If all the taxis were the same, there would not be this constant struggling back and forth with doormen, for it wouldn’t make any difference which cab you took. Or, rather, the only difference would be in the drivers.
Taxi drivers are always going to differ, I suppose, whether the state runs the business or not, but there might be some way of showing a prospective fare just what the personality of his driver is going to be. A red light on the starboard side could mean that the chauffeur is conversationally inclined, a green light that he would rather be left to himself. I, personally, prefer the conversational kind as a general rule, but there might be times when I wanted to do some reading or take a tardy shave, and then a good, quiet, even sullen, companion would be appreciated. On the whole, though, I have found taxi drivers to be much more consistently agreeable and sensitive to your wishes than any other class of the citizenry. If you want to talk, they will talk (and very delightfully, too). If you want to sit quietly and sob or read, they sense it and look straight ahead. Find me any other type of person who will do that.
This matter of reading in cabs could stand a little preliminary planning, too. Reading in a cab at night is bad enough, for, after groping up and down the sides and pushing screws and hinges and ineffectual protuberances in a search for the tiny light switch, it is nine times out of ten discovered that the light doesn’t work, or that it goes on only when the door is opened.
And you can’t go whizzing through the streets with a door swinging open just to find out who won the football game.
But in the daytime it is much more tantalizing to try and catch a few paragraphs between jounces, for you think that the windows are going to be some help in letting in light – and they are not. You try to hold the paper up to the little back window, with your head twisted off to the right to avoid a shadow, but that doesn’t give quite enough light to get beyond the headlines. You then try leaning over toward one of the door windows, but that necessitates getting halfway off the seat and leaves you in no position at all to cope with the next jounce. I have a scar on one of my cheekbones to this day resulting from a nasty reading wound incurred while trying to hold a paper where I could see it just as we went over an uncovered water main.
All of this could be remedied, if the new scheme goes through, by a little care in the construction of cabs and perhaps a poll of patrons giving suggestions.
Aside from the installation of reading lamps and character guides to drivers’ personal traits, I would like to offer the following list of possible accessories which would make it easier for us to hail a taxi and ride in it with a certain degree of comfort:
(1) A light on top reading “Taxi,” so that I shall not constantly be hailing private cars and incurring the displeasure of their owners.
(2) Another light reading “Taken” or “Not to Be Disturbed until 9 A.M.,” so that I shall not snatch open the door of a stalled cab only to find it already occupied by people who do not want to see me at that particular time.
(3) Some elevation of the door frame which will make it possible to enter a cab wearing a tall hat without having to go back immediately for a new one.
(4) Little hooks on which tall hats or derbies may be hung to avoid having them jammed over the ears by contact with roofs when going over bumps.
(5) Special helicopter attachment on the roof, making it possible for a cab stuck in traffic to rise, fly over the blockade, and land where it will have some chance of reaching its destination.
Or perhaps it would be simpler just to not use taxicabs at all.
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Tell-Tale Clues
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Unless you are very smart and remember all that was taught you in school about how to cover up your tracks after you have committed a crime, you are going to be surprised at some of the things that I am going to write down for you. And I, in turn, shall be surprised if you read them. The average criminal has no idea how careful he has to be in order to keep on being a criminal and not just an ex-. He may think that he is being careful while he is at work, wearing silk gloves and walking on his ankles and all that, but unless he spends as much time looking around for telltale bits of evidence after he commits the crime as he spent in committing it, then he is leaving himself open for a terrible panning by someone, even if it is only the Chief of Police.
For example, on April 7, 1904, the vault in the Lazybones National Bank and Fiduciary Trust Co. of Illville, Illinois, was blown off, and if there had been anything in there worth taking away, it could easily have been done. As it was, the vault contained nothing but a hundred shares of Goldman Sachs, and the robbers, instead of taking these, added two hundred more shares of their own and made their get-away, leaving the bank stuck with three hundred shares instead of one hundred.
Attracted by the oaths of the safe-crackers as they walked down the street, the police rushed first to the Farmers’ and Drovers’ Bank, then to the First Congregational Church, and then to the Lazybones National where the explosion had taken place. They found that not only had the front been blown off the vault but the handle to the front door of the bank building was gone. It had evidently been pulled off in pique by one of the robbers when he found that the door would not open as easily as he thought it ought to.
After a thorough investigation of the premises, Captain Louis Mildew of the detective force turned to his aide and said, “If we can find the man who has this door knob in his hand, we shall have the man who cracked the safe.” A week later a man was picked up in Zanesville who was carrying a door knob which corresponded in every detail with the one missing from the bank building. In spite of the fact that he claimed that it belonged to him and that he was carrying it to ward off rheumatism, he was arrested and later confessed.
Another case where carelessness on the part of the criminal led to his ultimate arrest and embarrassment is found on the records of police in Right Knee, New Jersey. A puddleworker had been killed in a fight and his assailant had escaped, evidently several days before the crime was discovered (in fact, the evidence pointed to the killer having escaped several days before the murder, which didn’t make sense). On looking over the ground where the body was found, the police discovered a man’s wooden leg firmly gripped in the teeth of the dead man.
The name of the makers of the wooden leg, the Peter Pan Novelty Co., was also broadcast.
On the fourth day of the search a policeman saw a one-legged man sitting at a bar and, approaching him in a businesslike manner, said “I represent the Peter Pan Novelty Co. and there is a payment due on an artificial limb bought from us last year. Could you see your way clear to giving us something at this time?”
The one-legged man immediately bridled and said hotly, “I pay you no more on that leg. It came off when I needed it most, and I haven’t been able to find it since. If you wish, I will put this in the form of a letter of complaint to the company.”
“You can put it in the form of testimony before a judge, buddy,” said the policeman, turning back his lapel where he had forgotten to pin his badge. “Come along with me.”
And so, simply through careless haste in getting away without looking about for incriminating evidence, the man was caught, and had a pretty rough time convincing the jury that he had done the killing in self-defense and to save his sister’s honor. It was later found that not only did he have no sister but that she had no honor.
Perhaps the most famous instance of carelessness was the discovery of the abductor of the Sacred White Elephant of Mistick, California. This was an inside job, for the elephant had been confined in a hut which was several sizes too small for her, making it impossible for anyone to enter from the outside. This much was certain.
The elephant, when it was first discovered in Mistick, had been neither white nor sacred, but was a camp follower of a circus, who had liked the town and stayed behind when the rest moved on. So the town whitewashed her and spread the report about that she was sacred, and used to charge
two bits to take a walk around her, once around one way and back around the other.
The man who had turned the trick was a very wily elephant thief who had been in the business a long time but had never worked in white elephants before. He made all provisions for a quick get-away and, before the loss was discovered, had the prize out of town and well on its way down the coast. What he had neglected to do, however, was to brush off the sleeve of his coat, not realizing that, when frightened, a white elephant gives off a fine dusty powder which settles on the nearest objects and marks them as having been near a white elephant. And so it was that, as the crook was walking along a country road leading his ill-gotten gain, he was accosted by a local constable. Stopping Potts (the thief s name was Potts), he said, “What’s that white dust on your coat shoulder?”
“I just left my girl,” said Potts. “Does your girl wear white elephant powder?” asked the constable, very comical. “That’s white elephant powder and it’s off that elephant.”
“What elephant?” said Potts in surprise, looking behind him. “Oh, that elephant?”
The thief tried to escape by hiding behind the beast; but the constable could see his legs and feet from the other side and placed him under arrest.
So you will see that it is the little things that count in successful police evasion, and the sooner our criminals realize this the fewer humiliating arrests there will be.
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The Helping Hand
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I have tried to be as public-spirited as I could and yet save out a little time to myself for running and jumping. That is, when the Fuel Administration wanted us all to save coal, I saved coal with a will; when it was Anti-Litter Week, I anti-littered; when the nation was supposed to be devoting itself to eating apples, I drank applejack until the cows came home and very funny-looking cows they were, too.
So when the head of the Unemployment Commission came out over the radio and asked every good citizen to set about “sprucing up” his home and give employment to as many men as possible, I saw my duty and set about doing it.
My house could stand a little “sprucing up,” for we have been hoping to sell it for eight to ten years (centrally located in Westchester County, three minutes from the station, colonial type, four master’s bedrooms and three masters, servants’ quarters at the foot of the plantation, two chimneys, of which one is imitation; just try naming a price and see what happens), and when you expect to sell a house any minute you more or less put off “sprucing up.” So I figured that I could help out the situation considerably merely by fixing up the house so that the owls didn’t fly in through the roof at night.
Aside from having the roof patted down, I decided that a couple of eaves troughs could stand a little humoring; that one of the master’s bathtubs might very well be given a new porcelain filling; that the furnace could easily be looked into by an expert, possibly using a ferret to get out that clinker which got stuck in the grate four years ago; and that we needed a new lock on the front door (or perhaps it was a new key; at any rate, the front door couldn’t be locked).
This shaped up like quite a boon to the unemployed of the town. All that remained was for me myself to find enough work to do to pay for it.
We had quite a little trouble in finding a carpenter and a plumber who could promise to come before the following week (no matter how serious the unemployment situation, no individual carpenter or plumber can ever come before the following week, doubtless out of habit), and the locksmith and the furnaceman just didn’t seem interested. But we finally got a little group of experts who agreed to drop in the next day and see what could be done.
In the meantime, we had discovered that the electric range needed tampering with and that a fresh coat of paint wouldn’t hurt the back porch. So we engaged an electrician and a painter to come in the next day also.
The next day was one of those crisp late fall days when everyone feels so good that he wants to stay right in bed under the blankets all the morning. I was surprised, therefore, in my bathrobe by Mr. Margotson, the carpenter, and Mr. Rallif, the electrician, who arrived together at eight thirty. This started the thing off on an informal basis right at the beginning, and as Mr. Shrank, the locksmith, came a few minutes later, it seemed only hospitable to ask them if they wouldn’t like a second cup of coffee before starting to work. At this point the furnaceman, Mr. Thurple, arrived in the painter’s automobile (I didn’t quite catch the painter’s name, but I think it was Schnee; at any rate, I called him Schnee and he seemed quite pleased), and so our little coffee party was now six, including the host, which just filled the breakfast table nicely.
“Do you take cream in your coffee, Mr. Margotson?” I asked. Mr. Margotson and Mr. Rallif having been the first to arrive, it seemed to me that they should be served first.
“It’s strange that you should have asked me that,” replied Mr. Margotson, “for I was saying to Mrs. Margotson at breakfast only this morning, ‘I see in the paper where a man says that cream and sugar together in coffee set up a poison which sooner or later results in toxemia!’”
“Don’t you think,” put in Mr. Thurple, helping himself to cream and sugar, “that we are, as a nation, becoming a little too self-conscious about what we eat and drink? As a nation, I mean.”
Mr. Schnee, or whatever his name was, laughed a low, tinkling laugh. This, although Mr. Schnee said nothing, somehow broke the ice and we all laughed, I had never seen five more congenial and delightful men together at one table (six, if you want to count me; I couldn’t very well have said it myself). As soon as we all had our coffee cups well poised, the conversation became general and drifted from dietetics to religion and then quickly back to dietetics again. When Mr. Ramm, the plumber (true to the jokes in the funny papers, the last to arrive), came bursting in he found us deep in a discussion of whether or not ransom should be paid in kidnaping cases.
“The late Mr. Ramm!” taunted Mr. Thurple, the furnace-man, who had already established himself as the clown of the crowd by having seven cups of coffee. At which sally Mr. Schnee again laughed his low, tinkling laugh and set us all off again. As soon as Mr. Ramm had recovered from his embarrassment at being the butt of Mr. Thurple’s joke, I set the round of day’s activities in motion.
“How many here play badminton?” I asked, springing to my feet.
“I,” “I,” and “I,” came with a will from three hearty throats, and Messrs. Margotson, Rallif, and Thurple had their coats off and their sleeves rolled up as an earnest of their intentions.
“Take me, I like backgammon,” said Mr. Ramm.
“You’re my man then,” said Mr. Shrank. “I am the backgammon king of Locksmiths’ Row.” It looked for a minute as if we were in for a rather nasty argument, but Mr. Schnee’s low, musical laugh came again to the rescue, and the party was on. The room which had been full of men only a minute before was now emptied in a trice, some rushing pell-mell to the badminton court and some to the backgammon room.
Luncheon was a gay affair, with favors for those who had won at their various games and speeches of acceptance which convulsed even the low-laughing Mr. Schnee.
“I am sorry, gentlemen,” I said, in part, when it came my turn, “that I have got you all here to do certain jobs to which you are severally suited by training and study, for I find that I have not the money to pay you with, even if you were to carry out your commissions. But what there is of good cheer and good fellowship in this house is yours, and we are all going to make the most of it while it lasts.”
That was a month and a half ago and they are still living with me. We are the best of friends and still the small boys at heart that we always were. The house is in much worse condition than it was before; but, as it turned out that they all had more money than I, I am not worrying. They have each promised to buy a story from me as soon as I can get around to writing it.
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Announcing
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a New Vitamin
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Dr. Arthur W. Meexus and the author of this paper take great pleasure in announcing the discovery of vitamin F on August 15, 1931. We ran across it quite by accident while poking through some old mackerel bones, trying to find a little piece of fish that we could eat.
“By George,” exclaimed Dr. Meexus, “I think this is a vitamin!”
“By George,” I said, examining it, “it is not only a vitamin, but it is vitamin F! See how F it looks!” And, sure enough, it was vitamin F all over, the very vitamin F which had been eluding Science since that day in 1913 when Science decided that there were such things as vitamins. (Before 1913 people had just been eating food and dying like flies.)
In honor of being the first vitamin to be discovered, this new element was called vitamin A, and a very pretty name it was, too. From then on, doctors began discovering other vitamins – B, C, D, and E, and then vitamin G. But vitamin F was missing. It is true vitamin G looked so much like vitamin B that you could hardly tell them apart, except in strong light, and vitamin E was, for all practical purposes, the same as vitamin A (except a little more blond), but nobody seemed able to work up any discovery by which a vitamin F could be announced.
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