Klein, Platz

In Detroit, one Joe Jordan, apartment-house janitor, said to his lean-ribbed daughter Mae, last September: "You git some money! You're 14 now. You work or you don't eat here!"

Frightened by the glint in Joe Jordan's eye, Mae Jordan sought work, found none for a child so inexperienced and anemic as herself. Desperate, she begged odd jobs of baby tending, dish washing, floor scrubbing from residents in the apartment. One November day she sought her father radiant: "Mr. Klein and Mr. Platz want me to 'do' their apartment every day for $10 a month!"

Shrewd, Mr. Klein and Mr. Platz, partners, bachelors, garment merchants, stipulated a condition: Mae Jordan should not receive payment for doing all the housework of their apartment unless she should sweep the floors northward on odd days of the month, southward on even days. Ingenious, Mr. Klein and Mr. Platz kept track of the sweeping by observing each evening which way the nap lay on their living-room rug. Relentless, cruel, Mr. Klein and Mr. Platz detected wrong sweepings during January, February, April and June, withheld payment for those months.

Docile, stupid, Mae Jordan has toiled, swept. Last week, one Dr. Peter Rusk, kindly Samaritan, chiropractor, discovered the conditions of Mae's slavery, called upon Klein and Platz, blacked Mr. Klein's eye, punched Mr. Platz's midriff.

Wager Won

In Paris, "Excuse me," said a masked man to two pop-eyed U. S. girls crouching in their hotel bed. "Excuse me, I'm no burglar; it's a bet." The girls, breathing rapidly, blushed furiously. The voice was so pleasant. "I wagered $400," continued the mask, "that I would enter your room. If you'll turn out the light. . . ." Suddenly collecting herself, one of the girls snapped the switch, "I'll go." A black shape glided out the window; the two girls lay whispering for hours. In the morning, a house detective found a velvet mask, a revolver, in the trunk of one Eric Nelson, British, in the cubicle overhead. Disorderly Mr. Nelson was arrested.

Ride

In Barberton, Ohio, Louis Goudy, 14, of Decatur, Ind., stepped off his bike and arched two harassed insteps. Barberton is 213 miles distant from Decatur. Said Louis: "I heard grandmother was ill and I thought she might need me, so I came." Grandma was pleased.

Freshmen

At Lock Haven, Pa., last week, 20 Pennsylvania State College freshmen sat in the refectory of their forestry department camp. They were fed up with the lore of weird foods. Horse meat is paler than that of cattle, and sweet. Dog steaks are as tender as lamb chops, but taste flat. Frog legs are like the white part of chicken, would be appetizing save for the dead look of the bones. Rat flesh is like that of tame rabbits. Snails fried alive in butter have a quaint taste. They are tough to chew. Human flesh, when the source is not known, is tender and sweet. Toasted grasshoppers have a nutty flavor. Earth worms, washed clean and gently stewed, have a tangy tartness. Eels even cooked retain their stench of the sea. Snakes. . . . An atavistic nausea sickened the boys. Black jungle folk might drool over the carcass of a boa constrictor. But Penn State students! None the less they were themselves to eat snake flesh to maintain a college tradition. Goggly-eyed, some watched their cook strip the skin from five rattlesnakes, gut them, parboil the sleek joints. The 20 freshmen ate, wearing the green grin of bravado.