TERRITORIES: To the Virgins

Gather ye rosebuds while ye may, Old Time is still a-flying: And this same flower that smiles today Tomorrow will be dying.

This advice 17th Century Poet Richard Herrick gave "To the Virgins." Novelist Robert Herrick, born more than two centuries later, does not favor the same type of literary composition. A New Englander who began novelizing while he was a professor at the University of Chicago, he made his reputation with Together (a best seller in 1908) which touched not lightly upon adultery. Yet last week he, too, addressed himself to the Virgins, not in writing but in an airplane.

As Sexagenarian Herrick lay sunning himself at Winter Park, Fla., he received an appointment from Secretary of the Interior Ickes as Government Secretary to the Virgin Islands, right hand Administrative job in the regime of Sexagenarian Governor Paul Pearson. Novelist Herrick packed his bag, boarded an amphibian and three days later took the oath of office in the Administration Building in St. Thomas.

Thus the New Deal added another literary light to its representatives overseas who already include: Novelist Meredith Nicholson, Minister to Paraguay; Historian William E. Dodd, Ambassador to Germany; Journalist Claude G. Bowers. Ambassador to Spain; Publisher Lincoln MacVeagh, Minister to Greece.