HE COULDN’T TELL A LIE.

Poverty Bay Standard, Volume X, Issue 1118, 9 August 1882, Page 2

HE COULDN’T TELL A LIE.

“What makes you walk so straight, Johnny ? ” asked a fond mother the other day as she saw her son making tracks for the door. Johnny was silent. “ Have you a stiff neck, sir ?” asked his mother eyeing him sharply. And Johnny, seeing he was cornered, replied : “ I cannot tell a lie ; it's a pumpkin pie that I stole from the shelf hard by, and I intended to screen it under my jacket, and escape your eyes.” At this juncture the pie droppedon the floor and spread like a scandal. Now, gentle reader, do you fancy his mother caught him in her hands and cried, and said she would rather have him steal a thousand insignificant pies, and ruin SB5 worth efAxminster carpet than tell a falsehood ? She did not; she reached for a broom and fetched him one in the small part of the back that doubled him twice and almost tied him in a bow knot and sent him flying through the door and on the stoop as though he was first bass.

A little later, while rubbing himself against a shade tree, he solemnly murmured to the vagrant winds: It may be right to go to Sunday school and tell the truth, but after this I shall travel on the straight lie, Perhaps its better to be right than President, but I'd rathpr bo wrong than have my back broken in four places with a broomstick.”