Richard King Mellon, 40, successor to his uncle, the late Andrew William Mellon, as head of the Mellon financial empire, has plenty of chicks but no child. Last week he and his 29-year-old wife, Constance Prosser McCaulley Mellon, adopted a two-months-old boy. To newshawks who begged for the largesse of a look at the child, Father Mellon gave short change.

Q.: "What does the baby look like?"

Mellon: "Have you ever seen a two-months-old baby?"

A.: "Yes."

Mellon: "What did he look like?"

Q.: "How does it feel to be a father?"

Mellon: "Are you a father?"

A.: "Yes."

Mellon: "Well, how do you feel?"

On the set in Hollywood, between takes, Cinemactress Greta Garbo, the Swedish nonpareil, is wont to sit aloof and brooding. Metamorphosed by her light-comedy role in her picture-in-progress (Ninotschka), she joined the offset chatter, sometimes smiled right out loud.

Aging Prophet Herbert George Wells, 72, published in England his 85th book, The Fate of Homo Sapiens. He contended that it is "still just possible" that democratic brainwork may avert Man's fate; otherwise mankind, "which began in a cave, will end in the disease-soaked ruins of a slum."

When Tourist Joseph Patrick Kennedy Jr., 23-year-old son of the U. S. Ambassador to the Court of St. James's, went for a swim at San Sebastian beach in Franco's Spain, he was tapped by a Spanish cop, who quoted Spain's antiquated new beach laws (TIME, Aug. 7), made him don a top to his bathing suit.

Sphinx-Headed Author Gertrude Stein uttered: "It is nice that nobody writes as they talk and that the printed language is different from the spoken otherwise you could not lose yourself in books and of course you do you completely do. I always do." Best novel to lose yourself in, according to the Stein taste: Samuel Richardson's Clarissa (date: 1748).

To Hollywood went Michael O'Daniel, 19, son of Texas' Governor Wilbert Lee ("Pass the Biscuits, Pappy") O'Daniel, to make his fortune with his face. After a screen test he was offered a contract by Paramount, went home in high feather to get his pappy's consent.

Beaked Alan Patrick Herbert, 48, England's quixotic M. P. for Oxford who crusades with equal fervor for good beer, sensible divorce laws and the King's English, broke a lance against the windmill of officialese. Said he, if Nelson's famed signal ("England expects every man to do his duty") were repeated today, it would read: "England anticipates that as regards the current emergency, personnel will face up to the issues and exercise appropriately the functions allocated to their respective occupation groups."

So offended by the noisome proximity of a hog farm to his Montecito, Calif, estate that he complained he had to use smelling salts, well-nosed Maestro Leopold Antoni Stanislaw ("Stoky") Stokowski appealed to the law, had the hogs evicted.

Noble-browed Polar Explorer Vilhjalmur Stefansson, 59, published a book about Iceland (Iceland: The First American Republic), joined Local 537 of the New York College Teachers Union, because "as yet there is no union for polar explorers."*

* Nearest thing to an explorers' union is Manhattan's Explorers Club. President: Vilhjalmur Stefansson.

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