LIGHT LITERATURE.

Hawera & Normanby Star, Volume I, Issue 82, 22 January 1881, Page 4

LIGHT LITERATURE.

THE MEANEST MAN.

An exchange says :—": — " The meanest man has occurred again. He lives in Milford, N.J., and stole the collection which had been taken to pay the expenses of a temperance orator and set up the drinks for a bier crowd at the hotel with the money. There is, we confess, a kind of originality about such rascality as that."

He would have been much meaner, if he had bought two or three cases of brandy and gone in for a " big drunk " on the quiet, like a servant whom we heard of, who for ten years was a staunch teetotaller, and therefore his master thought he could safely leave a case of very old choice cognac in his charge, while he (the master) took his Christmas holidays. On his return he found the servant very full, and the brandy case empty. The explanation which the culprit volunteered was this : — " You see, sir," he said, " I was moving the case when I was cleaning up the house, and one bottle fell out and broke, and I thought the smell of the liquor was beautiful, and it was a pity it should be wasted, so I just drank it up, and thought it was real good. That was on Christmas Eve, sir, and the next day my throat was very dry, and I thought it was Christmas, and it was a pity such fine liquor should be just lying idle in the case on a Christmas Day, so I drank another bottle. That was two bottles, you see, sir. I don't very well remember exactly about the rest; but I know that whenever I wanted a drink after that, I thought what a great pity it was that all that fine brandy should be spoiling with long-keeping in the case there, and so I took another, and this is the last, sir ; and indeed I don't know what 1 should have done if you had not returned. I believe I might have died or hanged myself for grief that there was no more."

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