"No, I don't know any such a thing," returned the astonished Ashburn.
"Well, it's so. Where is your newspaper?—Haven't you read it? I got mine on Friday evening, and saw the news. Early on Saturday morning I found two or three speculators ready to buy up all the wheat they could get at old prices; but they didn't make many operations. One fellow who pretended to be a fancy sportsman, thrust himself into my way, but, even if I had not know of a rise in the price of wheat, I should have suspected it as soon as I saw him, for I read, last week, of just such a looking chap as him having got ahead of some ignorant country farmers by buying up their produce, on a sudden rise of the market, at price much below its real value."
"Good day!" said Ashburn, suddenly applying his whip to the flank of his horse; and away dashed homeward at a full gallop.
The farmer never sat down to make a regular calculation of what he had lost by stopping his news paper; but it required no formality of pencil and paper to arrive at this. A difference of thirty cents on each bushel, made, for a thousand bushels, the important sum of three hundred dollars, and this fact his mind instantly saw.
By the next mail, he enclosed two dollars to the publishers of the "Post," and re-ordered the paper. He will, doubtless, think a good while, and retrench at a good many points, before he orders an other discontinuance.
HUNTING UP A TESTIMONIAL.
"DOCTOR," said a man with a thin, sallow countenance, pale lips, and leaden eyes, coming up to the counter of a drug-store in Baltimore, some ten years ago—"Doctor, I've been reading your advertisement about the 'UNIVERSAL RESTORER, AND BALSAM OF LIFE,' and if that Mr. John Johnson's testimony is to be relied on, it ought to suit my case, for, in describing his own sufferings, he has exactly described mine. But I've spent so much money in medicine, to no purpose, that I am tired of being humbugged: so, if you'll just tell me where I can find this Mr. Johnson, I'll give him a call. I'd like to know if he's a real flesh-and-blood man."
"You don't mean to insinuate that I'd forge a testimonial?" replied the man of medicine, with some slight show of indignation.
"Oh, no. I don't insinuate any thing at all, doctor," answered the pale-looking man. "But I'd like to see this Mr. John Johnson, and have a little talk with him."