The Press: Horace Revealed

Last month the Saturday Evening Post made a rare deviation from custom, published a small "agony" advertisement consisting of a young man's photograph and the simple text: "HORACE! Please write your Mother" (TIME, Feb. 2). The identity of Horace was held in strict confidence by the Post. Fortnight ago the Omaha World-Herald revealed that the photograph was recognized there as that of Horace Burt, 27, grandson of the late Horace Greeley Burt, who was president of the Union Pacific Railroad (1898-1904) in the time of its domination by the late great Edward Henry Harriman.

Horace's parents are divorced. His father, Russell Burt, resides in Los Angeles. His mother lived in Omaha until three years ago when she moved to St.Paul where her brother, Benjamin Wright Scandrett, famed railroad lawyer, is vice president of Northern Pacific. Another brother, Henry Alexander Scandrett, is president of Chicago, Milwaukee, St. Paul & Pacific Railroad Co.For two years Mrs. Burt and her brothers have been quietly, diligently searching for Horace, onetime student in Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Their search availed them nothing. Finally they resorted to the hope that Horace, who had been a thoroughgoing Post reader, would chance to stumble upon himself in the magazine's back pages.