them, a writer in the Buffalo News gave several cases in which individuals supposed that they were entitled to payment for losses although subsequent investigation showed that they had not actually sustained any loss.  One of these cases, that given below, he decided to relate in his own words, without conversation or quotation, although he might have quoted part of the affidavit, or might have given the dialogue between the detective and the woman who had lost the pin.  No doubt he regarded the facts themselves, together with the suspense as to the outcome of the search, as sufficiently interesting to render unnecessary any other device for creating interest.

Another woman of equal wealth and equally undoubted honesty lost a horseshoe diamond pin.  She and her maid looked everywhere, as they thought, but failed to find it.  So she made her “proof of loss” in affidavit form and asked the surety company with which she carried the policy on all her jewelry to replace the article.

She said in her affidavit that she had worn the pin in a restaurant a few nights before and had lost it that night, either in the restaurant or on her way there or back.  The restaurant management had searched for it, the restaurant help had been questioned closely, the automobile used that night had been gone over carefully, and the woman’s home had been ransacked.  Particular attention had been given to the gown worn by the woman on that occasion; every inch of it had been examined with the idea that the pin, falling from its proper place, had caught in the folds.

The surety company assigned one of its detectives to look for the pin.  From surface indications the loss had the appearance of a theft—­an “inside job.”  The company, however, asked that its detective be allowed to search the woman’s house itself.  The request was granted readily.  The detective then inquired for the various gowns which the woman had worn for dress occasions within the preceding several weeks.

This line of investigation the owner of the pin considered a waste of time, since she remembered distinctly wearing the pin to the restaurant on that particular night, and her husband also remembered seeing it that night and put his memory in affidavit form.  But the detective persisted and with the help of a maid examined carefully those other gowns.

In the ruffle at the bottom of one of them, worn for the last time at least a week before the visit to the restaurant, she found the pin.  The woman and her husband simply had been mistaken—­honestly mistaken.  She hadn’t worn the pin to the restaurant, and her husband hadn’t seen it that night.  The error was unintentional, but it came very near costing the surety company a large sum of money.

The benefits of a newly established clinic for animals were demonstrated in a special feature article in the New York Times by the selection of several animal patients as typical cases.  Probably the one given below did not seem to the writer to be sufficiently striking if only the bare facts were given, and so he undertook to create sympathy by describing the poor, whimpering little dog and the distress of the two young women.  By arousing the sympathies of the readers, he was better able to impress them with the benefits of the clinic.