IT'S A SHAME
The Same Old Story Only Told Differently
A wry newsroom anecdote about a subscriber who canceled his paper over a strangely petty complaint, offering a glimpse of 1890s newspaper office humor.
NewsPipe summary
The Austin Weekly Statesman · December 24, 1896 · Page 5
1 min readYou have all heard that story about the man who was so stingy that he saved the ashes from his pipe and used it in place of snuff. Also about the individual with a wart conveniently located on the back of his neck, which was used as a collar button. Well, those individuals were sinfully generous compared to the people who caused a certain gentleman to call at the office yesterday and cancel his subscription to The Statesman. When the young man at the desk asked the cause for this subscriber stopping the paper, after having been a subscriber for so many years, he told the following tale, and it was so unanswerable that there was no argument used to induce him to continue his subscription.
"I don't get a chance to read it," he said, [...] until late in the evening
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