Perth Amboy evening news., 1905-10-13
REMARKABLE GUEST.

about as odd a guest as | ever had In
any house | ever kept said the retired
hotel keeper, was a regular boarder
who lived with me once who was very
fond of pie.
There was nothing very extraor-
binary in his fondness for pie. | have
known plenty of other men that liked
pleas it turned out there were lots OF
them right there in that same house
with him. but there was something re-
markable about the extent to which Mr..
Jillbigton-that wasn't his real name,
but it's near enough to it-allowed his
fondness ~ pie to carry him.
I'VE had in that house at that particu-
lar time a pastry cook who was just 4
wizard on pies. She could and did make
pies such as mother used to make every
day in the week, and we used to keep
up with all the new pie material as fast
as it came into market. and so our house
came to have more or less fame for its
pies. just as any hotel or restaurant is
likely to get a more or less permanent
reputation for some particularly excel
lent feature of its cooking, and all our
boarders were very fond of our pies. and
none more SO, of course, than Mr.. Jill
bigton.
And that pleased us. of course, for
we liked to have our boarders satisfied,
but pretty soon the very superior quality
of the pies turned u by our pastry cook
got us into trouble, the immediate agent
being our friend Mr.. Jill. Mr.. Jill took
TO calling for a second piece.
Nov. you understand, if ours had
been just ordinary pies, with only a linn
tied demand coming for them, it
wouldn't have made any difference to us
whatever if a few scattering pie fiends
had occasionally called for an extra
piece; but as we were situated. with the
brand of pie that we were turning out,
Mr.. Jillbigton's calling for In extra piece
soon made all the difference In the
world. For, you see, with what you
might call the unusual normal demands
made upon it the pie section Of the kitch-
en- was already running about to its ca
pacity; and if everybody should take to
calling for extra pieces of pie, why, we'd
be up a tree right away. And that's just
what happened.
when the other regulars saw Mr.. Jill
bigton calling for an extra piece of pie,
and getting it. they all called for extra
pie, and in two weeks time our pie de-
partment. that had been In a small way
a source of pride to us. was putting us
to all manner of trouble. to say nothing
about a considerably added expense;
and then something had to be done
about it, and | got Mr.. Jill into my Office
to talk it yer.
Mice man, Jillbigton, nice a man as
you would want to meet, and a very
level-headed man, too. generally speak
ing; Woody only on the subject of pie.
And | thought that with his general fair
mindedness all I'd have to do would be
mention the fix into which his demands
had brought us to get him to cut of his
extra order, when we could get every
body else to do the same, and so we'd
drop back to our regular comfortable
gait.
But. by gracious, he didn't see it in
that light; didn't see why he shouldn't
have extra pie. Wanted to know what |
kept a hotel for if it wasn't to please my
guests; and why | shouldn't be willing
to put myself to some trouble, and all
hat sort of thing. And finally | had to
tell him that it wasn't only the trouble
and the general upsettedness that wor-
ried me, but that supplying the enlarged
demands that his calls had created was
putting me also to an added expense that
considerably more than consumed the
ing anything on him, I was now the
same as paying him to make me all this
trouble! And thought that that was
going to be a clincher; but
"'Heavens!' he says, why didn't you
mention this to me before? Charge all
the extra pieces to me. Say nothing.
Give EN- the pie, and you take the credit,
and I'll play. gladly. Charge all the ex-
ira pie to mel
And what could | say in a case like
that? Nothing. He was a man of very
comfortable means and he meant just
what he said.
"And so we put in another pastry
range and got an assistant for the pastry
cook, and made more pies and supplied
all demands and charged to Mr.. Jillbig-
ton all extra pieces served, amounting
in some weeks to as much as 300 pieces.
1t took a little bookkeeping in the
kitchen and the exercise of a little COM
mon sense in the dining-room to know
just exactly how many of the extra
pieces ordered ought to be charged to
Mr.. Jill and to keep track of them, but
that was comparatively easy. and at the
end of every week we would tack on to
Mr.. Ji1lbigton's bill that item, for pie
as per contract. so much, and he paid it,
and paid it eheerfully.
And in this way things ran along
smoothly enough for about two months,
wher suddenly one day the assistant
pastry cook left.
Then for a day we were in deep
trouble in the kitchen again owe the
pies, and the very next day u great
pastry cook got a black bordered letter,
which, however, was not quite so