HIS SIGN.

Daily Telegraph (Napier), Issue 3224, 29 October 1881, Page 4

HIS SIGN.

Three or four days ago a coloured man living on Illinois street hung out a j; zn on his house reading,' For Sail.' Ho happened to he at the gate when a white man came along and said, ' You'll never get an offer for your house with any such spelling as that.' The owner of the place was greatly puzzled to improve the orthography, but finally took Lis wife's and made it read, ' For Pell.' his seemed to be all right for a day or two, end then a schoo'boy hnlted and said, 'If you don't fix that sign all the school children will be laughing at you.' There was another convention of the family to see where the mistake came in and the sign was made to read, 'Fur Sail. It hadn'i, been up nn hour when an 01-; coloured man came along and queried, ' Does you mean dat dis place am fur Sally ? What yer gwine to gib de place t Sally fur ?' 'Am you findin' fault wid dat sign ?' asked the other. • 'Well, I doan quite cotch on to de spelling. 'You doan', eh ? Has you got §700 to pay cash down fur dis place ?' '*No,sah.' ' T>en you pass on an' shet up! May V I doan' spell jist de same as you do, bntl'ze got prospects of handlin' §700, while yon has got boaf knees out to de weather. I doan' care to use high-flown language an' .have to war a shoe on one fut an' a buteon de odder. Q-o 'long, ole man, you am too fly on gog'aphy !'—Detroit Free Presß.

THE FLY.—BILL NYE GIVES THE EXPERIENCE OF A BALDHEADED MAN.

Much has been said of the fly of th c period but few write about him who aro bald-headed. Hence we say a word. It is of no use any more to deny the horrible truth. Although as beautiful as a peri in other way; l , our tresses on top - have succumbed to the inclemency of the weather, and our massive brow is slowly creeping over toward the hack of our neck. Nature makes all thing even. If a man be possessed of such ravishing beauty and such winning way*< that his power might become dangerous, she makes him bald-beaded. That is our fix. When we have our hat on and go chasing down the street with that camel glide of ours, everyone asks who that noble-looking Apollo with the deep and melancholy eye is ; but when we are at the office with our hat Hung up on tHe French -walnut sideboard,and the sun comes softy in through the rosewood shutters and lights up the shellac polish on our intellectual dome, we are not so pretty. Then it is that the fly, with gentle tread and seductive song, comes and prospects around on our bump of self-esteem, and tickles us and makes us mad. When we get where forbearance ceases to be a virtue, we haul off and slap the place where he was, while he goes over to the inkstand and snickers at us. After he has waded around in the carmine ink awhile he goes back to the bump of sprituality and makes some red marks over it. Having laid off his claim under the new mining law, he proceeds to sink on it. If we write anything bitter these days ; if we say aught of our fellow-man that is disagreeable or unjust, and for which we afterwards get licked, it is because at times we got exasperated and are not responsible. If the fly were large and weighed 2001b,

md came in here and told us that if we' : idn'fc take back what we had said about im he would knock out the window with ur remains and let us fall 100 ft into the i'usy street, it wouldn't worry-us somueli, because that we could strangle him with one band while we wrote a column editorial on Oonkling with the other. We do that fre[iiently. But a little fragile insect with no iome and no parentg, and only four or five .Million brothers and sisters, gains our confidence, find then tickles our scalp till we nve to write with a sheet of tar roofiing oyer our head. i'hen ie comes in and helps us read our !;<•■ >of. We don't want him to help, but he insists on making corrections and putting tnaeluutions in the wrong place, and putting '"ull stops where they knock the sense all out •f the parrngraph. Tf the fly could be removed from our ti l l much alonj in out l (_ 'i leviv th it would it ii >n oP the oivilh( d * i ' * *( 1 fa< v.p ire not " - . vc • ■ it dsoine recoid —Boomer-