A HAPPY MATCH.

Hawera & Normanby Star, Volume XVII, Issue 2954, 17 October 1891, Page 4

A HAPPY MATCH.

There was once a comic picture in PwMh, representing "The Last Match"—half-a-dozen yachtsmen some miles out at sea on a windy day, clustering anxiously around the man who has got the only wax match in the party. The comedy was converted into grim V earnest in the case of the crew of the " Holt IHillr" shipwrecked on St. Paul's Island. I The nights were so cold that to be without i a fire meant certain death, and there was no ' flint and steel and only one match. • Imagine the trembling anxiety with which the three -and -thirty cold and starving wretches watched the ( kindling of that lucifer! ,

Fortunately the operation was successfully performed ; a blaze was made and the poor fellows were saved. But it was a ginjing episode.

'' is a story that a farmer who had lost some cows was fully persuaded that he had himself been attacked by the epidemic. Forthwith he consulted his own medical man, who tried to laugh him out of the notion, but to no purpose. The fanner then went off to an old well-known practitioner, who, being a bit of a wag, and seeing how matters were, entered minutely into the details of the case, ( expressed his concurrence with' ihe patient's views, and told him he could cure him. He then wrote a prescription, sealed it up, and told the farmer to go to a certain druggist in the next pottery town. The farmer lost no time in going with the prescription, but was somewhat startled when the druggist showed him the formula, which ran thus : " This man has got the cattle plague ; take him' into the back yard and shoot him, according to Act of Parliament." There is no need of saying that this was a " perfect cure."