The White House Week

P: The President chose to speak in a roundabout way to the Government of Mexico. Recently the Mexican Congress passed land laws which are believed to threaten American property rights in Mexico as guaranteed by existing treaties. President Calles however has not yet approved the bill. To correspondents assembled at the White House, President Coolidge intimated that of course the U. S. assumes that Mexico will live up to her treaties.

P: President and Mrs. Coolidge attended for an hour the opening of the 35th annual Charity Ball for the benefit of the Children's Hospital. They did not dance* but received many friends in their box. Other notables at the ball included Vice President and Mrs. Dawes, a large part of the diplomatic corps, Senator and Mrs. James W. Wadsworth, Mr. and Mrs. John Hays Hammond, Dr. and Mrs. Stanley Rinehart.

P: "It is a tremendous inspiration to the tens of thousands in our ranks to know that we have in our Chief Executive one who is unfaltering in upholding the beneficent law for prohibition so challenged today by sinister forces. Permit me, Mr. President, as the leader of an army which day and night toils for the betterment of the victims of sin and misfortune to assure you that conditions are immeasurably better under this law than they were in those days when our great government was set for the defense and legalizing of a traffic that was an unmitigated curse."

So said a telegram from Evangeline C. Booth.

P: One afternoon Mrs. Coolidge received Mrs. Nicholas Longworth, wife of the Speaker of the House, and her step-mother in the oval room on the second floor of the White House. After a half hour's chat, Mrs. Longworth's step-mother was shown over the building, and shook hands with several of the older employes. It was the first time that Mrs. Theodore Roosevelt Sr. had been in the White House since she left it one March morning in 1909.

P: Word came from Plymouth, Vt., that the county commissioners in that neighborhood have regularly employed snow plows to keep clear the road from Ludlow to that town, so that if the President should decide at any time to visit his father, ill at Plymouth, there would be no chance of the Presidential automobile being ensnowed between the station and the homestead.

P: Mrs. Coolidge attended a luncheon of the Senate Ladies, as also a concert of the New York Philharmonic Society.

P: At Boston, one John Wilder, 80, Vermont fiddler, did not hesitate to blazon far and wide that he is an uncle of President Coolidge. He announced that he had read of the exploits of "Mellie" Dunham, famed "fiddler-to-Ford," and is prepared to play for the fiddling championship of New England. A few credulous, unmusical reporters were impressed when Mr. Wilder displayed his violin. "I tell you it's nearly 100 years old."

P: Another Uncle, Dr. C. W. Coolidge won third prize in the Buff Plymouth Rock Cockerels class in a poultry show at Madison Square Garden, Manhattan. He had but a single entry against 18 prizewinners from the entire country.

P: Chase S. Osborn,** millionaire and onetime (1911-12) Governor of Michigan, called at the White House and asked the President to release from prison Warren T. McCray, onetime Governor of Indiana, now at Atlanta for using the mails to defraud. Magnanimously if not practically, Mr. Osborn offered to take Mr. McCray's place in prison, saying: "I have nothing to do, I have no dependents, and I am used to more hardships than a prison entails."

P: Miss Helen Keller, famed prodigy, deaf and blind since she was 19 months old, visited the White House and was photographed with her arm about the President's neck. Her lips formed words inaudible to herself: "You are a dear President. They say you are cold, but you are not."

P: Senator and Mrs. David A. Reed of Pennsylvania, Mr. and Mrs. Frank W. Stearns, ex-Governor and Mrs. Sproul of Pennsylvania, Senator Smith of South Carolina, Congressman and Mrs. Begg of Ohio were guests on a week-end cruise aboard the Mayflower.

*The last President to dance at such an affair was William Howard Taft.

**Onetime Indiana and Michigan newspaper man, ardent dabbler in science (concocter of a theory explaining the source of glowworm light), inveterate globe trotter, Andean explorer, author: The Andean Land, The Iron Hunter.