Rats, Cat

In Mid-Pacific, the tanker Java Arrow picked up 14 men from the helpless and drifting Japanese steamer Taishin Maru No. 3; flashed the message ashore: "Men uneat last 20 days, no water last five. Caught rats, made soup. Later caught no more rats; crew ate cat."

Joke

In Brooklyn last month John Seles, butcher, was held up and robbed of $40 in his small store. Last week, Taximan John Kirschner entered the store, stood behind Butcher Seles, cried, "Hands up! Get into the ice box!" Butcher Seles whirled, drove his cleaver through the base of Mr. Kirschner's skull, though neck muscles and three large veins. Hospitalized, close to death, Mr. Kirschner said, "I was only fooling." No whit penitent, Butcher Seles said, " A joke, eh? What a joke, I'd say! . . . Yes, his wife, she's a customer. But him I don't know. What does he think I should do--laugh?"

Puddle

A very old drayhorse splashed through a puddle on a Boston street. As the water touched his hoofs, he seemed to be made young again. He put up his head, whinnied once or twice, and set off at a round pace with his coal-wagon. Had the water of the puddle been enchanted? Did he taste once more, in his gnarled nostrils, the clover-scented wind of youth?

A younger horse clip-clopped into the puddle. He began to rear and caracole as if he were about to suffer transformation into a colt. . . . And a very old man who was watching from the pavement decided that the puddle was in truth a magic puddle -- perhaps the same puddle Ponce de Leon was looking for when he saw in dreams the goldern city of Cathay. The old man tottered across the Boston street and thrust his hand into the water. . . .

He sprang back with a sharp cry. Workers of the Edison Electric Illuminating Co. were called. They found that a short-circuited conduit had given the puddle a charge of 120 volts.