SHORT STORIES.

Manawatu Herald, Volume XLII, Issue 2138, 10 June 1920, Page 1

SHORT STORIES.

A hoarding-school boy wrote to his unde for financial aid, and then, feeling rather nervous about the impression his letter’would make, added t his postscript : ‘“P.S. —I)ear Unde, 1 am so ashamed to have to ask you for this money that; I have run after the postman along way to get it back, but I eould not eateh him. My only wish is that you' will never get the letter now. —Your loving Nephew.” The unde replied by return of post: “My Dear Nephew.—l am hastening to make you happy by telling you that your wish was granted. I never received your letter.”

Miss Blank, who wished to become a. candidate for the position of teacher in the public schools, went up for examination recently. She was called upon to read, a passage from ‘‘Macbeth/' which doses with the words which Macbeth speaks to Lady Macbeth, “Prithee, come with me.” “And what,” asked the examiner, “do you understand ‘prithee’ to mean?” “I understand it to he a corruption of ‘pray thee/ ” replied the would-be teacher, surprised at so trivial a question. “I am glad,” said the examiner. “The lady who came just before you assured me that it was the Christian name of Macbeth’s wife.”

The shy man sat in a crowded (ranjcar next to a lady who wore very dangerous protruding hatpins. For a time he bore her moVements, which spelt danger to all in her vicinity, but at last he summed up courage enough to say: — “Forgive me, madam, for addressing you without an introduction, but I thought I ought to’ tell you there is a.spot of blood from my cheek on one of your hatpins.”