Little Stephen Girard.

Cromwell Argus, Volume IV, Issue 204, 7 October 1873, Page 7

Little Stephen Girard.

The man lives in Philadelphia who, when young and poor, entered a bank, and says ho, “Please sir, don’t you want a little boy?” And the stately personage said, “ No, little boy, I don’t want a little hoy.” The little boy, whose heart was too full for utterance, chewing a piece of liquorice stick he had bought with a cent he had stolen from his good and pious aunt, with sobs plainly audible, and with great globules of water running down his cheeks, glided down the marble steps of the bank. Bending his noble form, the man dodged behind the door, for he thought the boy was going to shy a stone at. him. But the boy picked up something and stuck it in his poor and ragged jacket. “ Come here, little boy,” and the little boy did come here ; and the. bank man said, “ Lo, what pickest thou up?” And he answered, and said, “A pin.” And the bank man said, “ Little boy, are you good and he

was. And the bank man said, “-How do you vote ?—excuse me, do you go to Sunday school ?” and he said he did. Then the bank man took a pen made of pure gold and flowing with pure ink, and wrote un a piece of paper, “ St. Peter,” and he asked the little boy what it stood for, and he said, “Salt Peter. Then the bank man said it meant “ Saint Peter.” Then the little boy said “ Oh.” The bank man took'the Tittle boy to his bosom, and the little boy said “Oh!” again, for he had squeezed him. Then tho bank man took the little boy into a partnership, and gave him half the profits and all the capital, and he married the bank man’s daughter, and all he had had is his, and his own too. The story of another little boy is as follows “My uncle told me this story, and I spent six weeks in picking up pins in front of a bank. I expected the bank man would call me in and say, ‘Little boy, are you good?’ and I was going to say ‘Yes,’ and when he asked me what 1 St. John’ stood for, I was going to say ‘ Salt John.’ But. I guess the bank man wasn’t anxious to have a partner, and 1 guess the daughter was a son, for one day says he to me, ‘ Little boy, what’s that you’re picking up ?’ Says I, awful' meekly, ‘Pins.’ Says he, ‘ Let’s see ’em.’ And he took ’em, and I took oil’ my cap, all ready to go into the bank and become a partner and marry his daughter. But I didn’t get an invitation. Says he, ‘ The pins belong to the bank, and if I find you hanging around here any more I’ll set the dogs on you.’ Then I left, and the mean old cuss kept the pins.” Such is life as I find it. —Mark Twain,