Life — May 21, 1914 — page 32: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

el Oe la ee A Rascal Caught IFE. is happy to announce that, aided by alert and clever friends in Kansas City, Missouri, it has run to carth the petty swindler who, under the name of Curtiss and under other aliases, has been posing as a subscription agent for Lirr. He has been active in numerous cities of the Southwest and Middle West, and, judg- ing from the numerous complaints received at Lire office, has been very industrious indeed. The amount involved being so small in each case, it is fair to assume that for every complaint received there have been very many more victims who have pocketed their loss in silence. Curtiss turns out to be, in fact, a young Russian Jew whose real name is Kurtisky. His modus operandi was simple. He had books of receipts printed and numbered bearing both Ltre’s real address and a fictitious one in Chicago. His proposition was that on payment of forty cents he would enter the name of his victim for a ten- weeks’ subscription to Lire. Sometimes he varied this alluring proposition by throwing in a set of books or a life insurance policy. Almost any one would give up forty cents sooner than waste time refusing, and the scheme worked very well. Of course, the subscriber never re- ceived the paper, and before he learned that he had been swindled Kurtisky had gone to other fields, Kurtisky, like most criminals, made one mistake. He paid a return visit to Kansas City, and one of his victims, who had been enlightened by Lire, encountered him and promptly had him arrested on a charge of obtaining money under false pretenses. He was sentenced to fifty days in jail. Ltre has notified the authorities in other cities, and it is likely that Kurtisky will play a continuous per- formance in various jails and penitentiaries for some time to come. Warrants are already out for his removal to Tulsa, Oklahoma, where the chain-gang is reported to do very good work on the roads, in which he is expected to participate. After that other towns will claim his services. It has not been an easy task to apprehend this petty larceny thief, and Lire congratulates the public that, for a while at least, he will remain in salutary seclusion. com Glossary ‘OR the benefit of short story writers and other honest authors who wish to change their output to modern demands on account of the unpleasantness with Mexico, we append a vocabulary of Mexican terms with their American equivalents: Peon—Any worker. Pulque—Any non-grape-juice fluid. Gringo—The gentle reader. Tortilla—Parker House roll. Adobe—Woolworth. Sniper—A roof-garden waiter. Insurrecto—I. W. W. THE GIRL WHO GETS IN AHEAD OF YOU Sedition Ov thanks may be due to Mr. William D. Haywood for rescuing one of our happiest little archaisms from oblivion. By announcing that some of the unions might cease work in the event of war, he has enabled the New York Times, whom we haven't seen so wrought up in a long time, to charge him with sedition. This, of course, sent us all scurrying to the dictionary. There we found that the word is obsolete, and when we examine its definition, we can understand why. It is obsolete because its defi- nition defines nothing. Sedition merely consists in not thinking so well of a governmental authority as some- body else thinks you ought to think. It falls short of treason, because treason requires an overt act which can be defined. Inasmuch as we feel, in a democracy, that we all have the right to our own opinions respecting (or dis- respecting) government policies, it is practically impossible to make a discriminating use of the word sedition. That’s why nearly all of us have dropped it and the Times might do well to do likewise. E.0. J. 5) Rate best time to talk about being down and out is after you have got up again. comichooks.