A Parable.

Waimate Daily Advertiser, Issue 39, 18 February 1899, Page 4

A Parable.

Sometimes the newspaper office ia, and for the best reasons, the birthplace of timely parables. The following, taken from an exchange, is just at the present time splendidly adapted to the season, and beara a moral well worthy the consideration of our patrons and friends * — Once a farmer had one thousand eight hundred bushels of wheat, which he sold, not to a single gram merchant, but to one thousand eight hundr-ed diftel'ent dealers, a bushel each. A few of them paid in cash, but far the greater number said it was not convenient then, but they would pay later. A few months passed, and the man's bank account ran low. " How 19 this ?" he said. My one thousand eight hundred bushels of grain should have kept me in affluence until another crop is raised, but I have parted with the grain, and have instead only a vast number of accounts, so small and scattered that I cannot get round and collect them fast enough to pay expenses. So he posted up a public notice and asked all thoso who owed him to pay quickly. But few came. The rest said, " Mine is only a small matter, and I will go and pay one of these days," forgetting, that though each account was very small, -when all Were put together, they meant a larga sum to the man. Things went on thus ; the man got to feeling so badly that he fell out of bed and awoke, and, running to his granary, found his one thousand eight hundred bushels of wheat still safe there. He had only been dreaming, and had not sold hi? wheat at all. Moral. — The next day the man went to the publisher of his paper and said : " Here, sir, is the pay for your paper ; and when nest year's subscription is duf, you can depend on me to pay it promptly. I stood in the position of an editor last night, and I know how it feels to have one's honestly earned money scattered all over the country in small amounti."