VARIETIES.

South Canterbury Times, Issue 2320, 24 August 1880, Page 3

VARIETIES.

“ Semper Pavata.” —The Doctor’s Daughter—“ Janet, are you never going to leave off that unbecoming old bonnet?” Aged Villager—“ Well, Miss I’ve wore it for 30 years, and the yicar says I may be took any hour,” We have generally observed that if a man does some mighty mean thing when he has been drinking, the liquor had a mighty mean man to work on in the first place. Don’t lay it all to drink. A Japanese student of English, being required to write a treatise upon the domestic animal, handed in the following :—“ The cat is a small cattle. When he sees a raf he laminates bis eyes.”

Putting a Better Complexion on it.— “And they were all talking so unkindly of you, clearest Louise ” “ And what were they saying ?” “ Sayingdbat you painted your face; and I told them that it was untrue, and that your color was only erysipelas.” At a legal investigation of a liquor seizure, the Judge asked an unwilling witness :—“ What was in the barrel you bad?” The reply was: —“Well, your Honor, it was marked ‘ whiskey’ on one end of the barrel, and ‘ Pat Duffy’ on the other, so that 1 can’t say whether it was whiskey or Pat Duffy was in the barrel, being as I am on my oath.” Fences do not walk, but nevertheless have a swinging gate. And though not soldiers, they have a good picket line. And though they stand firmly to their posts, yet are they easily captured ; for how many people there are that find it easy to take a fence ! The Spread-Eagle Abroad.—A huge Yankee in England, on being profusely thanked for having rescued a lady from the attack of a ferocious dog, which he seized by’ the throat and throttled, said “ Of course I was glad to help (lie girl ; but what I wanted most was to give that condemned English cur some adequate notion of the American eagle.”

A Lost Hope.—The phrenologist lifted his hand from the hoy’s head and said, “ Your son has extraordinary developments, sir; he will be a great man” The father dropped his chin upon his breast and mournfully added, “ Then he can never be President of the United States.”

The only Minister of the late Cabinet to whom a pension has .yet been granted is Lord John Manners, who, under the Act of 1869, takes a second-class pension of £ISOO a year. It is not yet certain whether Lord Beaconsfield will resume his pension of £5000: but in the ordinary course ho will do so, as there is no necessity for a Minister who has already’ made the application required by’ the statue to repeat it a second time. The other first-class pensions are drawn by Sir George Grey, Mr Milner Gibson and Mr Spencer Walpole. "The following euro for mosquitos and rats is worth a trial :—Leave a bottle of the oil of penny’ royal uncorked in a room at night, and there will not be found a mosquito or any' other bloodsucker there in the morning. Mix potash with powdered meal, and throw into the rat-holes of a cellar or store, and the rats will depart. -n Irishman was going along a road, when an angry bull rushed down upon him, and with his horns tossed him over the fence. The Irishman, recovering from his fall, upon looking up, seeing the bull pawing and tearing up the ground, said: “ If it was not for your bowing and scraping your apologies, you brute, faith I should think .you had thrown me over this fence on purpose.”