HAD THE LAW OF IT.

New Zealand Tablet, Volume XX, Issue 16, 5 February 1892, Page 15

HAD THE LAW OF IT.

" Thkbb couldn't be two Lord Mayors in this city at one time, could there ? " asked a lank and seedy individual, with a bucolic air about him, as he touched one of the city's " finest " on the arm one afternoon. " Certainly not." " The law wouldn't allow it, would it 1 " " Of course not," said the policeman. " 'Specially they couldn't be one Conservative and one Liberal, anyway ? " " I don't see how they could."' " That's what I told the old folks all the time. You see the Lord Mayor and me used to live in the same neighbourhood when we were boys. Law, why I knew him as well as I did my own brother. Used to go to school with him ; go blackberrying and nutting with him ; slept with him lota of times when we were little shavers." '•Well, what of it?" " Just this : My old folks live with ma, and they are always grumbling because I haven't done as well as the Lord Mayor, " Just look at him," dad'll say. •' You bave just as good chances as be had, and see where he is— and you're working a market garden on shares." Of course there's a big difference, ain't there ? "

" I should say there was." " Well, it galls me, 'specially as they're getting Sary, my wife, to look down on me. She keeps twitting me about it, and I'm afraid the children ire getting a little offish about it. You see it's mighty hard on me." " 1 hat is a fact, it is." " I argue with 'em that it'd be a real impossibility for me to be Lord Mayor, too, while he is. I belong to another party, and, naturally, am opposite to him every way, and I couldn't do it, could I?" "Not very well, the way the law is." " Much obliged. I'll settle the whole of 'em when I go home. I'll tell them I explained the case to one of the first lawyers in the city, and he told me it was no go, and there hadn't been any use of me trying." " He turned quickly down a side street, and left the officer so surprised and flittered by bis closing sentence that the guardian of the peace actually forgot to stop the traffic for four minutes. — American Papers,