Odds and Ends.

New Zealand Mail, Issue 310, 30 March 1878, Page 3

Odds and Ends.

Favorite Hibernian Toy—The top of the morning. If a bank cannot stand a loan it must eventually go down. , .Mean speed, according to 1 itncJt, is running away from one’s creditors. Fact about the sex. —Although a woman’s age is undeniably her own, she never owns it. “ Ticker me when I’m sad mother,” is the latest, he should tickle him with a rolling-pin. Germanic Excuse for not Addressing an Exglishman as “ Mr ” —“ To Herr is human !’’ A Candid Child. —Landlady’s little girl—“ Ali, mother looks nicer in that bonnet than you do !’’ — Punch. A Spanish illustrated paper is in trouble for publishing a portrait of the intended bride of King Alfonso without making it a flattering picture. The answer is, “ One strikes ilie blow and the other blows the strike.” We have forgotten the question. Ah, parson, I wish I could carry my gold with me," said i dying man to his pastor. “It might melt,” was the consoling answer. “ I was not aware that you knew him,” said Tom Smith to an Irish friend, the other day. “ Know him,” said lie, in a tone which comprehended the knowledge of more than one life. “ I knew him when his father was a boy.” “ Sambo, why is a chimley-sweep one of the happiest men alibe?”—“ I spose kase he knows de joys ob de fireside ?”—“ No, dat ain’t it.” “Well, den let me see —kase from de queen on the throne, the ladies cannot do widout him,” —“ No dat ain’t it ; do you gib it up ?” “ Well den, kase lie’s always suited(sooted).” Some women love and praise their husbands, said a Louisville wife the other day in a frank, honest way. “My husband is a smart man, yes he is. I never saw a smarter. Why, he has got it fixed so that I can go to any store in town and run in debt as much as I please, and they can’t touch a thing. But, of course, I wouldn’t.” Doing it Dacently.—Mrs. Macartliy : “ Faith an’ I don’t want the tilings at all at all, B chly O’Brady, though it’s yourself wid your plisint tongue I’d rather have than anyone else to cliate me-”—B.O’B. : “That’s thrue for ye, Mrs. Macartliy, an’ shure I don’t know anyone else in the wide world I’d be half so pleased to cliate." The following conversation occnred between a colored prisoner and a temperance lecturer, who was in search of facts to fortify liis positions and illustrate his subject: “ What brought you toprison, mycolored friend?” “ Two constables, sah.” “Yes, but I mean had intemperance anything to do with it ?” “ Yes sah, they wuz bofe uv’ em drunk, sah.” The Russian army is verv scantily supplied with bands, the men marching to the music of their own songs. We should think that when a man had been compelled to listen to a Russian song, he would want to fight somebody if he had to walk one hundred miles to find the man.

A man too busy to take care of his health is like a mechanic too busy to take care of liis tools. “ Liee is made up ov sunshine and sliaddo,” says Josh Billings—“about five shaddos to one sunshine.” A woman may not be able to sharpen a pencil or hold an umberella, but she can pack more articles into a trunk than a man can in a one-horse waggon.

Happiness.—There is one sure way of attaining what we may term, if not utter, at least mortal, happiness ;it is this —a sincere and unrelaxing activity for the happiness of others. A vejiy neat definition of the word “ suspicion” was that given by a jealous husband. ‘‘A suspicion is a feeling that impels you to try to find out something you don’t wish to know.” “ How is it that you have never kindled a flame in any man’s heart ?” asked a rich lady of her portionless niece. “I suppose, aunt, it is because I’m not a good match,” meekly replied the poor niece. Providential Arrangement.—Greenland lias no cats. “How full of wisdom,” exclaims the Chicago Times, " are the ways of Providence ! Imagine cats in a country where the nights are six months long !” “ I don’t see how you could have been working all day like a horse !” exclaimed the wife of a lawyer, her husband having declared that he bad been thus working. “Well, my dear," he replied, “I’ve been drawng a conveyance all day anyhow. ” “You see, my dear.” he explained, “The man was climbing the ladder with a hodful of mortar on his shoulder. Just as I passed under it ho made a misstepand the whole contents of the hod came down upon mj' head." “How absurd you must have looked?" she remarked. “On the contrary, my dear, I was sublime.”

He had been in the habit of making very frequent calls on a very agrecble lady of his acquaintance, and on entering her parlor one evening he said, “ Well, Miss Sims, here I am again, yon see as regularly as the fever and ague,” “ Ob, no,” said she, very demurely, “ that comes only every other day.” They were husband and wife, and ns they stood before the capitol in Washington she asked, “ What's the figure on top ?” “ That’s a goddess,” he answered. “ And wliat’s a goddess ?” “ A woman who holds her tongue,” he replied. S.‘-.e looked at him sideways, and then began planning how to make a peach pie with the stones in it, for the benefit of his sore tooth. When an Oxford Professor of Biblical Criticism recently put to his class the question whether they could think of any reason why the grave of Moses should have he n so strictly concealed, a simple youth who, unfortunately, stammers, and who appears to be a frequenter of shows, thought it must be “ Be-because they would ‘ t-take him up and st-stuff him.’ ” Spurgeon, the celebrated English divine, recently made the remark that he lias often thought, when hearing certain preachers of a high order speaking to the young, that they must have understood the Lord to say. “ Feed my camelopards,” instead of “ Feed my lames,” for nothing but giraffes could reach any spiritual food from the lofty rack on which they place it. AViien Gen. Changarnier was in Africa he was colonel of a regiment, and was more fearful of a draft of air than the lead of his opponents. His mind appeared to be constantly occupied with drafts of air. On one occasion the balls were flying thick around him. An officer saluted and said : “ Colonel, you are exposing yourself.” “True,” said Changarnier, “we are fighting in a gorge.” He turned up his coat collar. “The way we had in the Army.”— Colonel (of the pre-examination period—to studious Sub) : “ I say, youngster, you’ll never make a soldier if y> u don’t mind what you’re about !” Sub(mildly) : “ I should be sorry to think that’ sir !” Colonel : “I saw you sneaking up the High-street yesterday, looking like a Methodist parson in reduced circumstances ! Hold up your head, sir ! Buy a stick, sir ! Slap your leg, sir ! and stare at the girls at the windows!” —- Punch. There is a legend in Florence tiiat a Grand Duke once proclaimed that every beggar who would appear in the plaza at a certain time should he given a new suit of clothes. The beggars of the city were on hand promptly, when all avenues to the plaz were closed, and eacli beggar was compelled to strip of his old clothes before receiving the new suit. In the old clothes thus collec ted enough money was found secreted to build a beautiful bridge over the Arno, still called the Beggars’ Bridge. A New-Hartford magnate, who experiences great satisfaction in dwelling upon the fact that ho is a selfmade man, is given to poking sticks right and left without regard to politeness or property. The other day, in a crowded store he commenced bantering a ne’er-do weel of doubtful antecedents, who, drifti g into town some years ago, wound up his remarks as follows : “ Say, now, did you ever have a father or mother?” “ Sartin’s you live,” came back the reply, like a shot; “I am none of your self-made men.” A bright story is told of the accomplished wifenow dead—of General Hooker. When she was the admired Miss Grosebeck, of Cincinnati, she was once at an evening party when a fashionable young dandy wasaslcedif he would like to he presented to her. “ Oh, yes, said lie languidly, “ trot her out.” The lady overheard the remark, and when lie was presented, she adjusted her eye-glasses deliberately and slowly scanned his clothing from hoot to collar. The survey finished, she waved her hand and carelessly said: “ Trot him back, I have seen all there is of him,” Ur in tiif. “ Hact.” —Not long ago an officer of the London School Board was crossing Convent Garden Market at a late hour, when he found a little follow making his bed for the night in a fruit-b isket. “ Would you not like to go to school and he well cared for ?” asked the official. “ No,” replied the ui chin. ‘ ‘ But do you know that I am one of the people who are authorised to take up little boys whom I find as I find you. and take them to school?” I knows you are old chap, if you find them in the streets ; hut this here is not a street. It is private property ; and if you interferes with my liberty, the Duke of Bedford will be down upon you. ” I knows the Hact as well as you.” London covers nearly 700 square miles. It numbers more than 4,000,000 inhabitants. It comprises 100,000 foreigners, from every quarter of the globe. It contains more Roman Catholics than Rome itself; more Jews than the whole of Palestine ; more Irish than Dublin ; more Scotchmen than Edinburgh ; more Welshmen than Cardiff. Has a birth in every five minutes and a death in ever eight minutes ; has seven accidents in it everyday in its 7000 miles of streets ; has 124 persons every day, and 45,000 annually, added toitspopulation ; has 117,000 habitual criminals on its police register, and has 38,000 drunkards annually brought before the magistrates.