MISCELLANEA.

Cromwell Argus, Volume IV, Issue 167, 21 January 1873, Page 7

MISCELLANEA.

Tho London Saturday Review has coined a new piirase, the "kingdom of petticoatery." A darkey says :—" All men are made of chiy,"itnd, like meerschaum pipes, are more valuable when highly coloured." A Trench speculator is said to he making much money by manufacturing mummies from the raw material of the Parisian dissect-ing-rooms and exporting them to Egypt to ! be sold to collectors of antiquity. Von Moltke, the great strategist, is living a quiet life in the little Silesian town of Schweidnitz, and can be seen there every clay, in a long black frock coat, smoking an enormous pipe, and reading the newspapers at the only cafe in the place. As the earthquake approached, a young lady improved the opportunity to faint away in her lover's arms, it being tho first time either had dared to establish such a propinquity. She did not recover for twenty minutes or more, and the gentleman took a vast oath on the morrow that he would "give twenty-five dollars a shock on earthquakes." A grey hair was espied among the raven locks of a fair friend of ours a few days ago. " Oh, pray pull it out," she exclaimed". "If I pull it out ten Will come to the funeral," replied' the lady who made the unwelcome discovery. "Pluck it out nevertheless," said the dark haired damsel; " it's of no conS3qucnce how many come to the funeral, pro* vided they all come in black." The credit system has been carried to a very fine point in some of the Tennessee rural districts, if we may judge from the following dialogue said to have recently occurred between a customer and a store proprietor : "Haow's trade, Squire ?"—" Wa'al, cash trade's kinder dull naow, Major. Betsy Nipper has bort an egg's worth of tea, and got trusted for it till her speckled pullet lays." An artless American, who lately bought a few sausages, thus relates his troubles :—" I got them sausages home without getting bit, and cut them apart and left them. In the morning I visited them. Three of 'em had cuddled up together, and were sleeping sweetly. Two of 'em had crawled to my milk pail and were lapping the milk, and one, a black and white one, was on the fence, trying to cat.-h an English sparrow. I drowned the whole lot." There is a man in San Francisco, aged 74 years, who has been in gaol twenty-seven times. lie has been convicted twice of murder, once of manslaughter, four times of glary, three times of housebreaking, twice of incendiarism, twelve times of drunkouiess, twice of shoplifting, and he is now under going a sentence of five years' imprisonment for coining. We cannot congratulate the San Francisco people on the possession of such a genius. A swimming feat by a clergyman is recorded by a New York journal as follows : " The Rev. G. A. Gilfillan, Hector of St Paul's Episcopal Church, at Brainerd, Minnesota, started at the railroad bridge across the Mississippi at that place, and swam, without halting, to Crow Wing village, 18 miles down the river-. He left the bridge at exactly one o'clock, and arrived at Crow Wing at ten minutes before five o'clock, making the IS miles in three hours and fifty minutes, or nearly five miles an hour. Ihe current runs only at a fraction over three miles an hour, thus requiring him to swim nearly two miles each hour faster than the current for nearly four hours successively." Dean Swift was walking in the Phoenix road, Dublin, when a thunder shower came on, and he took shelter under a tree, where a party was sheltering also—two young men and two young women. One of the" girls looked very sad, till, as the rain fell, her tears fell. The dean inquired the cause, and learned that it was their weddirg day ; they were on their way to the church, and now her white clothes were wet, and she couldn't go. " Never mind ; I'll marry you," said the dean ; and he took out his prayer-book, and there and then married them, their witnesses being present ; and to make the thing complete, he tore a leaf from his pocket-book, and with his pencil wrote and signed a certificate, which he handed to the bride. It was as follows :

Under a tree in stormy weather, 1 married this man an 1 womr. together. Let none but H''m who rules the thunder, Sever this man and woman asui.dcr. j Among the g< od stones told at the expense lof Mr Greeley's ehirography is this :—Years I ;:u r o, when a young man, he received a poem | from a young lady in Vermont, lie strongly j suspect', d that all poetry was nonsense, especially if the lines did not square at both ends, and as this particular poem did not come un to hj is particular meehauieal standard for such literature, he threw it in the waste basket, and wrote to the anther that he thought she would do hcUer to marry the first"lionest man that ofierod her his hand, ard mend his hose and tend h's babies, than to ra/k her brain in trying to writ ■ rhymes that nobody would read. The poor g'rl received the cruel letter and could only decipher the Writer's name. She showed it to her mother, and she to was non-j lushed. A council of inquiry was held ov*>r the strange document, which was finally interpreted as a proposal to marry the author of the rejected rhymes. After some inquiry in in the character of Mr Greeley the proposal was acceptor], greatly to the surprise of the young editor, who was so much pleased with the prize he had von that lie bought a white hat and overcoat that he haa worn ever since, and was married forthwith.