SHORT STORIES.
Little Betty was staying with her grandmother in the country. Just before dinner-time one day she discovered that chicken.was to be the principal attraction.
“Oh, wher’d you get the chicken, grandma'?” Betty asked, very excitedly.
“In the poultry yard,” the old lady replied. “You remember the chickens you saw this morning, don’t you ?”
“Do you mean the ones I fed?” “Certainly. Well, we killed one of them.”
“Oh, did you,” exclaimed Betty In surprise. “We buy our chickens leady-made.”
An old woman from a remote country district, visiting Edinburgh for the first time, happened to arrive as a party of golfers were hurrying to catch a suburban train for the links. On her return the minister asked her how she enjoyed herself. :
“It’s a fine town,” she said, “but it hurt me, sair, tae see sae many decent-like men carrying bags of broken umbrellas. There maun hue been sair, douncomes, and though I wadna mention it for the world to anithcr, there was two or three that lookit as if they had been ministers.”
An old gentleman recently lent his grandson enough money to purchase a brand-new football. The money was to be repaid in instalments, the ball to remain the property of the, grandfather until the last payment had been made.
One day, not very long afterwards, the boy found his grandfather in a quiet corner. “Say, granddad,” he whispered, “who docs the football belong to?” “It belongs to me until you have completed the payments,” replied grand-dad. “That was the agreement. But why do you ask ?”
“Well, I just wanted to make sure,” remarked the boy, with a grin. “Your football —or —needs a new cover.”
A well-known literary man tells of an amusing incident which once befell him, and might have turned out the opposite. He went into a barber’s shop one day to be shaved. As he sat in the chair he noticed that the woman attendant in the outer shop kept looking at him anxiously through the glass panel of the door. He could not understand her behaviour at all until he got outside, when a policeman came up to him and said, “I’m glad to find you’ve come out all right, sir.” “Why?” exclaimed the journalist in surprise. “What’s the matter? Is there anything wrong inside?” “Well, the fact is, sir,” replied the policeman, “that barber only came out of a lunatic asylum last week, and his relatives are considering whether they will have to send him back again.”
Two rival soft goods travellers arrived simultaneously at a country town to land a big order. The younger secured the only vehicle—a barrow —dumped his samples in it, and started to wheel the lot to the draper’s shop. The elder was about to admit defeat when he espied a mot-or-hearse outside the station yard. “I’ll give you 55,” he said to the driver, “if you land me at Taffeta and Tape’s before that chap with the barrow,”
The driver earned the ss, and the elder traveller was leaving Taffeta and Tape’s when his rival, bathed in perspiration, arrived. “No use you going in, sonny,” said the successful one. “Ive the order in ray wallet.”
“Yes, but how did you get here?” you?”
“Did you see a motor-hearse pass “Yes, of course I did.’’ “Well, I was in it.” • “Good gracious!” exclaimed the defeated one. “Why, I put down my barrow and took off my hat to you!”
Every zoo throughout the world is in need of new specimens. During the war, of course, the wild beast trade practically ceased to exist, and although a little of the shortage has been made up since;- there is still much to be done. It is estimated that at the present moment British zoos alone are in need of £20,000 worth of animals, and it is the same story in every civilised country.
Robins have been revered by men for many centuries. They are always on the side of the good fairies, and there is superstition that bad luck will fall on anyone who kills a robin, or upon one who keeps a robin a cage, and deprives it of its freedom. But probably, when all is said and done, the robin owes its popularity mainly to its red breast, and the cheerful picture it makes amid its bleak surroundings.
By the death of Mr Wynne Edwin Baxter, London loses its oldest coroner. Bor over 35 years he was
coroner for East London, and before that he held a similar office in Sussex. Among the 38,000 or more inquests which Mr Baxter held in East London were most of the Jack-the-Ripper murders, and many other well-known crimes. He also held inquests on all the spies who were shot in the Tower of London during the war. On one day alone he held inquests on over 00 of the victims of the Silvertown explosion. Mr Baxter was always a hard worker. On the day on which he was taken ill, September 15th, he had six inquests to hold. Ho had finished three of these when he was suddenly seized with heart trouble, and was removed by motor car to his home.
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Manawatu Herald, Volume XLII, Issue 2217, 18 December 1920, Page 1
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863SHORT STORIES. Manawatu Herald, Volume XLII, Issue 2217, 18 December 1920, Page 1
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