GRASS
The auctioneer, offering the pasture lot for sale, waved his hand
enthusiastically, pointed toward the rich expanse of herbage, and shouted:
"Now, then,
how much am I offered for this field? Jest lok at that grass,
gentlemen. That's exactly the kind of grass Nebuchadnezzar would have
given two hundred dollars an acre for."
GREED
An eminent doctor
successfully attended a sick child. A few days later, the grateful mother
called on the physician. After expressing her realization of the fact that
his services had been a sort that could not be fully paid for, she continued:
"But I hope
you will accept as a token from me this purse which I myself have
embroidered."
"The
physician replied very coldly to the effect that the fees of the physician must
be paid in money, not merely in gratitude, and he added:
"Presents
maintain friendship: they do not maintain a family."
"What is
your fee?" the woman inquired.
"Two hundred
dollars," was the answer.
The woman opened
the purse, and took from it five $100 bills. She put back three, handed
two to the discomfited physician, then took her departure.
GRIEF
At the wake, the
bereaved husband displayed all the evidences of frantic grief. He cried
aloud heart-renderingly, and tore his hair. The other mourners had to
restrain him from leaping into the open coffin.
The next day, a
friend who had been at the wake encountered the widower on the street and spoke
sympathetically of the great woe displayed by the man.
"Did you go
to the cemetery for the burying?" the stricken husband inquired anxiously,
and when he was answered in the negative, continued proudly: "It's a
pity ye weren't there. Ye ought to have seen the way I cut up."
*
* *
The old woman in
indigent circumstances was explaining to a visitor, who found her at breakfast,
a long category of trials and tribulations.
"And,"
she concluded, "this very morning, I woke up at four o'clock, and cried and
cried till breakfast time, and as soon as I finish my tea I'll begin again, and
probably keep it up all day."
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