Author Description

MANY of the readers of a great weekly magazine, which boasts of a circulation of several million a week, have been amused and entertained by the "Tutt and Mr. Tutt" stories written by Arthur Train. I recently purchased a volume entitled, "True Stories of Crime," by the same brilliant author, and find his accounts of actual happenings, while he was Assistant District Attorney of New York, to be just as entrancing as the fiction from his pen. Among these stories I found one, "A Murder Conspiracy," which dealt with a celebrated case in which a lawyer was accused of the murder of an aged millionaire. This story recalled an incident that occurred at Austin during the optometry law campaign of 1919. After a hard day's work, a group of us, Willis Chamberlin, Tom Ward, Bob Terrell, Sam Burstyn, and some others were standing in the lobby of the old Driskill, conversing with Abe Frank, the genial proprietor of the news and cigar store. Naturally, optometry was being discussed and after a few minutes a man Standing near us came up and said, "You gentlemen are optometrists, are you not? I have also practiced optometry," We, of course, were glad to greet a fellow practitioner and asked him where he had practiced. Imagine our surprise when, without the lapse of a second, came the reply, "In Sing Sing Prison." We were all attention immediately and asked the stranger his name, and he answered, giving the name of the defendant in the famous murder case. He then told us how he became interested in optometry. It seems that in the Sing Sing Prison Hospital there was an optical trial case but the young physician there was not familiar with eye work. The prisoner became interested in Optometry, obtained the necessary books, and taught himself, and eventually was doing most of the eyesight work at that institution. It is interesting to note the versatility of this lawyer. While in Sing Sing, he perfected his various appeals, and according to Mr. Train he even saved a fellow prisoner from