homestead at Sandringham. had to mush 200 yds. down the road with Prince Charles to find a phone, call for help.