In Dead of Night

Anna Putriuniate, 17, native of Lithuania, dressmaker in Montreal, Canada, wanted to become a resident of the U. S. She paid a man $50 to show her how. He took her one Sunday night to the gorge dam at Niagara Falls, lowered her by a rope to the trestle of the Michigan Central Railroad. With little, cautious steps she walked along the cold steel girders, while the Whirlpool Rapids 250 feet below howled at her. She was shrewd enough to put her legs in trousers instead of flapping, treacherous skirts. She reached U. S. soil. Last week she was arrested with four other young women who had crossed from Canada in rowboats the night after her bridge-walk. All were held as witnesses against a band of five alien smugglers. Commented the New York World: "Perhaps, then, in wattle huts and thatched roofs, in crowded slums and picturesque villages of the old familiar parts of the world, they still think of this [U. S.] as the promised land. Hearing their stories, we can hardly do less than strive to make it that."