AUTOMATIC GAS-METER.

Taranaki Herald, Volume LXI, Issue 144050, 20 March 1913, Page 4

AUTOMATIC GAS-METER.

THE ARCHITECT’S JOKE. There is a story of a country storeketper who sold a saddle on credit and forgot to whom it had been delivered. He, knew that the buyer was one of a dozen customers, who were large pastoralists in the neighbourhood, so ho put the saddle into eaeli of their accounts, thinking that the eleven who had not bought it would point mil the mistake. Ten men' paid up without protest.

Country customers may or may not he as simple as the story makes out, blit a Sydney architect tells of an experience which is very similar. Ho was remodelling a public hall in one of tho principal country towns of the State, and the first thing he did was to disconnect the gas meter. He cut off and capped all the pipes leading to the meter, and put it away in the yard. The work was held np for some time, and was not finished for six months. At the end of that time a bill for £2O for the use of gas was sent to the owner of the building, who passed it on. to the architect, thinking that he had used the gas. The architect protested, but was told that the meter showed that as much gas had been burned as when tho hall was used for entertainments.

Then he found that the meter was never read—that a bill had been sent in every six*months and paid as a matter of course. But when the architect triumphantly told how the meter had been cut off, instead of receiving a humble apology he was : threatened with legal pioceedinps for interfering with the property of the gas company.