The Twin City Star

What Would You Do With a "Cherub" Like This?

CHICAGO.-Four enormous police officials sat back in their armchairs in the police station and discussed a little boy who stood before them. He had black eyes and rosy cheeks and a cherub's tapering chin, and with his chubby little grimy paw he spun a top on the table, which was almost above his reach.

"You know, Frankie, you're the youngest burglar in the United States and with a record just about as long as you are," Capt. James Corcoran told the little fellow.

And there it was on the police books-"Frank Bambich, seven years old, theft."

The booty was a $200 set of furs which the child had taken from the residence of Mrs. Caroline Reichman. He pushed his little fists up into the air when they asked him how he did it. "Opened the window like this," he said, with a serious interest in explaining his methods.

"That kid's clever just like an old crook at his job," said one of his guards. Frankie was absorbed in spinning the top.

"What did you do with the furs?" he was asked.

"Sold 'em to a man for 20 cents."

"Who?"

Frankie hates to answer questions, and after several other inquiries which he replied to in a childish murmur he suddenly said, "Aw, it was a man who had a horse that was green."

And that sort of answer is about all they can get from him. Someone told it that he recently took a geranium plant from a florist's wagon standing before a house, climbed the steps of the house and pretended to be delivering the plant to its destination. While the housewife wondered who had sent the plant to her the boy squirmed in through the open door, stole $5 and two watches lying on a dressing table and skipped away. Frankie was proud of this achievement, too, as it was told.

No one knows what to do with the little boy.

"He's too little to keep in jail," sighed one of the policemen. "He is too young by three years to place in a corrective institution under the Illinois statutes. He will not stay in school. They tell of him that he prowls alone in alleys at midnight, before daylight, at noonday-at any time, in any place, committing these crimes."