A COINCIDENCE.

Nelson Evening Mail, Volume IV, Issue 206, 2 September 1869, Page 2

A COINCIDENCE.

To the Editor of the Nelson Evening Mail. Sir.— -My brother Tom says I ought to tell you something that happened the other day, "so I have asked him to write it for me, because I am not much of a skoller myself. I'm a laundres*, and as I was at one of the houses where I goes washing (three and sixpence a day, a sup of beer and a hit of bread and cheese at 1 1 o'clock, a pint of beer with my dinner, and a drop of something hard before I goes home, that's my sallery), I was having a bit of lunch, when in comes Susan, that's the cook, and she says, Mrs. Washtub, says she, you ought to go to Erance. Why should 1 go to France, says I. Oh ! says she, because the Hempress pays lier washerwoman six thousand a year, I heard Robinson — that's her missus's husband — reading it out of a paper the other day. Do you think, says I, I could borry the loan of that paper to take home to my old man. I daresay I can get it, says she, so off she went to the libery and fetched ifc down, and when I went home at night I took it out of my pocket after supper, and I says to iny husband, "Pather,'' says I, " I want to go to Erance." "Go to your grandmother," says he, " what's the woman a thinking about now." So I just told him, and he says " Rot ! you mustn't never believe what you sees in the newspapers, but let's have a look at it mother." So I gave it him, and he reads the name of the newspaper : Tasmanian Times, August 9, and then he reads about the washing, which was in a letter from Prance, and then he looks up and down the letter, and he says, " Why," says he, " I read exactly the same in our Colonist t'other day ; I know it's just the same, because it begins just like it, — Paris — from our own correspondent" — "Never can't be," says I, " newspapers don't print exactly the same, do they." " I tell you 'tis," says he, and up he gets and fetches out the Colonist, and he says, " now mother, I'll read em both to you, and you see if they ain't both the same ? " So he reads the one from the Tasmanian Times first, because he said it was printed a fortnight before the Colonist, and then he says " Can you remember all that, ■mother," and I says " Yes, but look sharp, before I forgets it," and I sat and looked straight into the fire, for fear I should think of something else* and then he read the Colonist, and he savs " that's jisfc the same, ain't ifc ? " •' Word and word alike," says I, "now ain't that queer, father. S "■ That's not the right word," says he— "but give me my pipe, mother, and I'll try and think what it is." Well, he sat there till he had smoked two pipes, a thinking hard ail the time, and then he gets up and goes straight to bed without saying never a word, and I didn't speak to him because I knew he was thinking for the word. Soon after I followed him and got into bed, and just as I was' going to sleep, he larrups round, all of a sudden, like, and he says, '- Mother," says he, " It's one of them things they calls a koinserdens," and then he went off to sleep quite comfortable. Oh ! he's a wonderful clever skoller, is father. Your hunibel servant, her , Eliza x Washttj-b. mark.