Playwright Tennessee Williams, 51, who likes to claim that his deepest compassion is reserved for things "not meant to win," feels very compassionate about The Milk Train Doesn't Stop Here Anymore. After having been stopped with it twice on Broadway, in 1963 and again in 1964, Williams took the religious allegory to the Actor's Workshop in San Francisco, labored for two weeks to clear the metaphysical boulders off the track. It didn't quite work out; the play remained disappointing and minor. On opening night after the first act, Williams nervously jumped from the Train to Bob's Nevada Lounge next door to wait for the final curtain. Later he warned first-nighters that he would keep trying to get the play around the bend. "I never know when I've finished," he said.

Despite the dust, the sultry midsummer heat and a pursuing band of photographers, Jacqueline Kennedy looked cool and graceful as she led Daughter Caroline's pony, Leprechaun, into the ring for the 4-H Stablemates' Horse Show in Cape Cod's West Barnstable. Last year Caroline won a sixth-place ribbon in the show, but she failed to place this time in a "maiden equitation" event, left the family victories to Bobby Kennedy's daughters Kathleen and Mary Courtney, who trotted off with three blue ribbons. Later in the week, Jackie let John Jr. and Caroline host an ice-cream-and-cake party for the younger children of the clan as she celebrated her 36th birthday.

In the first chapter of an intricate crime story that might be entitled Murph the Surf, His Yeggs and All That Unfenceable Swag, a band of thieves slipped into New York City's American Museum of Natural History and footpadded out with 24 gems, including the priceless Star of India sapphire and the $140,000, 100.32-carat DeLong ruby. Chapter II: the cops picked up Jack ("Murph the Surf") Murphy and two Miami beachboy buddies--but not the jewels. Through contacts, the police began shadowy negotiations with the underworld, eventually regained nine of the stones, among them the Star of India (TIME, Jan. 15). Chapter III: New York's gang-busting District Attorney Frank Hogan, 63, disclosed that the DeLong ruby had wound up in the hands of some Miami usurers. They were asking $21,000 ransom, and at first Frank Hogan agreed. But 48 hours later, the D.A. snorted, "My office will not be used as an instrument in a ransom or blackmail deal like this." All of which leaves Murph the Surf and his two friends serving three-year jail terms and the DeLong ruby still missing, along with 14 other stones.

Ogden Nash, 62, fled Manhattan in the spring to settle in his old home town of Baltimore (TIME, May 28). Mayor Theodore R. McKeldin shot off a welcome-back letter, and after some meditation the master of quizzical doggerel replied:

Dear Mr. Mayor,

My spirits are gayer

Because of your letter of welcome;

It rang like a clink

Of ice in a drink

To one who has newly from Hell come.

Though others may fatten

And thrive in Manhattan

I found it a verminous vault,

So I'm glad you don't shun

The Prodigal Son

Whose heart never wandered from Balt.

Ill lay: New York Mets Manager Casey Stengel, in Manhattan, after an operation to repair his left hip, fractured when the Perfesser slipped while alighting from a taxi during the scheduled week-long celebration of his 75th birthday; former Japanese Premier Hayato Ikeda, 65, in Tokyo, with aftereffects from the radiation treatment used last November to rid him of the nonmalignant throat tumor that forced him to resign the premiership; Barry Goldwater, 56, in Phoenix, after a four-hour cervical laminectomy to repair an old injury to vertebrae in his neck.

It was a Thai for first prize. Not since the night in 1960 when Thailand's Pone Kingpetch became flyweight champion of the world had there been such rejoicing in Bangkok. Radios blared, horns honked, and the queen pronounced herself "delighted" as bulletins flashed from Miami Beach that a Thai girl once nicknamed Pook (Fatty), raven-haired Apasra Hongsakula, 18, had been voted Miss Universe. Queen Sirikit, herself a famous beauty, had fussed with Pook before the contest, marching her up and down the palace halls to watch her posture. When it was all over, Pook (35-22-35) paraded into New York City for a peek at the town and the World's Fair, cooed "I hope my Queen is happy."

Don't shoot! That scruffy Thoreauvian prowling around the woods with that chewed-up hat and the two-day grizzle was suave old Bing Crosby, 61, cheerfully letting his whiskers run to seed up in the Rocky Mountains. Cast in the role of the amiable, boozy doctor in a movie remake of Stagecoach, Bing bunked down at the Caribou Country Club and Ranch near Nederland, Colo., made some scenes for the horse opera, fished for rainbow trout with his son Harry, 7, and mused happily: "I look a bit like a Skid Row bum, don't I?"

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