AMUSING AND INTSRUCTIVE.

Grey River Argus, Volume IX, Issue 689, 18 June 1870, Page 2 (Supplement)

AMUSING AND INTSRUCTIVE.

Statisticians estimate the total population of the globe at 1,228,000,000. . A St. Louis husband seeks a divorce because his wife 'keeps too many fast days, and almost starves him. Some of the New Englaud ciergymen will not marry a couple who have not "courted less than a year." . };."''* No cards, no cake, no company, nobody's business," was recently appended to the marriage notice of a'young cynic. ' . : An experienced old gentleman says that all that is necessary in the enjoyment of love and sausages is confidence. : ■ A sbory is told, of a young man who was going to open .a .jeweller's shop. When asked what capitaj he had, he replied, "A crowbar." '.■>-.'-.'. • A ; schoolmaster, asked his scholars if any of them could >quote a passage of Scripture which forbade- a man's having tw6 : wives, whereupon nearly the whole school cried out, "No man can serve two masters." A married gentleman present at a'spiritrapping circle, : being informed that the power, depended wholly on the will,: begged that his wife might try it, as he had never seen anything resist her will. Lord Norbury, while on circuit, being attacked with a fit of the gout, sent to the Solicitor-General to require the loan of a pairof slippery. " Take them, " said the Solicitor, General-to his servant, "with my respects, as 1 hope soon to be in his lordship's 1 shoes." As -a lawyer and a doctor were walking arm in arm, a wag said to a friend, " These two are just, equal to one highwayman." "Why ?" was the response. ," Because it is a lawyer and a doctor— your money or your life !"; A lover once wrote to a lady who rejected him, saying that he intended to retire to " some secluded spot and breath away his life in sighs." To which the lady replied, by inquiring whether they were to be medium or large size. "What was the name o 1 your second wife, Tammas? I -was just disputing wi' a friend the oth er nicht about it. " ' • Man, it was— but— that's, odd ! Ye mind her name weel eneuch, surety, yersel' ! She was a lassie frae Denny." . . The editor of a Columbia (Mississippi) paper having recently «fot married, a contemporary says— "May his father-in-law die rich, and enable poor Stevens to retire • from the printing business and set up a cake shop at a railway station." "You don't do work enough to earn your salary," said the head of a department in the New York Custom House to one of his clerks. "Work !" exclaimed the young man, "1 worked hard to get here; you surely ,don't expect me to work any longer." A curious oonfessor, who had listened with as much surprise as attention to a young woman who had disclosed the state of her mind to him, at last inquired her name. With a presence of mind peculiar to herself, she replied, ." My good father, my name is no sin." Miss Julia Hnbbard, the transcribing clerk of the Wisconsin Legislature, is young, handsome, and well-educated. A bashful young member called her the "transporting .clerk," in his confusion, the other day, and was immediately called to order. by all the other unmarried members, ' "If ever you think of marrying; a widow, my son," said: an anxious parent to his heir, "select one whose first husband was hung ; that's theonly way to prevent her throwing his memory back in your face, and making annoying comparisons." "Even that won't •prevent it,", said a, prusty, old .bachelor j "sheMl then praise him, and say hanging would be too good for you." , ■ Josh Billings charges the oat with being a Mkritter " that is guilty of "affektashun ; " "I hey known a kat tew klean the kream all oph from the buzzuin of a pan of milk, and then limp into the sitting-room, on all four leggs, and lay down in the corner of the . fireplace, so melancholy, as tho she hadn't a friend on the fase of the earth." A lady, who, though in the autumn of life, had not lost all dreams of its spring, said to Douglas; Jerrold — "I cannot imagine what makes my hair turn so gray ;. I sometimes fancy, it is the essence of rosemary with which ray maid. brushes it. What do you think?" "I should rather be afraid," replied the distinguished dramatist, drily, " that is the essence of time !" . '; : As a railway train stopped at Hanna, a station in Indiana, lately, the breaksman thrust his head inside the car-door, and loudly called "Hanna!" A young lady sitting next the door, probably endowed with the poetio appellation of Hannah, supposing that the breaksman was addressing her, and shocked, at his familiarity on so short, an acquaintance, frowned and retorted, "Shut 1 your mouth !" . . . .-.,. ; Old Deacon Sharp never told a lie, but he used to relate this :— He was standing one day before a frogpond— we have hia word! for it— and saw a large garter-snake toake ah' 1 attack utoon an enormous bit* hull-frog. ' Ths; snake seized on the fr&g&hmi legSj aufl tlie ' frog, to be on a par with his snakeship, caught him by the tail, and both commenced ' swallowing one one another,- ' and continued ; this carniyorons operation until nothing was left of them. . • The late John Berry, Esq., of Wester Bogie, was married, to a relation of Willie Law's— a : well-known Fifeshire " character " — upon which account Willie used a little more free- . dom with Mr Berry than he otherwise would have done. Meeting him one day in Kirkcaldy, he cries, " God bless you, Mr Berry'; gi'e iis a bawbee — gi'e us a bawbee." " There, Willie," said Mr Berry, giving him the halfpenny, which Willie held close to his eyes being near-sighted. Mr Berry, perceiving he had by mistake given Willie a shilling instead of a, halfpenny, said,- "That's no a gude bawbee, Willie ; gi'e met back, an' I'll gi'e ye anither ane," "Na, na," quoth Willie; "it sets daft Willie Law far better to pit awa' an ill bawbee than it does you, Mr Berry." Although the "flush times" have passed away on the "Mississippi, they still have some queer customers ' on the river boats; On a recent trip of the Highflyer, crowded with passengers, the clerk had allotted the hist state-room, and was about ' to close his office, wben he was astonished by the appa-. rition of a tall Missourian, who exclaimed, v I say, stranger, I want one of them cham-. bers."— "Sprry, sir," said the official blandly ; "'but-, our state-rooms are all taken."— "The doose they are," responded Missouri ; " I've paid my fare, 'n I want, one of them chambers."—" Allow me to see your ticket," said the still polite clerk. Putting his hand behind his neck, the passenger pulled out a ten-inch bowie knife, and driving it quivering into the counter, said,; "I'm from Pike County young feller, and that's my ticket. . I want one of them chami bers." Before the ateel had ceased to vibrate, the prompt clerk quietly thrust a loaded and capped alx-shooter under Pike's nose, and I cooly answered, " I've got only Bix chambers, and you soe *h©y all full." f Tbo Missourian edged olit of range, and putting up his 'toothpick," muttered something between his teeth, and. strode off to get such quarters'as he could find.' ■ Mark Twain, who, whenever he has been long enough Bober,tp permit an estimate, has has been uniformly found to bear a spotless character, has got married., It was not the act of a desperate man— it was not committed: while laboring under temporary, insanity;: his insanity j& not of thaitype, nor does he ever . labor— it was, the cool, methodical, , Cumulative culmination of - humiaft n'fttiu:^

working in the breast of an orphan hankering for some one with a fortune to love — some one with a bank account to careea. For years he has felt this matiimony coming on. Ever since he left California, there has been an undertone of despair running through all his letters, like the subdued wail of a pig beneath a washtub. He felt that he wob going-r— that no earthly power could save him ; out, as a concession to his weeping publishers, he tried a change of climate by putting on a .linen coat and writing letters from the West Indies.-- Then he tried rhubarb, and during his latter months he Was almost constantly under the influence of this powerful drug. But rhubarb, (while it may give a fitful glitter to the eye and a deceitful ruddiness to the gills, cannot long delay the pangs of approaching marriage. .Rhubarb was not what Mark wauted, Well, that genial spirit has passed away; that long, bright smile will n6 more greet the early bar-keeper, nor the oldfamiliar "Cbalk it down" delight his ear. Poor Mark !• he was a good schemer, but he couldn't be made, to work.- San Francisco News-Letter. ■ .