"Well, I think that to spend money upon your shop-people is no such
great hardship after all. Now I've been in something like trouble
lately. I can't get a penny out of my customers. One man owes me
fifteen ounces; another owes me twenty-five ounces. Really that is
enough to make a man feel as if his heart was worn away."
When he had finished speaking, an old gentleman, who was sitting
opposite, playing with his fan, said--
"Certainly, gentlemen, your grievances are not without cause; still,
to be perpetually asked for a little money, or to back a bill, by
one's relations or friends, and to have a lot of hangers-on dependent
on one, as I have, is a worse case still."
But before the old gentleman had half finished speaking, his neighbour
called out--
"No, no; all you gentlemen are in luxury compared to me. Please listen
to what I have to suffer. My wife and my mother can't hit it off
anyhow. All day long they're like a couple of cows butting at one
another with their horns. The house is as unendurable as if it were
full of smoke. I often think it would be better to send my wife back
to her village; but then I've got two little children. If I interfere
and take my wife's part, my mother gets low-spirited. If I scold my
wife, she says that I treat her so brutally because she's not of the
same flesh and blood; and then she hates me. The trouble and anxiety
are beyond description: I'm like a post stuck up between them."
And so they all twaddled away in chorus, each about his own troubles.
At last one of the gentlemen, recollecting himself, said--
"Well, gentlemen, certainly the deer ought to be roaring; but we've
been so engrossed with our conversation, that we don't know whether we
have missed hearing them or not."
With this he pulled aside the sliding-door of the verandah and looked
out, and, lo and behold! a great big stag was standing perfectly
silent in front of the garden.
"Hullo!" said the man to the deer, "what's this? Since you've been
there all the time, why did you not roar?"