POINTED REBUKE.

New Zealand Graphic, Volume XVIII, Issue XXIV, 12 June 1897, Page 745

POINTED REBUKE.

Functionabiks in public offices in great cities, who do not always have work enough to keep them oat of mischief, sometimes conspire to play a joke upon some person from the country who comes in on business; and it is cheerful to learn that occasionally they get more than they bargain for, as the common saying is, from these same ‘simple-minded * country people. Daring the excitement over dynamite explosions in Paris, when Anarchists were causing disasters under the very noses of the police and many were eseeping detection, a policeman one day found upon the street a pocket book containing thirty thousand franca. He took it to the central police office and gave it to his chief, who examined and made a note of its contents. A few minutes later a rich fanner from Normandy arrived at the office, and declared that he had lost a pocket-book containing thirty thousand francs. He described the contents of the pocket-book with so much detail that the superintendent of the office was satisfied that the pocket-book already in the office belonged to the farmer. This was indeed the case. The superintendent, noting the countryfied air of the applicant, resolved to amuse himself at his expense. Calling a clerk, who had overheard the conversation, he said to him impressively : * I give you just five minutes to go out upon the streets and find this man’s pocketbook. If you do not come back with it in that time I shall discharge yon.* The clerk saw through the joke, and pretended to be terrified. He pleaded for mercy with clasped hands, and put on such an air of dismay that the farmer interceded for him, and begged the chief not to require an impossibility of the man. But the chief was inexorable. He sent the clerk out, whining and trembling. At the end of three minutes the elerk rushed in, apparently out of breath, and threw down the pocket-book, which he had simply picked up in the next room. For a moment the farmer was stupefied. Then he put the pocket-book in his pocket, and remarked as be went out: * Well, well! If you fellows could find dynamiters half as easily as you can pocket books, it would be a great benefit!’