Contaminated

At The Dalles, Ore., a thirsty tourist beheld a roadside spring over which the Highway Department had nailed a sign: THIS WATER IS CONTAMINATED. He hurried to the spring, began noisily to drink. A highway official, driving by, stopped to warn the drinking fellow. "Hi, Chief," said the guzzler, "what kind of mineral water is this here contaminated water? I never heard of it before, and this is the first time I seen it advertised." The official crawled away. Next day the old sign was replaced with another: THIS WATER IS ROTTEN. NOT FIT TO DRINK.

Persecuted

In Brooklyn, one Wong Low, Chinese laundryman, was harassed by a gang of rowdy youths who threw stones into his windows, pounded on his doors when he slept, tossed garbage upon the linen he had just laundered. One day last week they began their activities by nonchalantly stoning him through the open door as he bent his wet yellow face over an ironing board. One of the missiles struck the board. Wong Low screamed; the youths jeered. Chattering Chinese imprecations, Low drew a revolver from his blouse, began to shoot. The boys scattered, but one James Courte, aged 22, dodged into a doorway, was "cornered" by the enraged Chinese, received one of Low's bullets in the head, another in the heart. A policeman, seeing Courte pitch forward upon his face, broke the back of the fleeing laundryman with a well-aimed bullet.

Flush

In Hackensack, N. J., one Joseph Schnugg grinned at the five cards of a poker hand he had just been dealt. There was the ace of hearts, the king, queen, jack of hearts, and another card that was neither a heart nor a ten. Hence the grin upon the face of Mr. Schnugg; he had come so near to having the highest hand in poker, a natural royal flush, and his chance of drawing the needed card (ten of hearts) was so minute as to be nigh undecipherable. Mr. Schnugg stretched out his hand to the pack, flushed to the ears. He had done it.

Choked

The New Yorker Herold, German newspaper published in Manhattan, reported the following event:

In Brooklyn, the tall Persian cat of one Mrs. Anna Kiekhoffer chased a mouse this way and that, around the garbage can, under the kitchen table, cornered him by the scuttlebutt; there began to toy with him in the remorseless sadistic fashion of tall Persian cats with small timid mice. Suddenly the tiny creature, deranged by terror, turned upon its tormentor like a lion, scrabbled into the cat's mouth, put its head down the cat's throat, choked it to death by choking to death within it.