THAT BARREL.

Akaroa Mail and Banks Peninsula Advertiser, Volume 4, Issue 352, 2 December 1879, Page 3

THAT BARREL.

BY M. QUAD.

Just as the last rays of the setting sun were gilding the church spires and white-washing the back kitchens of Detroit, the other afternoon, a man and a barrel .were discovered at a stairway on Monroe avenue." He was a small man and it was a big barrel, and pedestrians who saw him looking up the stairs and back at the barrel inferred that it was his intention to elevate it to the third story. But how? " I'd rig a tackle and pulley in that third story window," said the first man who halted. " That's your easiest way, and there's no danger of accident." He leaned against the lamp-post to calculate on the length of rope and the lifting power required, and along came a second man, who took in the situation at a glance, and said : " Go and get some scantlings fourteen feet long and lay 'em on the stairs. Then two men can roll that barrel up there as slick as grease." The little man looked round in a helpless sort of way, ancl a third man came

blustering up, and called out: " Want to get that barrel upstairs, * eh ? Well, now, fasten your pulley at the head of the stairs, and ten men down here can snake the barrel up in no time. Where's your tackle ?" By this time the crowd had increased to twenty, and was pretty evenly divided between a dead lift through one of the front windows and a pulley at the top of * the stairs, but the man who suggested the skids had a very loud'voice, and was determined to carry his point. Taking oft his coat, he said : ** "I know what I am talking about, and I say that I can skid that barrel up there alone. You just wait a minute." ' He crossed the street to an unfinished building, and returned with a couple of, 2x4 scantlings and laid them on the stairs, and the crowd now numbered fifty. " You want this barrel on the third floor, 'do you?" he asked of the little man. " Yes—but—but—" ,- "But what?" "Why, I was waiting for my wife to get the clothes-horse out of the upper hall. She's all ready now, and I'll take it up." And the little man shouldered the barrel, and trotted briskly upstairs between the skids. It was empty !