ODD, BUT EVEN.

Temuka Leader, Issue 1266, 18 November 1884, Page 3

ODD, BUT EVEN.

It is quite a. number < f years since this old camel story trotted along the sands "f time, so as the circus se.ison is approachit has? been suggested that the i're. Press should start the aDcitmt animal on iis travels again. This is how it happened : AM Ben Eli McGuffin, being ful' of years, died, leaving to his throe sons Ids seventeen camels for the simple reason that he could not take them along with him. The will, duly attested, said the eldest was' to have cine-half, the second son one-third, and the youngest one-nimh of the seventeen camels. The boys were h little perplexed at this as it seemed to involve the cutting up of a camel, and camels were worih 3dols a day on the Sahara that season. But the boys, if not first-class mathematicians, had level headland did not go to law to prove the old man insane, but went inst"ad to 'he good o ; d Cadi Hassan O'Dmohue, who had taken a medal at mathematics at Ann Arbor. "Boys," said the good old Cadi reproachfully, "You should not bother me with tlvse Mttle matters. Ask me a harder one." But seeing they were troubled the benevolent old man asked the hostler to trot out his own dilapidated camel, which hnd seen its b-ist days travelling with Barmiiti as the Sacred Gnu of Persia. Placing the aged brute with the seventeen camels the boys had brought along, he said : " There are eighteen camels. .1 shall bow give you half of the eighteen, which is nine. How does that strike you ?" "It hits me where I live," said the eldest, who was slangy but withal pleased at getting half of eighteen rather than half of seventeen. "The next boy shall have one-third of eighteen, which is six. Aie you there, Moriarity ?" " You bet," said the boy. ' The next will have one-ninth o f eighteen, which is two," and so the third youngster collared his two camels. Thus two and six and nine made seventeen, and still was the good Cadi's aged animal left unscathed. people marvelled, as the Cadi given each more than the will called for, which is rather unusual in courts of law. And they said one to another, "That's what it is to be good at figures."