The Birmingham age-herald., 1914-06-07

Mrs Selene Armstrong Harmon. who Is writing a series of papers on "Womer Worth While" published this week a de. lightful story of Mrs. Oscar Underwood which was published in several eastern papers and excerpts from which will bt read with interest here. Mrs. Harmon formerly lived in Atlanta and has rela. tives in Birmingham. Writing of Mrs Underwood she had asked her of hel hobbies and her fads.
 ''I do not catch them any more easily than a grown person does the measles, she says.
 She's no suffragette at all. She doesn't even belong to the Womans club. And when it comes to old-fa shioned ideas about big families, why, she agrees with Colonel Roosevelt and Madame Schu- mann Heinke- Indeed, her admiration of the latter is based on the fact that the diva has genius and eight children, too.
 You see, have no new ideas, and am not at all fit when 1t comes to being interviewed" solemnly declares Mrs Os- car Underwood, wife of the senator from Alabama, beg pardon, the majority leader in the House at Washington.
 Yet for all her modesty, and partly be- cause of 1t, no woman in the national eye is more worth interviewing than Mrs. Underwood. Nor, in spite of her protes- tations to the contrary, has any woman two bigger hobbies. For 1t Is easy to dis cover in ten minutes talk with her that Mrs. Underwood's hobbies are her hus- band and politics. Now that MT. Under wood has been elected to the Senate to succeed the late Senator Johnston, it may be said that politics. especially Alabama politics, holds decidedly new zest for his wife. Mrs. Underwood's interest In her husbands s career has been vital inter- ,s and one of practical as well as in .r ltional value to him.
 Ince my earliest girlhood," Mrs. Un- ss 'ood acknowledges. 'I have had a
 e for politics. l confess to this reFdc- s4ftly, perhaps because down soufh we
 10 conservative with regard to women sll politics. I think men, 'ard women rrr accept woman in good faith when
 declares that the Consuming interest
 sr life is national politics. She gets
 for being either silly or affected and almost never for the ability really to comprehend national issues"
 Few women are better fitted to grace high position than is Mrs. Underwood She is highly accomplished, having a mezzo soprano voice of unusual beauty. She cultivated her voice under eminent teachers in Paris during her early girl hood, and continues her vocal study in Washington. In books her taste tends to the psychological and the philosophical. In the matter of clothes her gowns are always characterized by great simplicity, but it is that simplicity which only the smartest can achieve. Widely travelled, she has the culture of the cosmopolite, but she has never lost that frankness, friendliness and -heartedness that are characteristic of so many southern women.
 Last year MT. and Mrs. Underwood pur- chased a home in Washington It was the house formerly owned by Maj. Archi- bald Butt the popular aide of President Taft. who was among the victims of the wreck of the Titanic. Mrs. Underwood has spent every. congressional season ir Washington since her marriage, nine years ago. Also. she is a real standpatteI when 1t comes to remaining at the capital during the summers heat of an extra ses- eion, in order to be with her husband.