University of Virginia Library

GIVING REASONS.

The various reasons which some folks always have
ready for their accidents and misfortunes, or as palliatives
for their faults and follies, are very amusing.
Many stories are told of such: one we remember of a
boy who had played truant, and gave, as the reason for
his absence, that his father kept him at home to help
grind the handsaw. A toper, accounting for a bad cold
he had, said he had slept on the common, and forgot to
shut the gate. Another soaker, who was found in the
gutter, with the water making a free passage over him,
when asked how he came there, replied that he had agreed
to meet a man there.

In our printing-office days, when we had to work for
a living, it was our luck to work with a queer old fellow,
who bore the name of Smith, or some such odd title.
He was a very unhappy man, and never smiled unless
he had the whole office in a snarl, and then he would
chuckle right gladly. He was always fancying that his
office-mates were imposing upon him, and a perfect flood
of bile would he throw off at times for imagined wrongs.
His position was by a window, fronting the east, and
over this window he claimed absolute dominion, to shut
it up or have it open, as he just pleased, maugre the
fretting of those who were annoyed by his obstinacy.
He assumed the office of a thermometer for the men, and
graduated the heat according to his own feelings. If the

wind was east he would as surely have the window open
as that he would have it shut if it blew pleasantly from
the west.

One day, with the wind blue east, the window was
open all day, and much audible complaint was made by
all hands, but without any effect. It was with a feeling
nearly akin to exultation they saw him enter the office
next day with indubitable signs of having a cold upon
him; — his nose looked “red and raw,” and his voice
sounded as if he had two tight-fitting cork stoppers in his
nostrils. The window that day was not opened, you may
depend. One of the men undertook to remind him that
his cold was in consequence of the wind blowing upon
him.

“Do it aidt,” said Smith, “but I hug by hat up by
the widnder, ad last dight whed I put it od, it was brib
full of east wid.”