Jack and the Check Book

MP3 Audio CD. JACK AND THE CHECK-BOOK



I


Once upon a time a great many years ago there lived a poor woman who,
having invested all her savings in mining shares, was soon brought to
penury and want. She had bought her modest little home and all there was
in it on the instalment plan, and here she was, upon a certain beautiful
morning in late spring, absolutely penniless, and three days off,
staring her in the face, were payments due on the piano, the kitchen
range and even on the house itself. Moreover, the winter had been a
bitter one. Four times had the water-pipes frozen and burst, and a
plumber's bill of appalling magnitude had come in the morning's mail,
with the stern admonition stamped in red letters at the bottom:

LONG PAST DUE.
PLEASE REMIT.

The unhappy woman was at her wit's ends to know what to do. She had
tried to sell her shares in "Amalgamated War-whoop," only to find that
that once promising company had passed into the hands of a receiver, and
that there was an assessment, amounting to four times their face value,
due on the shares, so that every possible purchaser to whom she applied
refused to take the stock off her hands unless she paid them five
dollars a share for the service and would guarantee them against the
chance of further loss. All other means of raising the necessary
funds--and she had tried them all--proved equally futile.