Education: Prodigy

At 3, she was able to use a typewriter.

At 4, she wrote a poem and made her first public speech.

At 8, she published a book of verse, Mother Goose in Esperanto, which some people, including her mother, thought was a wonder.

At 9, she had mastered 13 languages.

At 26, she made the pink front page of the New York Evening “pono-“) Graphic. The photograph showed her lolling in bed, clad in scant, fluffy negligee, with a sad but inviting expression on her face. This happened last week.

She, Winifred Sackville Stoner Jr., was supposed to be suffering from a thoroughgoing beating which, she said, had been inflicted on her on Thanksgiving eve in the Sherry-Netherland Hotel, Manhattan, by Robert H. Loeb, psychoanalyst, student of Dr. Jung, and member of the New York Stock Exchange.

Miss Stoner’s story was that she had given Mr. Loeb an $8,000 ruby bracelet to be repaired, that she later saw him with another woman who was wearing the bracelet, that when she protested Mr. Loeb punched her in the chest and face, kicked her and generally abused her. She caused Mr. Loeb to be arrested, took her story to court.

Mr. Loeb denied these charges and said that Miss Stoner was indulging in a “publicity stunt.”

One clue to the previous relations of Mr. Loeb and Miss Stoner was a photograph of Mr. Loeb which remained hanging, last week, above the bed of Miss Stoner.

At least half a volume of quotations from Miss Stoner were printed in metropolitan dailies last week. Among them: “I’ve got myself into the worst mess of all the messes I’ve been in. I’ve lost Bainbridge Colby,* who was my mental mate, given pain to Mother Stoner and must go to court to fight for a bracelet which was given to me. . . . It’s taking a long time to live down the child-wonder business and how sick I am of hearing that word!”

Mother Stoner, too, organizer of the World League for the Promotion of Genius,! had something to say: “Poor girl! It is a terrible thing to be in the public eye as a so-called prodigy. No one who has any sense wants to be appearing in the papers. . . .”

Perplexed parents eyed, last week, their children, pondering well the benefits of having a prodigy in the house.

* Onetime U. S. Secretary of State, under President Wilson.

| Not to be confused with the Lucy Stone League composed of women who retain the use of their full maiden names, though married. Such women are popularly dubbed “Lucy Stoners.”