THE BRAKEMAN'S CHRISTMAS STORY.
"Funny things occurred down at our house Christmas," said the brakeman. "I'm away almost every night in the year, but Christmas night I got a lay off and staid home with the wife and babies. Next door to us lives one of the stingiest old codgers that ever was. Wheeler is his name, and everybody calls him Stingy Wheeler. He is an old chap who has no children and no friends, and who is said to be worth a good deal of money. I've had a good deal of sickness in my house this winter, and times have been right hard with us. It was mighty little Christmas we had, I can tell you. "Well, there's one thing we can say, Henry," said my wife to me, "and that is that our house is not hard to warm. It beats all the way coal does last us here. That half ton you got a month ago isn't nearly all gone yet." "That's the way coal lasts when there's nobody to steal it, as we had where we lived last," I replied. "Now there's only one man in this neighborhood I'd suspect of stealing coal, and that's Stingy Wheeler. I wouldn't trust that old codger very far." "Neither would I," said my wife. "That night, after we had got in bed, my wife woke me, saying she was sure she heard someone in the coal house." "I believe its old Wheeler," I said. "So do I," my wife replied; "but be careful, Henry, and don't get into any trouble with the old skinflint," she added, as I hastily dressed myself. "Softly I tiptoed out to the coal house, and sure enough there was a man there, hard at work with a shovel. It was stingy Wheeler, and he was throwing coal from his bin into mine."—Chicago Herald.