SKYSCRAPERS.

Oamaru Mail, Volume XLII, Issue 12823, 15 April 1916, Page 1 (Supplement)

SKYSCRAPERS.

A FEW TALL STORIES FROM AMERICA.

New' York, February 12

The. following axe a few everyday news stories culled from a batch of New York and provincial daily papers, and quoted verbatim except that Amer rican currency has been.translated into the British equivalent. They certainly require a believing mind on the part of the poor reader:—Although Jacob Gajeiki has no arms, having lost them in a mine accident years ago, he is charged by. his wife in 'divorce papers filed at Hazleton. today with having frequently beaten ner - _, . The Rev. William B. 'Stocked, pastor of the Presbyterian Church at Doylestown, Pengsylvama, announced to-day | that he was considering the introduction of a new collection device in his church. ■-.""•.

This newly invented contrivance is intended, to stimulate giving. If a member of the congregation drops in the equivalent' of a florin there is no sound; when a shilling is deposited it jingles; a 5d piece, and a bell rings; a 2sd bit, and a whistle blows; and if a halfpenny is slipped in a cartridge explodes. Myron Cummings was lodged in prison at Riversdale, New Jersey, to-day, because he swore at his horse. He could not furnish the £lO bond to keep the peace. :: AVhy n- razor, anyhow ?" asks Robert T.' Evans, a member of the Johnstown city fire department. Robert hod his face heavily lathered for shaving the other morning when an alarm came in. Without removing the lather, Evans jumped on a _ motor truck and was soon whizzing thirty miles an hour through a temperature of 5 below zero. He rubbed his hands over his face, and his whiskers broke off.

The ostrich-Like appetite of a chicken .sold to Frank Shinnen, chief of Atlantic City's electrical bureau, puthis entire family to bed with ptomaine poisoning to-day.

Examination oi nieut cut from the fowl showed poison, and when the craw was investigated three partly consumed copper tacks were discovered. The action of the bird's digestive organs had worn away half the tacks and distributed the poison through the system. ' •

Rather than wait until spring, when a minister could get the great drifts of snow between Pinedale and. Big Piney, in .Wyoming,, MrL. E. Bennett, a .Denver musician, caused his marriage to Mrs Martha Dennis at Big Piney yesterday to be performed over the long-distance telephone. The novel ceremony was performed by the Rev. W. D. R"eese at Pinedale, the questions and answers traversing 45 miles of line, and the ceremony was legally witnessed at both ends of tho wire. The service was wholly" in accordance with the Wyoming statutes. It occupied five minutes, and the cost in toll charges was Is ,6d. Hunting musk rats in the lowlands along the Susquehanna River at Seven Kitchens. Pennsylvania, to-day Mr R. Al. Quinn, of Sunbury, says he saw a fight between a bear and a cow,' in which the domestic routed the wild animal.

The cow was in a. cornfield munching ■a pumpkin, when a black bear approached, evidently without desire to harm the cow,, it- tried' to get a. bite off the pumpkin. The cow took exception to this, and (Juinn says he saw it gore and paw at the bear, which struck back futilely and then fled.

Sangford Phillips, jun., aged two, of Kfkihs, West Virginia, owes his life to the fear of wild hogs for their, own likeness when reflected in a lookingiihiss.

Wild hogs which exist in the moan, tains of Randolph County came down j'uto the foothills and charged into the home of Sanford Phillips, sen., upsetting furniture, and attacking Phillips' two-year-old son. " • The animals had torn nearly all-, the clothing from the child when ho ran into a corner where a big mirror hung. The hogs followed 1 , but soon stopped when they beheld their likeness in tho big glass. Only a second dM- they hesitate, however, then turned, plunging from the house back up the mountain side. The child was only slightly injured.

A. J. Rutherford, aged seventeen, of Kearneysville, West Virginia, was arrested at Hagerstown, Maryland, today, charged with forging Frank Trump's name to a £4 8s cheque on the Farmers' Bank, Shepherdstown, and also with stealing a horse. Rutherford admitted forgery, but claims that when lie entered the stable the horse followed him out, and he merely mounted aud rode off.