"Names make news." Last week these names made this news:

Early in the Depression, dapper, white-mustached Clarence Hungerford Mackay, board chairman of Postal Telegraph & Cable Corp., and his wife, who was Opera Singer Anna Case, closed their 50-servant "Harbor Hill" mansion on Long Island, ousted their superintendent from his snug, white lodge on the grounds, moved into the lodge. Last week the Mackays prepared to move back to "Harbor Hill." For the present they will open only the south side of the mansion, keep a skeleton staff.

So elated was the Count of Covadonga, eldest son of Spain's ex-King Alfonso XIII, at receiving a case of whiskey from his comely Cuban wife that he spent his monthly allowance of $200 on a steamship ticket to Manhattan. Besides rejoining his wife, the haemophilic Count, who lost his pretensions to the throne and his title (Prince of Asturias) by marrying a commoner, planned to hunt work as a cinemactor. Said he: "My wife and I would be together now if it were not for Father. Father wanted the marriage annulled but I said: 'Nuts, I won't give you that pleasure.'. . . My wife was offered half a million dollars by a Hollywood firm to make two pictures. Out of loyalty to me she rejected the offer. When I arrive she may reconsider the offer. I may even be offered a small part. I am willing to play the second part. That would be another shock for the family."

From London's gem district went word that the Jonker Diamond had been sold to a Manhattan dealer named Harry Winston. For the uncut, egg-sized stone which shrewd Sir Ernest Oppenheimer of Britain's Diamond Corp. bought for $312,000, Dealer Winston had reputedly paid $730,000. The Jonker, youngest and most perfect of the world's great diamonds, was found one January day last year by the black Kaffir boy of Jacobus J. Jonker, a seedy South African prospector. That night Prospector Jonker tied the stone around his wife's neck, bolted his cabin doors, stood guard until dawn with his son Jacobus Jr. Next morning the stone was weighed at 726 carats, took rank as the fourth largest ever found. Cut as a single stone it would be second only to the Star of Africa which was cut from the Cullinan stone and is now a British Crown jewel. Dealer Winston, mindful that the U. S. has no diamond to compare with it in size,* assumed an air of national trusteeship, said he would carry it to Manhattan himself on a U. S. boat. Said he: "I do not think the American people would like it brought on a vessel of any other nation."

Out of Reno with her handsome new Danish husband sped Countess Barbara Hutton Mdivani Haugwitz-Reventlow. Late that night they drove into San Francisco, put up in the bridal suite of a hotel. Next morning the Count handed newshawks typewritten slips of paper setting forth that his first name was "Court--not Curt or Kurt." He announced that he was paying off Manhattan newshawks with whom he made solemn $25 bets that he would not be married within a year. Meanwhile Barbara's father, Franklyn Laws Hutton, had followed in his private railroad car the Curleyhut. After three days of shopping, dancing, sightseeing, Count & Countess Haugwitz-Reventlow started East in the Curleyhut, headed for France or Denmark.

On the Haugwitz-Reventlow Danish country estate "Rosenlund" (see p. 22) parishioners built bonfires in celebration of becoming the richest parish in Denmark, hoped for a 10% tax reduction.*

Rear Admiral Richard Evelyn Byrd, arriving overland from Manhattan, made his entrance into Boston in false mustache, dark spectacles and cap. At the Charlestown Navy Yard he slouched up the gangplank of the Jacob Ruppert, donned his white uniform, marched resplendently down again for an official reception.

To 95 oldsters in small Horicon, Wis., postmen delivered 95 identical pairs of envelopes, one white, one brown. All the oldsters were men or widows of men who had spent their lives making grain drills and seeders for the Van Brunt Manufacturing Co. In each white envelope was a letter from their oldtime employer Willard Van Brunt, now 88 and retired to California. Read the letter: "In all my recollections one of the unhappiest mileposts passed during my life occurred on that winter morning in 1918 when I left my old home in Horicon. . . . The registered Government bonds, in your name, which I expect you to receive about the time this reaches you, is part of our earnings while we were all on the job." Each oldster opened the brown envelope, found three U. S. baby bonds, current value $2,154, ultimate value (1960) $3,000. Horicon mathematicians calculated that Willard Van Brunt had remembered Auld Lang Syne to the tune of $205,000.

*The Hope, owned by Mrs. Evalyn Walsh McLean, is famed not for its size (44 carats) but for its peculiar blue color. *Danes calculated that the Countess' fortune was 225,000,000 kroner, not quite twice the gold reserve of the Kingdom of Denmark.

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