VARIETIES.

Globe, Volume VIII, Issue 1019, 1 October 1877, Page 3

VARIETIES.

! A question for the very Scientific Associa* . tion—Why is it that it takes two hymn- ' books to supply the same couple after mar* riage, who always found one hymn-book sufliI s cient for them while they were lovers ? A woman in Omaha was choked almost to , death and entirely destroyed her power of I speech for an hour by swallowing a boot i button. Some serious trouble will yet come ! out of this custom of Omaha women uni buttoning their shoes with their teeth. I Every married man should have a dog in ; the house. A dog will scare off robbers at • night, eat up stale scraps of meat, and when . you come home out of humor and find supper an hour in arrears you can give vent to your | wrath by kicking the animal clear across the room.

“ Why doesn’t this fire keep in ?” asked a husband pettishly, as he pranced around half dressed, and furiously poked the grate, late one bitter morning. “ It’s so much like you,” piped out his wife from her warm bed. “ Like me!” exclaimed he, stopping in his work. “How so?” “Because,” said she, roguishly, “it will go out at nights!” He mumbled something to himself, and returned to his work. A Warning to her William. —A letter picked up in the street yesterday read thus : “Dear Bill, —Doant ku'm to see me enny moar for a while enny way. Father has got awfully skeered about burglars, and he sets up every night till late with a double-barrelled shot-gunn, watching the backyard. He put moren a pound uv led into Smith’s big nufoundland dog which was kummin over the fens after a bone last nite— The rose is red, the violet’s blue, I wouldn’t kum now if I was you. —Yours, as ever, Nancy.” An American journal has the following : “And I must say, Ulysses,” remarked Mrs Grant, as she put on her nightcap, while the General swallowed his, at Windsor Castle t’other night. “ I must say it was very rude of you to ask ‘ if the meter was frozen ’ when they lit the candles at dinner. You know how hard times are, how high gas is, and what a large family Victoria has. I dare say she, poor thing, has to economise all she can. You know we had to when you were King —I meant President,” and the good soul dropped off to sleep, leaving his Ex-ness to wonder whether “Dieu et mon Droit,” over the fireplace, was a Latin motto, and if so, whether it meant “ No smoking in bed.”

Referring to the Paris Exhibition for 1878, Sir Julius Vogel, K.C.M.G., says :—“ For the sake of visitors and exhibitors, I suggest that after the main exhibition there should be a supplementary exhibition of all the articles exhibited which are praised by the juries. I cannot fancy a more useful, enjoyable, and instructive exhibition than this would be, comprising, as it would, in a comparatively small space all that was most excellent and economically valuable in every variety of production and manufacture. The prospect of this subsequent exhibition would be an enormous incentive to exhibitors of a really good class. To occupy a place in the prize exhibition would mean the certainty of their goods being examined and appreciated by many thousands of intelligent people.”

Bismaeck’s Htjmoe. — To characterize Bismarck’s humor one might say that it has a touch of Sterne in it. Not of Sterne’s satire and fancied extravagance, but of the subtle

touches of realisms with which that unrivalled prose poet brings before us the life, the thoughts, the conversations, and little eccentricities of two English country gentlemen. A somewhat similar kind of minute humorous observation —although of course in a much lesser degree of literary perfection—is observable in the letters which Bismarck addressed to his sister from his rural solitude. At that time he was a disappointed man. He had tried the army and the civil service without much satisfaction to himself or others. The estate of his father in Pomerania, which he had undertaken to manage, was encumbered with mortgages. Congenial society also could hardly be found amongst the feudal nobles of that province, or of Alt-Mark, compared with whom a conservative squire of Bucks or Huntingdonshire would be a model of social enlightenment and political progressiveness. At times Bismarck tried to out-Herod Herod. His feats in the hunting-field and at drinking-bouts, where a horrid mixture of stout and champagne was quaffed by the bumper, earned him the nickname of “ der tolle Bismarck” —that is, mad or wild Bismarck. A story of a number of young foxes being suddenly let loose in the drawing room to frighten the female cousins reminds one of Tony Lumpkin’s practical jocularity. But moody reaction followed such fits of artificial buoyancy. Bismarck would disappear for days amongst the woods of his estate, or lock himself up in his closet, poring over numberless volumes of miscellaneous literature. Even Spinoza he explored to find “ adversity’s sweet milk, philosophy,” with what result may be imagined—“ Gentleman's Magazine.”