"Poor Jose"

A pleasanter lunatic than Jose Marinat perhaps never lived. Years have passed since he first won the hearts of shrewd peasants in the suburbs of Tarragona by three peculiarities. He would work without pay. He loved to tell stories to children. And to toss "Poor Jose" an old guitar was the prelude to an evening of wild, haunting melody.

Recently ten small tots ran prattling to parents, begged permission to go into the woods with "Uncle Jose" who had promised to shoot pigeons and then tell stories. "You may go with Jose," smiled many a parent, adding piously, "May the Blessed Virgin go with you all!"

Once deep in the woods, Jose Marinat, usually a dead shot, fired at a pigeon and missed, at another and missed, at another and missed. . . .

"Shame! Shame on Uncle Jose!" teased the tots. Slowly the marksman grew livid, lowered his rifle until it pointed to the nearest of his teasers, squeezed trigger, put bullet into brain. As the other children scattered, screaming, poor Jose knew no better than to chase and shoot them down one by one. With his last shot he wounded a peasant who had rushed up brandishing an axe. As the man, for whom he had often worked for nothing, fell, Poor Jose seized his axe and split his head in twain.

Strolling home with his empty rifle Jose Marinat saw his mother standing in the doorway and felled her with a single blow. The sight of her quiet body seemed to penetrate at last into his maddened brain. Throwing away his rifle he plunged again into the woods, wandered aimlessly for two days, was hunted down and shot dead by efficient agents of the famed Spanish Guardia Civil.

Box

In Manhattan, one Charles Callan, a kindly looking old gentleman with bushy white hair, walked up to the poor box in St. Joseph's Church. Prying it open, he was about to reach in and seize its contents when a blinding light bedazzled him and he ran away.

The next week, Charles Callan again approached the poor box. Reflecting that the frightening flash had been caused by some short circuit, he had returned to complete his interrupted robbery. Yet this time again Charles Callan was disturbed. A policeman took him by the shoulder and hustled him to court. Here Charles Callan was confronted by a snapshot of himself showing him in a characteristic pose. In a moment Charles Callan recognized St. Joseph's poor box and his own face peering into it. "Whar did you git that there?" he asked the judge who made no reply but sentenced the thief to jail.

Had he but known more about his self portrait, Charles Callan would have been proud indeed. Charles Callan was too stupid to understand that the flash of light which should have been his augury was, in point of fact, a photographic flare which his tamperings with the poor box had caused to be ignited at the precise instant in which an automatic camera caught the features of his startled face. The camera trap was the invention of a policeman, one James O'Donnell, who had already seen his device installed in several haunts but had never before had an opportunity of giving it a working test. Proud of its performance, Policeman O'Donnell recommended its installation in any surroundings where thieves might be expected to foregather. Insurance companies, he remarked, would lower their burglary premiums if such an instrument were located on the premises.

Proud Stroud

Down the side of Pike's Peak, Col., coming at a precipitous rate of speed, with an enormous roar, was seen last week a hairy and runtlike Negro. On reaching the bottom, 48 minutes after he had left the top, the Negro said that he had broken the record for coming down Pike's Peak and that his name was Dolphus Stroud.