Ready With His Excuse

1905

Clerk Justified Mean Trick by Scriptural Quotation

A certain tailor of very strict principles was in the habit of excusing the faults of his assistants only if they could justify themselves by Scripture. One day a woman entered his shop and asked to see some material, but refused to buy it because it was too cheap. After showing her some other goods, the assistant brought back the same material, this time asking a higher price, whereupon the customer bought it. Afterward, the proprietor, who had witnessed the transaction, reproved his assistant severely. The latter, remembering the rules of the establishment, replied "Oh, it's according to Scripture all right. She was a stranger and I took her in." — Harper's Weekly.


The Raven in Folklore

R. Boswell Smith, an Englishman, has recently made an exhaustive study of the place of the raven in folklore, in religious legends and in literature. It is a curious commentary on the people of some Christian nations that they should hold the raven in abhorrence when the legends, and in some cases the authentic histories of the church, tell them that the bird which they shun was the companion of a dozen or so saints and martyrs who gained rather than lost in sanctity from the companionship.