Varieties.

New Zealand Mail, Issue 17, 20 May 1871, Page 18

Varieties.

Question by a Sewing Machine. — What is woman’s true sphere P —The Hemisphere. ~ * Company Drill. —lnstructing the servants before your party. ‘ Our National Defences.’—The sea and —its sickness. Con. at a Christening. —What is the difference between godfathers and godchildren ?—The former are bled, the latter cupped. . „ At Home. —‘ You ought to acquire the faculty of being at home in the best society,’ said a fashionable aunt to an honest nephew. ‘ I manage that easy enough, responded the nephew, ‘ by staying at home with my wife and children.’ Roast beef, serenity of mind, a pretty wife, and cold water, will make almost any man ‘ healthy, wealthy, and wise.’ The Opossum is a quadruped of great ability, able to do almost anything you ask him, as indeed, his name signifies, for, translated out of Latin into English, it means, neither more nor less than O ! I can.’ . ~.. n I have known vast quantities ot nonsence talked about bad men not looking you in the face. Don’t trust that conventional idea. Dishonesty will stare you out of countenance any day in the week if there is anything to begot by it. Dickens The following quaint inscription; is placed high up on the Berlin Town Hall in anticipation of the coming illuminations: pride; pride brings war; war brings poverty; poverty brings humility : humility brings peace.” An Irreverent Parrot. —lhe Rev. F. O. Morris relates :— ‘ A parrot belonging to some friends of mine was generally taken out of the room when the family assembled for prayers, for fear lest he might take it into his head to join irreverently in the responses. One evening, however, his presence happened to be unnoticed, and he was entirely forgotten. For some time he maintained a decorous silence, but at length, instead of ‘ Amen,’ out he came with, ‘ Cheer, boys, cheer. On this, the butler was directed to move him, and had got as far as the door with him, when the bird, perhaps thinking that he had committed himself, and had better apologise, called out, ‘Sorry I spoke. The overpowering effect on the congregation may be more easily imagined than described Yery Old and Curious.— Host! ‘Now how do you like that port ? Guest. ‘ Humph ! well—why, not much !’ Host: « There now ! I always thought you judges of wine were humbugs. You remember the port you tasted when you were here a month or two ago? You said it was splendid ! Well that’s the very same bottle that was decapitated for you then.’ The Explanation at Last. —An American editor writes thus about a display of the Aurora Borealis :— ‘ Last evening, as soon as Tithonus. had retired for the night, and was enjoying his first snooze, his spouse, the rosy fingered Aurora, daughter of the morning, snatched the saffron colored coverlet from his and wrapping it about her, danced a jig in the northern sky.’ . _ , , Not a Paddy. A Sunday school teacher asked a little girl who was the first man. She answered that she didn t know. The question was then put to an Irish girl, who answered, ‘ Adam, sir,’ with apparent satisfaction.— ‘ La !’ said the first child, * you needn’t feel so grand about it—he wasn’t an Irishman.’ In one of the latter days of Fox the conversation turned on the comparative wisdom of the French and English character. ‘ The Frenchman,’ it was observed, ‘ delights himself with the present; the Englishman makes himself anxious about the future. Is not the Frenchman the wiser ?’ * He may be the merrier,’ said Fox; ‘ but did you ever hear of a savage who did not buy a mirror in preference to a telescope ?’ At the late examination of a country grammer school, a clergyman said that boys were often so excited when undergoing an examination as to spoil many good papers by the most curious blunders. For instance, a boy, after giving a very good description of the ark, spoiled it by describing Moses as the builder ; another, in answer to the question; ‘ Suppose Queen Victoria had died- ia childhood, who

would have succeeded to the English throne ?’ wrote ‘ her eldest son.’ The fact that nobody ever takes it doff t deter some people from giving advice ; it is a piece of generosity of which they never tire.

Why are our nose and chin always at variance ?—Because words are contiually passing between them. An Intelligent Voter. —At the recent election in Macon, Georgia, a negro voter appears and offers a ballot. Inspector— ‘ What is your name?’ Voter— £ I dunno, massa, I'se sometimes called Ole Joe, but most allers Ole Cuss.* Inspector —‘ What is your age ?’ Look a yere, massa, I’se over a hundred.’ Inspector —‘Where were you born? Voter—- * Golly I dunno dat. My old massa said I wasn’t born at all, but dat Ijes come yer on am old boat.’ Inspector take his ballot.’ —“ American Paper.” French Marshals. —A gentleman looking over the pages of the “ Glasgow Chronicle” for 1811 during the time war was raging on the continent of Europe, came upon the following curious estimate of Bonapartist Marshals. ‘ The want of truly great captains is umveral. Even Bonaparte, at Tilsitz, when giving a charater to his present marshals, described one as a washerwoman, another as a mere bavard, &c.: and observed— 4 If I should die before them, you will find my account verified ; and Europe will be astonished at the miserable insufficiency of my aids.