VARITIES.

South Canterbury Times, Issue 2342, 18 September 1880, Page 3

VARITIES.

When is a man most transparent ? When lie lias a pane in liis back and his vest is open. Lady : “Will you tell me my little hoy, what is the pestilence thatwalketh in darkness ?” Small Hoy: “Bugs.” Why is Hymen always represented as bearing a torch ?” “ Boston Post” Because only light-headed people think of marriage. “ Now, toll me candidly are you guilty?” asked a lawyer of his client “ Why, do you suppose I’d be fool enough to hire you if I was innocent ? The latest in pyrotechnics is a figure of G. Washington holding aloft a flag upon which is inscribed a liver pill advertisement. The blind man should be the most contented man in the world, because he cm have everything lie secs. —“ ’Tis sweet to be remembered,” as the man said when he got a cork leg. Those Englishmen who have been riding the bicycle longest have become bow-legged and stoop-shouldered as a consequence; and no one pities them. A critic say “Ouida’s” “success” is due to her unfailing pruriency; Balzac’s to his inexhaustible genius; George Elliot’s to her intellectual sympathy. _ Mrs Langtry, the English professional beautj', is about to appear in amateur theatricals. The Duke of Buckingham is a widower without sous, though' he has several daughters. Unless he marries again and leaves a son the title will become extinct. Hartmenn, the Nihilist, Mcnotti Garibaldi and Arthur Arnould, the Communist, are mentioned as members of the stall’of Boehefort’s new paper, “L’lntransigeant.” The latest style of ladies’hair-dress-ing in Paris is the “coiffure d’Ophclie.” Get your hair in a wild tangle, and then sprinkle it with wild flowers. Only this and nothing more. ■ Mr Wilkie Collins states that one American publisher confessed to having sold 120,000 copies of “The Woman in White”; and yet that publisher never sent the author a sixpence. “ Where do your paragrapliers go to when they die ?’ asks the “ Houston News,” and the “Philadelphia Herald” replies ; If it isn’t from the humorous to the grave we give it up.” It must.havo been tremendously embarrassing to that nice young man out at Bowling Green, who escorted the preacher’s fair daughter to church on

Sunday night, and arrived late, to hear the reverend gentleman road from the Bible as the couple marched up the aisle, “ My daughter is grcviously vexed with a devil.” It would be hard to tell which felt the worst,, the preacher, his daughter, or her escort. When Wilberforce became rector of Brighton, in the Isle of Wight, he was waited on by an old farmer, whose one desire in life was to rent the glebe acre. “Why?” asked the Bishop.—“ Well,” said the old fellow, with a look of business shrewdness, “ when t’ other parson was here he used to farm it hisself, and there being so little of it he always got in his hay before anybody else. Then he clapped on the prayer for rain.” Choice of Evils. —Duckwidge and Pottles meet. Many years had passed since they were at school and college together. Duckwidge invites Pottles to dinner “in a quiet way.” Duckwidge—Now what will you drink, Pottles? We have here some—(holding decanter against the light)—Yes, this is “ East London”— that by you, I think is “New River.” Perhaps you take sparkling (to serving maid). Mary, did you bring up the Seltzer and apoll (Pottles gesticulates dissent). No? Well, I assure you you’ll find that “ New River” an exceeding pleasant —• ah water ! [By Heavens, as Pottles said at club that night, the man was an irreconciliable Lawsonite !] —“ Punch.”