A farmer in the Kinnekinnick Valley was paid $1,000 while he was loading
hay. He put it in his vest pocket, and after he had unloaded the hay he
discovered that he had lost it, and no doubt had pitched the whole load
into the mow on top of it. He went to work and pitched it all out, a
handful at a time, upon the barn floor, and when the hired man's fork tine
came up with a $100 bill on it he knew they had struck a lead. He got it
all.
A man gave me two $5 bills once to pay a balance on some store teeth and
asked me to bring the teeth back with me. The dentist was fifteen miles
away and when I got there I found I had lost the money. That was before I
had amassed much of a fortune, so I went to the tooth foundry and told the
foreman that I had started with $10 to get a set of teeth for an intimate
friend, but had lost the funds. He said that my intimate friend would, no
doubt, have to gum it awhile. Owing to the recent shrinkage in values he
was obliged to sell teeth for cash, as the goods were comparatively
useless after they had been used one season. I went back over the same
road the next day and found the money by the side of the road, although a
hundred teams had passed by it.
A young man, one spring, plowed a pocket-book and $30 in greenbacks under,
and by a singular coincidence the next spring it was plowed out, and,
though rotten clear through, was sent to the Treasury, where it was
discovered that the bills were on a Michigan National Bank, whither they
were sent and redeemed.
I lost a roll of a hundred dollars the spring of '82, and hunted my house
and the office through, in search for it, in vain. I went over the road
between the office and the house twenty times, but it was useless. I then
advertised the loss of the money, giving the different denominations of
the bills and stating, as was the case, that there was an elastic band
around the roll when lost. The paper had not been issued more than an hour
before I got my money, every dollar of it. It was in the pocket of my
other vest.
This should teach us, first, the value of advertising, and, secondly, the
utter folly of two vests at the same time.
Apropos of recent bank failures, I want to tell this one on James S.
Kelley, commonly called “Black Jim.” He failed himself along in the
fifties, and by a big struggle had made out to pay everybody but Lo
Bartlett, to whom he was indebted in the sum of $18. He got this money,
finally, and as Lo wasn't in town, Black Jim put it in a bank, the name of
which has long ago sunk into oblivion. In fact, it began the oblivion
business about forty-eight hours after Jim had put his funds in there.
Meeting Lo on the street, Jim said:
“Your money is up in the Wild Oat Bank, Lo. I'll give you a check for it.”
“No use, old man, she's gone up.”
“No!!”
“Yes, she's a total wreck.”
Jim went over to the president's room. He knocked as easy as he could,
considering that his breath was coming so hard.
“Who's there?”
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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