Fashion in Funerals

In Buenos Aires' Chacarita Cemetery 30 years ago Don Tomas set up business as a professional valedictorian of the dead. Of his red-eyed clients he asked only the name, nationality and business of the deceased. Then he would step to the head of the newly turned grave and deliver eulogies of any desired length. He had practiced, he boasted, ten years to give his voice the correct hollowness of tone. When funeral fashions changed, and speeches gave way to flowers, Don Tomas tried vainly to meet the competition. He pared his rates four times. He threw in six Latin quotations free. He introduced a ten minute oration for $1. But modern Argentines continued to buy flowers, to shun Don Tomas' speeches. Last week Don Tomas died and was buried, with flowers, without speeches.

Tumor

In the General Hospital of Kingston, Out., a 115-lb., 41-yr.-old woman had a 55-lb. tumor removed. Weighing 60 Ib. she may recover.

Wives

"A college woman, when she becomes a wife, makes more trouble than all the other classes of wives put together. I make just one exception. The only wife who makes more trouble than a college woman is a wife who has gone to a girls' school. A college woman is too ambitious, too full of ideals for any man to get along with. The girls' school wives suffer from the spinsterial environment in which they live during impressionable years. Don't make the mistake of treating your wife like a pal. Treat her like a woman." Such advice was given the Western Psychological Association at Berkeley, Calif, by a member of the Los Angeles Institute of Family Relations.

Mousetrap

In San Joaquin County, Calif., an incendiary fastened sandpaper to the spring of a mousetrap, friction matches to the base. Carefully he pulled the spring back and held it at tension with a piece of adhesive tape. Then he put his contrivance in a grain field and from hiding waited until the sun melted the adhesive and sprang the trap which ignited the matches and set fire to 1,600 acres of grain.

Daffodils

In a Brooklyn garage Angelina di Gangi, 15, scolded Vito Marano for flirting. Young Vito cuffed his love, and she fled home. Hour later Vito, repentant, sidled into the dark hall of her house, a peace-offering of fine yellow daffodils in his hand. A gun spat a bullet. Young Vito turned slowly in surprise, walked a block before he showed his wound to a policeman. At the other end of the block Angelina's hysterical scream attracted the policeman. Hugged to her breast was a bunch of fine yellow daffodils, flecked with young Vito's blood.

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