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"Now you mustn't read that," her mother would say, when Jane Gray picked up a newspaper, "that's too old for you." An obedient child, Jane Gray never learned that her father, Judd Gray, had been tried and executed for the murder of Albert Snyder. She was however informed that he was dead and that before his death he had written a series of letters one of which she would receive every year on her birthday. Last week, Jane Gray received the first of these letters. Newsgatherers wished to know its contents but Jane Gray refused to tell them. Whatever the letter said, it caused her to smile last week, on her eleventh birthday, as she read it.
Conradian Cat
Joseph Conrad's Nigger of the Narcissus tells of such a tempest as stirred the demons of the Pacific into an oceanic Walpurgisnacht off Central America last week. Two ships reached harbor safely at Balboa, Canal Zone. The freighter William A. McKenney lost a third mate, steward, carpenter, boatswain, six seamen, two cooks, the first and chief assistant engineers who were battening down tarpaulins and were caught in the abrupt rush of an enormous wave. Only seven of the crew survived. Also reminiscent of Conrad was the cat of the liner American Star, which reappeared, wan, mewing, after an absence of two perilous days.
Spark
In West Point, last week, at the garage of the U. S. Military Academy there was a fire which destroyed the limousine of Major General W. R. Smith and other government property to the value of $60,000. The fire was started by a spark which sprang from a soldier's hobnailed boot.
Fumigated
At Baltimore quarantine 16 stowaways cringed, and no less than 400 rats scuttled, in hidden places of the S. S. Steel Inventor, in last week from Brazil. Health inspectors were about to fumigate her. The crew fastened doors and hatches. All was quiet below. The boat rocked a little; chains scraped; water tattled against the hull. Then a sweetish odor came upon the hidden men, like the taste of peach stone kernels. Seven of them collapsed, limply, dead from the hydrocyanic acid gas used for the fumigation.
Burglars
In Paris, Auguste Moessner was sentenced to five years in jail for robbery. It had been his system, as a thief, to stick a note under the front door of such houses as he intended to enter; if the note was not taken in during the course of three days, Auguste Moessner, sure that the occupants were not at home, would pay his call.
So successful had Auguste Moessner been with this system, that he became rich. He visited all the best bars and restaurants in the city and often had tea with persons whose belongings he had previously appropriated. He was quite frequently spoken of as the best dressed man in Paris; indeed when they arrested him the police found 125 splendid suits of clothes hanging in his humble flat; and Auguste Moessner smoothing his hair, remarked, "Yes, my elegant appearance was my best protection."