Why He Looked Sad.

Otago Witness, 14 December 1893, Page 49

Why He Looked Sad.

"You look a trifledoleful to-night," said one of a group of gentlemen to another, while all were sitting one Saturday evening before the fire in one of the clubs. " Well," said the gentleman addressed, " I have as good a right to look doleful to-night as any man I know of." "What's up?" asked the obheir members of the group in chorus. "It was this way : You know that lam an ardent bicyclist, and I have a boy who has the same.passion. This evening, just after dark, as I was coming down the street to the club, walking along thinking of nothing in particular, I was hit in the back by what seemed to be a locomotive, and knocked sprawling into the ditch. Ifc was muddy there, and when I had collected my scattered senses I was all covered with dirt, and also very mad. I looked around to see what hit me, thinking that perhaps in my abstraction I had walked on to a railway line somewhere, and found a young man and a safety bicycle on the pavement, all tangled up. I was mad, as I said before, and, without stopping to think what I did, I took that young man by the coat collar and kicked him off the pavement. Then I jumped on the bicycle, , stamped all the spokes out of the wheels, and generally disfigured it." Here the gentleman stopped. And one of the audience said : "Well, why should that make you feel as you do ? You did just the right thing." " I suppose I hadn't ought to feel so," said the speaker, " bub, you see, it was my boy and my bicycle."