JUDICIARY: Quiet Christmas

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Tall, grey Richard Lee Strout, Washington correspondent of the Christian Science Monitor, and editor of Maud, 1939 non-fiction bestseller, is well and widely acquainted in the Capital. Correspondent Strout even knows inaccessible, flinty, old (77) James Clark McReynolds, lonesome last conservative on the U. S. Supreme Court (TIME, Dec. 4). Last week Newshawk Strout, striding through last-minute Christmas shopping, encountered the hawk-faced Justice in a toy store off Pennsylvania Avenue. After an exchange of season's greetings, Reporter Strout probed: buying gifts for others? No, said Justice McReynolds—a gift for himself. To a clerk he boomed stentorian-wise : "A package of marbles, please; the kind used for Chinese checkers." He got the marbles, strode majestically off down the street, alone.