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