Page 4 Advertisements Column 1

Ashburton Guardian, Volume 1, Issue 146, 31 August 1880, Page 4

The Proper Age.—“ At what age wore you married ?” asked she, inquisitively.— But the other woman was equal to the emergency, and quietly responded, “At the parsonage.” An Aweul Trick.—A trick was played in an Evangelical Union Church in Greenock lately." While service was going on some unknown persons entered the lobby and poured a quantity of whisky into the water kept there for the use of the congregation. A Lost Coelection. —A Leicestershire paper says that an amusing scene occurred in a church at Penpont. The assistant had/ exchanged” with a neighbor, and theS stranger, not aware that in the Established congregation the collection was always taken with the ladle, allowed no opportunity for it between the last psalm and the blessing. The people were visibly amused, the more that the • incumbent, a man of rather irritable temper, was observed to be trying, but ineffectually, to arrest the attention of the preacher by a series of short, sharp, and significant coughs. When the people began to move out at the doors he could stand it no longer, but rushed out of his pew, caught a fugitive by the shoulder, ordered him to seize a ladle, and the beadle another, and intercept the collection that threatened to elude him altogether. The most of the congregation, however, had already escaped by other doors, having much to do to restrain their laughter till they got into the open air. On the two toll collectors returning they reported a sum of 4s. “ Four shillings !” exclaimed the venerable divine with undisguised contempt ; and he proceeded to open the Sabbath class, held immediately after the service. I