The Man on the Box

Purchase one of 1st World Library's Classic Books and help support our free internet library of downloadable eBooks. Visit us online at www.1stWorldLibrary.ORG - - If you will carefully observe any map of the world that is divided into inches at so many miles to the inch you will be surprised as you calculate the distance between that enchanting Paris of France and the third-precinct police-station of Washington D. C which is not enchanting. It is several thousand miles. Again if you will take the pains to run your glance no doubt discerning over the police-blotter at the court (and frankly I refuse to tell you the exact date of this whimsical adventure) you will note with even greater surprise that all this hubbub was caused by no crime against the commonwealth of the Republic or against the person of any of its conglomerate people. The blotter reads in heavy simple fist disorderly conduct a phrase which is almost as embracing as the word diplomacy or society or respectability. So far as my knowledge goes there is no such a person as James Osborne. If by any unhappy chance he does exist I trust that he will pardon the civil law of Washington my own measure of familiarity and the questionable taste on the part of my hero - hero because from the rise to the fall of the curtain he occupies the center of the stage in this little comedy-drama and because authors have yet to find a happy synonym for the word. The name James Osborne was given for the simple reason that it was the first that occurred to the culprit's mind so desperate an effort did he make to hide his identity. Supposing for the sake of an argument in his favor supposing he had said John Smith or William Jones or John Brown? To this very day he would have been hiring lawyers to extricate him from libel and false-representation suits. Besides had he given any of these names would not that hound-like scent of the ever suspicious police have been aroused?