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Southland Times, Issue 642, 11 March 1867, Page 3

Pook Soil. — When Sir Walter Scott was extending his garden at Abbotsford, an old servant was getting exasperated by digging some stony , ground. Sir Walter saw that the old man's feelings were rather ruffled, and said to him, < " That's grand soil you're working on the dday.1" 1 — " Grand soil !" exclaimed the gardener, sarcastically, " I think it's the riddin's o' the Creation." An Equivocal Peefekence. — A gentleman was describing to Douglas Jerrold the story of his courtship and marriage — how his wife had been - brought up in a co avent, and was on the point of taking the veil, when his presence burst upon her enraptured sight, and she accepted him as her husband. Jerrold listened to the end of the story, and then quietly remarked, " Ah, she cvi- ] dently thought you better than nun." , Here is the pithiest sermon ever preached ; " Our ingress to life is naked and bare ; our pro-g-ess through life is trouble aud care j our egress out of it we do not know where ; but doing well here, we shall do well there; I could not teU - more by preaching a year " Bismarck is said to be partial to brandy, and before leaving Berlin for the seajb of war a little son of his asked him how long he was to be away. He replied that he did not know. Thereupon a servant came in to inquire how many bottles of cognao were to be packed up in the count's luggauc. " Two i ozen," wa-» the answer. " Ah. p-pa," cried out the terriiJa infant, "now I know how long you are to be from horne — twentyfour dnj 8.". ' Dean Swift, having preached an assize sermon in Ireland, was invited to dine with the -. jud es ; and having iv Iva sermon considered the use and abuse of the law, he then pr.-ssed a little s hard upon those councillors who pleaded causes which they knew in their consciences to be wrong. When dinner was over, and the glass began to go round, j, young barrister retori ed upon the dean, and alter so* oral altercations, the ( couuc.lor asked him, if the devil were to die, whether a parson mi^ht not he found, who, Jor money, would preueh lus funeral sermon, " Yes," said Swill, "Iwould gladly be the man, and I \ would then give the devil liis due, as I liave this 1 day done bis cbLdron." Li

A Curiosity op TELEORAPHr.-rrOur London j- reporter sends us tne following as an instauce of the many singular applications of telegraphy. A -' gentleman, whom we will call Mr M., resident in f London, is employed there to " manage the wire" } for a Glasgow journal ; that is to say, he arranges j the news to be sent down each evening by the , wire which that newspaper employs by special arrangement with one of the companies. The * principnl office of that company is at the top of i several flights of stairs in one of those immense • buildings, erected to furnish office accommodation, . which abound in some quarters of the city, j After a certain hour in the evening the telegraphic . clerk who sends off the " copy " by wire is the sole occupant of this mansion, with the exception J of the porter who attends to the door, which, , after the hour referred to, is generally shut. This I functionary, who is not often found nodding, got into this abnormal Homeric state a night or twoago, and so profound was liis slumber that not all the fantasias which Mr M. performed on the door — loud enough to have wakened the Seven Sleepers, and even louder than the works of some of our modern composers — could arouse him. It was, of course, out of the question to attract the attention of the clerk at the roof of the establishment. Mr M. fortunately, however, hit upon the following expedient lor letting the porter know that he was wuiting for admission. He went to an adjoining telegraph station, and sent a message to the company's office in Glasgow, requesting the clerk there to telegraph to the clerk in the London house, and instruct him to go down stairs to rouse the porter. This was done with perfect success in about twenty minutes. In that time, therefore, persons at a distance of over 400 miles succeeded in awakening one who was only separated from the employer by a door, and who, even at that short distance, was deaf to all persuasion. — " Leeds Mercury."