SCISSORS.

Akaroa Mail and Banks Peninsula Advertiser, Volume 2, Issue 144, 4 December 1877, Page 3

SCISSORS.

A woman who a ppHetl fnr a situation n<» cab-driver, being asked if she .omi'M manage mules, scornfully replied—"Cμ 1 course I can —I've liad Uvm jitisli'arids."

" Isn't it about time .you paid me that '-little bill?" said St»l)l>s rto one of his debtors. "My dear sir"," was the consoling reply, '' it's not a question of time ; it's a question of money." ■ A needy tailor, dunning for an old debt, wrqjte as follows :—>" Dear. Jim, this little account' has been standing seven years, and J think it is high time it was paid." To which Jim replied on the same sheet ot paper, while Snip's boy "was waiting: " Dear Sam, I don't'; and may a- difference of opinion never alter friendship." A armed man with an accordeon lately stopped before the suburban villa of a Parisian journalist. " Sir," he said,- " give me a trifle. I will not stun you with my music, but move on at once." "Not a bit of it," replied the journalist, "play as much as you like. I don't mind it, and it will amuse the children." " But," observed the musician, disconcerted, " I don't know how to play." " What's the good, then, of your accordeon ?" inquired the journalist. "Only to —frighten people, sir." The following reaches me from Dublin : —Archbishop Cullen was making his periodical tour of inspection in the Sunday schools. " Kate Malonsy," said he to an intelligent-looking girl, " explain the meaning of the Sacrament of Holy Matrimony." A pause. At last Kate replied, •' Please, yer honor, it's the state of existence before entering purgatory." "Go to the bottom of +he class, you ignorant girl," said the local clergyman, very much ashamed of his pupil. But his Grace stopped him. " Not so fast, Father Patrick, not so fast! The lass may be right after all. What do you or I know about it ?"

A Scotch witness somewhat given to prevarication has resently given an exact and careful answer which ought to be appreciated by lawyers of every land. " How far is it between the two farms ?" said the counsel. "By the road it's twa miles?" " Yes ; but on your oath, how far is it as the crow flies ?" " I dinna ken. I never was a crow." .

Some little, time.ago, at a bar conclave at a Southern hotel in " the States," generals, majors, and colonels, were each, with much declamation, giving an account of an incident in th 6 last civil war. A quiet man stood by, and at last said, " Gentlemen. I happened to be there, and perhaps might be able to refresh your memories as to what took place ;" and he gave, succinctly and inoffensively, the exact details of a smart action. The hotel-keeper said to him, " Sir, what might have been your rank ? " I was a private," was the reply. Next day, the quiet man, as he,was about to depart, asked for his bill. " Not a cent, sir—not a cent/ answered the proprietor. You are the vpry first private I have ever met."

The first time Jerrold saw a celebrated song-writer, the , latter said to him : " Youngster, have you sufficient confidence in me to lend hie a guinea ?" " Oh, yes !" said Jerrold, " I've all the confidence, but I haven't the guinea."

The following notice appears in a shop window of a tailor at Cork: "Wanted, two apprentices,' who will be ' treatect as one of the family." ■ .

A gentleman in San Francisco, whose Chinese cook left him, was unable to retain any of the numerous "Johns, " for over a day. until he induced one of them to explain that some apparently meaningless strips of red paper on the kitchen wall contained the Chinese inscription, " Boss woman long time tongue. Muchee jaw jaw."

" Women," remarked a contemplative man, " are as deep as the blue water of yonder bay ! " "Ay, sir," rejoined a disappointed man, " and as fall of craft."

There is no attraction for a woman now-a-days, after her glass, so powerful as the box-seat of a coach. The members of the Four-in-hand and Coaching Clubs are literally besieged by beauties demanding, as a right, to sit well in front. As a rule, the beauty gets what she wants. In the marriageable world every girl who knows who's who and what's what now looks forward to a coach with her husband that is to be. As knowing Mrs. Bryant tersely puts it, "My May is a match that will only light upon the box."— Punch

At one of the Detroit churches, where a revival was in progress, the clergyman asked those who wanted to be prayed for to stand up. Quite a number rose to their feet, and after the services were closed one lady was heard asking another at the door : " Why didn't you stand up ?" " Oh, I didn't want to," was the reply. " Why you are a very foolish woman. I would't have missed the opportunity for anything." "Opportunity for what?" "~Why, for standing up there and showing off your sealskin sacque ! There wasn't another in the whole church!"

A Scotch wife on her return home from kirk declared the sermon she had just been listening to was the finest discourse she had ever heard. " What was it about ?" inquired a friend. " How should I ken ?" replied the lady. "But what was the subject ?" asked the friend. I'm no sure" replied the gudewife. " But what was the text, and did he divide it ?" still presisted the friend. '' I dinna mind the tex," answered the lady, " but, oh, it was a grand discourse, the best I ever heard, for first he dang with this ban,' and then he dang with that han,' and then he stampit wi , this foot, and then he stampit with that foot, and aboon a , he was maist vicious."

Notlong before his death, Canon Kingsley drew attention to the surprising number of small young men to be seen in the London crowd. According to him, it was a sign of the deterioration of the race. But there are two ways of looking at everything, and, for the. comfort and satisfaction of small people we would point out that it might also be taken as an indication of intellectual. progress. Many—we might almost say most—of the great men of history have been of short stature. Canute the Great, for example, was a singularly small man ; Napoleon, too, was little ; Nelson had.no height to boast of ;. and the Great Oonde was short enough/. Hildebrand—Gregory, the Seventh—the mightiest of all the Popes, was also quite a diminutive person. Then amongst men of letters, poets, and philosophers, Montaigne, the essayist, was little ; so was Pope—"a little crooked thing that asks questions;", so was Dryden ; so was Dr. Watts, who insisted, as we all know, on the mind being the statnre of man ; and so was Scarron, who. alluding at once to his ill-health and his little size, called himself an " abridgement of human miseries."—