Finders and Losers

Alexandra Herald and Central Otago Gazette, Issue 365, 7 May 1903, Page 8

Finders and Losers

BROADLY speaking, girls are divided into tws great classes—the ones wiiolir.;! and the ones who lose. Meta is a girl who Ownerless earrings and brooches and shirt studs are scattered along her pathway, entreating l:tr to pick them up, whichever way she strolls, and little things like horseshoes arhd four-leaved clovers seem to "eap up in the rv.ost unlikely pine-: at the first sound of oerstep. "Guess what 1 found to-day?" is hex regular ferns of greeting; so do oce was SVrpristd whrn the question came that day at C:: nriyn's lea. "Oh, 1 dent kn;:\v." said Lilian, indifferent iy. "Probably a cotton handkerchief or st.-;i:e!icdy's other glove." Lilian i> one «;f the girls who c-nihin'i find anything if they would. Possibly that's il.t- n ason >he assumes the manner of t.;;e who wouldn't if she could. ife!:: give a withering glace at the ecorTVr. hen she removed her Ladysmith r. . ::;fl'c-.\t racted from its crown a roll o. l :iey, which she spread upon her lap. A SSO, a S2O and a $lO bill stared out.

"Counterfeit!" gasped-Lilian. "So. i "r. Uncle .Mac says they're as good as :.::v ever n:a:!e." "You d.f'n't find them, Meta; you're joking,'" protested* Georgia. "No joke about it. I was walking down \Y..L:iik avenue, and stacks of people were passing in both directions UK), but suddenly there was an open piaee about a yard square right in front of me, and straight iu the middle of hj lay this n:r.ne_v. ail rolled, up. It just he; niedcs though the crcwd parted, anc' everybcuy looked the other way on to Jet me have it." "Wt'l. I never!" sung the chorus. Meta:'* ioir.ebody asked, but Lilian, Whose ir.trrest had revived-wonderful-ly, didn't give her time to answer. "Use it for?" she cried. "Do you s'poiv Meta would spend that "money? Think of the poor woman who lost it!" "Woman, indeed!" retorted Meta, "Uncle Mac doesn't think that. He says there's a little pocket just inside the waistband of his trousers where he keeps a wad of bills—whenever he has one —and that it's the easiest thing in the world to slip the money in back of the pocket instead) of into it. And I asked him if that ever happened to him. You ought to have seen how guilty he looked when he said: 'Once—but don't tell Ellen!' That's m}- aunt, you know. Well, we think—Uncle Mac and I—that some rich club fellow lost it, and that he'd put it to some extravagant use even if he had it again." "But I can't help thinking about some poor old washerwoman who hadn't another cent in the world," murmured the blue-eyed innocent. "Washerwomen without another cent are so likely to go strewing SBO rolls around!" said Meta. "More likely 'twas a school-teacher with her month's salary—and teaching is such nervous work!" suggested Lilian.

"Or a fag-ged-out woman clerk," add* ed Georgia. "Well, I wouldn't take it from a woman any sooner than you would," declared Meta, "Of course I wouldn't mind so much if it belonged to a man. But I intend to advertise it, anyway." "Certainly!" exclaimed Lilian as if ■he'd been thinking of that all tie time. "That's the proper thing to do," and blue-eyed innocent added: "J should just use that money for sdver-c tiEing every day in every paper until there wasn't a cent left,"

Meta pursed her Hps. "Well, I'm taking Uncle Mac's advice about this," she said. -'He says to study the papers a day or two and see if the loser advertises. Then, after that, he says to advertise: 'Found—Sum of money, at

such & place, at such a time." Not a DVd a false claimant any help hfc identifying the bills, you see. But h* doesn't think I'll ever find the owner, and, say, girls, if he shouldn't turn up, what do you say to a lake trip together or some kind of a regular spree with this money?" "I couldn't enjoy it," said the righteous Lilian. "Not unless you gave half to a hospital," amended another. "Oh, I don't know," dissented Georgia. "I think my conscience would take is a trip to Mackinac." "Good for you!" replied Meta, as she rolled up her wealth and put on her hat. "Well spend it all for gum if we want to, Georgia; and we won't treat them, either —see if wc do!" They didn't see her again for three weeks, and then she came flying into luncheon at Lilian's with a look in her eyes as if she'd just fallen heir to a million in gold* "I've had the loveliest experience in the world!" she announced. "You remember that money I found? Well, 1 waited a few days, as Uncle Mac said, and no one advertised the loss; so I put one in myself. Told them to address X, the newspaper office, you knew—the way they do. Next morning I went down to get the returns. There were nine answers, and of all the pathetic things! Not one of the people who wrote had lost their money on the day or at the place I found mine, but they were just as hopeful, for all that, and they actually made me feel responsible for their losses. "First there was a man who had dropped a small, flat, blaok book, with a pawn ticket, a laundry bill and twe two-dollar bills in it. And distressed over it! You'd think he'd lost a gold mine. And he was so sure 'twas his* money I'd found —poor fellow! Then a woman poured out a whole sheetful of her heart, and drew a picture of the purse she'd lost, and told me how the money in it belonged to her sister. who was in the hospital and who needed it dreadfully, and how I'd be blessed forever if I only restored it. Next there was an old man who had dropped two S2O bills, and he went on in a shaky, feeble hand to explain that the reason he was carrying it was because he couldn't trust the banks; and then another girl, who told about an alli-gator-skin pocketbook containing a latchkey and a time pass over the Cincinnati, Jackson & Mackinac road. When I showed that to Uncle Mac afterward he said that road was a regular joke, because it didn't run to any of the places mentioned in its name, and he just shouted over the pass, because it had expired September 30, 1897. But it wasn't funny to me. I thought the girl must be in a sad way to be hanging on to an expired pass over a road like that for three whole years. Besides, she mentioned in a postscript that there was a five-dollar bill in her purse.

"I got awfully worked up over those letters. Then, suddenly, I had a brilliant idea. I just made up my mind to wait a week and then, if no one claimed that SBO, to send for,all those forlorn people and pay them what they had lost out of what I had found. I didn't dare telr Uncle Mac the scheme until the week had passed and I had really written notifying them all to be at his office at ten o'clock this morning. Then I just gave him the news all in one piece. I don't believe in breaking things, especially when you've set your heart on doing them. Oh, he thought I was crazy, of course, and wished he'd answered my 'ad.* himself and claimed the money. Said he could have done it through some one else so I would never have suspected, and then could have kept the money for me until this fit of sentimental foolishness had passed off—and all that sort of talk. But the end of it was that he took a chair over by the window in his office and let me have things all my own way with the people I had sent for. They all came, mind you, and of all the surprised-looking beings! Each one was expecting to find the identical purse he had lost, and at first ev«ry°V looked suspicious of everyone else. They couldn't seem to grasp the situation.

"I had the money, all changed into the right amounts and lying in tempting little heaps on Uncle Mac's desk. First I made a little speech and then I served gold and silver refreshments. It took every cent of the money, and I had to put in a dollar besides, so there goes our gum, Georgia; but you wouldn't grudge it if you'd been there, Such larks! I never felt so much like a beneficent fairy in my life. Oh, dear —fun! Vaudevilles are nowhere—and.,, say, the man who lost the pawn ticket will never get over his grudge against me because I couldn't give th*t hack. He thinks I've lost him a fortune!' But the rest were more than sweet. Girl*. I've been blessed and aiMjthe old man with the two SBO gold pieces actually kissed my hand. Think of that —will you? And the woman with the sister in the hospital was so happy! And I cried. Me crying-can you s<* itr And Uncle Mae needn't pretend he wasn't wiping his own eyes, either! But when they were gone he squared around at me, stern as stern, and ifija in a disgusted way: 7 " 'Well, of all th« girij»*M» w formances!' * * r^* "I looked straight back at him «and just said: 'How would you have a girl imcle Mac. if w % girly? Do you. -want me manny?' And hor.est f»«t he didn't know a single thing w&at to Daily Keeord. A Hostess «>n Purs He. -What- wasit Myrtilla did,that wasso crcacful?' "V.: v »ur literary c'.v.b m et at her bor.*.» and she wanted to show her new hat. so she wore it 7 Puck. Where 11 - nre,v7\ e ~T.!ne, Casey-I'h: tdoy. y. prt:f , .. Asa ch af: .-.'■ . ..•■,: :::„,. wh:*h:. ev ->