Emotion Mastered

Buxom, blonde, Nordic Fraulein Rasche came to the U. S. to exhibit her able stunt flying, to fly back across the Atlantic. For many weeks, she had been haunting the flying fields, quarreling with her unnamed backers, posing for photographs. A green and red Bellanca was ready for her trans-Atlantic hop, yet not available until additional safety devices should be installed. Fraulein Rasche fretted, pouted for the press.

Mrs. James A. Stillman appeared as the answer to her troubles. She bought her another Bellanca, painted a tender, feminine sky-blue. She bravely went up with her protege and returned to write a powerful piece for the New York American (Hearst). It began:

''' 'By Mrs. James A. Stillman.' Having got that down on paper and looked at it, I hardly know how to go on. It's one thing to have fifteen or twenty people shouting a lot of questions at you at once. It's an experience, I might say, that I've got quite used to. But it's another thing to sit down and try to think up both questions and answers."

Enough of this toying. Mrs. Stillman had something to say:

"I think my chief interest in making this flight, after all, was my interest in seeing how one of my sex has so far mastered the emotional side of living which is so particularly feminine as to be able to think out carefully every move of the mechanical thing in which we were riding. . . . It's the one thing I think women need to learn more and more if they are to get the most out of life."

Would she fly with Fraulein Rasche to Europe? "Mrs. Stillman," she asked herself, "are you going to do it?" She relieved the suspense, answered herself: "I'm afraid I'm not. I have my family to think of--but--if it weren't for that--"

Back on her yacht Winona, Journalist Stillman renewed her ancient feud with photographers by threatening to hurl one bold fellow into the waters of Long Island Sound. Plates and crockery, not threats, had been her weapons last July, when she fell upon the persistent, scoop-seeking villains of the press at her son's wedding. On the Winona Fraulein Rasche, an interested spectator, lumbered to her cabin, rested.

But no Stillman emotional experience can be serene. Into this idyllic union of feminine wealth and feminine daring came the disturbing arm of the law. Fraulein Rasche's former backers, suddenly emerging from anonymity, frankly revealed themselves as Harold W. Hartwell and the Hollis Corporation. They disclosed a contract with the aviatrix, obtained an injunction preventing her from flying away in the Stillman sky-blue Bellanca.

Backer Hartwell observed tersely: that he had made an extended search for a substitute aviatrix to fly the green and red Bellanca, but in vain; that he expected half of the Rasche publicity profits and a position as her manager; that he would not release her unless "any act of moral turpitude should injure her reputation."

Weeping, Fraulein Rasche considered the horrors of moral turpitude. But Mrs. Stillman reassured her: "Now, don't you worry. I have had lots of court experience. Everything will come out all right."