The Waterbury Democrat., 1939-01-31


 the afternoon,
 and envelop
 e V eryth ing,
 ground to sky, from the Bat tery almost Up to City Hall, and then stop.
 There's something uncanny about it as 1t moves silently through streets and alleys, flowing around sharp corners of towering buildings like SO much milk. Tenn perature drops within the cloud, sometimes several degrees lower than Q few blocks up the street. Windows in tall office buildings are closed against the invader, as the first swirls of white begin to pour through.
 The white cloud may retain pos session of the lower part of the Island for hours, until a breeze drives 1t seaward or breaks it up. There is less conversation among home-rushing crowds If the blank ct stays until the committing hour is on. Each one buttons up his coat or draws his scarf about his ears, and hurries silently for his train. looking toward better weather at home.
 Peter Arno, the quaint artist, has prejudice against auto- graph-writing. At a recent cele- bration I attended, Arno sat at the next table. A lady on my left was having her menu card signed by those near her and asked me to hand 1t over to Arno. It came back with this name printed sketchily on 1t: "James Mont- gomery Flagg."
 George Matthew Adams, long, time friend of mine, was telling me some interesting things about Walt Mason the other day. Walt, who will be l77 next May, recently fell and hurt himself near his home ;n La Jolla, California. That week, for the first time in thirty years, there was a slight delay in receipt of three of Waits daily poems in the New York office. Adams wired, Don't mind, we'll use three old ones." But the plucky poet came through with the copy,
 It's telling no secret to say that Walt Mason was a drunken tramp printer, many years ago. Mason has told all about 1t in print. He went to work for William Allen White on the Emporia Gazette, quit liquor forever. White called the attention of his friend Adams to the little "prose poems" Walt used to write for amusement.
 At that time, Walt was making $25 a week. In two or three years he was making $500 a week out of syndication of the verse by Adams. He made that kind of money for a long term. He saved his money, built three fine homes in suc- cession, finally settling down at the edge of the Pacific. Once, rival concern offered Walt twice what Adams was able to pay. Mason refused, and has never been sorry.
 had long talk with Oracle Fields, the English motion picture comedy actress, in her suite at the Ambassador, on Park avenue. When I asked If I might come up she warned me that sine wasn't made up to receive company, but I told her that didn't matter a bit, as like women -made-up for a change, occasionally. After that, she seemed not at all conscious of the fact that she hadn't had time to change from her flowing house. coat to a dress, make up her face or fix her hair. The house-coat, I noticed, was a New York bit, all covered with prints of Esquire Magazine.
 One of the first items she told me is that she is forty years old. can't imagine hearing that from an American actress, no matter If she had played in the Perils of Pauline or opposite Richard Mans- field. Miss Fields, even without makeup or becoming hair-do, looks only 3i.
 "They tell me I photograph as of about 3l," she said, "but why should anybody lie about her age, anyway? It makes 1t so embar- assing when your true age Is pub- lished with your obituary"
 A friend of Miss Fields told me that she is the highest paid act- ress in the world, and the English woman didn't deny It.. I don't know how that could be. with all that money being tossed around In Hollywood, but I don't think 1t matters much. The English people like the Fields comedy. But this clever actress seems to be little known in America. She had just made a trip to Hollywood and re- turn when l talked with her, and was preparing to sail soon. She hadn't ever heard from the publi- city chief of the American film company that has Her under con- tract.
 Miss Fields speaks very much like the average American. That deah me and oh my deah stuff" she told me, "is put on for the Americans by a certain type of English actor. I can't bear itl" Copyright, 1889. McNaught Syndi-
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