AT THE age of 75 most men have come to the sunset of their lives and desire rest most of all. Political figures, at that age, write autobiographies and dwell over the past. On July 11, 1936, Senator Geo. William Norris was 75 and could look back on years of service in Washington. Instead he looked forward to another six years as senator, a term that will last until he is 81.

"I have battled, battled for everything I got." he told an interviewer. At 75 he was battling opponents in Nebraska regular Republican and Democrat unrecognized President Roosevelt, he has spoken endearingly about Senator Norris, weapons: three speeches a day, a lifetime of struggles that has conferred on rugged farm-trained body the mantle of honest Senator Norris college days were days of postponment. Born in Ohio, he worked on farms during summer. Student at Baldwin University in Ohio Northern Indiana Normal School, he taught science during intervening years in order to continue school. In 1883 he received a law degree from Valparaiso University, but had to teach another year to pass law library. He was one of the senators to vote against America's entry in the war. Republican in name only he threw aside partisanship years ago, supported Al Smith and Roosevelt, thrust his seamed face and jutting jaw and untrammeled thinking into making a fight like that over the purchase of Muscle School. "My College," he says, "had been the farm." As if to prove it, he still drives a plow through Nebraska state every summer.

SLEEK-HAIRED Fannie Hurst's new book is called Great Laughter. Like Senator Norris she lived some of her early years in Ohio. At Washington University (St. Louis) she was a vigorous undergraduate, participating in sports and endless extra-curricular activities. Her first rejection slips came from the Saturday Evening Post, to which she tried to sell blank verse masques. She studied Anglo-Saxon at Columbia in 1911, worked as a waitress and shop girl to prepare her for novels you've seen on the screen. In 1935 she regained her figure by "taking no food with her meals."