So busy riding Michigan's Epworth League circuit that he could no longer get back to Charlotte on Sundays, pious ex-Governor Luren Dudley Dickinson (81) announced regretfully that he would have to give up the Bible Class at the Center Eaton Methodist Church over which he had presided regularly for 55 years--never more regularly than when all he had to do was run Michigan.

To U. S. World War I Ace Eddie Rickenbacker (26 planes), fighting for his life in an Atlanta hospital since he crashed in one of his Eastern Airliners (TIME, March 10), came cabled best wishes from German World War I Ace Ernst Udet (62 planes), No. 1 Nazi stunting dareall and now the directing genius of Luftwaffe production and design.

Thirty-eight years ago a panty-waisted young bucko who had quit Buffalo Bill's circus for prospecting whirled into Manhattan, met handsome Socialite-Banker Julian M. Gerard, brother of World War I Ambassador to Germany James W. Gerard. Charmed and impressed, Gerard grubstaked Death Valley Scotty (Walter Scott) to $10,000, made a contract to get 22 1/2% of all nuggets he found. Ever since, Death Valley Scotty has been talking about his hidden gold mines, and though Scotty has gone through a lot of money, Banker Gerard has never seen any of it. Last week in Los Angeles court he sued for his share. Scotty, affable and fanciful as ever for all of 65 years and a gleaming shiner ("A mule kissed me," he explained), spun a fine yarn of a hillside currency cache which unhappily washed away when the rains came. The judge tolerantly termed him "a confessed cheat," observed that here was one hick who had trimmed city slickers. Broker Gerard, still friendly enough with Scotty to shake hands, hoped at least for a cut on the $1.10 Scotty took from tourists who came to gaze at his fancy desert residence.

Following his older brothers Jimmy (captain with the Marines at San Diego, Calif.) and Elliott (captain in Army air procurement at Wright Field, Dayton, Ohio), 26-year-old Franklin D. Roosevelt Jr. quit his job as a Wall Street lawyer, prepared to leave wife and small son, report as ordered April 3 for service as ensign of the Naval Reserve, aboard the destroyer Mayrant. Next day, fourth and youngest son John, 25, convalescing at the White House after a minor operation, got a commission too--as ensign in the Navy supply corps. His probable first assignment upon being called: to enroll in Philadelphia's Naval Finance and Supply School.

"Before the war," observed shy, polite Author Harold Nicolson, British Parliamentary Secretary to the Information Ministry, to his constituents, "I had a great friend called Colonel Lindbergh." (The Colonel used to live, in fact, on Nicolson's Kentish estate.) "Before the war, Lindbergh's opinion of the British people was, 'You're fine but you are getting soft.' Now, after every bad raid, I have the great pleasure of sending him a post card saying, 'Do you still think we are soft?' Lindbergh does not answer these cards but I like sending them."

To Manhattan from Lisbon came handsome, Hungarian-born George H. Mendelssohn, 29, looking rather more like a U. S. collegiate than the great-great-grandson of Felix Mendelssohn-Bartholdy. Before going off to join the U. S. Army, Emigre Mendelssohn confided that in his own musical composition he stuck to jazz --"classical jazz."

Cleared by a Los Angeles jury of a charge that he had caused a man to be falsely arrested for loitering about his house, lurching, lachrymose Cinecomic Wallace Beery breezed cheerily out of court on the arm of Mrs. Loreen Buffum Robinson, a wealthy Manhattan widow whom he would like to make his third wife. Burbled he: "I probably ask her every day, and she probably refuses me every day. But I'm not giving up. I'm no fool."

When dimpled, dilettantish Chicago Socialite Washington Porter II found himself fresh out of cash last year, he went to Mrs. Frank Granger Logan, who also loves art (she authored the 1936 Sanity in Art brouhaha), and asked her to buy his curio-crammed museum-mansion until he could raise the money to buy it back. Mrs. Logan found $17,500 and Wash Porter took other quarters. Last week, because he was sure the Logans were planning to sell some of his fanciest items, Collector Porter resolved to reoccupy his lakeshore fastness, and taking friends and reporters along broke in at dawn. Drawing on cellar stocks with which to withstand the longest siege, he cried: "A man's house is his castle. I defy anyone to put me out."

Vice President Wallace arrived at his office with a fine scratch on his nose. Hit himself with his own racquet playing early-morning tennis, he said.

Having hitherto risked the Blitz in the running luck of travel, their Britannic Majesties, George VI and his Queen, are soon to get a warworthy armored train--three coaches plated and shuttered in 1/8-in. bullet-and shatterproof steel.

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