Varieties.

New Zealand Mail, Issue 50, 6 January 1872, Page 17

Varieties.

‘ Should auld acquaintance be forgot ?’—Not if they have money. It is a pity that those who taught us to talk did not also teach us to hold our tongue. Numerically True. —If a man doesn’t take care of No 1, he will soon have 0 to take care of!— * Though lost to sight to memory dear,’ as James said when Brown ran off and left Jones to pay his bill. The Bravest Man in the World.—The man who talks of going to the sea-side without taking his wife. ‘ Ah,’ exclaimed an Irishman the other day to a pretty girl, ‘ how I should enjoy being in jail for the stealing of you.’ A young man name Neck was reeently married to a Miss Heels; they are now, therefore tied Neck and Heels together. A five year old city boy told his mother how to make butter :— ‘ You just take a long stick with a cross at the end of it; then you get a big tub ; and then you borrow a cow.’ Young men now a days have a shocking regard for the Scriptures. Solomon said ‘ Go to the ant, thou sluggardand yet the majority of our sluggards irreverently persist in going to their uncles ! An old farmer said to his sons.— ‘ Boys, don’t you ever speckerlate, or wait for summat to turn up. You might just as well go an’ sit down on a stone in the middle of a medder, with a pail atwixt your legs, an’ wait for a cow to back up to be milked.’ A Boston minister says he once preached on the recognition of friends in the future world, and he was told after service by a hearer it would be more to the point to preach about the recognition of friends here, as he had been in the church twenty years, and did not know any of its members. It is related that when Beecher was in the country last summer he lost his hat, but found it in about a week in a barn where he had left it, but with four eggs in it. This is as it should be. Beecher had just written a eulogy on the hen; and why shouldn’t the Hen-re-ward Beecher ? A poor American batchelor, having rashly sacrificed himself on the alter of Hymen, exclaims : Oh! when I think of what I ar, And what I used to was, I find I’ve flung myself away Without sufficient cos, A patient complained to his physician that he was pursued by a ghost the night before, as he was going home from the tavern. ‘ What shape was it?’ asked the doctor. ‘ln the shape of an ass,’ replied the man. ‘ Go home,’ said the doctor, * and keep sober. You were tipsy last night, and frightened by your own shadow!’ A Good Reason.—A certain minister going to visit one of his sick parishioners, asked him how he had rested during the night. ‘ Oh, wondrous ill, sir,’ replied he, ‘ for mine eyes have not come together these three nights.’ ‘ What is the reason of that ?’ said the other. ‘ Alas! sir,’ says he, ‘ because my nose was betwixt them.’ A nice young man kept looking into the window of a married lady at her lodging-house until he saw her shake a handkerchief, wheu he called at her room. After being picked up at the bottom of the stairs, and having his bonep set, it was explained that she was only shaking some apple peelings from the serviette. Her husband says she did perfectly right in hitting the visitor with the water jug. A Reasonable Reeusal.—At the time of expected invasion at the beginning of the century, some of the town magistrates called upon an old maiden lady of Montrose, and solicited her subscription to raise men for the service of the King. ‘ Indeed,’ she answered right sturdily, * I’ll do nae sic thing ; I never could raise a man for mysel’, and I’m no gaun to rise men for King George.’ A few weeks ago a baby was taken into a church to be baptised, and his little brother was present during that rite. On the following Sunday, when the baby was undergoing his ablutions and dressing, the little brother asked mamma if ska intended to carry Willie to be christened. ‘ Why, no,’ replied his mother ; ‘ don’t you know, my son, that people are not baptised twice?’ ‘What,’ returned the young reasoner, with the utmost astonishment in hie face, ‘ not if it don’t take the first time ?’ A Spiritualist authority asserts with confidence, without mentioning his data, ‘that about one third of the population of Great

Britain is susceptible to spirit influence ; or in other words nine millions of the inhabitants of Great Britain are mediums of more or less power.’ One of the old clergymen of Boston advised a parish committee looking for a pastor to take a young man, on the ground that every church should do its share of taming theological colts. A young lady with a very pretty foot, but a rather large ankle, went into a San Francisco shoo store to be measured. The admiring clerk, who is of Gallicextraction, complimented her in the following queer way— ‘ Madam, you have one bootiful foot, but ze leg commence too immediately Not long since an elderly lady entered a railway carriage, and disturbed the passengers a good deal with complaints about a ‘ most dreadful rheumafciz’ thatslie was troubled with. A gentleman present, who had himself been a severe sufferer from the same complaint, said to her, ‘Did you ever try electricity, madam ? I tried it, and in the course of a short time it cured me.’ ‘Electricity!’ exclaimed the old lady; ‘ yes, I should think I have. I was struck by lightening about a year ago, but it didn’t do me the least bit o’ good.’ This is a little Richmond schoolgirl’s idea of a composition on dogs:—‘Dogs is usefullor than cats. Mice is afeared of cats they bite em. Dogs follows boys and catches a hog by the ear. Hogs rare bitely. Sheeps bite people. Peoples eat hogs and not the Jews, as they and other animals that doesn’t chew their cud isn’t clean ones. Dogs sometimes git hit with bootjacks for barking at night. Sleeply people gits mad and throws at em. Dogs is the best animal for man than grounded hogs or koons or gotes. Got.es smell. The end.’