Evening Republican, Volume 19, Number 7, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 8 January 1915 — Statehouse Sod at Indianapolis Is Well “Salted” [ARTICLE+ILLUSTRATION]

Statehouse Sod at Indianapolis Is Well “Salted”

INDIANAPOLIS, IND. —Walter Montgomery, a statehouse janitor, was pickin’ around in the statehouse lawn, where they were planning to level and grade a bit. Walter had a real pick, too, and he swung it with genuine

abandon for a time. Then ,he took an unusually hard swing for’some reason ' or other and the pick stuck, deep hi the sod. He gave it a twist, and with the earth that Sew up came three silver dollars and two half dollars. Walter gazed at the money for a moment, then saw several of his brother “pickers’’ casually loafing toward the spot So he just picked it up again. ' Opinion was divided on the question of how it got there. One janitor believed a pickpocket had been loung-

ing around the statehouse yard at night to pick up a victim or two, when he saw the Indianapolis police force approaching—or part of it —bent on pickin’ up somebody. He then, according to this janitor’s theory, scooped oht a hole in the lawn, buried the money and resodded the spot, putting up a plantain leaf to show where he had buried it. The police probably had tramped down the plantain leyf in their eagerness to find the pickpocket, the janitor said. Another said he believed that two squirrels that have taken up their abode in the little trees about the statehouse had found one of the evening loungers at rest on the lawn and had picked his pockets, “eashaying” the results. _ ; ; : Still another said he believed the find‘was accidental and that, should it become known, Montgomery would be compelled to pay it into the hands of a representative of the Democratic state committee, since it had been found on state property. Montgomery said he had examined the money closely and could not believe it ever had been a campaign contribution.