Blanket Osage Indians, who have a liking for automobiles and other features of modern civilization, have taken another step forward. The Osage women are abandoning the ancient aboriginal custom of carrying their infant offspring strapped to a board on their backs. Recently a great many of them have purchased the fanciest “gocarts” they could buy, and now it is no uncommon sight in Tulsa, Okla., or other towns frequented by the Osages to see an Osage mother, garbed in a gaudy blanket herself, pushing a baby buggy in which reposes a little papoose who seems as contented as when strapped to the mother’s back.
It is said the Poncas, Otoes, and other blanket Indians are gradually coming to this custom.
Unsuspected Bank Clerk Pleads Guilty of Robbery.
William H. Bell, the 19-year-old bank clerk, who recently confessed to stealing the package of $55,000 from the First National Bank, at Pensacola, Fla., was arraigned before a United States commissioner and entered a plea of guilty.
Bell declared he had no accomplices in taking the money from the bank, or in returning it to the back door of the bank where it was found by the negro janitor. His bond was fixed at $5,000.
In his confession, Bell declared he yielded in a moment of weakness in taking the money, but, after he had it, he did not know what to do with it. He said he desired to have sentence levied for his crime as quickly as possible.
Bell was not under suspicion up to the time he presented himself to the bank president and confessed to the crime.
Gaynor Stands Up for the Hatpin.
Mayor Gaynor is not in sympathy with the crusade to suppress the wearing of hatpins with unprotected ends. Several attempts to pass an antihatpin ordinance in the board of aldermen have been made recently, and the mayor expresses his opinion on the subject in a letter to one of the advocates of the ordinance:
“I must confess,” he writes, “I never saw any one hurt by a lady’s hatpin, but[{68}] since you say so, and since the prefect of the Rhone department, in France, as you say, has issued an edict against ladies’ hatpins, I suppose they must do much slaughter. But is it altogether seemly for a man to get his face so close to a lady’s hatpin as to get scratched? Shouldn’t such a fellow get scratched?”