Excerpta.

Kaikoura Star, Volume XIV, Issue 732, 24 April 1894, Page 2

Excerpta.

§ Having Nothing, Vet Hath AU. How happy is he born and taught That serveth not another’s will ; Whose armour is his honest thought And simple truth his utmost skill ! Whose passions not bis masters are, Whose soul is still prepared for death, Not tied unto the world with care Of public fame, or private breath. Who envies none that chance doth raise Or vice ; who never understood How deepest wounds are given by praise, Nor rules of state, but rules of good : Who hath his life from rumours freed, Whose conscience is his strong retreat ; Whose state can neither flatterers feed, Nor ruin make accusers great; Who God doth late and early pray More of His grace than gifts to lend ; And entertains the harmless day With a well-chosen book or friend ; This man is freed from servile bands Of hope to rise or fear to fall ; Lord of himself, though not of lands ; And having nothing, yet hath all. Sir Henry Wotton, 1658. ****** Some Poi’tnguese Proverbs.

A man is known by his laugh. Love is work, not sweet words. A wrong confessed is half forgiven. A scalded cat is afraid of cold water. Of soups and loves the first is the best. Adversity will disclose your false friend. Fortune gives her hand to a courageous man. If you want to marry well, marry your equal. The friend of everybody is nobody's friend. To do good to rascals is to pour water into the sea. Oil, wine, and friendship—the oldest is the best. Take little and well, and you will be taken for somebody. Of keeping quiet one never repents, of talking he always does. There is no more dangerous water than that which makes no noise. Everyone sings according to his ability, and marries according to his luck. He who stumbles twice over the same stone is not far from breaking his head. He who gets into war, the chase, or in love, will not get out of it just when be pleases. * * * * * *

Laugh All You Can.

There is absolutely nothing that will help you bear the ills of life so well as a good laugh. Laugh all you can. If the clothes line breaks, if the cat tips over the milk, and the dog elopes with the roast, if the children fall into the mud simultaneously with the advent of clean aprons, if the new girl quits in the middle of house cleaning, and though you search the earth with candles you find none other to take her place, if the neighbour in whom you have trusted goes back on you and keeps chickens, if the chariot ” wheels of the uninvited guest draw near when you are out of provender and the gaping of an empty purse is like the unfilled mouth of a young robin, take courage if you have enough sunshine in your heart to keep a laugh on your lips. ******

Too Much for Him.

* There’s no use denying the fact,’ said a portly commercial traveller as be leaned back in his seat as if exhausted • * we men are bound to have the fate of the Red Indian and be swept off the face of the universe unless this woman business is stopped. I went down to the hotel office this morning and found a young women clerk there, as pleasant as you please. I wanted to send a telegram, and found the operator was

a pretty girl, with a smell of violets about her, and I clean got mixed up, and I know the old man will be wondering where I was all night to send such a telegram in the morning. ‘ I made a bolt for the station, and, whether you believe me or not, the station boss was a plump and pretty girl, wearing a cap with gold lace and shield. I went clear off my usual track to get a word out of her, but she meant business, and I might have been a tin man for all she cared. * I got into the car here, and I’m thanking God the conductor isn’t a fetching thing in a uniform, and the guard doesn’t put on a gingham apron when he wants to open the windows or whistle at the engineer.’

Examination Payer: The Globe.

Question : Can you give me any information about the globe ? Answer : Yes, rather 1 One Globe is situated in Newcastle street j but perhaps you mean the earth we inhabit. Well, it is divided into five zones, and human beings must live in either one or the other of the five, so every man very properly gets his own (his zone). Common air, or the atmosphere, is a fine, invisible, elastic fluid surrounding the earth, but the most common air at present is ‘ ’E dunno where’e air.’ The higher one ascends the rarer is the atmosphere, and on the top of high mountains it is so thin that animals can’t breathe in it but they come back alive to tell us so. The air is expanded by heat and contracted by cold. That’s the way I'm built, for my dad often tells me I’ve contracted a cold by going out, and he calls this the ‘ Contracting-out Clause.’ The winds which blow over the Indian Ocean are called monsoons, and they come monsooner or later, but the change from one monsoon to another produces violent storms. Hurricanes travel at the rate of one hundred miles an hour, so they never go by the South Eastern line. Rain is very unequally distributed on the different parts of the globe. Some kings have a long reign and some a short one. Just the same with horses. Rain is generally more abundant near the line. This might be from the dripping of the clothes hung on the line. In Egypt, Peru, and Chili, there are large districts in which it never rains. You can buy umbrellas cheap there. The sea, in its widest sense, embraces five oceans, so it must be a whale at embracing. Tides are the rise and fall of the sea, and are caused by the attraction of the moon. I feel the attraction of the moon sometimes. One night I was so much attracted by it that 1 walked out with Emma Jenkins, and when I got back father took the shine out of me. Hurricanes are whirlwinds grown up. Whirlpools are caused by tides and currents meeting. Whirlpools often draw ships upon the rocks. I generally draw them on paper. The most dangerous of these is the Malestrom. Good gracious ! What would a femalestrom be ? The number, size, and luxuriance of vegetables are greatest in the torrid zone, and diminish as you go towards the poles ; they also decrease considerably as you go towards Covent Garden where a halfpenny orange is three pence.—Peter Prig, 4th Standard —Moonshine.

Wisdom jests as well as preaches. When the oarsman retires he oomes out of his shell. The individual who was lost in thought has been found in drink.

? teU JOB whal ’» fc Mr M Daub, those ostriches are simply