WHAT THE SLIP OF A CORK DID.

New Zealand Times, Volume XXX, Issue 4552, 22 October 1875, Page 3

WHAT THE SLIP OF A CORK DID.

(From the Banbury Neios.) A little boy was carrying a bottle of gingerpop down the street the other day, when suddenly the cork poped out and popped him in the north eye. When he had sufficiently recovered from his astonishment, he yeEed so vigorously that a small crowd soon collected around him to ascertain the matter. Two carpenters at work on the next block around the comer, in their anxiety to see what the excitement was about, fell out of the second storey window on to a peanut stand beneath. Then two women fainted, one of whom suddenly disappeared in an adjacent coal ceUar. Three smaE boys shouted “ fire,” and a man with a long ladder on his shoulder, hearing their cries, turned around suddenly, and after overturning an apple woman amid the demoralising ruin of her wares, the end of the ladder demolished a plateglaaa window, and finally settled itself on an old gentleman’s worst com. Then a fat old lady had an oye gouged out by an nmbreEa, and a Dutchman and Irishman, after excitedly endeavoring to explain to each other the cause of it all, got into a fight and rolled recklessly into the gutter. By this time seven policemen, headed by two fireengines, came upon the scene, and arrested nine innocent lookers-on. This had the effect of dispersing the crowd, most of whom to this hour haven’t the remotest idea what it was all about anyhow.