FUNNIOSITIES.

Daily Telegraph (Napier), Issue 4114, 27 September 1884, Page 4

FUNNIOSITIES.

Tlio bicycle rider is said to be like a Soutli American Shite, because ho is always on the brink of a revolution. A man may forgot home, kindred, friends, and almost everything else ; tut he never forgets the first time he went to a barber's shop to be shaved. Solemn question with city people about to go to the country : —" What shall we do with the bird or cat, " One good way is to let the cat have the bird and then kill the cat. Obvious.—Visitor (at our Sunday-school): ""What is the outward and visible form in baptism?" Pupil (tentatively), after a longpause at this poser: "Please, teacher, the baby." "Mother," said the High-schoolgirl, " I hear that old Mr. Jenkins is convalescing-." " Oh, I'm so sorry ."' replied the estimable lady; " but then one could hardly expect

him to get over such a fall as that at his time of life." Irish Professor in Chemistry: " The substance you see in this phial is the most deadly of all poisons. A. single drop placed on the tongue of a cat will kill the strongest man." The small boy's mother now begins to feel his hair each time he enters the house, but the small boy knows a trick worth two of that—ho doesn't go home from swimming until his hair is dry. Nothing is more thoroughly disheartening to a broken bank cashier than to be told that it would never have happened if he had only been an honest man. Even "I told you so," is preferable to that. " Husband and -wife," says some sage person, "should no more struggle to get the last word than they should struggle for the possession of a lighted bomb." They don't. The wife gets it without a struggle. Wife (anxiously) : " What did that young, lady observe who passed us just now?" "Why, my love, she observed I rather a good-looking man walking with I quite an elderly female—that's all. Ahem!" A boy in one of our state schools was reading the following sentence: "The lighthouse is a landmark by day, and a beacon by night." He rendered it thus: " The lighthouse is a landlord by day, and a deacon by night." It has been suggested that the Woods brake be driven by gas. There has been a lot of gas expended on it already ; in fact, enough to start a new company in the suburbs, and we are not surprised at tho same power being required to keep it in use. An liotelkeeper has given up his business from conscientious motives. This reads well, and he is to be commended for his action. Wo hoar, however, from a private source that he has started in the grocery business since, and only does the single bottle trade. "Do you think your father is going to move shortly r" inquired the owner of a rented house in the suburbs, of his tenant's son. " Think so ?" replied the boy ; " you bet. Why we've been using the window frames and the bannisters for firewood for the last two days." True modesty.—Mr. Spinks : "I had .such a beautiful dream last night, Miss Brings ! I thought I was in tho Garden of Eden " Miss Brigg.s (with simplicity) —" And did Eve appear as she is generally represented, Mr. Spinks F" Mr. Spinks: " I—l—l didn't look." She builded better than she know.—Rev. Mr. Mandril : "I have often wondered whether the theory of evolution is one in which I can put my faith." Miss Basbleu (referring to pier glass) : " Oh ! I am perfectly sure that a little reflection would convince even you." Dean Stanley used to say that until his marriage he had never really lived. A Collingwood man says that until his marriage he lived like a fighting cock. His wife overheard him make this remark one day, and after that he lived more like a fighting-cock than ever. It does r.ot do for a compositor to slavishly follow bis copy on all occasions. Some of it blew out of the first-storey window of our composing-room tho other day, and if he had followed it right through, wo believe we should have been a hand short that day, and lost another day at a funeral. An unnecessary precaution to bo taken in roasting fat mutton is to cover it with a paper during the early roasting stage. Care should be exercised, however, in selecting the paper, as some of our con temporaries' sheets are so frightfully dry that they would absorb all the juices of tho meat if spread over the joint. A Geelong farmer has cultivated two acres of onions this year. Being of a statistical turn, he has calculated that he has crawled thirty-six miles on his hands and knees whilst weeding them. vVo shouldn't think this was a knees;/ way of making money. We feel sure it must also have frequently brought tears in his eyes ; it would if weed done it. A well-known nigger corner-man lately applied for a situation as guard on one of our up-country linos of railways. Ho has had fargo experience in America before taking to the stage, and his credentials were excellent; but the application was refused because they were afraid of a breakdown if ho was on the train. At a cheap restaurant.— "Waiter, take away this fish; it isn't fresh." "What! don't you think it sweet, sir?" "No; if you don't believe me, come and smell it." " Oh, no ! thanks ; I'll take your word for it. You arc the tenth gentleman who has said the same thing. We will have to use it up for to-morrow's fish-soup." " They are all going," said a young competitor for our Tit-Bit prize; "all our literary men are fast departing: Dickens, Thackeray, Buhver-Lytton, Trollopo, Marcus Clarke, Charles Reade, and the rest of them; and, to tell you the truth, I don't feel well myself." We are glad to assure our readers that he is now much better. " I don't object so much to your wearing any of my jewellery when you walk out with your young man," said the wife of our bosom to the slavey; "but I ask you as a favor not to clean tho steps with my best dinner dress on." Result: We are now without a domestic, Mary Ann having given notice and left. She said she couldn't put up with people who were so dreadfully mean. " In Alabama," says an American paper, "a baby was blown several miles by the wind, and escaped unhurt." We believe this; but if a baby can bo blown several miles, what is to prevent it being blown up sky-high in long clothes, and coming down in about ten years in short jacket and knickerbockers? We see no reason why one should not occur as well as the other. The only suspicion that haunts us is that there too much kid obout this baby story.