Varieties.

New Zealand Mail, Issue 44, 25 November 1871, Page 17

Varieties.

That man is indeed hard up, who cannot get credit even for good intentions. Dr Russell says the reason why Sunday is the hottest day of the week is because people have nothing else to do but scrutinise the weather. A paper, reporting a criminal trial, makes one of the witnesses say, ‘I saw him round the corner.’ That must have been a circular saw. An unpoetical youth described his fiancee's hair as frizzled in front, and fricaseed and scrambled at the back. An Irish magistrate, censuring some boys for loitering in the street said, ‘ If everybody were to stand in the streets how could anybody get by ?’ A contemporary mentions a case beyond the ordinary oculist. It is that of a y»ung lady who, instead of a pupil has a college student in her eye. A shopkeeper having advertised his stock to be sold under prime cost, a neighbor observed that it was impossible for him to do so, as he had never paid anything for it himself. Summer Fashions.— Large checks are in demand for summer toilets. A check for a thousand pounds, presented to Miss Bunnymags by her father, has been much admired. Fob the English Social Science Conguess.— (By a French Professor ) —Why is there never any high tide on the French rivers ? Because the water is always Veau. Exit French Professor. Whiskebandos and Tilburina.— Cousin Guy and Mary are looking very innocent and sitting very far apart, when Emily comes into the room. But how comes Guy to have an ear-ring hanging to his whiskers ? Some of the questions proposed for discussion at a meeting of a Western debating club were these : ‘ Is if necessary that females shud receve a tliurry literary education? Ort females to take part in polytix ?’ Dramatic material ran so scant in a Western city that a brilliant genus dramatised the * Prodigal Son,’ and made the sensation turn on a bloody encounter between the Prodigal and the Swine for the husks. An Heirloom —Mistress: ‘ That’s a curious locket you have there, Jane.’ —Jane :■ ‘ Yes, mim ! It’s a relict of my family.’—Mistress : ‘ A relict?’—Jane : *Ye 3, mim ! (with solemnity) a ’air-b’loon!’ An old bachelor recently gave t.ho following toast: —‘ Woman—the morning star of infancy, the day star of manhood, the evening star of age. Bless our stars, and may they always be kept at telescope distance !’ Suggestive. —Boatman : ‘ Ax yer parding, ladies, but I’m right out o’ baccy; ye ain’t none on yer got e’er a screw o’ baccy about yer ?’—Damsels: * Tobacco ! No, of course we have not! Whatever should make you think so ?’—Boatman : ‘ Well, I didn’t know but what yer might have some about yer (a pause), leastways the price of a screw o’ baccy. What are you disturbing the whole house with your yells in this way for ?’ demanded a Saratoga landlord of a guest whom he found late at night seemingly in active pursuit of invisible foes, and yelling at the top of his voice. ‘ I’m shouting the battle cry of flea-dom,’ answered the guest, as he went ahead with his search and his yells. Spiteful. —An old bachelor writer thus, in his spite, comments on a recent moonlight night: ‘We left our sanctum at midnight last night and on our way home we saw a young lady and gentleman holding agate on its hinges. They were evidently indignant at being kept out so late as we saw them bite each other several times.’ A friend passing along a village street was painfully bitten by an ugly dog. A single blow of a heavy stick, skillfully aimed, was sufficient to kill the animal instantly but the enraged pedestrian still continued to pummel the corpse till little vestige of canine form remained. At length he was accosted with, ‘What are you about ? The dog has been dead these ten minutes.’ ‘I know it,’ was the reply; ‘ but I wants to give the beast a realising sense that there is a punishment after death.’ Roman Pride. —At the examination of the boys in the city of Rome who applied for admission to the recently opened lyceum, most of the applicants, although they had studied for at the old Papal schools, were found to be almost incredibly ignorant. A tall lad of eighteen was asked what geography was. He did not know it. ‘ What is Sardinia ?’ ‘ A river.’ ‘ The Adriatic ?’ ‘ A mountain.’ ‘Milan?’ ‘An ocean,’ Another was questioned about the history of Italy. He was utterly ignorant, and when the examining professor expressed some surprise at his lack of knowledge, he replied haughtily, ‘ You must bear in mind, sir, that I am a Roman, and not an Italian!’ Hamlet Left Out. —A Telegraphist publishes the following :—“Hot long ago a respectable lady handed in at the head office in M ——a telegram for transmission to her absent partner. The message was found to contain twenty-two words. The clerk observed that by omitting two words the charge would be reduced ninepence, and respectfully suggested that ‘ Dear Husband,’ with which the telegram was prefaced, might be struck out. After some, considerable hesitation the lady acquiesced, remarking, with real feminine penetration, “ Strike your pen through them, then; he will see at once that I have had the words written down.”

‘ A self-supporting wife’ is one of the wants in an advertising column of a Western paper. That ever a stern chief of police should bo made Cupid’s go-between, and the emissary of sighing lovers ! But he who rules the constables of Kansas City has received a letter from Miss Julia of Leavenworth. ‘Johnny Bascombe,’ she writes, ‘is in your plaae. He has been driven away from our house by my eld father.’ ‘I am,’ adds Julia, * like a heap pf other girls, and like to be courted.’ The affectionate demoiselle incloses her photograph, which the chief is to deliver to Johnny, who is also to be informed that this maiden will stick to him, ‘ father or no father.’ Here is evidently a lassie of spirit, and Paterfamilias may as well bestow the paternal sanction, and make a virtue of necessity. One evening as I was sitting by Hetty, and had worked myself up to the point of popping the question, sez T, ‘ Hetty, if a feller was to ask you to marry him, what would you say ?’ Then she laughed, and sez she, ‘ That would depend on who asked me.’ Then says I, ‘ Suppose it was Ned Willis?’ Sez she, ‘ I’d tell Ned Willis, but not you.’ That kinder staggered me, but I was too cute to lose the opportunity, and so sez I agen, ‘Suppose it was me ?’ And then you ought to see her pout her lio, Sez she, ‘ I don’t take no supposes.’ Well, now, you see, there was nothing for me to do but to touch the trigger and let the gun go off. Bang it went. Sez I, ‘ Lor’, Hetty, it’s me ! Won’t you say yes ?’ And then there was such a hullabaloo in my head I don’t know zactly what tuk place, but I thought I heerd a ‘ Yes’ whispered somewhere out of the skrimmage.