The Birmingham age-herald., 1904-12-04
OUT OF THE ORDINARY


There is a. hint for the novelist, possibly the germ of a best selling book" in the tale recently retold by an English perl odical of the famous card swindle said to have been perpetrated some years ago on the sprightly citizens of Havana The tale goes back to Spain where a certain spaniard of marked criminal propensi- ties began operations by a wholesale pur- chase of packs of playing cards. This ingenious gentleman. to whom time was apparently no object. opened, marked and cleverly sealed up again hun dreds of packs of cards-an operation said to have consumed two years of pa- tient, monotonous labor. Then he ship ped the cards to Havana, where they were offered to local dealers at so small a price that they became practically the whole stock in trade of island merchants and so gradually found their way all oyer the island.
 The time was now ripe for the ingenious spaniard to follow his various shipments of playing cards. He appeared in Ha- vana, became a member of the leading clubs and soon began reaping handsome profit on his investment. Presently, how every, there appeared in the island a French card sharper, who purchased pack of cards with the intention of mark Ing it for his own purposes and greatly to his surprise, found it marked already. Carrying his Investigations further he found that every pack he purchased, no matter where he purchased 1t, gave sim far evidence of having been tempered with. And putting two and two together the French rascal scented a gigantic scheme of card cheating and set himself to find the man who was profiting by it.
 This of course, was comparatively easy, for the Spanish swindler was ob viously the lucl1iest man at cards in all Havana. Confronted by the discovery he was compelled to share winnings with his French confrere until such time as he found himself in possession of a suf- fciently large sum to make instant flight profitable. And the story came out in confession made sometime after by the French blackleg.
 Somewhere in Europe, our information does not specify the exact place, 1t Is said that there has been recently estab- ushed a school in which the pupils are taught how to sleep. The purpose of the curriculum is not only to reduce slumber to a graceful art but to teach the slum- berer how to wake up in the morning good-natured, optimistic and pleasant companion at the breakfast table. Snor- ing, of course is to be thing unknown among the graduates and the unhappy habit of sleeping with the mouth open is checked in the very earliest stages of study.
 The new school will undoubtedly fill long felt want. In these days of apart ment houses with his partitions, for ex- ample, 1t might even be a good idea to require diploma from every prospective tenant.
 The recent invention of razor with so many blades that the happy owner may shave for months without indulging in the familiar struggle with hone or strop is the more curious when one realizes for how many centuries the human male has faced that daily contest and thought little about 1t, one way or the other, ex- cept during the bitter moments of the en- counter Shaving, in fact, antedates his- tory. The oldest Egyptian sculptures ex- hibit some men with boards and others smooth shaven, and we may still read in Genesis that Joseph, some 1500 years before the Christian era, Shaved himself