Received the following query from a colleague at Illinois:
In "The Stolen White Elephant," one
>detective telegraphs that "Glass factory broken open here during night and
>eight hundred bottles taken. only water in large quantity near here is
>five miles distant.....: and so on.
>
>So what exactly is the joke? Some topical allusion? I mean it
>certainly is odd that the elephant would take, or be thought to have taken,
>800 empty glass bottles--but the joke seems lame. Some local in-group
>joke? A reference to U.S. Grant? Booze fit in anywhere here?
>
>Tony
Any speculations?
Bruce Michelson