numbers runners petty street criminals who collect money from people betting on a lucky number.
pince-nez eyeglasses which have no temple pieces and which rely on a spring to secure them to the bridge of the nose.
had pull with influenced.
German Brot dark, round glazed loaves of rye or wheat bread.
Toussaint L'Ouverture François-Dominique Toussaint-L'Ouverture (1743-1803), military leader and liberator of Haiti.
siditty pretentious.
Alley Oop the dinosaur-riding cave man and beau of Ooola, both characters in V. T. Hamlin's popular cartoon strip, which originated in 1933.
The Shadow a popular radio program premiering on the CBS "Detective Story" in August 1930, which grew from Walter Gibson's serialized novels in Street and Smith magazine. The character was originally played by Jack LaCurto; in 1937, Orson Welles assumed the role.
Horatio Alger Graduate of Harvard Divinity School, Alger (1832-99) wrote 130 books in three series— Ragged Dick, Luck and Pluck, and Tattered Tom—about determined boys who work their way up from poverty and obscurity to fame and riches. Altogether, the Horatio Alger series sold twenty million copies.
Tiny Tim beloved crippled son of Bob Cratchit in Charles Dickens' classic novel A Christmas Carol, published in serial form in 1843.
Katzenjammer Kids cartoon characters in a New York Journal strip drawn by Rudolph Dirks. A hybrid version of Max and Moritz, a German cartoon, the strip was first printed in 1897.
