Directory_and_Chronicle_1845 — Page 800

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Moral. When persons have spendthrift children, who dissipate their wealth like “boiling water or melting snow," snch conduct as this old man's is explainable; but it is painful to see an old man growing so foolish.

A dumb Man speaking.

A certain beggar feigned dumbness, and begged for alms in the streets and markets, pointing with one finger to his clap-dish, and with the other hand to his lips, grunting, Ah! Ah! One day he got two cash, with which he bought whiskey, and drinking it up, said, "Give me a little more whiskey." The rumseller said, "You come in here constantly, and have never been able to talk; how is it you can speak to-day?" "I got no money other days, what should make me talk; but I got two cash to-day, and now of course 1 can say something."

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Moral. Money nowadays will make most men speak.

Brothers cultivating a Field together.

Two brothers were partners in cultivating the same field, and when the time of harvest came, and the younger was about dividing the grain, the elder said, "You and I are good brothers, but if we take this petty carefulness about our portions, I am afraid observers will say we are measuring and estimating everything to the loss of harmony and propriety. Let me take the upper part of the grain this

year, and you the lower straw part, while next year you can take the upper part, and I will take the lower; and thus alternate year by year." The younger assented. Next year, in the spring, the younger remarked to his brother that it was time to set out the rice shoots, to which he replied, "That is true, but I hear that it is going to be a very dry season this year, and I am decided to plant taro this spring; besides, you agreed to take the upper half of the crop this year, and I the lower part, alternating year by year, which we considered a fair division; and now you must not alter the ar- rangement."

Moral. Those who scheme only for their own benefit and never think of others, are plenty everywhere, and even friends offend each other in thig

“but who can tell whether Venerable Heaven will let manner; with rectitude ?"

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