The story has to do with the enumerator who called at a humble home, and there found the head of the family humped up over a large volume. It developed, in the course of the conversation, that the householder some months before had been induced by a traveling agent to invest in an encyclopedia. To get the worth of his money he had been reading the books of the set pretty constantly ever since.
In reply to the caller’s questions he gave his name and age and his wife’s name and age.
“How many infant children have you?” asked the census taker.
“I’ve got three,” said the citizen. “And that’s all there ever will be, too, you take it from me.”
“What makes you so positive about that?” asked the visitor.
“I’ll tell you why there won’t never be but three,” said the man “It’s wrote down in this here book that every fourth child born in the world is Chinese.”
§ 41 One Detail Was Missing
On the historic afternoon when Jack Johnson fought Jim Jeffries in Nevada for the world’s championship there was a baseball game at the old Polo Grounds. In the press stand, among others, sat Sid Mercer, the sporting writer, and Franklin P. Adams, the column conductor. For some reason or other, ringside bulletins were not being received at the ball park. Naturally, the crowd wanted to know how the fight was going.
Several hundred spectators, drawn by the fact that telegraph instruments were clicking in the press stand, packed themselves solidly behind the wire netting in the hope of hearing tidings from Reno over the wire. Mercer and Adams had a joint inspiration. They pretended to be taking a ringside description off one of the instruments. First one would chant off a purely imaginary account of a round, and then the other would.
Adams had a bet down on the negro to win, and accordingly favored the dark contender. In his turn to “read” a round, he would depict Johnson as hammering Jeffries to a pulp. But Mercer, who was a partisan of Jeffries, would each time retaliate with a spirited but, of course, purely fictitious account of how the white man, having rallied heroically, was now dealing mighty blows upon the head and body of the tottering, weakening black.