Pentecost

In Jersey City, Joseph Soldi, seven-year-old deaf mute, saw flames shooting from windows of his apartment house, shouted: "Mama, fire!" When she reached the street, he was dumb again, could only weep.

Toe

In Manhattan, Nurse Marian Cribbs was awakened by someone tweaking her big toe. Tweaker was a man who said he had come to rob her. Instead he kissed her foot, tried to kiss her. Resourceful Nurse Cribbs reminded him it was Lent, shooed him out, promised to meet him later. At the rendezvous he met police.

Look

In Perth Amboy, N. J., John Czerwiec, 67, took a last look into the coffin where his dead wife lay, collapsed and died.

Rats

In Bakersfield, Calif., Teacher Hildegarde Case set out to prove to her pupils that plain foods are best, even for rats. To one rat she fed milk, whole wheat grains; to another, soda pop, salt pork, coffee. The first rat grew plump and healthy; the second even plumper. Suspecting a jokester, Teacher Case hid one night to waylay him. No one appeared, but in the morning she found eight baby rats in their soda-popped, pork-fed mother's cage.

Sweeper

In Aliquippa, Pa. when Mario Izzo died, Aliquippans took up a collection to move his body from potter's field, and buy him a tombstone. Reason: Last summer when oldster Izzo, an Italian immigrant, was put on relief, he looked at his first weekly check for $3.60, seized a broom and went out to sweep the streets six hours a day, six days a week, explaining: "I think this is a wonderful country. I decide I will be an honest man with this country. ... So I start to sweep. . . . My bread it tastes sweet and I feel like a man because I work."

Coat

In London, Alice Thistle bought a coat, was 1) puzzled, 2) dismayed, 3) appalled by its pungent odor. Said she: "I suffered social embarrassment." Said her mother: "She sits and broods for hours." Said a doctor: "She is on the verge of a complete mental breakdown." Reason: When the coat was sent to the cleaners, a dead mouse was extracted from the collar.

Jury

In White Plains, N. Y., Mr. & Mrs. Carroll Timberman served on the same jury. Balloting for the verdict, Mr. Timberman voted for the defendant, his wife for the plaintiff. Final verdict: for the defendant. Boasted Mr. Timberman: "She soon came around to my way of thinking."

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