MISCELLANEOUS.

Poverty Bay Standard, Volume I, Issue 119, 30 April 1884, Page 2

MISCELLANEOUS.

“ Is it true that when a wild goose’s mat 2 dies it never takes another?” asks a young widow. “ Yes, but don’t worry about that. The reason it acts that way is because it is a goose. Never confide your secrets to paper; it is like throwing a stone into the air, and if you know who throws tbe stone, you do not know where it may fall. A young wife’s greatest trial is probably to find out whether it would bo proper to starch her husband’s shirt all over or only the bosom ami cuffs. There are persons who have more intelligence than taste, an l others who have more taste than intelligence. There is more vanity and caprice in taste than in intelligence. The forgiving nature and unselfish Christian charit that characterise Heaven’s “best gift to man ” was illustrat 1 1 during a disturbance in the gallery of a theatre. It was charitably suggested to pitch the disturber over the paraquette, when a sweet gill seated there looked beseechingly up, and with a sweet voice cried, “ Don’t throw him over ; please don’t! It would be cruel. Kill him where he

“ No sir,” said the young lawyer who was paying attention to a fair maiden, “no sir, I don’t like a circuit court. There’s no fun in being chased around the house by a cross dog before getting a chance to dive in at the front door. An advertisement in a Swiss paper says:— ‘ Wanted a servant who knows how to cook and take care of children.’ In the cannibal islands a domestic possessed of such a double gift would not long remain without employinent. A Cincinnati woman eloped last fall with an old man ninety-three years of age. Now he has deserted her. Lhis ought to teach women not to be too fast to elope with a young and giddy youth. These old boys are sometimes fickle. Fifteen years ago an Alabama man killed a peddler. Ever since then his wife has held the crime over him as a whip, obliging him to split all the wood, build the fires, and rock the oaby. Rendered desperate by her treatment he has given himself up to be hanged. “ When I married Georgina,” said Frank, “ my people told me I was foolish to wed a girl who didn’t know how to handle a rollingpin. Lord, how they misjudged her! Do you see that lump on my head ?” “ She a great artist I” contemptuously ejaculated a prima donna: “ Why there was no brass band on the tug-boat that went down the harbor to meet her, and she wasn’t even inter-viewed. And she thinks she can sing!” As to railway accidents and how to avoid them, most men hold some theory about the disputed point—which is the safest carriage in a train. In the late Werribee accident the first carriage next to the engine was totally smashed, the last carriage was also damaged, but the middle part of the train escaped serious injury. I remember once conversing on this subject, while travelling on an English railway. A. learned bishop, noted alike for his sound common sense and earnest piety, was one of the party ; having much to do with railway travelling, he was asked for his views. “ Well,” said the man after my own heart, “ if possible, I always select the middle carriage in a train, and take a seat in the middle compartment of that carriage; the rest I leave to Providence.” I don’t know that human foresight can go much further than this. The Conservative journals are nothing if not extreme. The other day they plunged themselves into the deepest abyss known to despair in writing about the early death of Prince Leopold, and no sooner is this unseemly demonstration over than the fates are again propitious, and the “ penny a liners ” are allowed to have their head, or rather lose their head, in writing high faintin’ about the sad railway accident near Werribee. The organ with the limited circulation which panders to the tastes of the hysterical old ladies of Toorak on this occasion out-Heroded all its imitators, and fairly laid its ears back for a “ big ” effort. The result was columns of drivel about “ sleet of a truly wintry night ” —thermometer registered 80—“ the howling storm and sheets of rain ’’ —the only howling came from the writers as jhey rubbed their hands over their ink besmeared paper. Of course, such phrases as “ lurid sky,” “murky sky,” “ ruddy flames,” “truly sickening spectacle,” “ lent glamor to the weird scene,” were scattered as plentifully and promiscuously throughout the report as blowflies about a slain carcase at midsummer. But the artist who wrote that the “ force of the impact could not have been exceeded by an earthquake, or the explosion of a bomb"' deserves—well, the schoolmaster’s rod. - If it were not laughable it would be positively indecent to print such ravings about a very sad occurrence. It is only in the Prairie Holder that one expects to find this kind of writing. —“ Under the Verandah.’: