Angel v. Women

Huddled close together for warmth in the pews of the village church at Buchau, pious farmer folk heard their beloved pastor explain from the pulpit, last week, why Europe has been visited with the coldest winter of the century.

"God is angry at the shameless city women!" thundered the pastor. "His eye is offended by their short skirts, from beneath which peeps the wanton whiteness of their limbs. God is not mocked with impunity! He has sent this piercing cold to make the city women feel His wrath and lengthen their skirts. That is why your vines are blighted my friends! . . . Let us now join in prayer. God's will be done."

As the peasants emerged from church, they espied four young women, all short-skirted, hiking through the village. Soon these hussies were set upon, pinioned, subjected to fierce applications of snow, and finally chased out of Buchau.

When correspondents from nearby Karlovy Vary (Karlsbad) hastened out to query the pastor, he exclaimed:

"A blessed angel in robes of flowing white that swept the ground appeared to me and said why God has done what He has done."