1.--Ask a person to write, in figures, eleven thousand, eleven
hundred and eleven. This often proves very amusing, few being able to
write it correctly at first.
2.--If the eighth of £1 be 3s, what will the fifth of a £5 note be?
=BOTHERSOME BILLS=.
Defter at the anvil than at the desk was a village blacksmith who
held a customer responsible for a little account running:
To menden to broken sorspuns 4 punse
To handl to a kleffr 6 "
To pointen 3 iron skurrs 3 "
To repairen a lanton 2 "
A klapper to a bel 8 "
Medsen attenden a cow sick the numoraman a bad i 6 "
To arf a da elpen a fillup a taken in arvist 1 shillin
To a hole da elpen a fillup a taken in arvist 2 "
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Totle of altigether 5 shillins and fippunse.
That the honest man’s services had been requisitioned for the mending
of two saucepans, putting a new handle to an old cleaver, sharpening
three blunted iron skewers, repairing a lantern, and providing a bell
with a clapper is clear enough; and by resolving “a fillup” into “A.
Phillip,” all obscurity is removed from the last two items, but “the
numoraman a bad i” is a nut the reader must crack for himself.