MISCELLANEA.

Kumara Times, Issue 1470, 14 June 1881, Page 2

MISCELLANEA.

The Princess of Wales is a fine musician, and plays from Chopin and Schumann with feeling. She is very fund of French art, and her private rooms are filled with innumerable objects in Dresden and S6vres, with small objects brought from India by the Prince, and with screens of her own embroidery. The French are very fond of her in return, and a white marble statuette by M. D’Epinay represents her as a lady of the time of Henri Deux, dressed in a long brocade petticoat, the bodice loaded with precious stones, the head adorned with a cap with streaming feathers, and the features fine as a cameo, the whole thing an object of exquisite beauty. A new reading of a couplet by Benjamin Franklin, illustrates the advance made of late years in the art of “ gettihg on.” Franklin wrote : “ He that by the plough would thrive, himself must either hold or drive.” The Yankee version, adapted to the times, is : “ He that by his trade would rise, must either bust or advertise.” First Man (pleasantly) : I made a good bargain yesterday; I bought some potatoes at the rate of Gd per peck wholesale; they would cost 10d retail,

and as iny family eat half a peck a day I save 2d each day.” Second Man : Anah, begor, and so you do ; but if ye’d eat a peck a day ye’d be after savin’ 4d.”

Two feminines, driving on a plunk* road, were applied to for toll. “ Well,’’ says one, “ how much is it 1” “ For a man and a horse,” x-eplied the gatekeeper, “ the charge is fifty cents.” “Well, then, get out of the way; we’re two gals and a mai‘e. Get up, Jenny !” And away they went, leaving the man in mute astonishment. “Is your wife a Democrat or a He* publican ?” asked one Rockland citizen of another in a store one morning. “ She’s neither,” was the prompt reply, and then glancing cautiously around and sinking his voice to a hoarse whisper, he explained, “ she’s a Hume Ruler.” A wag Was requested by an old lady to read the newspaper for her. He took it up and read as follows :—Last n ight, yesterday morning, about one o’clock in the afternoon, before breakfast, a hungry boy, about forty years, old, bought a big custard for a levy, and threw it through a brick wall nine feet thick, and jumping over it, broke his right ankle off above his left knee, and fell into a dry mill-pond and was drowned. About forty years after that, on the same day, an old cat had nine turkey gobblers; a high wind blew Yankee Doodle on a frying pan, and killed a sow and two dead pigs at Boston, where a deaf and dumb man was talking to his Aunt Peter.” Whereupon the old lady, taking a long breath, exclaimed: “Du tell!”