Poe's "S"

Into Baltimore's Wyman Park, on a dark night, up to the statue of Edgar Allan Poe stole Edmond Fontaine, Poe reverer. With flashlight he scanned the stone-wrought verse of "The Raven": "Dreaming dreams no mortals ever dared to dream before." The "s" in "mortals" offended Mr. Fontaine. He hated its sibilance, knew that there was no "s" in Poe's original version. So Mr. Fontaine determinedly edited out the "s" with a chisel. A policeman arrested him for defacing the public monument.

Tonguer

In Charlestown Prison, Boston, Mrs. Edith Barlow's husband wanted his habitual narcotics. Mrs. Barlow stuffed a goodly supply in a rubber finger cot, placed it in her mouth. As she kissed a friendly prisoner, whom in ruse she called her brother, she tongued the drug-stuffed cot into his mouth. A guard caught them.

Dogger

In Pittsburgh, Gustave J. Miller sought divorce because his wife insistently took her Airedale to bed with them.

Church-Cleaner

At Plummers Corner, suburb of Auburn. Me., Mrs. Carleton Proctor thought the abandoned Little Methodist Church should be used. She got the key, threw out the church supper dishes, scrubbed the floors, filled the lamps, tidied all things. Then she invited neighbors to hear her preach. During a long sermon she announced: "This is God speaking. He is going to have a clean house here. There are never going to be any more church suppers." The congregation walked out on her.

Insomniac

On Staten Island, Mrs. Margaret Colliton, returned with her husband from a late, exciting party. She tried to sleep, could not, took the family car for a drive. The medical examiners think she drowsed at the wheel, for she smashed the car into a pole, killed herself.*

Foreboder

At Wagon Mound, N. M., it was Friday evening, Sabbath eve for Charles Geist, tailor, and Joe Lowenthal, haberdasher, Orthodox Jews of Paterson, N. J. They were motoring to Los Angeles where they hoped to start in business. Their cult forbids traveling on the Sabbath. They stopped over at Wagon Mound. That Friday night Charles Geist dreamed that he was dead. So moved was he that next morning he broke another Sabbath law. He wrote his wife Gussie of his morbid dream. A few hours later a tornado swept through Wagon Mound, killed him.

Shrewd

In Manhattan a shrewd woman robbed Tiffany's of $6,000 worth of jeweled rings in this wise. At the store she asked that a salesman take the rings to show her mother before she bought them. She gave the address. At once she hastened there and rented a furnished apartment with two exit doors. When the salesman, Christopher Fisher, with Tiffany's 25 years, appeared at one door, the woman took the rings from him "to show mother'' in her bedroom, walked out the other exit.

Gapers

In Manhattan, just because street renters of binoculars said so, gapers last week paid to squint at a "flagpole-sitter" atop the New York Central Office building. The "sitter" was only an ornament up there almost a year.

Bear

At Watertown, N. Y.'s Thompson Park Zoo, attendants took her cubs from a 500-lb. bear. When next a human entered her cage--it happened to be Emerson E. Joyce, 60, keeper--the bereft bear hugged him to death.

Hawk & Pigeon

A sparrowhawk started to chase a carrier pigeon across the Atlantic last week. When 500 miles out they met the Cunarder Caronia, both were contented to alight, to be put in a single cage where they completed their crossing in avian amiability.

Cubans

At Camaguey, Cuba, El Camagueyano, leading newspaper, printed an invective against the national lottery as being illicit gambling and a public fraud. Three days later its editorial staff, who like most Cubans habitually buy lottery tickets, collectively won the biggest prize, took it.

*One means found efficacious in keeping awake while motoring is to keep one foot off the floor. The probable explanation, is that the strained position forces constant attention, and wakefulness.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.