In vain we call old notions fudge
    And bend our conscience to our dealing.

  The Ten Commandments will not budge
    And stealing will continue stealing.

  —­Motto of American Copyright League.

  Suspicion always haunts the guilty mind;
  The thief doth fear each bush an officer.

  —­Shakespeare.

See also Chicken stealing; Lawyers; Lost and found.

THIN PEOPLE

  There was an old fellow named Green,
  Who grew so abnormally lean,
    And flat, and compressed,
    That his back touched his chest,
  And sideways he couldn’t be seen.

  There was a young lady of Lynn,
  Who was so excessively thin,
    That when she essayed
    To drink lemonade
  She slipped through the straw and fell in.

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 me again.”

  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.”