HERR WINDMULLER CONFESSES
TO THE CRIME OF THE TOMATO HE ADDS A THEFT OF CHERRIES.

Distinguished New Yorker Breaks Down Under Cross-Examination-Stubbornly Refuses to Admit That He Stole the First Oyster He Ate and Didn't Like.

Louis Windmuller publicist and treasurer of the Reform Club, told only half the truth the other day when he confessed in a letter to the editor of the Evening Post that he once stole a tomato. Yesterday be broke down completely and told of other thefts committed in Germany.

Perhaps he was buoyed up by his knowledge of the statute of limitations, so far as that tomato was concerned, and by his familiarity with the fact that there is no treaty yet in existence between this country and Germany which would provide for his extradition in case the police authorities of Munster should desire to take action at this late day on crimes of the early '50s. It was this sense of security, that enabled Louis Windmuller to assume yesterday an air of bravado after making a clean breast of his hitherto hidden past. He actually laughed about that tomato; and although he didn't say 80 in words. his laugh meant nothing if not the bold challenge.

"Well, what are you going to do about it? I'm the treasurer of the Legal Aid Society which furnishes gratuitous service to helpless strangers."

It is but fair to Louis Windmuller to say that the Legal Aid Society has been in existence only twenty-five years. It was fifty-two years ago that he stole that tomato It was in Vesey street that the crime was committed. Now that all the facts have been brought out, it is perfectly clear that Mr. Windmuller's conscience began to trouble him long ago when he wrote an essay entitled "Food That Fails to Feed."

That essay was, no doubt, the first weak struggle at a vague confession. For the stolen tomato did fail to feed the man who stole it. As he said in his confession the other day, "I was disappointed by the taste and scolded the poor driver after robbing him. From the beautiful looks I had expected a better flavor."

He took but one bite and in the half century that has elapsed he has tried to convince his conscience that one bite was punishment enough for larceny.

"I had the same experience with oysters when I first come to this country," he said yesterday.

"Where did you steal the oysters?" asked the inquisitor, firmly but not unkindly.

"Oh, I didn't steal the oysters!" he exclaimed, quick and apparently glad to seize an opportunity to digress from actual crime. "I meant that I didn't like the taste of the first oyster that I had on a Fulton street corner out of curiosity, and I spat it out."

The third degree was tried on the culprit at this point, but be stuck to his assertion that he didn't steal the oysters.

"Was there a policeman eating there at the same time?" he was asked.

"I don't know," he said doggedly, but with downcast eyes. All the time he was nervously fingering; a batch of manuscript for a Reform Club pamphlet.

" Are you sure that you didn't like oysters?" "Yes, 1 am."

"But you're a member of the Reform Club and you go to Reform Club dinners?"

"Yes," faltered Louis Windmuller as a man trying to feel his way and fearful of what was coming next.

"And you go to other dinners of the uplift variety?"

"Yes," said Louis Windmuller rubbing his stomach with a painfully reminiscent look.

"What did you mean then by writing about 'food that does not feed?"

This was merely a digression resorted to by the inquisitor to confuse the witness, but for the moment he seemed to lose sight of his crimes altogether and declared with an emphasis almost desperate that he wasn't thinking about Reform Club dinners at all when he wrote the feedless food pamphlet.

"Did you have the Vesey street tomato in mind?"

The man refused to answer.

"New you have admitted that you attend many reform dinners.

"Yes."

"Do you eat them?" "Must I answer that?"

"Yes."

"Well, then, I do eat them."

"Now at every reform dinner are there at least two oysters served to each diner and at every dinner to inaugurate ax particularly great reform aren't there at least three oysters for each diner?"

"Yes there were four at one of our dinners," said. Mr. Louis Windmuller in a boasting manner.

"As a rule you sit at the head table where all the guests can see you?"

"Sometimes."

"Now, then. [with impressive slowness] alley you spit out the oysters?"

"I do not."

"Ah I thought so. Now you say you did spit out that oyster on Fulton street?"

"Yes."

"I will ask you once more, did you steal that oyster as you stole that tomato? And if net will you explain why you spat it out if your conscience was clear I while now that oysters are all canned with, poisonous preservative's you can swallow two, sometimes three and, as you have said, on one occasion four?"

He muttered something about being willing to take any risk for the sake of reform, but the strain had been too much, and it was at this point that Louis Windmuller t old everything, including the story of his record in Munster.

"I was only a boy," he faltered.

"Go ahead now, make a clean breast of everything," said the inquisitor, still not unkindly.

"I was only a boy, I had just come to this country. was a Clerk in a grocery store on Vesey street. It was a bright, sunny day. I was trying to be good and forget what had happened in Munster. But at the fatal moment a cart full of tomatoes stopped in front of the door. The old appetite came back and overpowered me. It was then that I stole the tomato. Must I say more?"

"You have not told all. What was it about Munster that you were trying to forget on that sunny day in Vesey street?"

"Ah, I can see it now," said Louis Windmuller musingly and more to himself than to his inquisitor.

"See what?" asked the other man sharply.

"The cherry tree" exclaimed the man defiantly. "I was in the tree stealing cherries. The farmer was underneath looking for me. But I was stretched out on a branch and the leaves hid me till he had gone away."

"You admit that you stole the cherries?"

"Yes," said the publicist.

"What else?"

"I robbed other orchards from time to time," replied the author of "A Plea for Parks."

"Did you ever commit any crimes of violence?"

"Yes. In 1848 the Parliament at Frankfort on the Main proposed Johann of Austria for Emperor of Germany and the Republicans in Munster had a jubilee in honor of the event. All but the conservatives decorated their houses. The Republican boys — I was one of them — broke the windows in all the undecorated houses of the conservatives. My father was a conservative and I broke all his windows. Some of the boys were arrested but I escaped.

"Is there anything else that you have been trying to conceal?"

"Yes. I once went in swimming in the river As without any clothes on.

Louis Windmuller, bank president and member of the Chamber of Commerce, then told of some empty beer bottles and a grocer's awning, but it wouldn't do to print that.