Finders and Losers

Alexandra Herald and Central Otago Gazette, Issue 446, 3 November 1904, Page 8

Finders and Losers

BBQADLY speaking, girls are dividedj into two great classes—the one*. who find and the ones who lose. j Meta is a girl who finds. Ownerless earrings and brooches and shirt studs are scattered along her pathway, en* treating her to pick them up, whichever way she strolls, and little things like horseshoes and four-leaved clovers seem to leap up in the most unlikely . • places at the first sound of her step. j "Guess what I found to-day?" is her; regular form of greeting-; so no one was surprised when the question, came that day at Georgia's tea. "Oh, I don't know," said Lilian, indifferently. "Probably a ©otton handkerchief or somebody's other glove." Lilian is one of the girls who couldn't find anything if they would. Possibly that's the reason she assumes the manner of one who wouldn't if she could. Meta gave a withering glace at the scoffer. Then she removed her Ladysmith hat and extracted from its crown a roll of money, which she spread upon her lap. A SSO, a S2O and a $lO bill stared out. "Counterfeit!" gasped Lilian. • "No, sir. Uncle Mac says they're ad good as any ever made." "You didn't find them, Meta; you'rejoking," protested) Georgia. "No joke about it. I was walking down Wabash avenue, and stacks of people were passing in both directions, too, but suddenly there was an open place about a yard square right in front of me, and straight in the middle of it lay this money, all rolled up. It just seemed as though the crowd parted, t and everybody looked the other way os i purpose to let me have it." "Well, I never!" sung- the chorus. > "What are you going to use it for, Meta?" somebody asked, but Lilian, whose interest had revived wonderful-1 ly, didn't give her time to answer. ; "Use it for?" she cried. "Do you s'pcvse Meta would spend that money?) Think of the poor woman who lost it!" I "Woman, indeed!" retorted Meta. j "Uncle Mao doesn't think that. He j cj.ys tber< s a little pocket just inside j the w - 'swand of his trousers where he J keep* a wad of bills—whenever he has j one—and that it's the easiest thing in I the worH to slip the money in back of 1 the pocket instead of into it. And I j asked him if that ever happened to him.! You ought to have seen how guilty he , looked when he said: 'Once —but don't j tell Ellen!' That's my 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 eome**poor old '.vasherwoman who hadn't another cent in the world," niurmuret: ihe cue-eyed innocent. "Wash. rwomen without another cent are so likely to go strewing- SBO rolls •round!" said Meta. ! "More likely 'twas a school-teacher ,with her month's salary—and teaching is such nervous work!" suggested. Lilian. "Or a fagged-out woman clerk," add* j 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 belonped to a man. I 'But I intend to advertise it, anyway;" "Certainly!" exclaimed Lilian as if i she'd been thinking of that all the time. "That's the proper thing to do," i and blue-eyed innocent should) just use that money for acver- ' tising every day in every paper un**" there wasn't a cent left." -,ii j Meta pursed her '•*"" ing Uncle Mac's ad»* ,» ell, I'm tak- j said. "He s»- iC e about this." she day or *- " ,ys to study the papers a ! i 1"" .wo and see if the loser adver- j Then, after that, he says to ad- [

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nob. a place, at such a time.' Not a word to g-ire.a faime claimant any help in identifying the bills, you see. But he '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 right" eous Lilian. "Not unless you gave half to a hospitow;" aaoeadied another. "Oh, I don't know," dissented Georgia. "I think my conscience would take in a trip to Mackinac." "Good for you!" replied Meta, as she rolled up her wealth and put on her hat. "We'll spend it all for gum if we want to, Georgia; and we won't treat them, either —see if we do!" They didn't see her again for three weeks, and then she came flying into luncheon-at Lilian's with a lookinhei 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 oue in myself. Told them to address X, the newspaper office, you know—the way the}' 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 thej- actually made me feel responsible for their losses. "First there was a man who had dropped a small, flat, black book, with a pawn ticket, a laundry bill and two two-dollar bills in it. And distressed over it! You'd think he'd lost a gold mine. he was so sure 'twas his mopey I'd found —poor fellow! Then | a woman poured out a whole sheetful i 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 j shaky, feeble hand to explain that the reason he was carrying it was because j he couldn't trust the banks; and then j another girl, who told about an alli-gator-skin pocketbook containing a=i latchkey and a time pass over the Cin- ; cinnati,»Jackson & Mackinac road. I 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 j like that for three \vhole 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 SSO, to send for all those forlorn people and pay them what they had lost out of what I had found. I didn't dare tell 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 **fi.' himself and claimed the money. Raid he could have done > it thnwjfe some one else so I would Eever 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 of* fice 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 everyone 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 tempt* ing little heaps on Uncle Mac's desk. First I made a little speech and thei> 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 f will never get over his grudge against, ! me because I couldn't give that backC He thinks Fve lost him a fortune! But the rest were more than sweet. Girls, ' I've been blessed and hugged, and the old man with the two S2O gold pieces actually kissed my hand. Think of that —will you? And the woman with the sister in the hospital was so happy! d v l cried - Me crying—can you see it? And Uncle Mac 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 said, in a Oisgusted way: " 'Well, of all the girly-girly performances!' "1 looked straight back at him andjust said: 'How would vou have a girl Uncle Mac. if not girly? Do vou want me manny?' And honest "fact, he dicn't know a single thing what to fiay."—Chicago Daily Kecord.

A Hostoau oa I ni-aJe - "What was it MyrtHl* , ; , **"!+.«_ dreadful?" ' * aia ttal ** MßO "Wlt* jj ' , our literary club met at her ase, and she wanted to show her new hat, so she wore it." —Pick. Wliere Fie Dreiv tkc "line. Casey—Phatdoyez nref< i asa chaser ! af";.er dhriiikiitg • ke\ V \ v is?idy—Auuytliing but iiue wuue,— | Jucge.