The Yankee and the Dutchman

OR,

I'LL GIVE OR TAKE.

A SHREWD Yankee, with about five hundred dollars in his pocket, came along down South, a few years ago, seeking for some better investment of his money than offered in the land of steady habits, where he found people, as a general thing, quite as wide awake as himself.

In Philadelphia, our adventurer did not stay long; but something in the air of Baltimore pleased him, and he lingered about there for several weeks, prying into every thing and getting acquainted with everybody that was accessible. Among others for whom the Yankee seemed to take a liking, was a Dutchman, who was engaged in manufacturing an article for which there was a very good demand, and on which there was a tempting profit. He used to drop in almost every day and have a talk with the Dutchman, who seemed like a good, easy kind of a man, and just the game for the Yankee, if he should think it worth the candle.

"Why don't you enlarge your business?" asked Jonathan, one day. "You can sell five times what you make."

"I knows dat," returned the Dutchman, "but I wants de monish. Wait a while, den I enlarsh."

"Then you are laying by something?"

"Leetle mite."

In two or three days, Jonathan came round again. He had thought the matter all over, and was prepared to invest his five hundred dollars in the Dutchman's business, provided the latter had no objections.

"It's a pity to creep along in the way you are going," he said, "when so much money might be made in your business by the investment of more capital. Can't you borrow a few hundred dollars?"

"Me borrow? Oh, no; nobody lend me few hunnard dollar. I go on, save up; bimeby I enlarsh."

"But somebody else, with plenty of money, might go into the business and fill the market; then it would be no use to enlarge."

"Sorry, but can't help it. No monish, no enlarsh."

"I've got five hundred dollars."

The phlegmatic Dutchman brightened up.

"Fife hunnard dollar?"

"Yes."

"Much monish. Do great business on fife hunnard dollar."

"That you could."

"You lend me de monish?" asked the Dutchman.

Jonathan shook his head.

"Can't do that. I'm going into business myself."

"Ah! what business?"

"Don't know yet; haven't decided. Into your business, maybe."

"My business!" The Dutchman looked surprised.

"Yes; it appears to me like a very good business. Don't you think I could start very fair on five hundred dollars?"

The Dutchman hesitated to answer that question; he didn't want to say yes, and he was conscious that the Yankee knew too much