People, Oct. 22, 1934

(2 of 3)

Founders' Day Speaker at Wheaton College, Norton, Mass. was Author William Rose Benét. His subject: Poetess Elinor Wylie, his late fragile wife, who composed whole poems without pencil or paper and died in 1928 from the effects of falling downstairs. Declared Mr. Benét: "No photograph can recapture the distinction of her actual appearance, the strange, unforgettable beauty, the remote fastidiousness, the shy, almost scared aloofness followed on the instant by some impulsive gesture of affection or the kindling of her expressive face to some enthusiasm. She made the most diverse impressions upon people met casually and for a short time. She was beautiful, with eyes that changed their expression from that of a falcon to that of a kitten. They were strange, hazel eyes, full of valor." Having accused him of selling his country's military secrets to Germany, the officers of the French Army in 1894 handed an obscure Jewish captain named Alfred Dreyfus a pistol, told him it was the officer's way out. Captain Dreyfus chose to live. Through four years of imprisonment on Devil's Island he lived, while mobs rioted, cabinets fell, all France divided into Dreyfusards and Anti-Dreyfusards. Grey and haggard, he lived to see Emile Zola & friends clear his name, to serve at the front in the World War, to be raised to the rank of lieutenant colonel. Last week, to many a Frenchman troubled by L' Affaire Stavisky, it came as a shock to be reminded that Colonel Dreyfus still lived. In a Paris hospital, tortured by nightmares of Devil's Island, afflicted with gland trouble and nearly blind, the central figure in the most famed of France's causes célebrès was passing his 75th birthday. For the running of the Langollen National Steeplechase on his Upperville, Va. estate, young Sportsman John Hay ("Jock") Whitney flew down from Manhattan in his new plane. Few feet above the landing field the motor stalled. The plane struck a ditch, nosed over, bumped owner and pilot into unconsciousness. With a black eye and six strips of plaster on his face, Sportsman Whitney went out next day to announce the races. In Washington Princess Julia Dent Grant Cantacuzene, granddaughter of President Ulysses Simpson Grant, regained the U. S. citizenship to which she was born in the White House in 1876. which she lost in 1899 by marrying Russian Prince Michael Cantacuzene. Regretting that she had been unable to get accommodations in anything more humble than tourist class of the Majestic, Mirabai (Madeleine Slade), British disciple of Mahatma Gandhi, arrived in Manhattan after a stormy passage. Said Mirabai, shivering in woolen robe and sandals: "Miss Slade died nine years ago when I renounced the world. ... I shall try to give Mahatma's point of view. . . . Who can say that he is greater or less than your Christ? ... He is my Christ."