Miscellany: Perfect

In Endfield, England, one Peter Perfect won first prize for good conduct.

Register

In lola, Kan., Ira Sutton, hotel clerk, wrote in succession on his register the names of three salesmen for a refrigerator company, a Mr. Coldsnow, a Mr. Winter, a Mr. Coldiron.

Spat

In Tarboro, N. C., one George Jenkins became reconciled with Olivia Morgan. In a spat, he had beaten her, knocked her down, tried to extract from her mouth some gold fillings he had paid for.

Bump

In Stamford, Conn., Paul Eckstein, 20 months old, and Edward Eckstein, 3, were playing on the floor. “Bump!” cried Edward Eckstein. They gurgled, bumped their heads together. Five minutes later, Paul Eckstein grew drowsy. Several hours later he died of a fractured skull.

Babies

Girda Klantsch, 4, Elizabeth Klantsch, 6, obeyed their father’s command to gofrom Chicago to Berlin to see their grandmother.

Robert McDonald, 10 months, was made to ride alone on a train 180 miles from South Paris to Brockton, Me.

Pappy

In Macon, Ga., small, withered John Joshua Beasley of Auburn, Ga., 71, claimed he had sired 40 children, discoursed on his progeny: “I can’t recall them offhand, but all 40 are on record at the court house. Now some of them died before we could think up names for them, so they were never named. . . . There was Molly, Florence, Mandy, John Will, Joe, Norm, E. T., Ola, Claudie and Cloodie. . . . I can’t think of another one in the first batch.” With John Joshua Beasley were his second wife and their youngest child, aged 18 months.

Blackman

In Chicago, Alexander Blackman tried to change the shape of the head of his sick daughter Helen by making her wear a thick leather helmet with adjustable chin straps.

Brothers

In Weston, Ont., three brothers, John Lennox, 96, C. E. Lennox, 85, and James Lennox, 81, had a party.

Poor

In Key West, Fla., one Mitchell Mc-Larin, inmate of a poor farm, bid $110,000 for ferry property put up for sale.

Juggernaut

In Milburn, N. J., Anton Boslavage, going up hill in his 15-ton steamroller, pulled the wrong lever. The roller rolled backward down the hill, got going faster and faster, reached town at 45 m. p. h., crushed two automobiles, broke a sidewalk, knocked the corner off a building, tossed Anton Boslavage, rolled over on its side.

Baker

In Manhattan, one John Baker was carrying so many doughnuts piled on a plate that he failed to see, over them, the open door of an elevator shaft at the bottom of which he was found, among his doughnuts, dead.

Fog

In Baltimore, one Thomas Eunick, groping in a fog, waved his hand into the open mouth of a horse who closed his mouth, let go when Thomas Eunick shouted in his ear.

Gatekeeper

In Hempstead, L. I., one Alexander Mazzone, railroad gatekeeper, was observed beside the tracks eating his lunch of caviar off a table on which he had placed a phonograph, a damask cloth, a vase of flowers.

Undertakers

In Chicago, a meeting of National Morticians adopted a slogan, viz: “Get Acquainted with your Undertaker.”

Zolt

In Chicago, I. J. Zolt, undertaker, went to court because Mrs. Helen Courtney Pett had not paid him for burying her husband. Said Superior Judge David: “You can go to the cemetery where the body is buried and take the shroud from the corpse, remove the coffin, and leave the body to the tender mercies of the Almighty.”

Tent

In Elizabethton, Tenn., at the alleged dying request of her 50-year-old sweetheart, W. T. Ferguson, one Mary Ann Kerry pitched a tent over his grave, slept there, warmed by an old stove.

Box

In Omaha, one Fred Merker threatened suit because a box which he had paid $400 to have shipped from Tampa, Fla., contained a corpse other than that of his son, erroneously reported murdered.

Tree

In Surrey, England, T. F. Halliburton willed that his ashes be scattered under the beech tree which had often spoiled his golf score.

Shrewd

In Manhattan, Evardo Banks, Negro, earned a living by suing transportation companies for pretended injuries to his chronically swollen left knee. Apprehended, accused of gaining $8,000 from 16 victims, he stated: “I am like a little fox who eats the tender buds of promise and destroys the beautiful vine of success.”