ONE THING AND ANOTHER.

Akaroa Mail and Banks Peninsula Advertiser, Volume 3, Issue 262, 21 January 1879, Page 3

ONE THING AND ANOTHER.

(Collated from our Exchanges.)

We never knew more than one man who was perfectly satisfied with the weather at all times and under all circumstances. It was Chubb. In summer, when the thermometer bolted up among the nineties, Chubb would come to the front door with beads of perspiration standing out all over his red face until his head looked like a raspberry, and would look at the sky and say, "Splendid—perfectly splendid 1 Noble weather for the poor and for the ice companies and the washerwomen! They don't shake up any such climate as this in Italy. Gimme me my umbreller, Harriet, while I sit out yer on the step and enjoy it." In winter, when the mercury would creep down fifteen degrees below zero, and the cold was severe enough to freeze the inside of Vesuvius solid to the centre of the globe, Chubb would sit out on a fence and exclaim, " By jingo ! did you ever see such weather as this ? I like an atmosphere that freezes up your very roarrer. It helps the coal trade and keeps the snakes quiet. Don't talk of summer-time to me. Gimme cold, and give it to me stiff." When there was a drought, Chubb used to meet us in the-»s*reet &ad remark, " No rain yet, I see! Magnificent, isn't it ? I want my weather dry ; I want it with the dampness left out. Moisture breeds fever and ague, wets your clotheß. If there's anything I despise it's to carry an umbreller. No rain for me, if* you please." When it rained for a week and swamped the country, Chubb often dropped in to sco us, and to observe, " I dunno how you feel about this yer rain, but it alius seems to me that the heavens never drop no blessings but when we have a long wet spell. It makes the corn jump, and cleans the sewer. I wouldn't give a cent to live in a climate where there was no rahi 1 . Put me on the Nile, and I'll die in;a week. Soak me through and through *to the inside of my undershirt, and I feel as it life was bright and beautiful, and sorrer nothing but nonsense. Chubb was always happy in a thunderstorm. He would say, " Put me in a thunderstorm and let the lightnin 1 play around me and I'm at home. I'd rather have one storm that'd tear the inside out of the continent than a dozen of j T er little dribblin' waterin'-pot showers. If I can't have a rippitf and roarin' storm I don't want none." One day Chubb was upon his roof fixing a shingle, when a tornado struck him, lifted him off, carried him a quarter of a mile, and dashed him with such terrible force against a fence that his leg whb broken. As they carried him home we met him, and when we aßked him how he felt, he opened his eyes languidly and said, " Immortal powers! what a storm that was! When it does blow, it suits the senior member of the Chnbb family if it blows bard. I'd give both legs if we conld have a Bquall like that every day. I—l——" Then he fainted. We want Chubb elected President. He is the only man in the universe who don't growl at the weather, and he ought to have glory and honor.—American Paper. - The Westport Times thus discourses: — *" Ho for a barber ! A Figaro to the rescue! Already the departure of the solitary professor of the art tonsorial—who finding Westport but as a barren field, has sought distant pastures where crops may be reaped, and stubbles mown more frequently—has been productive of frightful results. Poor helpless mankind in Westport have now to trust to their sweethearts and wives to .rim their flowing locks. But mark the consequence. The scissoring is like unto love sometimes * they cut not wisely daut -too well, and their liege lords go forth to their daily,biz, shorn even like unto sheep from the hands of the shearer."

A gentleman took, the following telegram to a telegraph office :—" I announce with grief, the death of Uncle James. Come quickly to read will. I believe we are the heirs. James Black." . The clerk bavin.; counted the words, said—"There are two words too many, sir." " All right; cut out * with grief " In July of last year the Government inaugurated what sire termed urgent telegrams, messages that take precedence of all ordinary and Pn-ssone*, if « double fee is paid for them. They cost 2d a word, yet 13,445 of them were *cut last year, and the handsome sum of £2,011, one half of which is clear profit to the department, was realised.