A TALL COLLAR FOR A LONG NECK.

North Otago Times, 3 December 1910, Page 2 (Supplement)

A TALL COLLAR FOR A LONG NECK.

When Barnum's menagerie visited San Francisco the manager saw in a laundry window a notice reading "Collars and cutis a penny each,"

a "Do you take any kind of collars at that price?" he asked the laun : dryman. "Yes, oh yes," said the laundryman ; "'same price everything." In the menagerie was a giraffe that the clown used to dress up for the evening parade in a sort of "masher" costume with a high collar reaching from its shoulders up to its head. The manager got one of the giraffe collars, and had it sent down to the laundryman to have it done up. When the laundryman opened the bundle and spread it out on the counter he said, "What's this?" And the man who had I brought it down said that it was one of the giraffe's collars. "Ah, yes," said the laundryman, just as though giraffe's collars were a common item of the wash in his laundry; but he hadn't had very many come in lately, and they'd rather escaped his mind. "Five o'clock," he said, when the man asked when it would he ready, and at five o'clock the man found it waiting for him, done up in a roll about as big as a stovepipe. "How much ?" he asked.

"A penny," said the laundryman, and he swept the penny off the counter into the drawer without saying a word; he was a man who could take a joke in good part, But the manager was the reverse of mean; he sent the laundryman five shillings, which was about what 'the work was worth, and a couple of complimentary tickets. That night the laundryman came to the exhibition. He was just as cool as ever, but you could see that he was. Highly pleased when the giraffe, came on wearing the collar that had been done up in his laundry. The story got about, and the laundryman's business doubled itself in a week.