Reporters Disagree

If she had not more energy, more zest than most rich women Eleanor Medill Patterson, daughter of Chicago's potent newsfamily, would never have badgered William Randolph Hearst into letting her edit his Washington Herald. (He said "No" when she wanted to buy it.) Last week Editrix Patterson, who cannot settle down in Washington but gads about the country for the fun of reporting, hinted that she had espied Professor Albert Ein stein on the Mojave Desert's brim in the nude.

". . . I was feeling rather shy and hesitant," she wrote, describing her approach to the Samuel Untermyer estate at Palm Springs, Calif., where she knew her quarry was a guest. Reporterwise, Mrs. Patterson noted the "Swedish maid," the "English girl secretary," the "German man secretary," and the "Italian-looking butler" who showed her up "a very steep and rocky, winding trail between the rocks."

"Up I went in the blazing sun," she wrote, "round a big rock. . . . I looked up--and bang! There was Einstein. . . .

He was gazing out across the wide and lovely and silent desert. Undulating, pastel tinted. A white handkerchief knotted at each of the four corners rested upon the famous shock of curly grey hair.

". . . He was Relativity in the nude.

"I couldn't go up so I had to come down, crestfallen and wondering what a regular determined go-getting she reporter would do under the circumstances."

Perhaps the greatest Hearst reporter was Arthur Brisbane. He has climbed up his ladder-like column of daily aphorisms to Journalism's highest wage: $250,000 yearly. He pontificates. He used to tell people not to sell the country short, and will again. As from Olympus he answered in his column, Today, Editrix Patterson's question about interviewing nudes.

"Under such circumstances," he wrote, "Nelly [sic] Ely,* best American woman reporter with the possible exception of Dorothy Dix/-, would have got a blanket, put it over Dr. Einstein and got the inter view, if necessary sitting on the blanket and Einstein to keep him from getting away.

"Mrs. Patterson is a first-class reporter.

Her account of Charley [sic] Chaplin's first night, with Dr. Einstein shedding big scientific tears, and Mrs. Einstein saying 'ach weh' should be read by all young reporters.

"Unfortunately Mrs. Patterson has more than a million dollars income, thanks to her grandfather, Joseph Medill, who founded the Chicago Tribune, so she won't do the fine things that she might do. Few-succeed, in spite of wealth, the worst of all handicaps."

The moral in the last sentence Mr. Bris bane has repeated as often as that child-rearing and travel broaden one. An incessant traveler himself, he happened to recross Kansas last week. Another colyumist, Urban Heywood Broun (reputedly earns more than $50,000 yearly), also crossed Kansas last week--for the first time.

Reports

Brisbane's It never grows tiresome. . . . . You must see all of the country.

Railway rates are lower. A small automobile will carry you.

Broun's

I don't like Kansas. At least not from a car window. If you. . . . . . like flat fields . Kansas may please you for a little while. . . . By nightfall the state will wear down the hardiest.

Colyumist Broun ended by relating that he used to tell ambitious young westerners who asked his advice about coming to New York: "There are no jobs. Don't come to New York. Stay where you are. You'll be better off." Hereafter his ad vice will be: "There are no jobs [in New York]. You'll probably have a terrible time. But come ahead, anyway. Hurry! Fly for your life before it is too late."

Colyumist Broun got off at Tucson, Ariz., where he has planted his son in school. Super-colyumist Brisbane sped on to the Hearst ranch at San Simeon, Calif. Editrix Patterson tarried briefly in Washington, which she scandalized by printing newspictures of Negroes, thus boosting Hearst darktown circulation.

* Not to be confused with Nelly Ely of Stephen Collins Foster's oldtime folksong. Mr. Brisbane assumed that everyone remembers Miss Eliza beth Cochrane who, writing as "Nellie Ely," circled the world in 72 days for the New York World in 1889--90.

/- Ledger Syndicate.

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