The Coolidge Week

P: What is a sea elephant? President Coolidge knew all about the land elephant, which is the symbol of his political party: the largest of land animals, herbivorous, mammalian, ungulate, with a flexible proboscis, exaggerated incisors (tusks), rudimentary tail. But what is a sea elephant; mammal or fish? President Coolidge said he did not know and when John Ringling, who was in Washington with his circus, called at the White House and said his sea elephant weighed four tons. President Coolidge went to see for himself. Mrs. Coolidge, in summery white hat, suit and gloves, went too. They took seven-year-old Suzanne Boone and her parents. (Dr. Joel T. Boone is White House physician.) With Mr. Ringling by their side they saw the land elephants and lots of other creatures. President Coolidge shook hands with plump little Lilian Leitzel, the show's regal trapeze artist. And before hurrying back to his duties, President Coolidge discovered that a sea elephant is just an overgrown species of seal (Mirounga leonina), carnivorous, mammalian, with a flexible proboscis (not nearly so long as the land elephant's), wiry whiskers, hind limbs so rudimentary as to look like a big, muscular tail; broad, flat, forward flippers for swimming and spanking its young. While President Coolidge watched, John Ringling's sea elephant gladly devoured 50 Ibs. of fish.

P: What made President Coolidge hurry away from the circus (Mrs. Coolidge and Suzanne Boone stayed on) was an engagement to press a button to send a current to ignite a dynamite charge to blow through the Great Northern R. R.'s new tunnel under the Cascade Mountains 100 miles east of Seattle, Wash. Many a citizen was surprised to learn that this Great Northern tunnel, 7.79 miles long, is the longest tunnel in the western world, 1.66 miles longer than the Moffat Tunnel through the Rockies near Denver, of which so much was heard when it was holed through a year ago and opened to trains last winter.

P: Two days after his visit to John Ringling's menagerie, President Coolidge received a one-animal menagerie in his office. It came in a goldfish bowl and consisted of a horned toad (Phrynosoma cornutum). Old Rip, the toad's name was, because it was supposed to have been buried in the cornerstone of the Eastland, Tex., court house, for 31 years. That it was still alive, President Coolidge could plainly see. As he discussed its merits with Senator Mayfield and some other Texans, he pointed at it, not with his finger, but with the bars of his horn-rimmed spectacles. This gesture, observers realized, was not a conscious precaution against a bite or horned warts. Pointing with the bars of his spectacles, indefinitely, with both bars at once, is a gesture President Coolidge habitually employs to indicate a document or memorandum under discussion.

P: President Coolidge nominated Miss Genevieve R. Cline, Cleveland customs appraiser, to be a judge of the U. S. Customs Court. Miss Cline's confirmation by the Senate would make her the first woman ever elevated to the U. S. judiciary.*

P: Following last month's visit of Governor John H. Trumbull of Connecticut and his family at the White House, Washington murmured afresh that there might be a wedding at the White House before the Coolidges either leave or renew their lease. To have the choice of White House or Governor's mansion has not been the lot of many brides--if Florence Trumbull is, as Washington assumes, engaged to John Coolidge. Etiquetticians pointed out that precedent for a bride leaving her family's roof to be married at the White House was furnished by Frances Folsom's marriage to President Grover Cleveland at the White House in 1886.

P: A burly expressman, entering the White House with a case of new-laid eggs for President Coolidge from a California admirer, had hard going through a throng that had thronged to see Fliers von Huenefeld, Koehl and Fitzmaurice pay their call. President Coolidge took the airmen to the lawn outside his office and pinned upon them the first Distinguished Flying Crosses ever given to foreigners. The Distinguished Fliers at once departed, returning later for a state luncheon. Meantime, the expressman successfully delivered the eggs.

P: Underneath the surface excitement of so many comings and goings, President Coolidge continued pondering the Flood Control Bill. He would not, he could not sign it as passed by the Senate and House, he intimated. During the week, the House added to the President's ponderings by passing the Senate's farm relief bill, again called McNary-Haugen, again containing the (to President Coolidge) objectionable equalization fee. The House also passed the Merchant Marine Bill without fully meeting the President's objection to it. When asked if he will veto much-disputed bills like these, President Coolidge's reply formula is in effect as follows: "I do not see that such-and-such provisions to which I have previously stated my objections, have been substantially altered. Therefore, I do not see any substantial reason for altering my previous attitude."

* Mrs. Mabel Walker Willebrandt's position as Assistant U. S. Attorney General is a Cabinet position in the Executive branch of the U. S. Government, as distinct from the judiciary branch, composed by the Federal courts. Many another woman ranks high in state and municipal judiciaries, viz. Judge Florence E. Allen of Ohio's Supreme Court.