Finders and Losers

Alexandra Herald and Central Otago Gazette, Issue 372, 25 June 1903, Page 8

Finders and Losers

t ROADLY speaking, girls are divided into two great classes—the ones who find and the ones who lose. Meta is a girl who finds. Ownerless earrings and brooches and shirt studs axe scattered along her pathway, entreating her'to pick them up, whichever way she strolls, and little things like horseshoes and four-leaved clovers seem to leap up in the most vJfclikely places at the first sound of her step. "Guess what I found, to-day?" is her regular fonn.of greeting; so no one was surprised when the question.came that day at Georgia's tea. "Oh. I don't know," said Lilian, indifferently. "Probably, a cotton handkerchief or comebody's other glove." Lilian is one of the girls who couldn't •nd anything if they would. Possibly that's the reason she assumes the manner of one who wouldn't if she could. Meta gave s withering glace at the scoffer. Then she removed her Ladysmith hat and extracted from its crown • roll of money, which she spread upon her lap. A SSO, a S2O and a $lO bill stared out. "Counterfeit!" gasped Lilian. "No, sir. Uncle Mac says they're as good as any ever made." ' "You didn't find them. Mete; you're joking," protested Georgia. "No joke about it. I was walking down Wabash avenue, and stacks of people were passing in both directions, too, but suddenly there was an open place about; a yard square right in front of me, and straight in the middle of it lay this money, all rolled up. It just seemed as though the crowd parted, and everybody looked the other way on purpose to let me have it." "Well, I never!" sung the chorus. "What are you going to' use it for, Meta?" somebody asked, but Lilian, whose interest had revived wonderfully, didn't give her time to answer. "Use it for?" she cried. "Do you s'pose Meta would spend that money? Think of the poor woman who lost it!" ■ "Woman; indeed!" retorted Meta. "Uncle Mac doesn't think that. He says there's a little pocket just inside the waistband of bis trousers where he keeps a wad of bills—whenever he has one—end that it's the easiest thing in the world to slip the money in back of the pocket instead of into it. And X asked him if that ever happened to him. Sou ought to have seen how guilty he looked when he said: "Once—but don't tell Eilen!' That's my aunt, you know. .Well, we think—Uncle Mac and I—that some rich club fellow lost it, and that he'd put it to some extravagant use even if he had it again." "But I can't help thinking about some poor old washerwoman who hadn't another cent in the world," murmured the blue-eyed innocent. "Washerwomen without another cent ere so likely to go strewing SBO rolls around!" said Meta, "More likely 'twas a school-teacher with her month's salary—and teaching is such nervous work!" suggested Lilian. "Or a fagged-out woman clerk," addad Georgia. "Well, I wouldn't take it from a women any sooner than you would," deslared Meta. "Of course I wouldn't tnind so much if it belonged to a man. But 1 intend to advertise it, anyway." "Certainly!" exclaimed Lilian as if ehe'd been thinking of that all the time. "That's the proper thing to do," and blue-eyed innocent added: "I should just use that money for advertising every day in every paper until there wasn't a cent left." Meta pursed her Hps. "Well, I'm taking Uncle Mae's advice about this." she esid. "He says to study the papers a day or two -nd see if the loser advsr» tises. Then, after that, he says to advertise: - -

Audi a place, at nwh & time.' Not a word to give a false claimant any help ta identifying the bills, yon :-i i. But he doesn't think I'll ever Ijiul the ow*ier, and, say, girls, if he shouldn't turn up, what do you say to a lake trip together or some kind of a regular spree with this money?" "I couldn't enjoy it," said the right' eous Lilian. "Not unless you gave half to a hospital," amended another. "Oh, I don't know," dissented Georgia. "I think my conscience would take in a trip to Mackinac." "Good for you!" replied Meta, as she rolled up her wealth and put on her hat. "We'll spend it all for gum if we want to, Georgia; and we won't treat them, either—see if we do!" They didn't see her again for three weeks, and then she came flying into luncheon at Lilian's with a look in her eyes as if she'd just fallen heir to a million in gold. I "I've had the loveliest experience in the world! "she announced. "You remember that money I found? Well, 1 waited a few days, as Uncle Mac said, and no one advertised the loss; so I put one in myself. Told them to address X. the newspaper office, you know—tht way they do. Next mdrning I went down to get the returns. There wet* nine aqswers, and-of all the pathetu things! Not one of the people who wrote had lost then-money on the da; or at the place I found mine, but they were just as hopeful, for all that, and they actually made me feel responsible for their losses. • "First there was a man who had dropped a small, flat, black book, with a pawn ticket, a laundry bill and twe two-dollar bills in it. And distressed over it! You'd think he'd lost a gold mine. And he was so sure 'twas hi; money I'd fellow! Then a woman poured out a whole sheetful of her heart, and drew a picture of th» purse she'd lost, and told me how the money in it belonged to her sister. who was in.the hospital needed it dreadfully, and how I'd be blessed forever if I only- restored it. Xext there was an old man who had dropped two S2O, bills, and he went on in a shaky, feeble hand to explain that the reason he was carrying it was Ik cause he couldn't trust the banks; and then another girl, who told about an alli-gator-skin pocketbook containing a latchkey and a time pass over the Cincinnati, Jackson & Mackir.ne road. When I showed that toUnclt Mac afterward he said that road was a regular joke, because it didn't run to any of tht places mentioned in its name, and hi just shouted over the pass, becaus; it bad expired September 30. 1897. But it wasn't funny to me. I.thought tin. girl must be in a sad way to be hang ing on to an expired pass over a road like that for three whole years. Besides, she mentioned in a postscript that there was a five-dollar bill in her purse. "I got awfully worked up over" those letters. Then, suddenly, I had a brilliant idea. I just made up my mind to wait a week and then, if no one claimed that fco, to send for all those forlorn people and pay them what they had lost out of what I had found. I didn't dare i tell Uncle Mac the scheme until the week had passed and I had really written notifying them all to be at his office at ten o'clock this morning. Then I just gave him the news all in one piece. I don't believe in" breaking things, especially when you've set youi heart on doing them. Oh, he thought answered my *ad.' himself and claimed the jnoney. Said he could have done it through some one else so 1 would never have suspected, and then ct:itld have kept the money for me until thh fit of sentimental foolishness had passed off—and all that sort of talk. But the end of it was that he took a chair over by the window in his office and let me have things all my own way with the people I had sent fox They all came, mind you. and of all the surprised-looking beings! Each one was expecting to find the identical purse he had lost, and at first everyone looked suspicious of everyone else. They couldn't seem to grasp the situation. "I had the money, all changed into the right amounts and lying in tempting little heaps= on Uncle Mac's desk. First I made a little speech and then I served gold and silver refreshments: JiJook every cent- of the money, and I had to put in a dollar besides, so there goes our gum, Georgia; but you wouldn't grudge it if you'd been there. Buch larks! I never felt so much like a beneficent fairy in my life. Oh. dear —fun! Vaudevilles are nowhere—and. say, the man who lost the pawn ticket will never get over his grudge against me because I couldn't give that back. He thinks I've lost him a fortune! But the rest were more than sweet. Girls, I've been blessed and hugged, and the' old man with the two S3O gold pieces actually kissed my hand. Think of that —will you? And the woman with the sister in the hospital was so happy! And I cried. Me crying—ran you see it? And Uncle Mac needn't pretend he wasn't wiping his own eyes, either! But when they were gone he squared around at me, stern as stern, and said, in a disgusted way: "•Well, of all the girly-girly performances!' "I looked straight back at him and just said: 'How would you have a girl. Uncle Mac, if not girly? Do you want me manny?' And honest fact, he didn't know a single thing what to ■ay."—Chicago Daily Record. A Hostei) oi l'rrile, "What waait Myrtilla<i;d thatwaeeo dreadful?" "Why, our literary club met at her house, and the wanted to show her new hat. so she wore it."—Puck. W»«rp lie Drew thp List*. Casey—l'hat do yes prefer aea eheeer afther dhrink'mg whishkey? Caseidf— Annything but me woife.— Judge.