“But,” the young man gasped out, “I have no money—”
“Go Monday?” queried the deaf cashier. “I don’t care when you go; you must pay and let these other people come up.”
“I have no money!” the mortified young man shouted, ready to sink into the earth, while the people all around him, and especially the three girls he had treated, were giggling and chuckling audibly.
“Owe money?” the cashier said, “of course you do; $2.75.”
“I can’t pay!” the youth screamed, and by turning his pocket inside out and yelling his poverty to the heavens, he finally made the deaf man understand. And then he had to shriek his full name three times, while his ears fairly rang with the half-stifled laughter that was breaking out all around him; and he had to scream out where he worked, and roar when he would pay, and he couldn’t get the deaf man to understand him until some of the church members came up to see what the uproar was, and recognizing their young friend, made it all right with the cashier. And the young man went out into the night and clubbed himself, and shred his locks away until he was bald as an egg.
SODDING AS A FINE ART
By Robert J. Burdette
One day, early in the spring, Mr. Blosberg, who lives out on Ninth Street, made up his mind that he would sod his front yard himself, and when he had formed this public-spirited resolution, he proceeded to put it into immediate execution. He cut his sod, in righteous and independent and liberty-loving disregard of the ridiculous city ordinance in relation thereto, from the patches of verdure that the cows had permitted to obtain a temporary growth along the side of the street, and proceeded to beautify his front yard therewith. Just as he had laid the first sod, Mr. Thwackery, his next door neighbor, passed by.
“Good land, Blosberg,” he shouted, “you’ll never be able to make anything of such a sod as that. Why, it’s three inches too thick. That sod will cake up and dry like a brick. You want to shave at least two inches and a half off the bottom of it, so the roots of the grass will grow into the ground and unite the sod with the earth. That sod is thick enough for a corner stone.”