Miscellany: May 31, 1926

Prank

Upon the Richards Flying Field, near Kansas City, a puppydog appeared, seeking friends. Some pilots did not reject his overtures, but one, taking a dislike to his shy looks and gentle manners, took him away in an automobile, deserted him on a lonely highroad. The puppy made his way back. Finding that the beast survived even his own natural inclination to sniff at whirling propellers and perform in the path of descending planes, this flyer, one Waldo Robey, pilot of the Porterfield Flying School, took him 800 feet up in a plane, dropped him overboard. The diminutive body, smashed to pulp, buried itself a foot deep in the earth. . . . “Just a little prank,” said Pilot Robey, grinning uneasily. E. E. Porterfield Jr. (head of the Porterfield Flying School) heard of the act, frowned, called Robey to his office, dismissed him from the school.

Eagle

As everyone knows, the eagle is a bird more remarkable for vigor than sagacity. This was again proved when the little steamer Sulanierco recently sailed away from Porto Pico followed by a huge black and white eagle soaring high above her wake, disdaining to swoop for scraps thrown by the cook unless they consisted solely of meat.

The cook, intrigued, threw many a meat scrap. The eagle, unwary, flew farther and farther seaward—followed the Sulanierco 20 miles with ease, 10 more by settling down to earnest purposeful flapping, 10 more by resorting to tricks of volplaning and wind-catching, 10 more with every tendon of its great wings strained by the torturing, racking effort.

As the 50th mile passed, the eagle reeled crazily in the air, sideslipped, almost dropped into the foam. The cook sought to lure it to alight and rest by spreading meat scraps upon the stern. The eagle soared once more by great effort, distanced the ship for an instant, suddenly appeared to faint in midair, fell thump upon the deck. . . .

When the Sulanierco anchored at Boston last week her crew, having nurtured the eagle back to health, presented it to the Franklin Park Zoo. Caged, the stupid eagle will soar no more.

Horses Tortured

Pondering sadly the numerous mishaps to animals during the week, horse lovers found themselves especially incensed by the act of one Schwarz. (See GERMANY, “Horses, Crocodiles.”)

Fall

It is hard to have a garden when you live on the tenth floor* of a hotel. Leaning out of the window of her apartment in the Hotel Charlotte (Charlotte, N. C.) a certain Mrs. A. A. Barren propped a heavy green box, filled with earth and flower seeds, on a corner of the ledge before lowering it to a little stone shelf that ran around the building a foot lower down. She reflected on the long way her garden would fall if she let it go.

First the box would twirl down six stories to the flagpole, then four more to the marquee over the sidewalk. There was a mesh of strong wire over the upper side of the marquee to protect the glass from things that might be dropped out of windows. Yes, the box would probably be broken to bits. It would frighten that woman†in the car in front of the hotel; it would make the traveling salesman** in front of the drugstore jump out of his skin. Slowly, cautiously, Mrs. Barron began to lower the box out of the window.

The woman in the automobile screamed. The salesman caught his hat in his hand and sprang back into the shelter of the doorway. Two things had fallen out of Mrs. Barren’s window. The first was the garden box. The second was Mrs. Barron.

The body fell the first six stories like a plummet; struck the guy-wire of the flagpole and turned over, almost languidly, in the sunlit air; fell three stories more, through the wire mesh, through the glass; careered from an iron beam of the marquee, struck the pavement— plop. The guy-wire was broken. The iron beam was badly bent. The woman in the automobile fainted.

Later in the day a hospital reported on Mrs. Barron:

“She has not lost consciousness. No bones are broken. There is no evidence of internal injuries.” Observers collected pieces of the garden-box as souvenirs.

Scooter

In San Francisco, at the intersection of Vienna St. and Russia Ave., one John Sambrailo, aged six, vigorously propelling himself upon a “scooter,” collided violently last week with one John Silvio, an obfuscated, pot-valiant carpenter.

Carpenter Silvio, incensed, drew a large jackknife with his right hand and opened it with his teeth, while with his left hand he seized John Sambrailo. The child screamed with pain and rage as the man gripped his hand and carved lightly on his palm with the jackknife an admonitory cross. Scooter John’s parents pronounced the wound superficial; declared that they will not seek legal retribution.

Lesson

For a decade the local gendarme at Saint Plouer, a Breton village, has passed regularly on patrol the cottage, dung hill and barn of one M. Letort, strapping farmer, and his toothless shrewish wife.

Last week as the gendarme made his rounds, he chanced to step within the Letort barn to escape for a few moments a cold and biting rain. A strangled cry drew his attention to a close barred door. Curious, he unbarred it, discovered a foul smelling stall, four feet square, perhaps four and a half feet high. On the slimy floor lay a girl, raving, naked, paralyzed from the waist down. A gasoline tin hacked in half and filled with scraps of food stood beside a “bed” made of decaying straw. The chill wind blew full upon the girl through numerous cracks.

Interrogated by the gendarme, Mme. Letort said: “The girl was our daughter Celine. She brought shame upon us—with a soldier—eight years ago. We locked her up to teach her a lesson, because she was bad tempered and weak minded. My husband fed her regularly and she got sufficient exercise walking on her hands and knees until her legs became paralyzed two years ago. She never caught cold in spite of her clothes wearing out. My son thought we were too hard on her, and so he gave Celine fresh straw for a bed now and then. To me she is as one dead.” Celine, swiftly conveyed to a hospital, last week continued to rave dementedly.

*About 150 feet from sidewalk.

†Mrs. Eleanor Batik of Charlotte.

**W. W. Norman of Mooresville.