THE HUMOURIST.

Patea Mail, 2 October 1880, Page 1 (Supplement)

THE HUMOURIST.

A PRUDENT YOUNG MAN. One of the Danbury young men who had occasionally escorted a young lady home on Sunday evenings, and went in for lunch, after performing both services last Sunday night, suddenly said to her, — ‘Do you talk in your sleep?’ ‘ Why—no,’ she answered in surprise. 'Do you walk in your sleep ?’ he next inquired.

‘ No, sir.’

He moved his chair an inch closer, and with increased interest said, — ‘ Do you snore ?’

‘No,’ she hastily replied, looking uneasily at him.

At this reply his eyes fairly sparkled ; his lips eagerly parted: and, as ho gave his chair another hitch, ho briskly inquired—- ‘ Do you throw the combings from your hair in the wash-basin ?’ ‘ What’s that ?’ she asked with a blank face.

Ho repeated the question, although with increased nervousness.

‘No, .1 don’t,’ she answered in some haste,

Again Ids chair wont forward; while Ids agitation grow so great, that he could scarcely maintain his place upon it, as lie further asked--

‘Do yon clean out the comb when you are through ? ’ Of course I do,’ she said, staring at him with all her might. In an instant ho was on his knees before her, Ids eyes ablaze with Hamo, and his hands outstretched.

‘Uh, my dear miss! I love you,’ lie passionately cried. ‘ I give my whole heart up to you. Live me, and I will he your slave. Love me as J. love you, ami 1 will do everything on earth for you. Oh ! will you take me to bo your lover, your husband, your protector, your everything?’ It was a critical moment fur a young woman of her years ; but she was equal to the emergency, as a woman generally is, and she scooped him in. He wanted her, but she would not give her consent until he had consulted her parents; so he wont into the room where they were, and modestly stated the ease. ‘And you really think you love her enough to marry her?' said the father, after lie had finished.

‘Oh, yes, sir!’ said the youth, in fervent eagerness ; ‘I love her with all my soul. I love her better than I do my life, tdic is my guiding-star, the worshipped object of my every thought, every hope, every aspiration,’ lie stood therewith clasped hands, his face radiant with the strength of his devotion. There was a moment of pause ; and then the mother softly asked—- ‘ What do you think of that, old man?’

‘That sounds like business, old woman,’ replied the satisfied father. And so it was arranged that the daughter should accept her suitor. A .MUSTARD PLASTKU. NINE FEET LONE.

Dr. Henry C. Chapman, coroner’sphysiciau, rushed into the drug store at the north-west corner Twelfth and Chestnut Streets the other morning, and cried in peremptory tones:—‘Give me three feet of mustard plaster, and give it to me right away,’ The apothecary, ‘with ovenvh'dming brows,’ looked up from amidst his ‘green earthen pots, bladders, and musty seeds,’ and said iu a dead sort of way, ‘ Sir ?’ In this single word was expressed both interrogation and surprise. ‘I say,’ replied Dr. Chapman, ‘I want three yards of mustard plaster, and I want it just'as quick as you can make it. Patient is in imminent danger. Delay may mean death.’

‘Three feet of mustard plasterV Great heavens, .Doctor, wh.it arc —’ ‘ I said three ya'/vA, not three feet; at least, when I said throe feet 1 meant to say three yards, and 1 immediately corrected myself. And L thank that I mentioned the fact that this was a ease in which there was no time to be lost.’ The 1 footer was "rowing testy. ‘ Hut three yards of mustard plaster—why, bless my soul you wouldn’t want that much if your patient was a hippopotamus, with the stomach ache. Surely, Doctor, you don’t really mean to say yards; you must mean inches.’

Dr. Chapman assumed an air of severity becoming his professional dignity and municipal ofiice. He seemed on the verge of expressing an opinion forcibly. There was a significant pause. Then his severity faded away, his dignity relaxed, and he chuckled. ‘The fact of the matter is,’ he said, ‘one of the giraffes out of the Zoo has an acute attack of bronchitis. His throat’s sore all, the way down, that’s what the plaster’s for. Now then let’s have it.

PROVERBS OF THE BILLINGS

FAMILY,

Ilumiu natur is Ibo same all over the world, cept iu New England, and thar its accordiu tu sarcnmstances. A kodlish aristokrat alwns puts me in mind of a drunken man trying to walk a krack.

Rum is good in its plasc, and liel is the plasc for it. Larfiu at your own story, while yu are tcllin ou it, is a good dele like a firing a gun opli thru the touch hole. A live barte surntinies gits into a dead body, so docs pearls git into jersa clams, “Glory enufl' for one da,” attending a nigger kamp meeting. He who skorns to be inlloocnscd at tail by fashion is a wise fool. I am prepaired tu say tn sevin ov the rich men out ov evry ten, make the most ov yure money for it makes the most ov yen. If i had a boy who didn’t lie well enufl tu suto mo, i wud set him tu tending a retalc dri good store.

Man was kreatod a little lower than the. angells and has bin gettin a little lo >v clever sinsc.

The mosto uneasy kreeturi ever perused was a bob tail bull in Hi time. When a feller gits going downhil, it dus seem as tho evry tiling had been greased for tli okashun. I havo known folks whoso calibre was very small but whose bore was very big.

The meanest man i ever mi was the one who stole a suggar wins :cl from a nigger baby to sweeten a knp ov rye kofl'ee with. Pluk is a nise kompound ov pride, vanitco, and vartue. Robbers arc like ranc, tha fall on the just and unjust. We hate those who will not take onr advise, and despise them who do.—“ Josh Billings.”

A COLOSSAL SWINDLE BAULKED,

A few weeks ago Mr. Thomas Hollister, an ex-Telograph clerk, was arrested at San Francisco by a Chicago detective upon the charge of having conspired with certain speculators in the Far West to create a Wall Street panic in Pacific mail and mining companies stock. The method by which this project was to be executed appears to be the offspring of Mr. Hollister’s fertile brain, and he had been fully empowered by his associates to put it iu practice, when the whole enterprise was suddenly frustrated by his seizure. He had convoyed a galvanic battery and an isolated wire to a desolate spot in the Sierra, not far from Battle Mountain, whore he proposed to cut the service wires connecting California with the Eastern States, and by means of his own apparatus to telegraph the following amazing despatch to the agents of the Press Association at Chicago :— ‘ This morning about ten o’clock a lingo tidal wave swept over San Francisco, destroying the entire city, and surging up farther inland until Sacramento and Stockton were flooded ten feet deep. Simultaneously a fearful earthquake convulsed the whole State, the heaviest shock being sustained by Virginia City and the neighbourhood. Comstock Mines completely choked up. Further details of catastrope are yet wanting.’ Mr. Hollister’s enterprise would have been carried out some days before his arrest but for an unexpected fall in Cromstock shares, which induced his associates to postpone their coup until this particular shock should have somewhat recovered itself. Meanwhile the Chicago police got wind of the scheme, and ran the chief £ speculator’ to earth just iu tiaio to avert one of the ‘ biggest things’ in swindles ever yet devised by Transatlantic astuteness.

DRESS AND FASHION IN PARIS

Grey, a colour long discarded, seems to bo again in favor with the fashionable world, and some very pretty toilettes are made in it. Handkerchief costumes have had a success, but vary too little in style and arrangement to bo long favourities ; there is, besides, something very uncomfortable in being dressed in immense squares like Hags. In contrast to these, foulards, spotted or dotted with small patterns, plain surahs, China satins with their rich and exquisite tints have met with unqualified approval. Long dresses arc very little worn ; nearly all skirts are ras de terre, excepting for special occasions or for evening wear, and even for these many young girls choose the short dress ; it is so convenient and graceful. One custom scorns unalterable, and that is wearing flowers in the bodice. On all occasions ladies adorn themselves with flowers ; at present it is near the neck, on the left side, that they place the bouquet. At the theatre on one with the least pretension to style is seen without her little spray or bouquet of dowers, often fastened by a lizard, a beetle, or some fancy ornament of jewels. A very pretty dress for the theatre is of cigar-coloured satin, with a fluted skirt. Four inches from the edge arc two rows of brown and gold passementerie ornaments, shaped like lyres. At first this may seem eccentric, but we can assure our readers nothing could be in better taste. ‘ Myra’s Journal of Dress and Fashion,’

An Irishman, on seeing a small cofiin,

exclaimed, ‘ls it possible that colliii was intended for any living creature V In some respects the gentler sex far surpass us. No man, for instance, can deliver a lecture with a dozen pins iu his mouth.

Doctors recommend people to go to sleep lying on the right side. This is all the better if you arm a little deaf in the left car, and don’t go home till late. A conGrmed drunkard says he ‘believes that the worst old toper in the world would be glad to draw a sober breath, if bo had one.’

A spirit of restful content, Creeps over tbs happy man who Can cash all the checks that he draws, And has not a thing else to do. But persons have noticed that this Calm spirit of restful content Busts up whenever its owner Hits down on a pin that is bent.

A Philadelphia youth who committed suicide twenty years ago because a lovely being gave him the mitten has been heard from through an uptown medium. He says that when he gazes through the misty veil which db. ides life and death and sees his old flame now, with her fourteen children lying around loose while she cleans house, he gets mad enough at his folly to commit suicide again, and his greatest punishment is in the reflection that he can’t. ’

And now another genius has gone into electricity and invented something that lays over the telephone, and enables you to sec the face of the person you arc talking with. At least that is what the inventor himself claims for it, and he ought to know. Row, if somebody will only invent something whereby you can tell whether the person you arc talking with is lying to yon or not, we will just throw up ouv situation to-morrow, give all our earnings to the poor and calmly sit down to trait for the millennium.

TWO oris lONS, Twenty-one.

Far from the crush and the crowd of the dancing. Far from the quarrel for supper-room chairs, Soft conic the strains of the music cntranc-

mg, Isn't it charming out here on the stairs, bright dewy eyes and a word softly spoken. Ao matron notices, nobody cares; Rosebud or ribbon is begged as a token, Oh, it’s delightful out here on the stairs, W *

Fifty-five.

How the door slams, it is really provoking, Piercing and bleak are the cold winter airs, Foon those poor fools will be coughing and choking, w It must be dreadful, out there on the stairs. There breeds pneumonia, colds, and bronchitis— See how the chandelier flickers and flares— Fever and chills and the dread meningitis, Oh, it is dreadful out there cn the stain.