Bloody Ruts

In Bangor, Me., 6,000 people were watching the wild animals in the circus. Seven tigers, as docile as 30-year-old cab-horses, were lounging and limping around a ring where a woman stood, telling them nonchalantly when to stop and go. One lazy, spavined creature growled at the woman with perfunctory rage. Then he and another tiger pounced upon her and lay on top of her biting the woman with their yellow teeth and slapping her with huge limber paws that left two-inch grooves on her arms and bloody ruts across her face. Almost before the people in the audience had time to scream, the lion tamer came over from the next ring and rescued the lady from the tigers.

She was taken to a hospital to recover from her wounds, while the 6,000 people jabbered with alarm and the tigers were led out of the arena to their cages, looking less decrepit now, and licking their muzzles with junglar ferocity. The history of the lady was made public after the accident. She was Mabel Stark, once the chief ornament of Ringling Brothers-Barnum and Bailey "cat-acts." In these she allowed herself to be embraced by a tiger, something no other woman had ever dared to do. When the Ringling circus gave up wild animal acts, because spectators often suspected cruelty to the animals, Mabel Stark was compelled to perform far less hazardous feats, such as descending from a synthetic fire at the roof of the big-top, by parachute, mounted on a horse. Finding this trick too monotonous, she had recently returned to her earlier specialty. When she regained the ability to speak, after the Bangor incident, Mabel Stark assured her friends that she had no intention of giving up her "cat-acts."

Coffin

Evangelist H. W. Thomas lay in a coffin one evening last week. Peering over the edge he harangued Milwaukeeans with ghoulish realism on the subject, "The Journey We All Must Take."

Well

In Colchester, Conn., one Edward West, 69, six feet tall, fell down a well. The well was 20 feet deep; in its bottom were five feet of water. Standing in this, Edward West yelled for help. As he did so, his feet sank slowly into the mud and the water rose slowly along his neck, up his chin. At the end of an hour, the water reached the mouth of Edward West. Unable to shout any more, in a few minutes he would be unable to breathe. As he waited for a slow drowning, Edward West saw the face of one George N. Lyman at the top of the narrow hole. George Lyman lowered a ladder, Edward West climbed out.

Meat

Mrs. Ward Leigh is famed for many miles about Nyack, N. Y. as the lady who lives in a glass house surrounded by a high wire fence and never eats meat. Late one night last week, firemen answered an alarm at Mrs. Leigh's home. Reaching the wire fence they could not enter. Politely they phoned credentials (by a telephone at the outer gate); firmly they insisted that they were authentic firemen; were at length given entrance. Mrs. Ward Leigh they found seated before a large sirloin steak. Querulously she told them not to break the glass of her house while extinguishing the fire, then returned casually to consume more meat.

Spectacles

One Francis C. Chadwick of Ardema, N. J. went out for an airplane ride with his son Stewart. Over Asbury Park, he leaned out of the cockpit to see what the famed resort looked like from a height of 1,000 feet. His spectacles fell from his nose. Next day the same spectacles, undamaged, were returned to Mr. Chadwick by Arthur Van Brunt, on whose Asbury Park farm they had fallen.

Subway

In Manhattan last fortnight, George Hicks, 60, clumsy, careless, fell off a subway platform. Before he could scramble up the edge again, a train, like a big boa came slithering toward him. George Hicks flattened himself face downward. The boa slithered over him, stopped. Ten openings opened. Hundreds of humans wriggled into the openings, became corpuscles of the boa. It hissed a little, rolled on over the body of George Hicks, and into a dark hole. George Hicks rose, unhurt, and made for the platform. Again a boa with two small red eyes came toward him, too fast. Again George Hicks salaamed snugly against the dirty groove between two rails. The second, and then a third beast swiftly passed over him, stopped, filled itself with people, slithered away. At last George Hicks clambered to the subway platform, pulled himself up quickly. He sighed pleasantly, noting that only a scratch on his nose and slimy dirt on his clothes testified to his carelessness and escape.