A Forestry Commissioner had just felled a giant tree when, seeing an honest man approaching, he dropped his axe and fled. The next day when he cautiously returned to get his axe, he found the following lines pencilled on the stump:
“What nature reared by centuries of toil,
A scalawag in half a day can spoil;
An equal fate for him may Heaven provide—
Damned in the moment of his tallest pride.”
At Large—One Temper
A Turbulent Person was brought before a Judge to be tried for an assault with intent to commit murder, and it was proved that he had been variously obstreperous without apparent provocation, had affected the peripheries of several luckless fellow-citizens with the trunk of a small tree, and subsequently cleaned out the town. While trying to palliate these misdeeds, the defendant’s Attorney turned suddenly to the Judge, saying:
“Did your Honour ever lose your temper?”
“I fine you twenty-five dollars for contempt of court!” roared the Judge, in wrath. “How dare you mention the loss of my temper in connection with this case?”
After a moment’s silence the Attorney said, meekly:
“I thought my client might perhaps have found it.”
The Seeker and the Sought
A Politician seeing a fat Turkey which he wanted for dinner, baited a hook with a grain of corn and dragged it before the fowl at the end of a long and almost invisible line. When the Turkey had swallowed the hook, the Politician ran, drawing the creature after him.