VARIETIES.

Globe, Volume IX, Issue 1249, 8 March 1878, Page 3

VARIETIES.

A Sunday school teacher in Alhion, NT. Y., asked her class the question :—" What did Simon say?" "Thumbs up J" said a little girl, A newspaper editor says :—" We have received a notice of marriage or insertioD, to which was appended the original announcement, ' Sweethearts at a distance will please accept this iwiimation.'" " Silence iu the court!" thundered a Kentucky Judgo, the other morning. "Half a dozen men have been convicted already, without the Court's having been able to hear a word of the testimony." One of the old settlers at the Isle of Shoals, seeing the name of Psyche on the hull of a yacht, the other day, spelled it out slowly, and then exclaimed, "Well, if that aint the biggest way to spell iish !" The Mexican name for a kiss is "telenamequizel," and a recent • traveller, not Bishop Haven, observes that when a pair of Mexican lovers are caught telenamequizeling over the front gate at niuht, they are not a bit more confused than if kiss were spelled with one syllable. "What is your chief consolation in life?" asked a pastor of a young lady in the Bible class. The yourjg lady blushed and hesitated, but on the question bning repeated, the ingenious maiden said: —"1 don't like to tell you his name, but I have no objection to tell you where he lives."

The experienced editor can always tell at sight the man who comes iu with his first attempt at original poetry. He walks on tiptoe, and looks as though he had just passed a counterfeit bill or strangled a baby.

It has been discovered that there is something peculiar about flour. When the price of wheat goes up ten cents a bushel, flour gets the news in half a minute by telegraph. But when wheat goes down, flour gets the news by mail, and mighty slow mail at that.

They were leaning on the balustrade of the bridge, looking into the water. He had a hand like a palm leaf fan, an ear like a pickle-dish, and no collar. She had a foot like a centre-table, and no teeth. They were cooing. He cooed first, and in a tone as gentle and musical as a Kansas zephyr, he said:—"Nancy, jist es soon as I sell my purtators, I'm going to claim you fur better or fur wuß." Then she cooed, and, with the customary shrewdness that women are accustomed to display in emergencies, she queried, in a soft, sweet monotone. " Buck, what air taters fethin' in the stores now ?" And thus did they coo until it got too cool.

The Chinese are a strange people. If there is one thing more than another that they hare made up their mind to do, it is to stifle, bo far as they are able, the development of foreign enterprise. They have seized the Woosung railway, though it was appreciated by the people, and intend destroying it, because they don't want western innovations. But lately they have launched a loan for £1,604,276, to be repaid in seven years, and secured on the customs duties at the several Chineee ports. They expect Englishmen to subscribe to it, though it is perfectly well known that the money is to be expended in purchasing artillery and other weapons of warfare, for the purpose of driving the hated foreigner out of the empire.

A Combination Dose.—One of our sea captains came across a skipper in the North Pacific who was in a state of great surprise and perglexity. Said he, '' There's something rotten about this medicine chest busi ness. One of my men was sick—nothing much the matter. I looked in the book ;it said, give him a teaspoonful of No. 15. I went to the medicine chest, and I see I was out of No. 15. I judged I'd got to get a combination somehow that would fill the bill; so I hove into the fellow half a teaspoonful of No. 8 and half a teaspoonful of No. 7, and I'll be hanged if it didn't kill him in five minutes ! There's something about this mediciue chest system that's too many for me !"—Mark Twain. A most laughable story has just been told me which caps the one that has been going the rounds respecting Mr Black, the novelist. A gentleman who was about to enter the holy estate thought be would have a good bathe before he was married, and on the morning of the day which was to see him the happiest man in the world he went down to the rver of a certain place which shall be nameless. He took with him a large dog belonging io a friend. He divested himself of clothing, placed it in charge of the dog, and took a header. After he had disported himself sufficiently long in the limpid strertm he landed and essayed to dress, but the dog, not recognising him in his Adamite costume, furiously barked at him as he approached his garments and absolutely refused to allow him to take possession of them. Soft words and hard words proved alike unavailing. Neptune was neither to be coaxed nor to be bullied. The situation was growing desperate. The hour for appearing at church was close at hand, but there appeared no prospect of the bridegroom being able to keep his engagement. At last he hoard the sound of voices and coming footsteps. He hid himself among the bushes and saw a party of friends appear. They beheld his clothes on the bank, and concluded that he was drowned. Some even suggested that he had committed suicide in order to avoid committing matrimony. They began to drag the river with rakes, until at last the unhappy man could endure his position no longer, and announced his presence by a lamentable cry. By that time it was too late to get married, and the wedding had to be postponed. Moral, cave cavern, when he is not your own.— •' World."

Wkmding Rim;*.—•ln speaking of wedding rings we learn that these important symbols have not always been manufactured from the precious metal, gold. We are told that in lieu of a ring the church key has often been used ; and Walpole tells us of an instance where a curtain ring was employed. The Duke of Hamilton fell so violently in love with the younger of the celebrated Misses Gunning, at a party in Lord Chesterfield's house, that two days after he sent for a parson to perform the ma r riage ceremony ; but, as the Duke had neither license nor ring, the clergyman refused to act. Nothing daunted, Hamilton declared "hewould send for the Archbishop; at last they were married with a ring of a bed-curtam, at half.past twelve at night, at Mayfair Chapel." Forgetful bridegrooms have been reduced to greater straits than this even ; in one instance a leather ring had, on the spur of the moment, to be cut out of a piece of kid from the bride's glove. A tragic story of a forgotten wedding-ring is told in the " Lives of the Lindsays." When he should have been at church, Colin Lindsays, the young Earl of Balcarres was quietly eating his breakfast in nightgown and slippers : when reminded that Mauritia of Nassau was waiting for him at the altar, he hir ried to church, but forgot the ring ; a friend present gave one, which he, without looking at, placed on the bride's linger. After the ceremony was over, the countess glanced at her hand, and beheld a grinning Death's-head on her ring. She fainted away ; and the omen made such an impression on her that on recovering, sha declared she was destined to die within the year, a presentiment that probably brought about its own fulfilment, for in & few months the careless Colin was a widower. " Chambers' Journal."