Then he went on without explaining any further, and the thing got talked around considerably for a day or two.
He forgot all about it until one day he met the alderman and suffered from the encounter to the extent of two black eyes and a coat split up the back.
And then he had to go all round and explain that what he meant was that he had seen the alderman’s wife give him a dime to buy some paregoric for the baby.
Relieved
A Houston gentleman who is worth somewhere up in the hundreds of thousands and lives on eleven dollars a week, was sitting in his private office a few days ago, when a desperate looking man entered and closed the door carefully behind him. The man had an evil, villainous-looking face, and in his hand he held with the utmost care an oblong, square-shaped package. “What do you want?” asked the capitalist.
“I must have money,” hissed the stranger. “I am starving while you are rolling in wealth. Do you see this little package? Do you know what it contains?”
The wealthy citizen sprang from his desk in horror, pale with fright.
“No, no,” he gasped. “You would not be so cruel, so heartless.”
“This package,” continued the desperate man, “contains enough dynamite, if let fall upon the floor, to hurl this building into a shapeless mass of ruins.”
“Is that all?” said the capitalist, sinking into his chair and picking up his newspaper with a sigh of relief. “You don’t know how much you frightened me. I thought it was a gold brick.”