“Not half as good as yours, Monk, telling the witness he couldn’t be a partner, for the plaintiff had put in all the ‘stock in hand,’ and he had only put in his ‘stock in feet.’”
They are full of stories, too, tragic as well as comic, picked up in the circuits.
“Jones, do you know Mc Farlane of Barney’s River, a Presbyterian clergyman? He told me he was once in a remote district there where no minister had ever been, and visiting the house of a settler of Scotch descent, he began to examine the children.
“‘Well, my man,’ said he, patting on the shoulder a stout junk of a boy of about sixteen years of age, ‘can you tell me what is the chief end of man?’
“‘Yes, Sir,’ said he. ‘To pile and burn brush.’1
1 In clearing woodland, after the trees are chopped down and cut into convenient sizes for handling, they are piled into heaps and burned.
“‘No it ain’t,’ said his sister.
“‘Oh, but it is though,’ replied the boy, ‘for father told me so himself.’
“‘No, no,’ said the minister, ‘it’s not that; but perhaps, my dear,’ addressing the girl, ‘you can tell me what it is?’
“‘Oh, yes, Sir,’ said she, ‘I can tell you, and so could John, but he never will think before he speaks.’