Fraulein and Swede

Steaming in through San Francisco's Golden Gate, last week, came the President McKinley, bearing a petite, blue-eyed German Fraulein of twenty-two. Resting an elbow on the ship's rail and cuddling her small chin in a pensive palm, she gazed at Las Papas, those twin, majestic mountains called "The Breasts." Then, having admired the view, Fraulein Clarenore Stinnes coolly turned to confront excited reporters.

Yes, she was the daughter of the late Hugo Stinnes. No, he had never claimed to be "The Richest Man in the World." Well, perhaps he had been the richest man in Germany, for a time, while the mark was falling, and he was building great pyramided super-trusts. What? Fraulein Stinnes shrugged. Why trouble to rehearse the details of her father's death and the titanic business crash which her brothers were powerless to avert. Clarenore Stinnes is 22, lives in the present, is rich.

She preferred to answer questions about the motor trip which she is making around the world, and about the handsome, strapping Swedish cinema camera man who is motoring with her, Herr C. A. Soederstroem.

Soon Californians heard how Fraulein Stinnes had set out from Berlin, last May, with two Adler cars, four mechanics and Herr Soederstroem. By way of the Balkans, Turkey, Persia and the Caucasus they drove to Moscow and thence to Irkutsk, Siberia, where the four mechanics refused to press on and returned by rail to Berlin. Not thus craven was Herr Soederstroem. He stuck with Fraulein Stinnes at Irkutsk for almost three months, while they waited for Lake Baikal to freeze, then drove across and on to Mongolia, China, Japan and the President McKinley.

"Once, at Urga, Mongolia," said Frau lein Stinnes, "we had to pay 140 marks ($336) for 106 litres of gasoline (28 gallons)." From San Francisco petite Motorist Stinnes proposed to sail for Valparaiso, Chile, whence she will motor northward to Washington, D. C., and thence proceed home to Berlin.

"The films I am taking we shall sell," said Cinema Swede Soederstroem, "and Fraulein Stinnes is writing a book."