THRIFT
It was said of a certain village "innocent" or fool in Scotland that if
he were offered a silver sixpence or copper penny he would invariably
choose the larger coin of smaller value. One day a stranger asked him:
"Why do you always take the penny? Don't you know the difference in
value?
"Aye," answered the fool, "I ken the difference in value. But if I took
the saxpence they would never try
The Mrs. never misses
Any bargain sale,
For the female of the species
Is more thrifty than the male.
MCANDREWS (the chemist, at two A.M.)--"Two penn'orth of bicarbonate of
soda for indigestion at this time o' night, when a glass of hot water
does just as well!"
SANDY (hastily)--"Well, well! Thanks for the advice. I'll not bother ye,
after all. Gude nicht!"
The foreman and his crew of bridgemen were striving hard to make an
impression on the select board provided by Mrs. Rooney at her Arkansas
eating establishment.
"The old man sure made a funny deal down at Piney yesterday," observed
the foreman, with a wink at the man to his right.
"What'd he do?" asked the new man at the other end of the table.
"Well, a year or so ago there used to be a water tank there, but they
took down the tub and brought it up to Cabin Creek. The well went dry
and they covered it over. It was four or five feet round, ninety feet
deep, and plumb in the right of way. Didn't know what to do with it
until along comes an old lollypop yesterday and gives the Old Man five
dollars for it."
"Five dollars for what?" asked the new man.
"Well," continued the foreman, ignoring the interruption, "that old
lollypop borrowed two jacks from the trackmen and jacked her up out of
there and carried her home on wheels.'
"What'd he do with it?" persisted the new man.
"Say that old lollypop must've been a Yank. Nobody else could have
figured it out. The ground on his place is hard and he needed some more
fence. So he calc'lated 'twould be easier and cheaper to saw that old
well up into post-holes than 'twould be to dig 'em."
A certain workman, notorious for his sponging proclivities, met a friend
one morning, and opened the conversation by saying:
"Can ye len' us a match, John?"
John having supplied him with the match, the first speaker began to feel
his pockets ostentatiously, and then remarked dolefully, "Man, I seem to
have left my tobacco pouch at hame."
John, however, was equal to the occasion, and holding out his hand,
remarked:
"Aweel, ye'll no be needin' that match then."
A Highlander was summoned to the bedside of his dying father. When he
arrived the old man was fast nearing his end. For a while he remained
unconscious of his son's presence. Then at last the old man's eyes
opened, and he began to murmur. The son bent eagerly to listen.
"Dugald," whispered the parent, "Luckie Simpson owes me five shilling."
"Ay, man, ay," said the son eagerly.
"An" Dugal More owes me seven shillins."
"Ay," assented the son.
"An' Hamish McCraw owes me ten shillins."
"Sensible tae the last," muttered the delighted heir. "Sensible tae the
last."
Once more the voice from the bed took up the tale.
"An', Dugald, I owe Calum Beg two pounds."
Dugald shook his head sadly.
"Wanderin' again, wanderin' again," he sighed. "It's a peety."
The canny Scot wandered into the pharmacy.
"I'm wanting threepenn'orth o' laudanum," he announced.
"What for?" asked the chemist suspiciously.
"For twopence," responded the Scot at once.
A Scotsman wishing to know his fate at once, telegraphed a proposal of
marriage to the lady of his choice. After spending the entire day at the
telegraph office he was finally rewarded late in the evening by an
affirmative answer.
"If I were you," suggested the operator when he delivered the message,
"I'd think twice before I'd marry a girl that kept me waiting all day
for my answer."
"Na, na," retorted the Scot. "The lass who waits for the night rates is
the lass for me."
"Well, yes," said Old Uncle Lazzenberry, who was intimately acquainted
with most of the happenstances of the village, "Almira Stang has broken
off her engagement with Charles Henry Tootwiler. They'd be goin'
together for about eight years, durin' which time she had been
inculcatin' into him, as you might call it, the beauties of economy;
but when she discovered, just lately, that he had learnt his lesson so
well that he had saved up two hundred and seventeen pairs of socks for
her to darn immediately after the wedding, she 'peared to conclude that
he had taken her advice a little too literally, and broke off the
match."--_Puck_.
They sat each at an extreme end of the horsehair sofa. They had been
courting now for something like two years, but the wide gap between had
always been respectfully preserved.
"A penny for your thochts, Sandy," murmured Maggie, after a silence of
an hour and a half.
"Weel," replied Sandy slowly, with surprising boldness, "tae tell ye the
truth, I was jist thinkin' how fine it wad be if ye were tae gie me a
wee bit kissie."
"I've nae objection," simpered Maggie, slithering over, and kissed him
plumply on the tip of his left ear.
Sandy relapsed into a brown study once more, and the clock ticked
twenty-seven minutes.
"An' what are ye thinkin' about noo--anither, eh?"
"Nae, nae, lassie; it's mair serious the noo."
"Is it, laddie?" asked Maggie softly. Her heart was going pit-a-pat with
expectation. "An' what micht it be?"
"I was jist thinkin'," answered Sandy, "that it was aboot time ye were
paying me that penny!"
The coward calls himself cautious, the miser thrifty.--_Syrus_.
There are but two ways of paying debt: increase of industry in raising
income, increase of thrift in laying out.--_Carlyle_.
_See also_ Economy; Saving.
More
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