Queen

Frank Kaslov, king of the gypsies of America, was a bachelor. He had no heart for any woman longer than an hour; none of the gypsy women could win him with the charms that sleep in satin skins and shiny eyes. And his mother, fearing that the royal line would perish, said to him, "It is time for you to find yourself a bride and leave off treating the woman question lightly."

"But, mother, where will I find one?" Frank Kaslov asked. "For surely, mother, you would not see me joined to one of these squat women, with no teeth in their mouths, with noses like fishhooks.'

"No, my son." A dreamy look clouded the eyes of the old woman. "In Milan, Italy," she said, "the gypsy women are as slender as boys; their bracelets jingle as they lean over the wells at twilight."

So Frank Kaslov, king of the gypsies, journeyed to Milan. His ticket was paid for by 600 U. S. gypsy families, who desired to see the old queen with a grandson and the young king with a wife. But in Milan, Italy, the women were not as his mother had said. "Go to Padua," a stranger advised him. But in Padua a plague had left the gypsy women with pocked cheeks. Too much child-bearing had broadened the gypsies of Cadiz. It was not until he went to Marseilles, on the advice of a knowing uncle, that he found his girl, the Princess Paras Kevi. Last week he brought her home on the Leviathan.

Queen Paras (as she may now call herself) stepped upon the shore, friendly but shy. She wore a red and yellow dress and over it a cloak of dark blue silk. Her hair was tied in braids; she wore no bangles. One hundred gypsies met her at the pier; one hundred gypsies escorted her, with shouts and cymbals, to be crowned a queen in Manhattan.

King Kaslov's young courtiers with difficulty concealed their envy of her matchless charm, the ripened, comforting charm of a generously constructed woman of some twoscore summers, about 5 feet 4 inches tall and weighing close to 200 pounds.

"Mother Machree"

In Newark, N. J., one night last week, a freight train thundered along the Pennsylvania tracks. As it passed Haynes Avenue, Brakeman J. Leroy Cullen of Bloomfield, N. J., missed his hold, dropped under the grinding trucks, was carried to a hospital, where surgeon amputated both legs. Next morning four relatives entered his room and a clear tenor voice was raised, singing "Mother Machree." After the last note there was a hush. Cullen's relatives filed out, lips quivering, grief-stricken. Wondering hospital attendants learned that the deceased, trained in a choir, often sang to his family of an evening, had wished to put his ebbing strength into a song of parting, as the wild swans are said to do.

Lucky

In Trenton, N. J., Chief of Police Walter last week ran to earth Mrs. Amanda Mosher Layton Williams, 71, working man's wife, living in a $20-a-month house, and Joseph Layton, 45, trolley-car motorman, son of Mrs. Williams by her first marriage. Layton, in poor health, was living with his wife and daughter. As neither he nor his mother was listed in the city directory, they might consider it doubly fortunate to learn from Chief Walter that a Racine, Wis., relative was hunting for them to have them participate in the distribution of an estate left to his heirs by the late Ezekiel Mosher of England--an estate of 132 million dollars. Said Trentonians: "Lucky!"

Unlucky

Off Long Point, Cape Cod. the U. S. submarine V-1, among the world's newest and largest, staggered suddenly in her underwater course, recovered, moved forward again laboriously. Worried, Lieutenant Commander Sherwood Picking signaled an immediate rise to the surface. Popping their heads out of the conning hatch, officers and crew beheld a monstrous shape lashing in agony athwart the vessel's sharp prow--a 58-foot whale. Three harpoons despatched Leviathan, whose spine was already snapped. The V-1 was unhurt.