Odds and Ends.

New Zealand Mail, Issue 317, 9 March 1878, Page 3

Odds and Ends.

Fair Play. —Paying an indifferent musician with “false notes.” A Word for the Publican. —He is a host in himself.—Punch. The Satelites of Mars. —Why, Pas, to be sure ! Punch,. , . , A SABBATH-school scholar was asked What Adam lost when he fell ? And replied, “ I suppose it was his “ Everything was satisfactory,” said an epicure paying his bill at a suburban hotel; “but next time remember the age is in the wine instead of the goose. ’ Always take a rope into your room at the hotel. It may enable you to slide out even when there is no fire A big board bill is just as ba las a conflagration. Military Intelligence. —ln order to facilitate promotion in the army, the preference in selecting for comissions will, in future, be given to gentleman of a retiring disposition. — Punch. Books We Should Like to See. —‘ Macaulay as a poet ”by the Rev. Robert Montgomery ; “ Johnson’s Life’of Boswell,” “ Ossian’s Macpherson,” and “ Mrs. Pepys’s Diary.”— Punch, The Labour Problem. — In the sentence, John, strikes William,” remarked a school-teacher yesterday, “ what is the object of strikes ?” “Higher wages and shorter runs,” promptly replied the intelligent pupil. “ What did the Russian soldiers’ send some hot grapes to the ’Turks for, papa ? asked a six-year-old, who had been spelling out a newspaper paragraph. “ Hot grapes, my dear?” “ Yes, papa, the paper says, “The Russians threw grapes hot for two hours.’ An Illustration. —“ What would be your notion of absent-mindedness?” asked Rufus Choate of a witness whom he was cross-examining. “ Well,” said the witness “ I would say that a man who thought he’d left his watch at home, and took it out of his pocket to see if he had time to go horns and get it, was ab- t ■ent-minded.” ~ , _ . ’ Woman’s Sphere.- Excited wife (to her husband) : “ Do you not admit that woman has a mission ?” Cool huband: “Yes, my dear, she lias—submission." Great confusion in the domestic circle, and the husband calls on the family surgeon for a plaster for his head, wounded by accidently hitting it against the edge of an open door. Sold Cheap.- Little Brown (to “Nigger Minstrel, who always addresses his listeners as “My Lord”) : “Ah how did you know my ah—how did you know I was a lord ?” (Sensation among the bystanders !) Mins rel: “ Bless yer, my lord. I never loose sight o’ my school fellers !’ (Roars of Laughter. Little B. caves in and bolts l)—Punch Awkward for Ma. —There was quite a company of fashionable guests sitting round the table after dinner, who happened to disagree as to the date of a certain event of which they had been talking, when th» host’s eight-year-old-un attempted to expedite the solution of the problem by suddenly asking—" Why, mamma, what day was it,you washed me ?” A Smoker.—” Smoking in Holland,” said a traveller, “ is so common that it is impossible to tell one person from another in a room full of smokers." “How is anyone wh» happens to be wanted picked out, then ?’’ asked a listener. “ Oh, in that case, a waiter goes round with a pair of bellows and blows the smoke from before each face till he recognises the person called for. Fact, gentleman.” A little fellow, five or six years old, who had been wearing undershirts much too small for him, was one day, after having been washed, put into a garment as much too large as the other had been too small. Our six-year-old shrugged his shoulders, shook himself, walked around, and finally burst out with, “ Ma, I do feel awful lonesome in this shirt !” “Say father,” says James Price, looking up from his book ; “ Frederick Charles was going to fight the Austrians, and said to his Prussian troops, ‘ May your hearts beat toward God, and your fists upon your enemy.’ Now, father, do people ft-lit when their hearts are right ?” “ Yes, I suppose so if they fight in a good cause,” said the father. “ I must try to get my heart right, then,” said James; “For I am mad at Bill Jones, and I want to fight him.” Mama sat in the nursery sewing, with baby May playing at her feet. Six-year-old Lou was there, too, tending her dolly, and mama was talking to her of the duty and pleasure of being kind and generous to those not so well off as ourselves. Lou drank it all in eagerly ; her eyes grew bright and earnest. “ Oh, mama,’ she cried “if baby had something awful pretty, and there was a’ real poor little girl coming along the sidewalk, I would go right and give it to her.” Interesting Experiment. —A contemporary says in a recent article —“If you wish to know whether a man is superior to the prejudices of the world, ask him to carry a parcel for you." A fellow tried this plan a few days since upon a well-dressed man he met at a railway station. The well-dressed man took the parcel, and the other was satisfied that he was superior to the prejudices of suciety, but he has not seen the parcel since.— Judy. Too Much “Jawy.”—A missionary joked an Indian who was about to take a wife, and among other things said —“I should think you’d be afraid you’d hive too much joy ; more than even your stoicism could stand.” The noble red man reflected a moment, and then said—“ The pale face is right. Squaw wife too much jawy, sometimes a great deal more than iDjun can stand."

“Who’s Cavahac ?” a boy on the Cedar Rapids’ train asked his mother one day last week. “ Cavahic?” she replied, “I don't know of any such person. I’m sure. Where did you hear of such a man ?” “ Why," he replied, “ back there at Cedar Falls, as soon as the train stopped, there was twenty men began to siout t Cavahac ! cavahac ! cavahac !’ as loud and as fast as they could.” And she explained to him that whin a man with a whip in his hand called another man “ Gvvaliae !” it meant that he wanted to charge him fifty rents for taking him to the wrong hotel and loosing hisbaggage, or to the other depot just in time to miss the last train.

A Patron of Art. —We take the following from the “ Detroit Free Press”:—The chief of police was visited by a sharp-nosed, keen eyed woman, who carried a chromo, lOin. by 14in. in size in her hand, and who placed it before him and asked : “ Are you a judge of chrmos and oil paintings ?” “ Well, I can tell what suits me,” he replied. “Can you tell one from the other?” “Yes, ’m.” “And what do you call this?” “ That is a chromo.” He wanted to say that it was the worst one he ever saw, but he didn't. “Now you are sure are you ?” she asked. “ Certainly I am.” “Well that makes me feel a great deal better. T bought that yesterday of an agent for a chromo, and he had scarcely left the house when some of the neighbors came in and said he’d swindled me and that it was nothing but an oil painting. I thought I’d bring it down and get your opinion, and you say it’s a chromo, do you ?” “I do.” “All right—thanks. Iv’e always been an enthusiastic patron of art, and if that man had got four dollars out of me on false pretences it would have kind o’ set me up against the old masters.”

Attending to His Education.—A San Francisco theatrical manager was busily engaged in the preparation of a new pantomine, for which a number of children were required to enact the roles of dogs and monkeys. His rehearsals wei-e proceeding very satisfactorily when one morning a lady came to the stagedoor leading a little boy with with a mouth like an almanac, extending from 'ear to ’ear, and a facial expression of illimitable vacancy. She was anxious that her infant prodigy should obtain an engagement, and make his first appearance as a full fledged baboon. “Mister,” she said, “ money is not an object with me, nor ever has been. I don’t ask any pecuniary emolument for my little boy, but I do want him to have some little cultivation. You can have his services free, and I’ll find his dress ; but I want him to enjoy all the advantages which mutual love and economy c in purchase him, and I’ll give up anything for his mental improvement." The hoy obtained publicity as a yellow dog. Shameful Deception.— The New York Times, writing of “ the rage for illustrations,” tells the following story :—Some subscription publishers of the unregenerate kind are understood to have t u ken unwarranted liberties with their fellow-countrymen. Two or three years since a publishing-house issued a trashy volume, claiming to be the lives of notorious criminals during the last half-century. Any blanks in thejeareers of the culprits were filled up with imaginary horrors, and all their misdeeds were grossly exaggerated, in order to present the lovers of such re fined and ennobling literature with the most highly spiced morsels. When the manuscript was finished and the proper illustrations were looked for, it was found that only a certain number of the scoundrels’ likenesses were obtainable. The question was to supply their places with assumed portraits that would not betray the cheat. After considerable search, an old volume, long out of print, of biographies of evangelical clergyman of a bygone day, with portraits, was opportunely discovered. These were coarse woodcuts, and so wretchedly done that it seemed to the publisher that they would pass current for villains of the deepest dye. The work was issued, and as it was extensively advertised is a moral publication—to warn the young from the beginning of vice, and so forth — it fell into the hands of many orthodox people, who had no difficulty in reading tiie characters of the rascals by their utterly depraved countenances. Before long some of the readers detected the lik ness between the criminals and certain aged preachers still lingering on this earthly stage. Discovery alter discovery was made, and finally the whole fraud was revealed ; but the exposure, it is asserted, only increased the sale of the noxious book.