HIS PRIDE EXPLAINED.

New Zealand Herald, Volume XXXVII, Issue 11520, 3 November 1900, Page 2 (Supplement)

HIS PRIDE EXPLAINED.

HIS WIFE SWORE ONCE, AND WITH GOOD EFFECT. A party of married men were talking about their wives, and it is worthy of note that every man was glad he had a wife and was anxious to tell of her good points. ,:

" I never heard my wife swear but once," said one of them when there seemed to be a lull in the praise meeting. All the others looked shocked. If any of them had over heard their wives swear they were not telling it, and they resented the frankness of the one man who was apparently betraying family secrets. But the man did not regard the bad impression he had created.

" And that," he continued in the same tone, "was away back yonder, 30 years or more ago, when the oil excitement in Pennsylvania , agitated the whole country. I owned a farm up there that I bad taken for a debt for 1000 dollars, not because it was worth that much, but because it was all I could get. My business was very small then, and 1000 dollars represented the bulk of my capital. I had been married five years, and my wife was the very best investment I had ever made. One clay I received word that oil had been struck on the farm adjoining mine, and right away I proceeded to go crazy, just as everybody else did when oil showed up anywhere in their neighbourhood. My wife showed signs, too, but she kept her wits about her. Inside of a week I began to get offers for my farm, and I got crazier every time there came an offer higher than the one before it. It went up like a balloon- at first, until the figures got away up, and then the small bidders dropped out. At last an offer of 100,000 dollars came from the representative of a company that I knew was worth 2,000,000 dollars or 3,000,000 dollars.

"' Let it go. John,' said my wife when I told her of this offer. " ' I guess not,' said I; 'if it's worth 100,000 dollars to them it's worth 100,000 dollars to me.'

"' I tell you to let it go," said my wife, as firm as a gatepost in the ground. '"Not much,' said I. 'I'll get 200,000 dollars.' " She pulled down her apron with a jerk, a peculiarity of hers when she meant business.

"' You're getting a hundred times more for it than you gave,' said she, 'and you never expect to make 100,000 dollars in a hundred thousand years, and you know it." " ' But I'll make a good deal more than that now,' I insisted, and started back to my desk to write a letter declining the oiler. " She pulled down her apron with a jerk that made the strings crack. "'John Martin,' said she, ' don't be a d fool!'

" And I wasn't," concluded the narrator, " for I accepted the 100,000 dollars offer, and it was 90,000 dollars more than the company ever got off the farm, for the oil didn't seem to run that —Lippincott's Magazine.