Word: algonquin
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...been President only a few days when he was rubbed the wrong way by a time-honored White House custom: he got stuck between floors in its creaky elevator. Ever since Theodore Roosevelt had it installed in 1902 (his rollicking sons used it to haul their patient pony Algonquin to & from their quarters). U.S. Presidents had frequently been stalled in the ornate mirrored and oak-paneled cage. The only power a President had in that emergency was to ring a gong, then wait while workmen hurried to the basement and jiggled the rachitic machinery back into motion...
Last week President Truman could see progress, on at least one of his pet programs. Workmen started tearing out the old lift, proudly reported they had found a hoofprint of Algonquin in the cork tile floor. The cage will go to the Smithsonian Institution as a relic. It will be replaced by a speedy, fireproof elevator designed by White House Architect Lorenzo Winslow at Harry Truman's order. Until about Oct. 1 the Truman family will have to use the stairways...
Died. Frank Case, 73, urbane proprietor-host of Manhattan's Algonquin Hotel, where the literati of the '20s (Woollcott, Benchley, etc., etc.) lunched at his famed Round Table, and where for four decades he matched wits with assorted writers and actors, afterwards chronicled their comings & goings in two volumes of anecdotes (Tales of a Wayward Inn, Do Not Disturb}; of heart disease; in Manhattan...
...Algonquin Park...
...would be some city park that had beaver, chipmunks, and deer on the loose (like Brookfield, near Chicago, maybe). But, as it happens, Toronto's Algonquin Park (TIME, April 16) is about 180-odd miles from Toronto and has, in addition to the above-mentioned fauna, bear, mink, moose, and wolves (researchers beware). It is, in fact, Algonquin Provincial Park, with a post office and all, some 1,500 lakes, covering, I would guess, about 3,000 sq. mi. of "picnic grounds," mostly second-growth coniferous stand, with some virgin timber in the north...