FUNNIOSITIES.

Daily Telegraph (Napier), Issue 3761, 4 August 1883, Page 4

FUNNIOSITIES.

As old as the hills—The valleys. Household words—"Shut the door." How husbands are caught —With the lass-o. "When tho clock strikes one there is no legal redress. "What is a house without a baby r Well, comparatively quiet. Sophie Arnold being f.old that a Capuchin monk had been devoured by rats, exclaimed, "Poor animals: what a terrible thing hunger must be !" Every sensible man who has seen Langtrv has gone home and said to his wife, ""Well, well; if she's good-looking I wonder what they'd call you 'r" Some wives take it as a compliment. " Boy, can 1 go through this gate to the river 'r" politely inquired a fashionablydressed lady. ""Yes'm; a load of hay went through tin's morning," was the urchin's horrid reply. "Why do good children go to heaven when they die:" asked tho teacher. "Because," promptly answered little Tommy, " because it's unsafe to trust children in a place where there's fire." "Captain, wo are entirely out of ammunition," said the orderly sergeant of a company of Volunteers to his Irish captain at a late review. "Antirely out'r" said the captain. "Yes," entirely out,"_ answered the sergeant. "Then sase firing," said the captain. Village Postmaster to his wife—" Here is a postal card for Mr Jones, saying that his brother and five children will be here on Saturday. Now keep that card till then, and I will be at the depot; and when they find no ono to meet them I will take them all over for §3." Old gentleman in a beer garden near the depot, waiting for his wife to arrive on the next train, complaining to himself: "Hero I have already drank six glasses of beer, and (looking at his watch) the train will not ■be hero for ono hour to come. This will compel me to drink six more glasses. It's terrible. What an expensive wife I have got!" He was wrapped in dignity and an enormous ulster, and he sailed along with the majesty of a line-of'-battlc ship under full canvas. Somehow all his dignity and majesty fell from him, as hailstones do from a bahihead, when a boot-black went up to him and said: "Say, mister, you forgot to take olf the pawn-ticket from the collar of your ulster." The boy didn't wait to be thanked for his information.

A new rival brass band was hired to play at the funeral of a Connecticut deacon. They were playing a slow and solemn dirge at the grave, when suddenly the trombone man shot out a blast that started the hearse horses, and broke up the whole procession. Tbe leader turning upon him fiercely, asked him what lie was doing that for. He answered with a smile, "Wall, I thought it was a note, and it want nothing but a hoss-fly ; but I played it."

A German paper has a rather good story about a lady, who, not feeling as well as she liked, wont to consult a physician. " Well," said the doctor, after looking at her tongue, feeling her pulse, and asking her sundry questions, " 1 should advise you—yes —l should advise you—ahem .' to get married." "Are you single, doctor':" inquired the fair patient, with a signiJieant yet modest smile. " I am, mem fraulciii; but it is not etiquette, you know, for physicians to take the phvsie they proscribe."

Sir Walter Scott told the story of a placed minister near Dundee who, in preaching on Jonah, said: " Ken ye, brethren, what fish it was that swallowed him P Aiblins ye may think is was a shark— nae, nae, my brethren, it was nae a shark ; or iiiblins ye may thingit was a saumon—na: , , nae, my brethren, it was nae saumon ; or aiblins ye may think it was a dolphin —nae, nae, my brethren, it was nae dolphin." Hero an old woman, thinking to help her pastor out of a dead lift, cried out " Aiblins it was a, dunter " (the vulgar name of a species of sole common to the Scotch coast). "Aiblins, madam, ye're an auld witch for taking the word of God out of my month," was the reply of the disappointed rhetorician.