A Chinese Curiosity

1901

"A Chinaman in San Francisco," says a gossiper in the Philadelphia Record, "showed me once an ivory ball as big as your two fists, with six smaller balls inside it. It was the most wonderful thing I ever saw. The Chinaman said that the balls had been begun by his grandfather and that he was the third generation to work on them. He told me how the work was done.

"It begins with a solid block of ivory, which is turned into a ball and then carved in a latticed pattern with tiny saw toothed knives. Through the lattice, with other knives that are bent in various shapes, the second ball is carved, but is kept fast to the first one by a thin strip of ivory left at the top and by another left at the bottom. Then the third ball, with still finer knives, is tackled through the first and second ones, and so the work goes on till all the balls are finished, when the strips that hold them firm are cut away, and they all revolve freely, one inside the other.

"This Chinaman said it was a common thing for families to have such balls for hundreds of years — grandfather, father, son and grandson working on them when they had nothing else to do. They are priceless, of course. Some cheap balls are made of vegetable ivory, being carved while the material is soft, like a potato. These, though, are not worth more than a few dollars at the most."

Hospital Patient, Clad in Nightie, Hides Sixty Hours in a Coal Bin

1920

MINNEAPOLIS, Minn. -- Barefooted, with only a nightshirt covering his body, Marlow Hutchins, 52 years old, who escaped from the Minneapolis General Hospital, hid in a coal bin and defied the March weather, but succumbed to hunger. He gave himself up and was returned to the hospital, after being out in the cold sixty hours.

"I didn't mind the cold, but I had to get something to eat," he told physicians.

When Hutchins eluded the hospital attendants he managed to make his way without being seen or reported, to the northern part of the city, where he crawled into a coal bin. he lay there quietly, he said, until he was driven out by starvation.

Physicians said that Hutchins was in a serious condition. His feet, from walking barefoot in the snow and ice, had been frozen, and he was suffering from exposure.

Hutchins escaped from the hospital when he cut the straps, which bound him to the bed, with the rough edge of a tin cup, and leaped from an upper window. He was being treated for a nervous disease and had been delirious.

When Hutchins could not endure hunger any longer, he came out into the street, where he was seen by a man driving an automobile.

"Please take me to the hospital," he pleaded.

The man, who did not give his name, wrapped the nightshirt-clad man in a robe and drove him to the hospital.

"I hated to go out before," Hutchins said. 'I was almost seen many times before I hid in the coal bin. Men passed close to me many times, but I dodged and didn't let any one see me."

--The Saturday Blade, Chicago, March 27, 1920, page 1.