Miscellany

Hodges

The University of Kansas was proud of Alexander Reily Hodges, star athlete. He was quarterback on the football team, second baseman of the nine, 158-pound boxing champion. He did not drink or smoke. Recently he started to work his way around the world.

Friends of his in Kansas got word that he had reached Manhattan. Then they read how an individual in that city had held up a restaurant with a dummy pistol last week, how he had fled through a theatre crowd, how a policeman had thrown his night stick, brought the fellow down. It was Hodges. He said:

"I don't know what impelled me to do the stickup. . . . When I entered the restaurant the thought came over me like a flash and I acted. ... I don't drink or smoke. . . ."

O'Neill

In Manhattan, Eugene O'Neill, just off the liner France, gave an interview to some ship-reporters.

"If you want anything from me . . . you can say that the canned goods market is depressed. ... I am sick to God of hearing people ask me about my plays. I never wrote anything more than a bill, and I never will. I'm in the canned goods exporting game in Frisco .... I'm a two-fisted man. . . ."

Mr. O'Neill stated that his middle intial is M. The name of "the greatest American playwright" is Eugene Gladstone O'Neill.

Hannah

In Elmira, N. Y., one Fred Hannah, Negro, applied for a marriage license. While the clerk was filling out the forms he discovered that the bride had a husband, just then detained in prison. He refused the license. In two hours Mr. Hannah again applied for permission to get married.

"Good heavens, man," said the clerk, "has your fiancee got her divorce already?"

The Negro smirked.

"My would-be is a has-been now, sport," he replied. "Dis yere," he said, indicating a meek yellow woman by his side, "is another gal."

Fast

In two glass cases in a restaurant in Berlin were stretched two men, thin, weak, but happy. They, Otto Klein and Max Kramer, were enduring a fast. People around them ate beefsteak; Herr Klein and Herr Kramer sipped Vichy water. Patrons of the restaurant devoured schnitzel, wienerwurst; Herr Klein and Herr Kramer smoked cigarets. For 45 days this painful scene went on, greatly to the advantage of the restaurant. On the 45th day Herr Klein and Herr Kramer were lifted from their cages. They had beaten by a day the world's record fast of 44 days set by Herr Jolly in the same restaurant.

Faith

In Winside, Neb., Albert Strate, a farmer, was converted to Christianity. The Lord, he declared, had made him impregnable to hurt. To prove this statement he swallowed a spoonful of strychnine. A coroner's jury returned a verdict of suicide.