"Clawing off."

Auckland Star, Volume VI, Issue 1695, 24 July 1875, Page 5 (Supplement)

"Clawing off."

Yestebday, as a policeman was strolling past a house on Fort street East, a woman, a year or two over forty, having her sleeves rolled up and her hands covered with flour, ran out to the gate and called to him:

'It's a little delicate,' she said, as she leaned over thj gate and tried to blush, ' but I'm a person that knows my rights, and, besides, I'm all alone in the world and no one to advise me ' ' Speak your mind freely, madam,' replied the officer, as he tapped the pickets with his baton. ' You know all about the law, don't you ?' she replied. 'Everything, madam. T can tell 1 you how to go to work in an Admiralty case, and bring you from that down through divorce, bankruptcy, arson, burglaiv, false pretenses, hitching a horse to a shade tree and getting intoxicated.' ' It's a little delicate,' she softly said as she rubbed the flour off her hands, but, as I said before, I'm all alone.' 'Trust me,madam —repose confidence in me,' he replied, swelling out his eh est ' Well s'posen you were a widow ?' ' Yes, madam.' 'And s'posen one of the boarders gave you a breast-pin ?' 11 see, madam.' ' And s'posen he smiled at you, and sent you poetry, and asked you to ride out on Sunday, and the neighbors whispered around that you were engaged ?' ' Proceed, madam— -I congratulate you. ' No you niusn't, for s'posen' after all this he suddenly began to draw off, and didn't smile on you any more, and didn't praise your cooking, and took another woman to the minstrel show ?' 'Ah ! the traitor! Perhaps he has transferred his affections to some one else.' ' That's what I think. I know it's a little delicate, but I'm all alone in the world, you see, and I want to know if there isn't a law to bear on him. It isn't right to go and encourage a lone woman like me and then claw off.' ' He ought to be roasted alive, he had.' 'I don't know as I'd want him arrested, but I'd like to have you call on him and make threats. Tell him he is liable to State Prison for clawing off this way. I tell you it's a pretty serious thing to go and -encourage a woman of my age and then skulk around behind a hen-coop all of a sudden. Isn't there a law ?' ' Less see. I hardly think there, is.' '. Well, you can call on him. 'lake him alone—look fierce—have your handcuffs in sight. Just tell him you know all about it, and that I'm goodhearted, pleasant, rich, and that he'd better be careful how he prances around, or he'll think a tornado struck him.' The officer promised, and she rubbed a cloud of flour off her hands and ran up the path with a light heart.— Detroit Free Press.

When two Pike county men are about to make a mule trade, the first question asked by the would-be purchaser is, 'What's his record ?' Seller replies, 'Three niggers and a couple dozen dashboards.' 'Here's your money,' and the new owner leads his property off. When a man mistakes the height of a chair he is going to occupy, by about an inch and a half, it is remarkable the amount of momentum he will acquire in making that little distance. He will strike that chair with nearly as much force as if he had sat down in it from the roof of a two-story building.— Danbury News.