Counted Wrong.

Te Aroha News, Volume VI, Issue 296, 5 September 1888, Page 4

Counted Wrong.

A Scotch tradesman who had amassed, as he believed, £4,000, was .surprised by his old cloi k with a balance-sheet showing his fortune to be C 6,000. 'It canna be,' said the principal ; ' count agen.' The clerk did count again, and again declared the balance to be C6,OJ(). The master counted himself, and he also brought out i surplus of C 6,000. Time after time ho cask up the columns — it was still n 6, and not a 4, that rewarded his labours. So the old merchant, on the strength of his good fortune, modernised his house, and ' put money in the purse ' of the carpenter, the painter, and the upholsterer. Still, however, he had a lurking doubt of the existence of the extra .£2,000 ; so. one winter night he sat down to give the columns 'one count more.' At the close of his task he jumped up as though he had been galvanised, and rushed through the streets, in a shower of rain, to the house of the clerk. The clerk's head, capped and drowsy, emerged from an attic window at the sound of the knocker, to inquire the errand of his midnight visitor. ' Who's there?' he mumbled, ' and what d'ye want ?' ' It's me, ye scoondrel !' exclaimed his employer ; ' ye've added up the year of our Lord among the pounds !'

Sir Edward Baines, the oldest journalist in Europe, is eighty-eight years of age. He began his career as a reporter on the t! Leeds Mercury" before Queen Victoria was born, and whilst George 111, v>a& still upon the throne. A Berlin bank' has mounted its Bourse mesbengers on tricycles. London's fashionable fad just now in Mr Jbjdibon'fe poi tected phonograph. Tol&toi, the famous Russian novelist, i& now being pursued by mad-house keepers.