MANNERS .& MORALS: Americana, May 2, 1949

¶ Women, declared Dr. Walter C. Alvarez, noted Mayo Clinic diagnostician, exhibit a tendency to “wear themselves out trying to make over an ordinary, good, kind prosaic husband into a Charles Boyer.”

¶ The Cigar Institute of America offered the Smithsonian Institution an antique: an 85-year-old cigar (unsmoked).

¶ To stay abreast of the times,, the Colorado state legislature defined grand larceny as the theft of anything worth $50 or more. The old limit was $20.

¶ Los Angeles barflies were intrigued by a new diversion: automatic quiz machines. For 5¢ ginmill intellectuals could try to answer five questions of 6,000 printed on a motion-picture reel.

¶ The city of Bay St. Louis, Miss, bought its first police car. It got the money by levying a fee of $5 each per month on 120 illegally operating slot machines. Said Police Chief Francis T. Hobbs: “The purchase of the car will greatly aid us in enforcing the law.”

¶ Caught between the demands of bird lovers and cat lovers, Illinois’ Governor Adlai Stevenson finally vetoed a bill which would have permitted the impounding of cats running around at large. Said he: “It is in the nature of cats to do a certain amount of unescorted roaming.”

¶ Mr. & Mrs. Andrew Hoffman of New Orleans had been told that their seven-month-old twin sons Denny & Kenny were blind, and had been blind from birth. Not giving up hope, the Hoffmans chartered a plane to New York. At Manhattan’s Presbyterian Hospital they heard good news: Denny had “some vision”; Kenny would undergo an operation.