One Leg, Single Mind

HIGH HATS AND Low Bows--Ellery Walter--Putnam ($3).*

Ellery Walter, young (25), one-legged and cheerful, attended the University of Washington, then set out to see the world. Part of his travels he has told about in The World on One Leg. In High Hats and Low Bows he recites with cheerful candor the high spots of a celebrity-hunting expedition during a summer in Europe.

Part of the time he paid his way by tutoring two small boys. When his leg began to bother him and he had to have another operation he lost his job. But he soon got another as courier to a bevy of ten Southern girls. Everywhere they went Traveler Walter did his best to meet the national celebrities, apparently never failed to get his man. Hindenburg received him, chatted with him a couple of hours. He had an audience with Mussolini, was photographed shaking hands with Il Duce proving he had been there (see cut). The late Sir Thomas Lipton took him racing on the Shamrock V and he watched King George's Britannia lose to them by a drifting length. Lloyd George drove him 45 miles to catch a train, in one hour flat.

When he took his girls to London theatres he "often heard hisses about a Turk or an American Mormon being in the house." Highest spot of the summer's adventures was when he was almost caught after lights telling ghost-stories to eight of his bevy in one of their rooms (out of bounds). When Chaperone Lulu knocked on the door Walter hid under the bed. Chaperone Lulu suspected nothing, the girls kept straight faces till "one of Miss Lulu's respectable feet kicked an earthenware object under the bed. There was a musical 'ping,' immediately followed by an almost hysterical outburst on the part of the eight girls." Everything, however, remained intact.

* Published Nov. 6.

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