Miscellaneous Mentions

Many people honestly believe that one Ulysses Simpson Grant was general of the Federal forces in the Civil War; that he said, "I purpose to fight it out on this line if it takes all summer"; that he drank plenty of hard liquor; that he was later President of the U. S. They are wrong. No such person ever did any of these things.

Last week General Grant's grandson, Major Ulysses S. Grant, disclosed that his famed grandfather had been christened Hiram Ulysses Grant. Said he: "History's error was caused by confusion on the part of the Congressman who recommended Hiram Ulysses Grant for West Point. The Representative mixed his name with that of his brother, Simpson Grant, and the erroneous name became fixed."

Geneva, lying meekly by the Alps, will receive Mrs. Woodrow Wilson on her second pilgrimage. She and her brother, Wilmer Boiling, sailed on the Leviathan last week. To Governor Alfred E. ("Smiling") Smith, $3,000; to his secretary, George B. Graves, $200; to St. Mary's Roman Catholic Church, $9,000; to 17 other churches, $250 each. So saith the will of the late John F. Brennen, beloved Tammany politician of little note.

"Who do you think I am--President Coolidge?" This was Vice President Dawes' way of informing Chicago camera men that he did not wish to be photographed in fishing garb before leaving for Colorado. Said Mr. Dawes: "If President Coolidge wants to pose for fishing pictures, all right, but I won't." At White Pine Camp the President has not been photographed in actual piscatorial encounter, but his merest fishing experience has been nationally recounted. Mr. Dawes intends to capture trout in the Rocky Mountain streams, unseen, unpublished. Four years come and go, and again sweltering delegates in some hot metropolis cast their state's several votes as a unit for some Democratic Presidential candidate. Again they cast them, again and again,* until in desperation they compromise on some one who can attain the two-thirds majority necessary for Democratic nomination. Last week John W. Davis, one-time nominee (1924), corporation lawyer emitted a dictum and a prophesy for his party: The dictum: "One delegate, one vote; the majority of votes to nominate." Both the "two-thirds" and the "unit" rules should be abolished. The prophecy: "If the proposed change is a good thing for the party, it will be a good thing for the candidate. If it is a bad thing for the party, it will be a bad thing for the party's Presidential nominee." In Raleigh, N. C., a semi-bald, placid, likeable newspaper editor amuses himself and satisfies his readers. He is Josephus Daniels, Democrat, War-time Secretary of the Navy. Last week he became orator once again. Exasperated with hearing farm bloc blurb, he told the Annual Farmers' Convention at North Carolina State College to "awake out of their sleep and go into politics redheaded. . . . There never was a time when farmers had such negligible influence in government as now." And Editor Daniels was never ironic. The rancor of feuds has wiped out many a Tennessee mountaineer, many a Chicago gangster, many a hone of political potentates. Puzzled citizens often wondered why two such potentates, Theodore Roosevelt and William Howard Taft, split the Republican party in 1912 by their lack of accord, and thereby became of great assistance in the election of Woodrow Wilson to the Presidency. At least one citizen no longer wonders. Last week Dr. Charles A. Moore, acting chief of the Manuscript Department of the Library of Congress, announced the completion of the mounting and filing of the 250,000* letters written and received by William Howard Taft during his Presidential term in 1909-13. The Taft-Roosevelt letters prior to their break will be published, among others, posthumously. Two handsome young matrons, Mrs. Alfred F. Madlener, and Mrs. John B. Drake Jr., daughter-in-law of John B. Drake (hotels), went to Chicago's grimy LaSalle street station to greet their father, Frank O. Lowden, the Farmer's Friend, as he stepped off the Twentieth Century Limited, home again after two months of watching German and Scandinavian farmers at their chores. The family party--Mrs. Lowden was with her husband--went first to the Drake-owned Blackstone Hotel, then to "Sinnissippi," the 4,500-acre Lowden agricultural estate down at Oregon, 111. There, three days later, 500 Illinois bankers followed them, to stand knee deep in clover that was soaked by a heavy drizzle, to hear Mr. Lowden explain how his estate is operated (at an admitted loss). Thronging into the immaculate, fragrant edifice that houses scores of Sinnissippi cows, the bankers heard their association president proclaim the cows' owner as "one of Illinois' greatest governors, who would make one of the nation's greatest Presidents." The present governor of Illinois, crooked Len Small, was out in Yellowstone -Park, but Lieutenant-Governor Fred E. Sterling had come over to do homage to the man who was known for a "great" governor in his day. Eyeing the Lowden mansion, before which sat the ladies of the family in cool and fashionable attire, Lieutenant-Governor Sterling declared: "A swell place for one of those front porch campaigns in 1928!"

*In 1924, 104 ballots were taken (TIME, July 21, 1924.) *Mr. Taft is credited with being the most prolific correspondent of all Presidents. Even during the Civil War period Abraham Lincoln wrote a mere 10,000 letters.