New York, Mar. 5.
In a nickel museum on 42nd Street a man climbed upon a rostrum, waved for a knot of loafers to come closer and yelled in a brassy voice: "Alexander the Great!"
Maybe the youngsters clustered around the stage thought it was going to be a sword swallower dressed in the armour of the invincible King of Macedon; or maybe a robed mystic who would read the future for us through a cloudy crystal; or maybe a magician in a tall silk hat.
But, no, it was a lanky man in a wrinkled brown suit. It was a man who had hen-track creases around his eyes from peering too much into the afternoon sun of too many summers. It was Old Pete, Grover Cleveland Alexander himself, who had come through the snow to this strange by-way of Broadway to earn bread and shelter in the harsh autumn of his years.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.