WASTE NOT WANT NOT.

Thames Star, Volume X, Issue 3136, 7 March 1879, Page 4

WASTE NOT WANT NOT.

The Boston Transcript says:■—An old sea captain, well known in the days of Havre packets, who "sailed the seas over" for fifty years and more, used to tell that in the early part of his first voyage as captain, when he had just turned twenty-one, his cabin boy complained of a lame back. There was a medicine chest on board, whose contents it was the captain's duty to dispense according to the best of his knowledge and , ability. In a shallow drawer at the bottom of the chest were three or four Spanish-fly plasters ready spread on kid, and one of these the captain decided to apply to the boy's back. It was done, and the v little fellow sent to bed. In the

morning- he was on band bright and early, but the captain's usual cup of coffee was misaing. " Cook isn't up, sir,'| was the boy's explanation. " Why not ?" asked the captain. " Says he can't get up; sir."' " Why not P" " Says his back hurts Him, sir.* "Back? What's the matter with hi& back." " The plaster, sir." "What do you mean?" exclaimed the captain: "I didn't put the plaster on his back." " No, sir, but I did," whimpered the boy. " You did, you young rascal," howled the captain, jumping from his berth, "what on-earth did you do that for P" •■■" Wet\, sir," answered the boy, getting well out of the range of any stray bootjack or other missile that might chance to be within the captain's reach, "when I woke up in the night it hurt me so I had to take it off. The cook was in the next bunk asleep, and I just clapped in on his back. I didn't want to waste the plaster, sir." And he didn't. It worked to perfection, keeping the poor cook in his bed with a Bore back for 'ever a «week; and in the next bunk, keeping him company, was the boy, also with a sore back, but it wasn't the plaster that made it so. A rope's end was a favorite prescription in those days.