HOW IT WAS.

Akaroa Mail and Banks Peninsula Advertiser, Volume 4, Issue 388, 23 April 1880, Page 3

HOW IT WAS.

•• Sam Jones and Tom Scott, I'm looking down on you !" exclaimed the court as two lads of ten wiped their noses under the shadow of the gloomy bar. " I'm h-hungry !". gasped Sam. "K 0 am I," put in Tom. " It's appalling to think how you can stand there and not tremble 1" sharply remarked his Honor. " I am t-tremblin'," replied Sam. " So am I," added Tom. ' "To think that two boys like you would engage in a street fight and collect a crowd of old women, loafers, and dogs! Why I don't know whether to send you up for twenty years apiece, or have you hung." " Yere's how it was,," tearfully began Sam, in explanation. " I was eating a piece of butter and bread on our own door-step, saying nuthink to even a dog, when this boy cumed along and said he wanted to hire my mouth for a circus tent. lis a boy as don't like to be picked on, and I jumped down and 'gave him a cuff on the ear for his mother. My mouth hain't any bigger nor his, and I'll bet on it and let you hold the staked.-" His Honor turned to Tom, and Tom said : •• Yer see, I was goin' down Croghan street to get two cents worth of allum for maw to hold in her mouth to cure the headache. I seed this yere prize fighter a eatin' of some purvishuns. He was takm' the awfullest biggest. bites you ever* seed. When he opened his mouth I couldn't see his eyebrows'tall, and all I said was, that I was glad I wasn't a hunk of gum layin' around where he could find me. Then he fit, 1 fit, and I'm awful sorry." " Judge, that air boy steals dorgs !" protested Sam. " Ami I-.e throws stuns at street kyars !" ex'-laimed Tom. Bij.di was KtTsppiin* them down" to the planks, and his Honor was greasing the buck-saw when the audience went out.