AT THE PLAY.

Hawke's Bay Tribune, Volume I, Issue 45, 4 February 1911, Page 4 (Supplement)

AT THE PLAY.

Although the village was small, the inhabitants were most ambitious. In the good cause of charity an entertainment was organised, and just to show the surrounding towns what they could do in the way of acting, with that modesty that characterised all their undertakings. they choose to present the trial scene from "The Merchant of Venice." Tlit amateur actress playing Portia bad dreamt of doing great things and in tantly leaping into fame—at least village fam® But she was dreadfully neivous. When she got to the thrilling non ent in the great scene, and' old Skylork stood cringing at her words “If thou t ’Aest more or less than a pound of fl sh.” she stopped, tonguetied wdh stage-fright. Then the awful silence which followed wiA broken by *he village butcher vc’. ling out :— "Put a bit <rf suet on it, miss, and gel on with the play I" DENTAL ARITHMETIC The pale gentleman in the Noah’s Ark frockc.at bore down on the redfrccd. uimply-haired fellow lying across a seat on the “down” platform. “My friend." remonstrated the P.Q., “did you ever reckon op th~t if you had placed the price of on.’ drink out at compound interest at the time of the building of So’orn®n’s temple, you would have £3.460.284?" • The red-faced, Tnan -Vwfeed-k'tmse’if on one elbow. i “No,” be replied. "I haven’t figured it out. But I'm something of a calculator, all the same, and if you don’t go away about one hundred and thiity-seven vards iu nine and a half seconds I’ll h?t you seventeen times, and make you see forty-two thousand one hundred and ninety-rix stars! I have just bad f ’ur teeth pulled out for ono pound five shillings, and you’d bette- go away before the arithmetic class gets over the rones and calls limo "