WHY HE WASN'T CARRIED UP STAIRS.

Poverty Bay Herald, 12 September 1879, Page 2

WHY HE WASN'T CARRIED UP STAIRS.

There were four of them, and they were all of that jolly fraternity known as printers. They were all of the married persuasion, and, with their wives, resif ded over in Brooklyn. They had all been pretty hard drinkers * in their day, but a short time ago they ! entered into a contract to swear off. They worked on a newspaper not a hundred miles from the Dispatch office, and every morning when they returned home ( . the usual command would be, "Come here, and let me smell your breath." They even twitted each other about it, and when one of them would absent himself from the office for any length of timo the others would exchange winks, and remark, " He's off again. " There are probably few printers in the country but what, at some period of their existence, have squandered at least a portion of their vast wealth at " policy," and our friends were no exception to the general rule. On Monday last one of the quartet "made a hit." Soon after he heard of his good fortune he got excused from the office and left. Then the other three " knew that he had gone off to get lush." "He'll have a head on him like a poisoned pup to-morrow morning," said one. " Hope it rains to-night or there won't be enough water in the reservoir for him when he gets up," said an other. "Better take a ham home for him to stretch his hat on," remarked the third. After their "formes-" had been " locked up '" the trio started for Brooklyn, all wondering where their absent comrade could be. When they arrived at their mutual boarding house and had opened the door, what was their dismay, to see him with his body on the stairs and his head gracefully reclining on the lower step. They held a caucus and it was finally decided upon to carry him to his bedroom so that the females might not become cognisant of his condition. He was pretty heavy and they all spit on their hands, grasped him by different parts of the body, and gave a double-barreled jerk., Then they turned hand-springs and double-back-action somer-saults, and flying leaps over the body. At that moment a chorus of female shouts apprised them that they had been endeavouring to lif t a stuffed figure. The thought flashed through their minds that it was the first of April. Their friend had returned home early with the pledge still intact. When he saw them endeavouring to lift "his body " he laughed as loud as the females, but when they had informed their husbands that he had mistaken it for one of them, and in attempting to raise it had skinned his nose on the second oldest step he looked as sour as a lemon squeezer, after a big day's work, and the services of the deacon of a neighbouring beer foundry had to be called into requisition before the young man could be pacified. They all continue to drink on the sly.