Wichita Eagle

A Series of Singular Fatalities

A Madrid paper narrates a series of fatalities to which three members out of a family of four fell victims in that city, and the story is one that seems as if it might have happened in New York. The family were flies, a brother and three sisters. They were in search of food.

The eldest sister alighted upon a sausage and ate heartily. The second satisfied her hunger on some flour. The third drank with avidity from a pitcher of milk. Then they essayed to fly, but in a few moments all three fell dead. The sausage had been given its fine red color by means of a poisonous aniline dye. The flour contained a fatal percentage of plaster of paris. The milk had in it so much chalk that no well regulated fly could drink it and live. The unhappy brother, seeing himself surrounded by the corpses of his dear sisters, in his grief determined upon suicide. He launched himself upon a gray sheet of paper bearing the inscription: "Fly paper—sure to kill," and sucked its deadly poison greedily; but in vain. The more he took of it the better he felt. He was doomed to live. "Fly paper was also falsified.—New York Sun.