The White House Week

P:Mrs. Coolidge, Colonel Sherwood A. Cheney, military aide of the President, Mrs. Cheney, Mr. and Mrs. Frank W. Stearns of Boston occupied a box at the afternoon performance of the Barnum & Bailey - Ringling Brothers circus in Washington.

P:The same day the President received a delegation from a new organization, with 55 members from 38 states: The Circus Men's Association of America. The President told them that he once walked 15 miles to see a circus.

P:Although Hiram Johnson, Senator from California, is well disposed toward the White House, he has not displayed cordiality toward any of its recent occupants. Of late the President has been inviting Senators to share his griddle cakes at breakfast. Last week Senator Johnson was one of those so honored. It is customary for the President to go in to breakfast side by side with the senior Senator present. An aide indicated Senator Johnson to the President. The President offered his arm. And together they walked. The others went smiling after.

P:Mrs. Coolidge in Girl Scout uniform received delegates from 39 countries in the Blue Room of the White House, and the President received them half an hour later. (See p. 7.)

P:It was definitely announced that the President and Mrs. Coolidge would summer at White Pine Camp, property of Irwin R. Kirkwood, publisher of the Kansas City Star. It is a 60-acre camp on Osgood Lake (one of the St. Regis group). The cabin for the President has two bedrooms, two bathrooms, a housekeeper's room, a sewing room, an attic. There are also a dining cabin, four guest cabins, a Japanese tea house, an open-air theatre, two bowling alleys, tennis courts, a billiard cabin, stables, two garages, a superintendent's house, a gardener's house, a greenhouse, a storehouse, cabins for 24 servants, two boathouses and a chicken house. There are also a fleet of boats and fishing for speckled and lake trout, black bass and great northern pike. The whole is situated a mile and a half from the Manhattan-Montreal highway, three miles from the railroad, 14 miles from Saranac, 20 miles from Lake Placid, 30 miles from Canada, 70 miles from Montreal and 370 miles from Manhattan.

P:Signalizing the advent of summer weather, the President went forth on his daily stroll wearing a straw hat.

P:Senators Wadsworth and Butler, both of whom come up for reelection this fall in states with a large foreign population, went to the White House and told the President that they would like to pass a law permitting 35,000 wives and minor children of alien-born residents of the U. S. to enter the country regardless of quotas.

P:The President last week exercised his first veto on any bill passed by the present Congress -- a bill directing him to reappoint one Captain Chester A. Roth well, who was discharged from the Engineering Corps of the Army because twelve Generals on an Efficiency Board had found that the Captain was "lacking in attention to duty, initiative and administrative ability, careless, indifferent and failing to take advantage of his opportunities for employment." The President decided to uphold the Efficiency Board, since he had no reason for reversing it.

P:The President and Mrs. Coolidge with guests, who included the two (Democratic) Senators from Virginia and C. Bascom Slemp (former Secretary to the President as well as onetime Congressman from Virginia), boarded the yacht Mayflower. Next morning they debarked at Yorktown. Governor Byrd of Virginia (brother of Polar-Pilgrim Byrd), with his attendants, was waiting for them. Under a bright sun, through fields of blooming clover, they drove to Williamsburg where on that day, 150 years ago, the Virginia Convention in session, including Patrick Henry, James Madison and other patriots, passed a resolution calling on the Continental Congress to "declare the United Colonies free and independent states" and to form a confederation of the states. At the site of the old Capitol, which for many years has been a fire-charred ruin, the President's party paused, then went on up Duke of Gloucester St. to the famed college of William and Mary. On the ancient campus, before Wren* Hall, the President, suddenly transmogrified with cap and gown, addressed the assemblage, and was made Doctor of Laws, causa honoris. Luncheon followed in the college commons and the Presidential party returned to Yorktown, to the Mayflower and to the completion of their week-end cruise.

*Designed by Christopher Wren.