HOW DID HE MANAGE IT?

Lake Wakatip Mail, Issue 2644, 28 January 1908, Page 7

HOW DID HE MANAGE IT?

It was in famine time. The pec*pie were dying like leaves in autumn. Naturally the undertaker was doing well. So much work had he on hand that it became necessary for him to farm out the job of making one 'coffin to Mike, the village handyman. Now Mike was a good carpenter enough, and he hammered merrily away until everything was finished but the brass plate. Then came the difficulty. He managed to scratch the name somehow, but when it came tq "Aged 28," he was beaten, because, you see, the 8 was such a curly figure that he could not manage it anyhow. At last he asked Con's advi". "Why, man," said Con. "four sivins makes twenty-eight and sivin lis an aisy figure to make, so just put down four sivins; that'll do aiquilly as well." Mike did as he was bid, and the coffin went away. Nobody took any notice of the trifling liberty they had taken with the corpse's age until the holy father was delivering his short address at the burial. "Remember, boys," he said, "ye should all be prepared for death, for who would have thought it time for poor Pat to go, and he only—only" —and he began fumbling for his glasses to read the age on the plate. "Yes, boys, ye'd have thought he was only beginning instead of ending his life,'*' he said, as he put on the glasses and looked at the brass tablet. Then he took them off and gave them another polish. "Yes, my friends, poor Pat was only—Christopher Columbus !" he exclaimed, talcing another squint, and reading, "Seven thousand, seven hundred and Feventy-seven ! Saints in glory ! How on this blessed airth did he manage to escape the deluge?"