Honest merchants of Ostend, Belgium, were unable last week to supply their regular customers with fish. There was a shortage of this commodity, because wholesalers had sold the majority of the fish to hotels for banquets and tete-`a-tete parties of President Arthur H. Sapp and his 8,000 fellows in Rotary International--many of them with their wives, the "Rotary Anns"--assembled in annual convention (TIME, June 6, 20).

Ticket

In Manhattan, one Thomas McCaffery, 11, earnestly spoke to Magistrate August W. Glatzmeyer in traffic court: "I've come to represent my father. He is a hard working man and he can't take a day off from driving his taxi, because he has to make a living for me and the rest of the kids. But me, I can miss a day at school, because I can make it up. Besides, he got a ticket on Father's Day, and every kid wants to do his bit for his father"

Impressed, Magistrate Glatzmeyer did not fine Mr. McCaffery for driving on the wrong side of the street, predicted a brilliant career as a lawyer for McCaffery Junior, smart son of a smart father.

Train

In Orange, N. J., one Louis Pruden, venerable bee farmer of Whippany, N. J., stood in the middle of the railroad track facing a speeding Lackawanna train. "The Lord commands you to stop!" cried he loudly.

Engineer John Russ, seeing Mr. Pruden, tried to obey, put on the emergency brakes, also blew the locomotive's whistle. Prudent Mr. Pruden, noticing that the train had only been able to slow down to 40 miles per hour as it approached him, jumped. The locomotive's cowcatcher nipped him, knocked him 50 feet.

Still conscious, with only his right leg broken, Mr. Pruden told the two policemen who picked him up: "Listen boys, I came down here to see if the Lord would look after me. I expected Him to protect me. But He didn't. You can see that for yourselves. . . . Still I'm not faultin' Him. He did pretty well to keep me alive at all."