Dear Mr. Punch,--I write to ask your advice. As you know, the Army
Council in its wisdom decreed that the Army, before being demobilised,
must be educated. I have been chosen as one of the Educators.
My efforts to lead the Army into the paths of light and learning were
crowned with success until in an evil moment I undertook to teach
Private Goodbody. This genial ornament of our regimental sanitary
squad is especially anxious to plumb the mysteries of arithmetic.
When he had, as I thought, finally mastered the principle that if you
borrow one from the shillings' column you must pay it back in the
pounds' column, I set him the following sum:--
"Supposing you owed the butcher sixteen shillings and three pence
halfpenny and took a pound note to pay him with, how much change ought
he to give you?"
Private Goodbody scratched his head for several minutes and at last
decided that he did not know.
"But come, Goodbody," I urged, "surely it's quite easy." And I
repeated the question.
"I don't know, Sir; I don't never have no truck with butchers," he
declared emphatically. "I leaves that 'ere to the missus."
"Ah!" I said, "and how does _she_ get the money to pay him?"
"_I_ gives it 'er," said Goodbody.
"What does she do with the change?" I asked next.
"Gives it back to me, I reck'n," he answered.
"Well," I continued, "if you don't know how much change there ought
to be when you give her a pound and she spends sixteen shillings and
three pence halfpenny, how do you know she gives you back the right
amount?"
Private Goodbody eyed me with something suspiciously like contempt.
"If my missus started playin' any o' them monkey tricks on me, givin'
the wrong change an' sich, I'd put it acrost 'er," he said.
And there the matter rests for the present. I feel that I should not
lead Private Goodbody any further into the intricacies of his subject
until he has solved my problem. This he resolutely professes himself
unable to do, and begs to be allowed to leave it and plunge into the
giddy vortex of the multiplication table.
Yours faithfully, MENTOR.
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"A cable message of 100 words from London to Johannesburg to-day,
at 2s. 6d. a word, costs £1 10s."--_Evening Paper_.
We suppose the Post Office makes a reduction for taking a quantity.
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