He Rebuked Gently.

Otago Witness, Issue 2006, 4 August 1892, Page 46

He Rebuked Gently.

He was such a weak and humble little man that when he came into the grocery store to make a complaint the clerk was disposed to be haughty and imperious.

"May I inquire," he said in a still small voice, " if any gentleman here sold my wife some butter yesterday ? "

" I guess I'm the man," responded a big brawny fellow with an inch or two more chin on him than a grocer usually has need of in his business.

" Oh, excuse me," exclaimed the customer shrinkingly, ' ' I meant no offence. The butter is all right, but I wanted to say that three colours of hair in one roll is somewhat incongruous. And I thought I might add also a request that if you could send up a brush and comb with the next sale we would be ever so much obliged. Of course it was an oversight on your part, and I am not complaining, you understand — not complaining, merely suggesting." The clerk's face was a study. "And," went on |the little man, "I don't think it is quite fair to put tacks at a shilling a pound in butter at eighteenpence, unless you make a discount for difference in weight and price, or -throw in a claw hammer so we can draw the tacks upon putting the butter on the table."

The clerk was gasping and the little man was going right along. " Referring again to the hair mentioned previously," he said, " permit me to say that I find no fault because of its quantity or its length. The incongruity of colour was the only objection. In the old times we read that Samson had long hair and a great deal of it, and your butter, in that respect has rights my entire family is bound to respect. Our only regret is that you did not send it up in a cage." By this time the clerk had fallen up against the counter, but the little man paid no heed.

" I might possibly," he continued mildly and weakly, " touch upon its age, but I have some reason to suspect that this butter is made from milk, that the milk came from a cow, and that a cow is a female, and I have been taught from my youth up to abstain from any and all references to age in relation to female kind, either remotely or contiguously. Therefore I shall not animadvert upon that subject, except to remark incideutally that the phrase ' feeble old age ' does not in the remotest degree apply to this case. I wish you'd send up to the house a pound of soda, four bars of soap, a package of starch, a dozen apples, and 251b of sugar. My wife asked me to leave the order, and she said she'd come around herself and see about ' the butter. Good morning," and the little man walked meekly out.