'A Very Careless Free Lance' Indeed!

Auckland Star, Volume XX, Issue 147, 22 June 1889, Page 3 (Supplement)

'A Very Careless Free Lance' Indeed!

* TnE characteristic free lance is too much a Bohemian to know how much he is making,' writes ' Gavin Ogilvy,' in an article on the literary calling in the 'British Weekly.' *He has a pound or two in his pocket; that is all he cares about. The other day a notoriously careless free lance was searching ■for a letter in his trouser pocket, and a. cheque for, £20 fell out. The scene was a club, and a friend, lifting the cheque from the floor, handed it back to tho owner, who again stuffed ib into his pocket. Nothing unusual struck him in this action until he saw the other laughing, when he explained thab he was really very careful aboub money. He had a sheaf of cheques, he said, in a case in his inside pocket. Asked to what amounb, he thought to two or three hundred pounds, but was willing to make sure. The case was then overhauled. It proved to be one of the little leather cases that hold three letters with comfort, bub now it buleed out like an alderman. Ib had bursb at one end, and the owner took credit to himself foi his forethought in having tied a bootlace round it. The contents were some fifty envelopes, nearly all of which contained cheques for sums averaging from two to fifty guineas. Some of them were a year old—their owner being surprised to see them—and in all they amounted to almost twice as much as he had bhoughb. His way is to cash them one by one, as he needs them or comes across them, and he seemed rather perolexed to find that he was so wealthy. This was nob safe, his friend bold him, and he admitted ib was nob, adding that lie must go away somewhere and spend more freely. Should he read bhis, he will bear no malice. Of course he is a bachelor, bub he has a hearb for all that.'