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Akaroa Mail and Banks Peninsula Advertiser, Volume 4, Issue 376, 27 February 1880, Page 2

A Reverend Mr Ward foh! those terrible Reverends 1) has uttered a doleful jeremiad against circuses. He must surely have withered Chiarini with the hot blast of his denunciation. It is sad to say but true that the youthful mind doats more upon the gauze and spangles, the cap and bells, the paint and tights, the caparisoned horses and the bounding acrobats, the arena, the ring-master, and the flaring lights of the circus than on the solemn phiz, the white choker, the sombre gown, and the oppressive sanctity of little Bethel. If our clerical, guides would drop the Pharisee, strive to work hand in hand with caterers for public amusement, and fill in the " great gulf " which divides the outer worlcl from the Church, 'our amusements would be purified and our Churches better filled, probably. It is worth the experiment, at any rate, and sweeping denunciations of popular amusements, founded on scanty knowledge, come very ill from those whose office it is to win, not to coerce mankind. The "Puritan leaven " may have done good service in its day, but for Heaven's sake don't let the struggle for .existence now-a-days be embittered by gloomy fanaticism. " Circuses,'' says this reverend old raven, "are stepping stones to hell !" Very mild and persuasive language. I'm afraid some of us, took mighty long strides towards that'disinal bourne when Messrs Cooper and.Bailey and Signor Chiarini came around here!

Did you (says a writer in a Home paper) ever notice the broad, comfortable, shady-looking Leghorn hats in the milliners' windows ? Just buy. a woman one, ; and the first thing she will do will be to double up her dainty fist and punch a three-cornered dent on the right side ; then, she will pinch the front rim down and the back rim up, and then .stave in , three or four more big dents at odd corners ; and, when it, resembles in shape an old tin pan that has been a target for a stone-throwing match, she will remark upon the " elegance and grace " of the affair. But just let aman jam in one side of his hat, and he will be proclaimed a wine-bibbing vagabond.

We hear a good deal of the canniness of Scotchmen, and I had always imagined a Scotch lawyer to be quite impregnable in his 'But.the following from a Home paper staggers me :—"A servant-girl, 23 years of age, was sent to .prison for twenty days by the Stipendiary Glasgow Magistrate on Friday. last for defrauding three Glasgow lawyers. She represented to each of the gentlemen that she would inherit a considerable fortune, and instructing them as to the realisation of the estate got from them small sums of money." I think the Stipendiary ought to have. forgiven a servant-girl who was able to prize open the pursea of "three Glasgow lawyers."

The Governor-General of the Dominion has a footman whose dignity is quite too awful. When the Marquis and Princess wero inspecting the Kingston Penitentiary this sublime flunkey asked a prisoner, " Aw, my man, what awyouheahfaw?" The prisoner, remembering a venerable story, said that he had been arrested for stealing a saw mill. " Aw, weally, for that ?" said the surprised servant. "Yes," the prisoner laid," but they did not mind that much. It was because I went back to steal the dam they went for me." The flunkey said it was very extraordinary, arjd left an agitated and astonished man.

"What are you fencing that pasture for 1 Forty acres of it would starve a cow." " Certainly ; and so I am fen cinq it to keep my cows out."