ODDS AND ENDS.

Daily Telegraph (Napier), Issue 2976, 8 January 1881, Page 4

ODDS AND ENDS.

It is better to hare loved a short girl than never to have loved a tall.

Leonidas was one of the original deadheads. He held the pass at Thermopylae.

Authors are spoken of as dwelling in attics, because so few of tnem are able to live on their first stray. A Western journal heads an article, " A Lunatic Escapes and Marries a Widow." Escaped ? He got caught. " Shall I, hereafter, darn your stockings ?" is the fashionable language for a young lady to use when making a leap-year proposal. The number of people alive a year ago, but dead now from not knowing it was loaded is estimated at 500, with a few old shotguns yet to h>ear from. "Myfi'ien's," said a, coloured preacher, " a man's character is like a fence—you can't strengthen i.'t by white wash, though you ''ivev Rn the places where it is worrncan l eaten. _ • observer has discovered that An • hie resemblance between a ?f c 1S 7 wl c ifc is firsfc then SS'v^r^ the flower Of to pay ready money for-a. „ > ain't α-gomg to chalk up say *■ " Wot are yen a-going to Taserßx sma tnen > JUI Si S°abe ? tL Allen> a poem "OV why for ever iraep'P" Elizabeth n g *™-c mistaken as to the facts. It t willow that weeps; it is the boy tint dances under the limber end of it. n "The Germans are s frugal people, says an American writer, after 7isiting the Bertm opera-house. "As soon as the opera was over, the man in front took' wads of cotton from his pocket and stopped »p his ears to save the music they had paid t'of.' " Going to the picnic, I suppose" : » 7°} x ™ of middle age wa9 asked yesterday. W ell, no," he answered; "the fact is T three years of picnic during the w.ai% ana I've had my fill of roughing it. SolicJ comfort is what I'm looking for." The people of a New Hampshire town afe so fearfully lazy, that when the wife of &" minister who had just settled in that towra asked a prominent" citizen if the inhabitants generally respected the Sabbath and refrained from business, ho replied, " Confound it, ma'am, they don't do enongh work in a whole week to break the Sabbath, if it was all done on that day." Foote was talking away one evening at a dinner-table of a man of rank, when, at the i point of one of his best stories, one of the party interrupted him suddenly with an air of most considerate apology. " I beg your pardon, Mr Foote, but your handkerchief is half out of your pocket." 'Thank you, | sir," said tfo'ote, replacing it, " you know the company better than I do," and finished his joke. A sculptor's wife had her husbaud arrested for assault and battery, because, as she testified, on the occasion of her going to his studio to inform him that a woman across the street had eloped, he struck her in the face with a huge mass of mud. The sculptor explained that the occasion referred to was the first time for years that he had seen a pleasant look on his wife's face, and therefore he hastened to take a cast of her features, in order to catch the expression for use on a bust he intended to model. Tho case was dismissed.

The coolest thing ever done by a bankrupt was, I should imagine, the exploit of a certain gentleman not unknown to political fame, who recently called his creditors together to make them a " satisfactory " proposition. "Gentlemen," he said, I am in your debt, and I can't pay. I have no money even for my sorest need. I have a libel' case which is certain to yield me £2000, bi\t. for lack of funds I cannot prosecute it. Gentlemen, if yoii wish to be paid, advance me the money to conduct nay suit, and then I shall be able to give you something in the pound. Gentleman I can make no fairer proposal" He was quite serious ; but somehow his creditors did not see it. — London Correspondent.