Fighting Man’s Square Meal.
Charles Weber, a pugilist from New York, while in a cell in Philadelphia, Pa., on a charge of forgery, having been brought here from Moyamensing Prison, told Turnkey Gordon, of the Thompson Street police station, that he hadn’t eaten for a week; that he was as hungry as a polar bear, and wouldn’t Gordon please get one dollar from his money in the sergeant’s desk and take his order for a square meal? Gordon did.
Ten minutes later Gordon faced the house sergeant with a wry face. “What do you think of that fightin’ guy?” he asked. “’E said ez ’ow ’e wanted a square meal, and sent me out fer a dollar’s worth of cream puffs, and blow me if ’e didn’t eat every bloomin’ one of ’em.”
Answers the Call of Cupid.
After having answered nearly four million calls, Miss Theresa Cox, chief telephone operator at the Minnesota State House, has fallen victim of Cupid, and given up her job. For ten years, ever since the capitol was completed, Miss Cox has guarded the switchboard day in and day out, the personification of efficiency and amiability, and long years ago gained the reputation of being a model telephone girl.
On ordinary days she made between one thousand and twelve hundred wire connections. When the legislature was in session, or in other times of stress, the demands[Pg 57] on her switchboard were greatly increased, and she would be called over the lines sixteen hundred times or more.
No one ever applied for her job, and she probably was the only one in the capitol whose job was not in danger. The uncertainties of political positions had no fear for her, for no governor ever could have thought of removing Miss Cox. There would have been a storm of protest akin to a riot.
But what governors could not do, Henry Jopling accomplished. He invited Miss Cox to marry him, and Dan Cupid advised her to surrender.
“I’m awfully sorry to leave here,” she said to a gathering of State House officials and employees who gave her a wedding “shower,” and her voice shook a little. “You have all been so kind to me.”