AN UNFORTUNATE LOAN.

Poverty Bay Herald, Volume XXXIII, Issue 10638, 14 April 1906, Page 1 (Supplement)

AN UNFORTUNATE LOAN.

"I'm tlilxjugh, I'm good and' through," asserted Gofften, with vehement bitterness. "The next man who taps me, expecting a gentle flow of the milk of human kindness, is going to be deluged by a torrent of infusion of gall and wormwood triple distilled. Hereafter I've an ear deaf* to the most piteous appeal.' From now on I'm a flinty-hearted miser impervious to the 'touch. My sympathies are dead, my generosity is defunct, and niy pocket-book forever shut to all but myself. You hear me!"

"Wnat's gone wrong now?" I asked. "I'm an outcast and expatriate from my home and fireside," declared Gofften acridly. "My wife regards me as an apostate, a renegade and a traitor actively giving aid and comfort to her enemies; her- mother is convinced that I am an abandoned character deliberately plotting to destroy her daughter's peace and happiness ; my children, more charitably, look upon me simply as a weak-minded, easy-going, slipshod, spineless imbecile; and it's all because I lent Rivalton fifty dollars."

"That's a good deal of a row for a small loart to kick up," I observer incredulously. "It is," admitted Gofften sadly. "But the result was peculiar. It seems," he explained, " that some milliner has had on exhibition in her window lately a hat of such fabulous beauty that every woman in town went wild over it. My beloved wife fell under its spell like the rest, and my devoted family banded itself together to extract the price from me, kindly if they could, forcibly if they must. Everything was ready for the-as-sault to take place after an. unusually good dinner one night, but I, totally unconscious of the fell design, had listened good-naturedly to a doleful. £ale of woe Rivalton told me that, afternoon', and lent him my last fifty. Surrounded, subdued, all but subjugated that night, I in desperation told my importunate family what' I had done with my money, as an excuse for my dollarless condition ; but even then there was no cessation of hostilities nntil I capitulated unconditionally and promised to raise the money somehow the next flay." "Well," I asked, as he paused to sigh wretchedly, "why wasn't that just as satisfactory?" ."Because," replied Gofften, from'the depths of gloom, "the very next morning Mrs Rivalton appeared on the streets arrayed in the identical hat, and that's where my fifty went is the unalterable belief of my desolated family, myself included."

— Alex. Ricketts.