'Jack Holmes,' a man-about-town, living no one knew how, was once under cross-examination by a certain sergeant-at-law, who knew his man too well. 'Now, sir,' said the learned gentleman, 'tell the jury how you live?'
'Well,' said Holmes, 'a chop or a steak, and on Sunday perhaps a little bit of fish; I am a very plain-living man.'
'You know what I mean, sir,' thundered the questioner. 'What do you do for a living?'
'The same as you, sergeant,' said the witness, tapping his forehead suggestively; 'and when that fails, I do'--going through the pantomime of writing across his hand--'a little bit of stuff--the same as you again.'
'My lud, I shall not ask this obtuse witness any more questions,' said the angry counsel.
'Brother,' said Baron Martin, 'I think you had better not.'
Here is a hint for our old friend the clown in the pantomime. At the burning of a provision store, the crowd helped themselves freely. One man grasped a huge cheese as his share of the salvage; rising up with it he found himself face to face with a policeman, and with admirable presence of mind put the plunder into the officer's arms, saying: 'You had better take care of that, policeman, or some one will be walking off with it.'
Equally ready to relinquish his loot when there was no help for it was a Chicago negro, caught by a poultry fancier in the act of carrying off some of his live stock, and challenged with: 'What are you doing with my chickens?' 'I wuz gwine fer ter fetch 'em back, boss,' explained he. 'Dere's a nigger roun' here what's bin disputin along er me 'bout dem chickens. I said dey wuz Coachin Chyniz; an he said dey wuz Alabarmar pullets; an I wuz jes takin 'em roun' fer ter stablish my nollidge. Dey don't lay no aigs, does dey, boss? Ef dey does, I'm mighty shamed of hustlin 'em roun'. Aigs is scase.'
Impudently cool as the darkey was, he must yield the palm for effrontery to the Erie Railway guard, whose interview with Manager Fisk is thus related in an American paper.
'You are a conductor on the Erie, I believe?'
'Have a very fine house in Oswego? Cost you some thirty, forty, or fifty thousand dollars?'
'Some little money invested in bonds, I am told?'
'Had nothing when you commenced as conductor on our road?'