Picking up the dog by its tail, the policeman carried it to Tasker Street, where he dropt it. Here he took his pencil and book out again and wrote:
“Dead dog at Delaware Avenue and Tasker Street.”
A passer-by asked the policeman what made him carry the dog to Tasker Street, to which he replied:
“Well, I couldn’t spell Dickinson, so I took the cur a square down to an easier street.”
(1503)
ILL-FORTUNE BECOMING GOOD-FORTUNE
An Australian miner had reached the very last of his resources without finding a speck of gold, and there was nothing for him to do but to turn back on the morrow, while a mouthful of food was left, and retrace his steps as best he might do to the nearest port. He flung down his tools in despair that last night, and staggered over the two or three miles of desert to the camp-fire. Next morning, early, after a great deal of sleep and very little food, he braced himself up to go back for his tools, knowing that they might bring the price of a meal or two when it came to the last. As he stumbled back that hot morning the way seemed very long, for his heart was too heavy to carry. At last he saw his wheelbarrow and pick standing upon the flat plain a little way off, and was wearily dragging on toward them, when he caught his toe against a stone deeply embedded in the sand, and fell down. This was the last straw that broke the camel’s back. He lay there and curst his luck bitterly, to think that he should nearly break his toe against the only stone in the whole district after all his failure to find gold. He felt like a passionate child who kicks and breaks the thing which has hurt him, and he had to beat that stone before he could feel quiet. It was too firm in the sand for his hands to get it up; so in his rage he dug it up with his pick, intending to smash it; but it would not smash, for it was solid gold, and nearly as big as a baby’s head. (Text.)—Louis Albert Banks.
(1504)
ILL LUCK
There was a man during the reign of Kaiser Otho, who wore puffed breeches. Puffed breeches then were filled with flour, and when the wearer of the breeches sat down on a seat he sat down on a nail, and the nail tore the breeches and the rent emitted three pecks of flour. Why he should have sat down at that particular time, and in that particular place, is a mystery; and why there should have been a nail there, is to me an inscrutable mystery; but there is the fact, and the sufferer I consider an ill-used man.—George Dawson.