Rescue

On Welfare Island (off Manhattan), one Rev. Joseph J. McGowan saw a victim of sleeping sickness, one Amiel Schul, jump into the East River. The priest gave his spectacles to a young man who volunteered to guard them, tore off his overcoat, leaped into the water, saved the life of the gurgitating Schul. On shore, surrounded by congratulators, he looked around for his glasses. They had been stolen.

Wager

In Norwalk, Conn., one Joseph Beres, restaurant proprietor, went out duck shooting with a buddy. All day they crouched in a blind. Few ducks came their way. Proprietor Beres grew restless, racked his brains for diversion, hit upon a scheme. Taking a 50-cent piece out of his pocket, he said to his friend, "If you can shoot it out of my hand, it's yours." After some wrangling, the details of the wager were satisfactorily arranged. Mr. Beres took his place, holding the 50-c- aloft between thumb and forefinger. His friend put a shell in his shotgun, drew a careful bead. Pow! went the gun. The coin, dented by dozens of buckshot, careered away. . . . With it went the end of Proprietor Beres' thumb.

Bandits

"Take off your pants!"

A bandit with a revolver in each hand was addressing the patrons of a cheap Manhattan "lunchroom."

"Line them up on the rear wall," he added to one of four assistants. Soon the diners, shivering and ashamed, their skinny, ponderous or hirsute legs exposed to the gaze of the facetious bandits, stood along one end of the restaurant. The robbers searched their "pants" for valuables extracted a total of $400. One of them devoted an idle moment to robbing the cigar counter.

"Here," he suggested genially, passing a handful of cigars to the stark-legged captives, "you might as well smoke while you're waiting." the unhappy patrons obediently puffed, while the bandits made their escape.

Gallant Collector

One Captain J. D. Dickson runs a "collection service" in San Diego, Calif., and he sends out through the mails advertisements, not of his business, but of chivalry. "Why," he asked last week, "is there less chivalry in man today than yesterday? I hold as inviolable:

If you go into a "lift," Lift your "topper," Be polite, Like your grandpop and your popper. No matter if the dame Is a "wild one" or a "tame," Lift you "dicer" just the same.

Lime, Mortar

In the Bronx, New York City, Paul Duminuco, boss plasterer, strode through the echoing white chambers of a new building examining work of his underlings whose $4,500 payroll he carried in a satchel. As he clumped about on the third floor, strong hands seized him from behind, tore the satchel from his grasp, bound his wrists with wire. Cruel hands sloshed wet quicklime into his eyes, jammed wet mortar into his protesting mouth, flung him into a closet with his eyeballs sizzling, his teeth and tongue fast setting into their mortar plug. . . . Some hours later, Joe, laborer, rescued, doctors revived poor Plasterer Duminuco.

Cosmopolite

In Manhattan, one Yervant H. Iskender, Turkish-Armenian, offered "world citizenship" to persons of any creed and nationality whatever; explained that he intended to unite 28 all English-speaking peoples, which would educate all other peoples, which would forthwith unite with their teachers in a world-state governed by representatives of the composite language-states; explained that he had found his plan practicable in every country on earth, which it had taken him twelve years to visit; explained that he had started the last war, giving Germany his Idea, which Germany mismanaged; explained, furthermore, that membership in "World Citizenship, Inc." was selling at $5, for which world citizens would receive a silver badge (or celluloid, at 15-c-) and a pamphlet explaining everything as approved by "A Few Supporters and Sympathizers of Note": the late Woodrow Wilson, the Kings of Belgium, Italy and Spain, the Presidents of Colombia and Peru.