A Lie That Lost a Fortune.

Otago Witness, Issue 2811, 26 August 1908, Page 86

A Lie That Lost a Fortune.

There has never been, so fax as we know, a mom remarkable- instance of a tangiblo o.iid yet a, fugveive- -wealth, tban o£ «t fortune that . evaded' fche grasp of a. relative of a I friend of -the waiter's. He was, many yeaxs ago, at school at Haraow, and returning along th© road by Ac baihingplace — to Ha-rroviaaie "ducbeir" — politely \ went to the assistance of si stout farmer on i horseback, in difficulties^ with a gate-lock. ! He opened Iho gate and> held it back for i the rider to pass. 1 "Thank you, my boy." said the farmer, ©n« of the wealthy Middlesex graziers who i own large tracts of tfo& Harrow and Pinner 1 rich meadow lands. "What may your name j be?" I "My name' 3 Green," returned the boy,

with an. ill-timed f burst of the imagination. ''And what is- your father?" "Oh, my father's q, cheesemonger," saact the smart scholar, chuckling internally at his ready wit, "and he lives in liondon at the Theobald's Road, rather a small shop, with two steps leading 1 down out of the street." " "Pro. very much obliged to you,'j replied the farmer, by no means— as it afterwards appeared — a maxi of straw. "You're a capital young chap. I sha'n't forget; you." "Don't," was the scholar's final thrust. "Remember Green, and a cheesemonger in Theobald's Road." Then up the hill he ,went, almost as much pleased with himself as if he had been as£ed to play against Eton at Lord's. What his feelings may have been when, 10 yeaira later, a young genitleman of the name of Green was advertised for, whose father kept a cheesemonger's shop in the Tbeobaloys Road, and who, in return for politely -opening a gate at Harrow, in the year 185—, was 'left a large legacy by the wealthy Farmer, recently deceased — what his feelings were tihen none of his relatives eared to inquire too closely;' but it was observed by aJI that from that hour the. unhappy young man never lost an opportunity'of insisting on the incalculable hlessings of the most rigid adherence to truth ; of the disasters invariably incident to even a momentary - deviation from which virtue he himself was a most marked 1 and melancholy example. "For neither was his name Green nor anything approaching iV.nor had his father, a. quiet country gentleman, Jever, even in the remotest fashion, been interested in cheese; indeed, 'as Jiis son has been heard' pathetically to remark, in the smallest quantity it invariably disagreed with him.