Year: 1876

A Handsome Take-on on the Mon who Lie
for the Fun OF Being Heroes:
There is class of men who love to sit
around the stove of a country grocery of
a winters evening and exchange lies.
NJ. Quad, the wag of the Detroit Free
Press, hits of this class in the following
aory:


One evening when the winter blasts
moaned sadly across the street corners,
and the captains of the ferryboats wore
anxious looks, seven or eight vessel
owners and "laid up" lake captains sat
around a cheerful base burner in q
saloon near the river. After the usual
amount of growing about the weather
one OF them told story. There might
have been an ounce of truth in it, but
the crowd felt certain that the one ounce
was offset by twenty-four pounds of the
"awfullest kind p" of lying. Therefore
second man tolk story to beat it, and
then third man beat the second.
When the fourth man started out he
said


Gentlemen, I have also seen tough
times. When 1 was sailing the schooner
Fortune forty years ago two of us were
swept overheard in q storm on Lake Erie
one black night. A hatch cover went
with us, and it 80 happened that we
both clutched it. It was not large
enough to support two. WAS captain,
he a sailor. 1 had family-he had none.
L shouted to him to quit his hold, and
when he would not, reached over,
clutched his throat, and held on till his
fingers loosened, and he went to the bot
tom of the lake 1t was twenty miles
off Point Betsey, and with shrill, wild
shrek, which yet fingers in my ears, the
poor wretch went to his deathI May
the Lord forgive me !'


With his chair tilted against the wall,
a lanky, sunfowerish chap had been
nodding his head right and left, as if
sleeping. AS the captains narrative
was concluded the stranger rose up and
solemnly said ::


81 am that man |"


The crowd looked at him in astonish-
ment, and he continued:


"I landed on Point Betsey next morn
ing in time for breakfast, and I swore a
solemn oath that I'd lick you for choking
me If had to live hundred years to
do it'll"


You can't be the man," replied the
captain, looking suspiciously at the
fellows big fists; " it was forty years
ago."


." I know it was, and for forty years
I've been aching to lick you out of your
boots I"


The captain had lied, but he didn't
want to own it, and he said:


That sailors name was Dick Rice"


Kerect I" bowed the stranger
"that's my name !"


But he was taller than YOU"


Being in the water so long that
night I shrunk just a foot" was the
cool rejoinder.


"Well, I know you can't be the man."
said the captain.


81 am the man, and now I'm going to
maui you to pulp! No man can choke
me and then brag about itr'


He sailed in and upset the captain,
but was then set upon by the whole
crowd. He got into the eye of the wind
and hung there for time, but presently
he paid off little, got the wind on his
quarter, and went at it to lick ten times
his weight in old liars. He was very
ambitious man, and those who could get
out doors got out, and those who
couldn't offered him gallon of whisky
to come to anchor. He furled his sails
on this understanding, and as he set his
glass down for the third drink he wiped
his bleeding ear and remarked:


"When @ man tries to sacrifice me in
order to save himself he don't know who
he's fooing with |"


He was the biggest liar of them all,
but he made the most out of it.