FIVE-MINUTE ACQUAINTANCES.
(Character Studies.)
IT was a bright cool morning that we were riding down Delaware Avenue in a street car which had very few passengers. It gave me a chance to study human nature. I began the study with a very handsomely dressed boy. Jacket and collar and necktie and hair all showed that very careful people had planned for him, and that they had plenty of money to spend on him. They came into the car just after I was seated, the boy and his mother. She was tall and pale, and in deep mourning; I wondered if her husband were dead, and if this boy were the only one she had to think about or care for her. If so she was to be pitied, poor woman! for it soon became evident that the young man thought about and cared for himself. His first exhibition was to fling his heavy overcoat on his mother’s lap as he said: “Here, mamma, hold that, and give me the tickets for the conductor.”
“I haven’t tickets, dear,” she said; “I shall have to buy some.”
“O, well! all right, give me your pocket-book and let me buy them.”
“No, dear, there is a good deal of money in my pocket-book, and some valuable papers.”
“What of that?” he said, in a tone loud enough for all the passengers to hear; “I ain’t going to lose them; don’t I know how to take care of things? Give me the purse.” It was passed over without more words.
“Take a quarter from the silver money,” the mother advised a moment later.
“O, no, mamma! I want to give him a bill, to see if he makes the right change. Here’s a five; that will do; no, let me see.” He jerked his arm suddenly away from the mother’s hand, which reached after the pocket-book, and several pieces of silver flew out and rolled around on the floor.