The Retort Discourteous

A small and dirty newsboy worked a paying game for a week or so down in the shopping districts, says Chicago Tribune. He would don a most pathetic expression, go up to a woman and say, "Missis, won't you buy a paper? Dis is my birfday and I ain't sold hardly any." Of course he would sell one in nine cases out of ten and would generally get a nickel and be told to keep the change. He must have kept thls up fully a week and reaped a bountiful harvest. At last one young woman who had tired of the same story and who became rather skeptical on the subject of the "birfdays," stopped the young genius and remarked In tones clear enough to be heard some little distance, "See here, little boy, what did you say about your birthday?" "Lady, please buy a paper; dis is my birfday, and I ain't sold but one paper to-day," whined the young rascal. "Now, little boy, to my certain knowledge you have had a birthday every day this week. Aren't you ashamed to teil such stories?" He was cornered for a minute and stood with head cast down and every appearance of remorse. At last he looked up with a most innocent expression and said: "Well, you see, lady, you en me we're different. I ain't very oíd, en I thought I'd have a lot of. birfdays to oncet, en den I could quit havin' 'em, like you. See?" She concluded he was past reforming and, slipping a dime in his hand, moved on sighing over the wickedness of the generation, while the young sinner executed a pas seul of his own invention.