ONE THING AND ANOTHER.

Akaroa Mail and Banks Peninsula Advertiser, Volume 4, Issue 356, 16 December 1879, Page 3

ONE THING AND ANOTHER.

(Collated from our Exchanges.) "I say ,John, did yer see the circus," yelled a little boy to another last week. "No I didn't seethe circus,"sneeringly said John had been kept in the house for dis- ~' obedience, "Humph ! Ought to been there, biggest show you ever seed ; elephants and , and boa contwisters and — and If I couldn't go to a circus I'd run away." Who wants yer old circus?" yelled John." I had a circus all to myself. Tied the milk pitcher to the cat's tail, and the cat knocked down two flower pots, smashed the pitcher and broke a pane of glass. Git away wid your old circus; been to more'n than four hundred an' didn't have' so much fun; and didn't get licked, nuther. And the boy who had been to the circus •" smoled" a sickly smile., ■.--,..; *" A Casabarnanca.—The boy stood on the back-yard fence, whence all but him had fled, the flames that lit his father's barn j. shone just above the shed. One bunch of W crackers in hie band, two others in his hat, with piteous he cried, "I never thought of that t" A bunch of crackers to the tail of one small dog he'd tied ;tbe dog in anguish sought the barn and mid the ruins died. The sparks flew, wide and red and hot, they lit upon the brat; they fired the crackers in his hand and eke those in his hat; Then came a burst of rattling sound— the boy ! Where was he gone? Ask of the winds that far around strewed bits of meat and bone, and scraps of clothes, and balls, and tops, and nails, and hooks, and yarn, the relics of the dreadful boy that burned ,Jp>-his'father's barn.''

It has been quoted as an instance of extraordinary presence of mind that when ihe keeper of the Scarborough Aquarium was attacked last week by the octopus, who fastened his tentacles around his leg, ' that" he hit upon the expedient, of slipping his boot off, upon which the animal stuck to his boot for'2o minutes, and then dropped it, as >f, though there ." may be nothing like leather," calf was better. But the intelligent advice of the keeper, however praiseworthy, was not original. A similar instance of intelligence is said to

have occurred in Borrowdale, CumberlandOne of the simple.,farmers %£ those parts beheld for the first time a saddle in Keswick market, bought it arid Te'turhed home in triumph, having put it to;' the use for which it was intended—only, unfortunately, his heavy wooden shoes stuck in,the stirrups and he could not'get'out of them. His sons were for putting him into the ' stable, but his , wife,; "a. person . of ) great natural intelligence, suggested that they shoufcl take the saddleafiT which was accordingly done, with her husband oh'-it, and he was kept in the kitchen all the winter carding wool. When his youngest son, however, who was a student of St. Bees, came home for his summer vacation, he at onco exclaimed: *• Why on earth did you not take father's shoes off ?" The happy'suggestion was acted<matonce,aad has. long- supplied in "that d|gtrict an argument in favour of priftjenaty education; S ''.' (!/ A well dressed man entered a jeweller's shop and if he could see " those ouptoin the Window," pointing; as he spike' to some silver cupS' lined With gold in the window. "These/, said the jeweller, • handing him' ' one, " are S race cups." *' Race are r.ace cups;?" " Why," replied the jeweller," they are cups I have ordered to.be 'made for prizes' to the best, racer." " Well,' if that's' so, suppose you and I race for one," and with cup in hand be started and the jeweller after him; At latest advices,,neither had been heard of. ' 777 .; : : :-■-.

She was : an Albany- ladywh© informed a visitor who came to see her new house that she was having nicks made in the walls in which to place statutes, and in one of them a burst of,her husband." •