Milestones, Sep. 7, 1931

Engaged. Elizabeth Parker Case, 21, daughter of Board Chairman James Herbert Case of Manhattan’s Federal Reserve Bank; and Hamilton Robinson, of Princeton, N. J. Wedding date: Sept. 12. Two months ago her brother, Everett Needham Case, married Josephine Young, only daughter of Owen D. Young (TIME. July 6). Last month Mr. Young’s third son, Philip, married Faith Adams of Washington (TIME, Aug. 24).

Married. Eleanor, daughter of Richard Farnsworth Hoyt, board chairman of Curtiss-Wright Corp.; and Alexis Felix du Pont Jr. of Wilmington, heir to $60.000,000 (estimated); at Marion, Mass.

Seeking Divorce. Mrs. Abigail Stapleford Allen Lott, 21; from George M. Lott Jr.. 24. Davis Cup tennis player with whom she eloped to Elkton, Md. last October; in Philadelphia.

Re-Elected— J. Finley Wilson; to be Grand Exalted Ruler of the Improved Benevolent & Protective Order of Elks (colored); by acclamation; at an uproarious annual convention in Philadelphia. Exalted Ruler Wilson recommended that the grand lodge money be kept in a vault so that the principal may be safe though the interest is lost.

Died. Leonard Wood, 39, son of the late Major General Leonard Wood, of ”lobar pneumonia”; at Bellevue Hospital, Manhattan. His name on oil stock prospectuses without the Jr. led to investigation and interruption of his business activities six years ago.

Died. Yuko Hamaguchi, 61, onetime (1929-31) premier of Japan; of ill health resulting from wounds received in an attempted assassination (TIME, Nov. 24. 1930); in Tokyo. Born Yuko Mizoguchi, he was adopted by a rich Samuraian, married his daughter and took his name, but in politics he was always the champion of the people. Rising to leadership of the Minsei-to (Liberal) party, he became Minister of Finance in 1924, restored the yen and helped rehabilitate the country devastated by the 1923 earthquake. He became Premier in 1929 and in the face of bitter opposition and active plotting obtained Japan’s adherence to the London naval limitation treaty. After the treaty was ratified a fanatic shot him. Four months later he resumed his duties, but had to resign after a month to undergo two operations, from the effects of which he never recovered. Known as “The Lion of Kuse,” and later by superpatriots as ”The Warrior for Peace,” he was a frugal, industrious, unpretentious man, the first commoner ever to become Premier of Japan.

Died. Alfred Pearce Dennis, 62, ranking Democratic member of the U.S. Tariff Commission; by jumping off a cliff into the sea; at Bailey Island, Maine. Professor, night watchman, brakeman, merchant, writer, he was a colleague of Woodrow Wilson in the faculty of Princeton University, later went to Smith College where he became the friend of a young lawyer, Calvin Coolidge. He was an investigator in Europe for the Department of Commerce under Secretary Hoover, was appointed by President Coolidge to the Tariff Commission, which he once described to the Senate as a “debating society.”

Died, Frank Harris, 75, author, editor and critic (Oscar Wilde, His Life and Confessions; The Man Shakespeare; My Life and Loves); of asthma; in Nice. Fearless, blatant, egocentric, he had many bitter enemies, a few stanch admirers; his books were often attacked as obscene, sometimes suppressed. Fleeing school in Ireland at 14, he went to the U.S., worked as bootblack, sandhog, hotelclerk, cowboy, became a lawyer and a U.S. citizen. He went to Europe, drifted from one university to another, finally settled in London to edit The Saturday Review, for which he hired Max Beerbohm, Herbert George Wells, George Bernard Shaw, and which he made one of the great critical journals of all times. He returned to the U. S. at the outbreak of the War, which he loudly and persistently damned. A badly dressed little man with a Hohenzollern mustache and a bawdy tongue, he found little to praise in America: “Oh, I say, what a dreadful country! What dreadful people! I say, Nellie, bring out the whisky.” He edited Pearson’s Magazine, got it barred from the mails, abandoned it and went to France to write his pornographic autobiography. He wrote always of Frank Harris, even when his subject was another man, but he remained less great than those he discovered. Of these the greatest was Shaw, whose biography he finished before his death.* Said Philosopher Shaw: “Frank had to die some day. … I think it is time that all men of his age and mine were dying.”

Died. Francis M. Bellamy, 75, author of The Pledge to the Flag; in Tampa, Fla. The pledge: “I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States and to the Republic for which it stands, one nation, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.” Died. Sir Hall Caine, 78, famed novelist (The Manxman, The Eternal City, The Woman Thou Gavest Me); of lung congestion; in Greeba Castle, Isle of Man. He was a close friend of David Lloyd George and of the late Poet Dante Gabriel Rossetti.

Died. Francis Marion (“Borax”) Smith, 85; of injuries sustained in a fall; in Oakland, Calif. Prospecting for gold in Death Valley, he found great borax deposits. Before he was 30 he controlled the U.S. market, was many times a millionaire. At 50, his fortune gone, he got a fresh start from a silver mine he had bought and forgotten. At 75 he bought a new borax deposit, made a new fortune. When he died most of that was gone.

*It will be published in the U.S. by Simon & Schuster in October.