Late yesterday afternoon the managing editor came into the Sanctum, where we were lying on the couch, busily doing nothing. "Are you asleep?" he asked.

"Yes," we said.

He tiptoed out softly, so as not to wake us, and we began to wonder what he would have done if we had said, "No." Presently we found out, as he came back an asked us again. And we said we weren't. Beside being the truth, this was a bad guess, because he believed us.

"Will you," he whispered in a sinister manner, "commit a Crime?."

"What?" we shouted, hardly believing our ears. It is getting so, these days, with the baseball scandal and the biographies of George Washington, that you can't believe anything. Our ears are not as righteous as some cars we know. Our incorruptibility, on the other hand, is a by word--or should we say, perhaps, not a buy-word?

"No, no," he hastened to assure us, noting with compassion our blanched cheek and trembling cigarette, "I mean write a Crime Column."

We considered a minute, and then said, "Why, yes, my son, we'll do our best, and folks don't have to read the rest." And then it came to us that that rhymed, and it helped tremendously.

The Plaint of The Stag

The stag at eve had drunk his fill

Of gin and Scotch and what you will,

And reeling home down Boylston Street,

A portly cop he chanced to meet.

"Avast!" the cop in wonder cried,

"Why reel from side to side?"

The figure paused and tried to drape