Honestly.

Otago Witness, Issue 2391, 28 December 1899, Page 67

Honestly.

"Howdy do, Mr Jarlick?" saluted Dr Slaughter, a Muddlehampton physician. "How is your health "to-day?" "Are you askin' as a physician or merely as a friend?" returned Mr Jarlick, a mossgrown but shrewd native. "As a friend, of course." "Well, then, doctor, I'm feelin' kinder sorter, so to express it. Ain't ill enough to go to bed, nor well enough to do anything that looks like work. Ain't rich enough to need 'a holiday, nor poor enough not to feel like I want one. Can't cay I've got hay fever or palpitation of the heart, for the first ain't in season now, an' I am too big an* husky for anybody to believe the latter. The simple fact of the case is that I'm truthful enough to own up that I'm lazy, without any frills or ornaments to it— jest plain downright lazy, an' honest enough to confess it. That's all there is in the world the matter with mo, doctor."

"How much will you give me for this atlas?" asked a shabbily-dressed private tutor as he walked into a eecond-hand bookseller's and produced the book named. "'Oh. it isn't worth much," answered the bookseller, as he turned over the leaves with an air of assumed indifference. "There's no demand for 'em. I bought one tho other evening, and it's outside on tho stall now. There's no demand for 'em at all. I shall think I have done well if I get eighteenpence for the one I have now.

"All right, here's your eighteenpence. This is the one you had outside," gaily auswered the tutor as he threw clow n the money and skipped out of the shop.